Delusion Formation through Uncertainty and Possibility-blindness

Abstract

Some scholars have tried to consider delusions as certainties – understood in Wittgenstein’s sense – due to the similarities that seem to exist between their epistemological statuses. However, such an attempt has been sharply criticized, among other things, because the content of delusions clashes head on with the content of certainties, so that delusions cannot be understood due to the changes of meaning relations. But it is obvious that, even though delusions cannot be regarded as certainties, many delusions affect in one way or another the patient’s system of certainties. On this basis, it is not farfetched to think that such influence might also be reciprocal: stated otherwise, it appears highly advisable to analyze whether some delusions might be contemplated as the upshot of changes in certainties. In this article, I carry out such an analysis by intending to show that the origin of some pedestrian and stark delusions can be found respectively in what I will call “possibility-blindness” and “uncertainty”, terms which I have developed taking into account the work of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.