Lalumera, E. 2017 Understanding schizophrenia through Wittgenstein: empathy, explanation, and philosophical clarification, in Schizophrenia and Common Sense, Hipólito, I., Gonçalves, J., Pereira, J. (eds.). SpringerNature, Mind-Brain Studies.

Wittgenstein’s concepts shed light on the phenomenon of schizophrenia in at least three different ways: with a view to empathy, scientific explanation, or philosophical clarification. I consider two different “positive” wittgensteinian accounts―Campbell’s idea that delusions involve a mechanism of which different framework propositions are parts, Sass’ proposal that the schizophrenic patient can be described as a solipsist, and a Rhodes’ and Gipp’s account, where epistemic aspects of schizophrenia are explained as failures in the ordinary background of certainties. I argue that none of them amounts to empathic-phenomenological understanding, but they provide examples of how philosophical concepts can contribute to scientific explanation, and to philosophical clarification respectively.