An Alternative View of Schizophrenic Cognition

Abstract

An alternative view to the traditionally held view that schizophrenia is characterised by severely disordered cognition is presented. It is possible that apparently self-contradictory expressions of schizophrenics are well-formed communicative expressions of highly ordered cognitive systems. Building on the premise that behavior is in general communicative, and using Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem from logic as a model, it is shown that the most characteristic symptoms of schizophrenia (namely apparently self-contradictory thought, delusions and hallucinations) may indicate truths that cannot be derived within highly ordered cognitive systems.