How Do Demons Poses Things Like Stuffed Animals

Abstract

Spirit possession is a common miracle around the world in which a non-corporeal amanuensis is involved with a human host. This manifests in a range of maladies or in displacement of the host'south bureau and identity. Prompted by date with the miracle in Arab republic of egypt, this newspaper draws connections between spirit possession and the concepts of personhood and intentionality. Information technology employs these concepts to articulate spirit possession, while likewise developing the intentional stance as formulated past Daniel Dennett. Information technology argues for an understanding of spirit possession as the spirit opinion: an intentional strategy that aims at predicting and explaining behaviour past ascribing to an agent (the spirit) beliefs and desires but is only deployed one time the mental states and activity of the subject field (the person) neglect specific normative distinctions. Practical to behaviours that are generally taken to point mental disorder, the spirit opinion preserves a peculiar form of intentionality where behaviour would otherwise be explained as a outcome of a malfunctioning physical mechanism. Centuries before the modern disciplines of psychoanalysis and phenomenological-psychopathology endeavoured to restore meaning to 'madness,' the social institution of spirit possession had been preserving the intentionality of socially deviant behaviour.

Introduction

Spirit possession refers to a broad range of phenomena whose basic defining characteristic is the interest of a non-corporeal agent with a human host in a variety of ways. These agents— commonly referred to as spirits—may be ghosts of departed ancestors or strange visitors, divine beings, demons, spirits of fire; in full general, ethereal creatures of various origins.¹ Spirit possession is ubiquitous in almost all regions of the earth. In a cross-cultural survey published in the 1960s, anthropologist Erika Bourguignon (1968) documented the presence of institutionalised possession in 74% of the societies included (360 out of 488 societies). In Sub-Saharan Africa and the Circum-Mediterranean (which includes Due north Africa) the figures were higher than the boilerplate, 81% and 77% respectively.² Judging by more recent ethnographies, reports and reviews, and my ain research in Africa, the prevalence and everydayness of spirit possession in many communities are not waning (due east.g. Boddy 1994; Cohen 2007; Rashed 2012). In these societies, spirit possession is not but an explanatory theory for affliction; it informs people'southward understanding of themselves and others in such domains every bit agency, responsibility, identity, normality, and morality.

In this paper I draw some connections betwixt spirit possession and the concepts of personhood and intentionality, prompted by my engagement with the institution of spirit possession in Arab republic of egypt. Considerations of spirit possession offer an occasion to articulate a perspective on the phenomena that makes use of the same concepts, while at the aforementioned fourth dimension extending agreement of the variety of intentional explanation/prediction of behaviour as the latter had been formulated by the philosopher Daniel Dennett.³ Specifically, I fence that spirit possession—or as I shall call it the spirit opinion—is a variant of the intentional stance in that it aims at predicting and explaining behaviour by attributing to an amanuensis (the spirit) beliefs and desires but is only deployed in one case the behaviour of the subject area (the person) is judged to have failed specific normative distinctions. Applied to behaviours unremarkably associated with mental disorder, and in contrast to an every-twenty-four hours disenchanted folk psychology, the spirit opinion preserves some intentionality where the alternative is likely to be an caption of behaviour as a consequence of a dysfunctional physical or psychological mechanism.

I continue by exploring means of approaching spirit possession, cognizant of the affinities between possession and dissociative phenomena, and the apparent metaphysical impossibility of due southpirit possession. Subsequently treading a cautious line through these issues, I attend next to personhood. I begin with a vignette describing a example of spirit possession and continue by arguing that the attribution of beliefs and desires to 'spirits' arises from their representation equally persons. Past highly-seasoned to contemporary debates on personhood, I demonstrate that in the manner they are represented, spirits possess many of the requirements considered essential to personhood. I and then outline the different ways in which noesis pertaining to a specific spirit-person is gained, for instance the spirit'southward name, gender, traits, and dispositions. Having articulated the status of spirits as persons, I go along to depict the connections between spirit possession and intentionality. I present a brief outline of Dennett's conception of intentional systems, the development of this theory by Derek Bolton, and its application to mental disorder. With the footing prepared I nowadays the proposal for the spirit stance. The remainder of the newspaper is then devoted to explaining and clarifying how the spirit stance works, and responding to some potential objections.

How are we to approach spirit possession?

The involvement of spirits with their human hosts is understood by adherents and practitioners to take various forms. The spirit may intrude into the person causing physical and psychological maladies or, less unremarkably, generating positive effects such as heightened capacities and powers. Social misfortunes such as financial bug and interpersonal discord may also be attributed to spirit influence through the effects of the spirit on the person's mental states. The involvement of spirits with their homo hosts is not limited to the furnishings of intrusion and may manifest in displacement of the host'due south agency. This displacement may be complete, in which case the spirit's identity and agency effectively supersede that of the person, whose concrete torso now becomes a vehicle through which the spirit(s) speaks and acts. Or it may be partial, in which instance only certain actions are understood to emanate from the spirit'due south bureau. With full displacement, the person—typically, just not ever—would not have witting awareness for the duration of the episode, a state commonly referred to in the literature as a trance state. Following Cohen's (2008) typology, I will refer to intrusion (whatever the effects) as pathogenic possession and to displacement (whether partial or total) every bit executive possession.⁴ Executive possession is particularly important for the institution of spirit possession every bit information technology is a fundamental means by which the identity of the spirit can be known through conversing with it. Given this brief outline, how practice we approach spirit possession?

Pathogenic possession may be the easier of the ii to approximate as information technology resembles what we would normally think of as a causal attribution theory of illness. For example, instead of explaining a depressed mood by citing a neuro-chemical imbalance, the person would exercise so by citing the effects of a spirit. The caption may stop there without any specification of a detailed causal pathway. But I found in my inquiry that healers sometimes utilize a representation of human being biological science of various degrees of sophistication to contend that spirits attain their effects by straight targeting the bodily organ or centre responsible for that effect (Rashed 2012). In any case, pathogenic possession tin can be idea of every bit a theory of illness based on the thought of the intrusion of an agent (e.g. virus, carcinogen) into the body, albeit the causal amanuensis hither—the spirit—is ane that many would object to on various grounds. I will address how we tin arroyo the spirit component of both forms of possession towards the stop of this section. But first, what about executive possession?

Executive possession is a familiar albeit fringe notion in modern popular culture. The thought that a person's bureau and identity tin be displaced or eclipsed past an incorporeal amanuensis is the subject of many movies, features in the historical record, and is currently endorsed and practiced by certain churches in the course of demonic possession. Even though it is a familiar notion, it remains ane that resists understanding by its apparent exotic nature. How are we to approximate possession within a naturalistic view of the globe? Possession, at the very least, makes a statement pertaining to agency. As Vincent Crapanzano (1977) had expressed, possession serves every bit

a very powerful metaphor for the articulation of that range of feel in which the subject feels "beside himself," not fully responsible for his own condition, as in extreme love, intense hatred, tantrums, furore, excessive backbone, compulsive ideation, the idée fixe, obsessional acting out, and, of class, fascination itself. (7)

Metaphorical equally that may exist, the thought is that when one is intensely in love or obsessional about an object, one is moved by emotions and compulsions powerful enough to evoke the experience of being driven if not against i's volition then against one's rational judgment. Notwithstanding, executive possession has a further component of identity switch, which implies a fractional or full loss of agency vis-a-vis the identity in question—like to Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) or, as it is at present known, Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). In DID the person has several alters, i of which dominates the others (or one's core identity) at any given moment. While the imaginative spring from possession-as-infatuation to DID may seem too dandy, the seeds for conceiving DID can already be found in possession-every bit-infatuation. To be driven against one'south rational sentence is a few steps removed from existence driven against one'southward witting volition. The latter is an feel of a source of agency within u.s.a. that is sufficiently distinct so as to go salient. Through various imaginative increments of objectification and breach nosotros can see how that source of agency may be identified with a persona. This persona may acquire independence with dispositions of its ain, responsible for certain deportment and emotions: it becomes an change. Perchance we tin can excogitate a continuum of possession states from the more familiar pull of infatuation to the unnerving cases of DID. The continuum does not suggest a shared causal structure to these phenomena, simply that they can be seen every bit gradations of each other.^five

Depth psychology accounts for the full range of possession phenomena without having to posit any outlandish beings. Depth psychology refers to any theory that posits a layered psyche with subconscious motivations and processes and which is capable of deceiving itself or, in extreme situations, of fragmenting. For instance, a typical explanation for DID would cite the affect of childhood abuse on ego evolution such that splitting (dissociation) becomes the primary response to astringent distress. Conversely, a typical caption for DID by a Qur'anic healer in the Western desert of Egypt is, in some ways, simpler: the person has been possessed by a spirit that had targeted him or her due to sorcery, attraction, bad luck or some such reason. There is no splitting in this case, distress demand non be a precipitating characteristic, nor are babyhood experiences necessarily relevant. For the psychologist the 'entity' is function of the ego (where else would it come up from?), while for the Qur'anic healer it is external to the subject. This is reflected in handling strategies: psychological treatment commonly consists in managing the dissimilar personalities by fostering sensation and communication among them, seeking their integration, or cultivating the original 'core self' (see Littlewood 2004). While in spirit possession interventions range from exorcising the spirit to developing an ongoing relationship with it by which the host may become a medium.

The similarities between DID and spirit possession have long been noted: both evince radical identity amending and discontinuity, full or partial loss of control over behaviour, and limited memory of such states (Bourguignon 1989). Writing from a historical perspective, Kenny (1981, 1986) observes that in 19^th century spiritism, interpretations of what we would now phone call DID included the idea that individuals were possessed by spirits. The decline in conventionalities in spirit possession has seen a concurrent decline in such phenomena. The return of DID to Europe and America in the 2d one-half of the 20th century was in the context of a adult depth psychology that could no longer meet DID every bit the incarnation of external agents but as the manifestation of an ego forced into such contortions by babyhood abuse. This perspective gained popularity through publicised cases, books and movies, bringing with it the problem of simulated memories of abuse (Littlewood 2004). The thought of possession by demonic and alien entities tin can still exist plant today among some British and American psychiatrists, doctors and clergy (ibid.). On the basis of descriptive and phenomenological similarities nosotros can consider MPD/DID and spirit possession to be, at least in these respects, equivalent phenomena.

Having partially approximated the notion of pathogenic and executive possession inside a naturalistic worldview, there remains an important question: what about the spirits? Is spirit possession a dissociative identity disorder in which the alters are conceived every bit super-natural? Is spirit possession a phenomena in its ain right mediated by other-worldly entities? Can spirits be blamed for the illnesses and maladies they supposedly cause? The answer to these questions will depend on many things only mainly on our metaphysical commitments; they amount to asking if spirits and spirit possession are possible. A materialist ontology, naturally, would deny this possibility. In fact this is the assumption implied by almost every unmarried scholarly work on spirit possession.^{half dozen} Something similar: given that spirits do not exist, how and so practice we explain/understand what is going on when people say they are possessed by spirits? The psychological theory of dissociation is, at present, a popular reply for executive possession. And for pathogenic possession there are numerous theories at our disposal to explain the effects in question. Only, actually, what about the spirits?

Consider the physicalist doctrine that any state that has physical furnishings must itself be concrete. This doctrine leaves 2 options for those who wish to defend spirits, neither of which is promising. On one manus if they insist that spirits practise have furnishings in the physical world they would have to concede that spirits are not, after all, the ethereal creatures they are claimed to be: they are either physical or supervene on the physical. On the other hand if they concede that spirits do not have furnishings in the physical world (and hence spirit possession is not possible) while maintaining that they exist outside the causal realm, the very possibility of spirits becomes questionable on epistemological grounds. The problem hither is that an entity that cannot take any physical furnishings poses epistemological issues: how else would nosotros know about it if non through our senses, which requires of such entities to be capable of influencing the physical world?⁷ In fact, spirit possession is probably only possible given a substance-dualist interactionist ontology: Cartesian Dualism. Spirit possession requires that there are 2 distinct substances in the universe (textile/physical and immaterial/spiritual), and that 2-way causal interactions between these substances are possible. Displacement of the human host's listen/soul by the spirit would then exist a switch of immaterial substances which presume control of the physical torso. However, interactionist dualism is not a popular view in philosophy despite being an everyday, common-sensical view: the physical world affects our thinking and emotions, both of which affect our actions.⁸ It also remains essential to monotheistic theology.

If we are tempted by physicalism, then it is unlikely that spirit possession is possible. On the other hand, if we are committed Cartesians, and then we might accept other objections to spirit possession—say the nature of spirits—merely information technology won't be its prima facie impossibility. We may assume that physicalism is true, in which case what is called spirit possession is just a fancy DID (executive possession) or a mistaken theory of illness (pathogenic possession). This position, in my view, diminishes our enquiry into spirit possession. I propose that despite descriptive and phenomenological similarities between spirit possession and DID, and despite the fact that scientific explanations of illness are oftentimes superior (prediction, issue), nosotros take reason in many instances not to reduce spirit possession to either. This claim does not arise out of respect for culling worldviews—important equally that may be—nor is it out of aesthetic preference for a term over another: spirit possession embodies moral, social, applied, and psychological consequences entirely different to the reductive nature of the disenchanted psy disciplines.⁹ For example, in DID, the person is expected to grapple with persons/identities that, according to current psychological wisdom, his own mind had created. By contrast to this myopic focus on the person, spirit possession immediately places the possessed in a much wider interpretive, experiential, and social space: in a prior existing and developed institution. Boddy (1994) expresses this well in relation to biomedical, but I may also add psychological, frameworks:

Unlike biomedicine, which collapses into the body, possession widens out from the body and self into other domains of cognition and experience—other lives, societies, historical moments, levels of cosmos, and religions—catching these up and embodying them ... Phenomena we package loosely as possession are part of daily experience, not just dramatic ritual. They have to do with one's relationship to the world, with selfhood - personal, indigenous, political, and moral identity. (414)

In what follows I offer a perspective on spirit possession that makes use of the philosophical concepts of personhood and intentionality. I shall extend agreement of the variety of intentional explanation and prediction of behaviour, and of the kind of work spirit possession tin practice in a community. The aim is partly to reveal what can be learnt from the remarkably resilient and widespread institution of spirit possession, especially with regards to behaviours that are taken by societies effectually the world to imply 'madness' or 'mental disorder.' I assume for the sake of exposition that there are spirits and that spirit possession is possible, and resist reducing either to psychological or biological categorization. Eventually I bring things back to earth by examining the implications of this practice for a range of concerns. For now, however, I urge the reader to append disbelief and to take that in that location are more than things in sky and globe than are dreamt of in our philosophy. I begin with a curt story.

Spirits and personhood

Girgis is a 50-year-old Coptic-Christian male who lives with his wife and two children at the far finish of the oasis where yous can see the edge of the desert. He became involved with a farmer who had unknowingly trespassed upon and damaged his habitat. Angered past this incident and past the damage sustained to his abode, Girgis began harassing the farmer. He would wake him upwards at night, put him in a bad mood all twenty-four hour period, prevent him from praying at the mosque, and mostly make everything difficult for him. The farmer sought one of the local healers to intervene and arbitrate betwixt them. The healer agreed to exercise so, and upon meeting with Girgis, he reminded him that both Christians and Muslims are people of the Book and should not harass each other like this. He assured Girgis that the farmer had no intention of trespassing upon his habitat, and that information technology is time to cease this misunderstanding. ¹⁰

The reader may be surprised to learn that Girgis is not a human person; he is a spirit of a diversity known in Egypt and in Muslim societies beyond the world as a jinni (plural jinn). Despite not being human persons, spirits are represented as persons. They are deemed to display features required for personhood, and it is on the basis of these features that people in the customs consider it possible to reason with them.

Providing a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for personhood is fraught with difficulty and disagreement, and information technology would seem that at that place are several, as opposed to one, concept of the person (run across Braude 1995, ch.8). Features that are ordinarily put forward include the post-obit: a person is a member of a "pregnant and ordered collectivity" (Carrithers 1985) pertaining to which the entity in question has (or will have) rights and towards which it has (or will have) obligations. It is considered a requirement for this sense of personhood that the entity must be capable (now or at a future time) of practical reasoning: of generating goal-directed action through deliberative reflection. Moreover, some accounts require that a person must not only be capable of acting on the ground of reasons, simply must have a sense of oneself every bit an agent for whom things matter in accordance with certain standards. Taylor (1985) calls these standards the "particularly human significances" such as shame and guilt (263).

Requirements for this sense of personhood are non met by all individuals, for example those with severe encephalon impairment or who are in a coma. Braude (1995) distinguishes this sense of personhood from what he refers to as the forensic concept of the person (194). This refers to entities that practice not have the chapters for practical reasoning—and who thus might be free of obligations—merely who nevertheless are, or should be, considered bearers of rights. Current debates on the moral status of individuals with astringent cognitive damage and certain non-human animals can be understood as pertaining to the forensic concept of the person (see Kittay and Carlson 2010). These debates have become an occasion to revise what we have to be constitutive of (forensic) personhood. A recent account, for example, argues that the capacity to care rather than the capacity for practical reasoning should exist the footing for ascribing to others moral status as persons (Jaworska 2010). Recognition of forensic personhood evinces cultural and historical variation. In some societies, attributions of personhood admit of a temporal process and are part of an ongoing "moral career" culminating in a series of initiation rites (Harris 1978, meet also 1989). Historically, personhood was denied sure individuals on the footing of their status as slaves (Mauss 1985). In both cases, the individual may be capable of practical reasoning simply is just recognised as a person, and hence worthy of respect, on completion of the relevant initiation rites or after being granted his or her liberty.

The assumption in the previous discussion has been of a one to ane correspondence betwixt a person and a living organism (see Braude 1995, 199). Nonetheless, sure conceptions of the person exercise not crave this. Of notation is the fact that in many cultures and religious traditions entities considered persons can inhabit many bodies and i body can be inhabited by several persons. Moreover, personhood and embodiment come autonomously. Spirits, every bit indicated before, are regarded equally disembodied persons who are able to learn executive control of a human being private. Just acquiring a torso does not add to their status as persons. This condition is axiomatic if we consider the style they are represented and which fulfills several of the criteria listed above. The jinn are members of a significant and ordered collectivity: they are socially organised, work, marry, and procreate. They are gendered, have human-similar traits and concerns. They are capable of goal-directed action and possess moral bureau which renders them subject area to trial and punishment. It is by virtue of these features that it is possible for the healer to reason with them and to appeal to their sense of right and wrong every bit the vignette above demonstrates. The jinn also enjoy recognition equally persons in the forensic sense. Thus, healers are wary of harming the spirits in and then far as information technology is non necessary to do so, and this stems not only from fears of retaliation, for case, but from an understanding that spirits are persons and are, at to the lowest degree, worthy of respect on that basis. By dissimilarity to the jinn, in Islam, angels are not persons; they are emanations of god'southward will and hence are incapable of agentic behaviour.

Given their condition every bit persons, how do people accomplish noesis of these spirits? How is the full general and impersonal category 'spirit' individualised into a specific spirit-person with an identity, name, gender, religion, history, traits, dispositions, and intentions?

Gaining knowledge nigh spirits

Observations of spirit possession in Egypt demonstrate that noesis nearly spirits is gained through various modalities each with its own merits to certainty and level of particular: religious texts, traditions and social interaction, straight advice, embodied experience, and frank emergence.

Religious texts such as the Qur'an and the compendiums of hadiths (sayings) attributed to the Prophet of Islam exercise speak of a category of being known equally the jinn. The jinn are mentioned many times in the Qur'an, the most famous of which is a verse stating the purpose of their creation: "I have created jinn and mankind only to worship Me" (Al-Dhariyat: 56), and some other usually interpreted as referring to damage accruing from "satan'due south touch" (Al-Baqara: 275).¹¹ However, the extent of the attribution of illness and misfortune to spirits and the more than colourful ways of exorcising them cannot be deemed for through the content of the Qur'an, though they practice have a basis in some hadiths. For believers, such texts while they are loftier on certainty are nevertheless depression on detail as they can only offer noesis of a general nature. Past contrast, the oral history of the community and the exchange of stories pertaining to recent or present experiences of possession, offering more detail most the nature of spirits and how they behave.

The remaining iii modalities all involve an experience of the spirit rather than hearing a story about it from other sources. As the proper noun implies, directly communication pertains to persons having auditory and visual experiences of certain spirits, thereby coming to learn well-nigh them. Embodied experience and frank emergence may occur spontaneously or at a healing session. Consider this typical clarification of a diagnostic and healing session as would exist conducted by a Qur'anic healer in the customs I studied. With his right hand placed over the subject field's forehead, the healer reads loudly the ruqya (incantation of specific Qur'anic verses) and registers the subject area's response: four possibilities are recognised. The first possible effect is that the jinni emerges and animates the subject'due south body, whose vox and identity are now replaced. The healer proceeds, through conversing with the jinni, to identify his or her name, religion, whether or non at that place is sorcery, the reasons behind possessing the subject, intentions at the present moment, and other questions relevant to getting to know the spirit. The healer then gain to negotiate with the spirit and secure its exit from the human host. The second and virtually common outcome is that the person responds with symptoms and signs such as mild tremors or numbness in the limbs, headache, screaming, stiffness, blurring of vision, arousal, violence, attempts to leave the room, crying, or perchance would be seen scanning the room in disdain and with an incongruent smile. Any of these are sufficient indications that a jinni is involved.¹²

Applying this to the vignette mentioned previously nosotros find the following: initially the farmer experienced insomnia and dysphoria. He suspected spirit interference (pathogenic possession) and went to the healer who administered the incantation. A jinni emerged (executive possession), and the healer began conversing with it. This is how the healer was able to acquire the jinni'southward name, religion, and understand the circumstances that occasioned the possession incident. Note that noesis regarding the spirit's intentions can already be suspected from more full general information pertaining to information technology. For example, a pagan jinni—in this community—is regarded as potentially dangerous every bit information technology would accept no regard for God and religious morality; it would have no qualms to damage the host or to behave in capricious means. On the other hand for a Muslim host, a Muslim jinni is more often than not considered less probable to impairment the host or carry insolently, and is easier to negotiate with past appealing to his or her sense of right and wrong.

The exposition, so far, sought to portray spirits as social persons who may interact with humans under various circumstances. Their identity every bit beings with such and such traits and capable of agentic behaviour is demonstrated and further refined when a spirit displaces the host'due south agency and makes its presence explicit or otherwise direct communicates with the host. This is how spirits are perceived in some societies where the institution of spirit possession exists. In club to further understand spirit possession and appreciate some of its consequences in relation to behavioural disturbances, I will introduce for this purpose Daniel Dennett'due south conception of the intentional opinion, and the development and application of his theory past Derek Bolton in the example of mental disorder.

Mental disorder and attributions of intentionality

According to Daniel Dennett (1981, 1987), we tin presume three stances to explain or predict the behaviour of an organism or machine—a organisation. From the concrete stance we appeal to our knowledge of the physical constitution of the organisation and the laws that govern its conduct. From the blueprint opinion we assume that the system has a particular design and that information technology volition function as designed; we do not require, for this purpose, knowledge of the physical implementation of the functions in question. From the intentional stance we aspect to the organisation beliefs and desires, and by assuming that it is rational—i.eastward. optimally designed relative to goals—we predict that it will human activity to further its goals in low-cal of its beliefs and desires. The intentional stance underpins the ability of folk psychology at providing predictions of other people's behaviour as well as of some college animals and complex machines such as chess-playing computers. It is the stance most commonly adopted in everyday interaction with others. Dennett (1987) notes that there will be cases beyond the power of the intentional opinion to describe and, by mode of illustration, cites the difficulty in discerning the behaviour of an artefact from its design if the artefact is physically damaged (28). In the case of human beings he implies that fatigue and malfunction may similarly hamper prediction from the intentional stance (ibid.). When at that place is such breakdown in function, Dennett (1981, five) suggests, nosotros drop to the physical opinion to explain behaviour.

This idea has been substantially remarked upon and adult by Derek Bolton (Bolton 2001; Bolton and Colina 2004) in the context of the apparent absence of intentionality that is generally considered a hallmark of mental disorder. Starting with the point that failure to recognise intentionality in the mental states and deportment of others underpins attributions of 'madness,' he points out that attributions of intentionality are observer-relative (Bolton 2001, 187). Upon encountering activity, dissimilar observers "may see dissimilar patterns of intentionality at work, including the vacuous case of seeing no such patterns" (Bolton and Hill 2004, 98). The assumption that credible lack of intentionality signals physical dysfunction may thus indicate hastiness in dropping to a lower level explanation (2001,188). Bolton then proceeds to demonstrate that there are a number of options from within the design too as the intentional stances to explicate breakup in office. That aside, the key bespeak here is that the intentional stance is abandoned when the mental states or action in question fail sure normative distinctions as judged by the observer. Bolton and Banner (2012) express some of these distinctions every bit practical to action and diverse mental faculties:

Perception of reality tin exist veridical or mistaken, or in an extreme, hallucinatory. Behavior may be true or false, reasonable or unreasonable, based on practiced evidence or otherwise. Desires are reasonable or otherwise depending on their relation to the person'south needs. Emotions may be understandable reactions to events, for case, anger is an understandable response to being hurt, or not understandable, being angry for no reason; and so on. The volition may fail to control action. Activeness may be reasonable or otherwise, depending on whether information technology follows from behavior and desires, or on whether those beliefs and desires are themselves reasonable. Behaviour may be random, without whatever relation to the achievement of goals, without method, and in this sense may fail to be real action... (83)

The observer relativity and hence the broad range of possible evaluations and interpretations at each of these faculties is axiomatic. Different observers may see in a child's tantrum an attempt to coerce the parents to provide withal another toy or in that same behaviour just that the kid is 'tired.' In the first case intentionality is nonetheless at play, in the second the parents are (peradventure wisely) reluctant to pursue it. Observer relativity likewise has a cultural dimension. An instance, further discussed below, is the tendency in some societies to see certain emotions— say unhappiness in a marriage—as having nothing to do with the personalities involved or other relational issues, but rather every bit states imposed by an interfering spirit. Many readers are likely to sympathize interpersonal emotions as having to do with the person and the relationship.

The idea I want to pursue in what follows is that spirit possession—or as I shall telephone call it henceforth the spirit stance—occupies a peculiar position: it is an intentional strategy in the sense that information technology aims at predicting and explaining behaviour by ascribing to an agent (the spirit) behavior and desires, merely it is only deployed once the mental states and activity of the subject field (the person) are deemed to have failed normative distinctions of the sort just outlined. It thus subverts the person'south agency, while simultaneously maintaining a peculiar grade of intentionality where otherwise one might expect a drop to the physical stance. Whether it achieves this and the fashion by which it does will exist afterwards discussed. Offset I will draw some of the situations in which the spirit stance is adopted and the normative distinctions that occasion this. These examples will serve to illuminate the way in which the spirit opinion cuts across the ascriptions of what may be described as a disenchanted folk psychology.

Encounters with spirits in Egypt

For both the healer and the possessed person, a question arises as to why the spirit had targeted that person in particular. In the Dakhla oasis of Egypt, where I had conducted enquiry, three answers are bachelor. The kickoff is bad luck, such every bit in the case of the farmer (cited above) who inadvertently stepped upon a jinni'south habitat. The second is infatuation ('eshq/mekhaweyya): a spirit is attracted to and selects a human host. The third, and most common, is sorcery (se'hour): here a person who would like to see another disadvantaged visits a sorcerer who is able to direct a jinni at the victim. The jinni is instructed to wreak havoc usually in a specified domain—physical health, behavioural, psychological—with the last purpose of imposing various sorts of social failures (e.m. problems at work, marital discord, impeded marriage possibilities, impotence). Whatever the means past which person and spirit are brought in proximity, the understanding is that a person is fabricated more vulnerable to possession if he or she fails to secure protection through prayer and other forms of worship.

The spirit stance is adopted to explicate a wide range of behaviours and is certainly not express to 'illness.' Table ane illustrates some examples from Dakhla, together with an indication of the normative distinctions that the behaviours or mental states are deemed to have failed. In each of these cases, un-understandability, unreasonableness, inappropriateness, etc., signal that the mental state or behaviour in question is imposed from without, hence deployment of the spirit stance.

Table i: Socially deviant predicaments and accompanying normative distinctions in the community

Total size table

In social club to draw out the implications of the spirit stance it is helpful to accept a view on what to contrast information technology with. I will accept the contrast to lie in a disenchanted folk psychology, the kind, for example, where interpersonal conflict is ordinarily explained past consideration of the personalities involved and, say, their temperaments. It is also i in which 'madness' tends to be seen every bit a outcome of dysfunctional physical or psychological mechanisms. Given this, and in light of the preceding examples, it tin can be seen that the spirit opinion cuts across ascriptions of such a folk-psychology: it extends into areas that would normally—though by no means exclusively—be described from the intentional stance (marital discord, other social and interpersonal issues), too as into areas that would usually be described from the physical opinion ('madness,' mental disorder). We can say that in both areas the spirit stance subverts the bureau of the person only in the latter (mental disorder) it preserves another form of intentionality, where otherwise there may accept been a drib to a physical stance explanation of the person'south behaviour and mental states.

The spirit opinion in the explanation and prediction of behavior

The spirit stance is a variant of the intentional opinion in that it explains the inappropriate or un-understandable behaviour of a human-agent by positing a non-corporeal entity now seen as the agent of this behaviour. To demonstrate how it works, consider behaviours that may attract a social judgement of 'madness'; a few accept been listed in tabular array i. These will vary from one socio-cultural context to another. Now recollect that spirits are (represented as) agents with beliefs, desires, and dispositions, capable of setting goals and acting on them. What does it mean to say that the person is behaving in this manner because he or she is possessed by a spirit? The outset sense in which this can exist understood is executive possession; that is, the behaviour witnessed is literally the spirit'southward. Every bit indicated at the beginning of this paper, displacement of the host'southward agency demand not exist accompanied by a trance state—an altered state of consciousness. Thus the behaviour is understood as intentional past virtue of the spirit's agency. Nearly generally, it would be said that information technology is in the nature of a spirit to seek deserted places and isolation, to be pre-occupied with burn down, to be restless. The second sense in which behaviour is ascribed to a spirit is pathogenic possession. Here, the spirit is 'making' the person behave in those baroque ways. While behaviour in this example is non, strictly speaking, the spirit's, it remains describable in an intentional idiom in those cases where sorcery is involved. Sorcery is a common reason why spirits become involved with human being hosts. As practiced in Dakhla, sorcery typically involves three agents: the seeker (the person who wants the harm arranged); the sorcerer; and the spirit that will exercise the work. The purpose is to make the person behave in a 'mad' way and thus to harm that person socially. The victim's behaviour is therefore goal-directed but the beliefs and desires that straight the behaviour, and the goals that are being served, have been established elsewhere in the nexus of relations that constitute sorcery.

In terms of prediction of behaviour, this requires that the applied theory (eastward.g. folk psychology) tracks some design in the earth in lodge for predictions to obtain in actuality. What blueprint does the spirit stance aim to track? Here nosotros render to issues raised before when discussing approaches to spirit possession. If there are such things as spirits, and so the spirit opinion tracks the intentionality of spirit-persons in the same mode that the intentional stance tracks the intentionality of human persons: assumptions are made concerning the beliefs and desires the agent ought to take and, being rational, that the amanuensis volition deed to further its goals. Here, procurement of individualised knowledge pertaining to the dispositions and intentions of spirit-persons (equally outlined before) volition facilitate the prediction of behaviour. On the other manus if spirits do not be, and the only source of bureau is the person, then it is non clear how individualised knowledge of the spirit—at present seen merely as a fiction of the person'south heed arising during a trance episode or direct communication—tin can play any role in the prediction of behaviour. It would not matter what the 'spirit's' dispositions are as there is simply one actor here: the person.

The only state of affairs in which it may exist possible to predict the person's behaviour by tracking the 'spirit'southward' intentionality is when the person actually takes on the dispositions and features of the spirit (or the unconscious/unacknowledged/alienated—however yous would like to put it—part of his personality) he had come to learn near. And this actually does occur; consider these examples from the Dakhla oasis: a Muslim man possessed by a Christian spirit stops attending the mosque, begins reading the Bible and praying to Jesus; a adult female possessed by a capricious, mischievous spirit behaves in such a mode where this is out of character for her. Pressel (1977) makes a similar point, here pertaining to the Brazilian Umbanda religion: "Subsequently learning to play the role of each spirit, the novice may extend that personality trait into his own everyday behaviour" (346). She cites the example of an "extremely impatient woman" she knew who "had learned to be calm from her preta velha spirit [spirits of old African slaves known for being peaceful, empathetic, patient, and wise]" (ibid). Thus, even if we decline spirits as possible agentic entities, at that place is still room for the spirit opinion to allow for the prediction of a person's behaviour. This will depend on the extent to which the personality of the individualised 'spirit' is integrated by the person who supposedly is possessed by that spirit.

Objections and clarifications

The proposal for a spirit stance raises some objections and requires further clarification. One objection concerns its presumed uniqueness. It could be argued that the spirit stance is really naught but the intentional stance, only that the amanuensis is distinguished from the person whose behaviour is being described. Alternatively, it could be pointed out that the spirit stance is really a concrete stance equally in many cases the person'southward behaviour is described through non-intentional processes (spirits enter the person and bear on actual organs). My argument in this paper has been that the spirit stance is a variant of the intentional stance. Hence, in response to the start objection, I concord that information technology is an intentional opinion but not that it is thereby indistinguishable from it. The crucial indicate hither is that the spirit opinion is adopted but once the intentional stance is abandoned. The spirit stance includes the recognition that mental states and behaviour take failed sure normative distinctions—the reason the intentional stance is abandoned—yet continues to describe both in an intentional idiom. In response to the second objection—that the spirit stance is a physical stance—I agree that intrusion past spirits sounds a lot like, say, infection by viruses. And the latter is a common physical opinion account for tiredness, moodiness, etc. Nevertheless, as I have endeavoured to elucidate throughout this paper, spirits are represented as persons whose nature tin be known and who are capable of intentional behaviour. That is why it is possible in some cases to explain besides as predict behaviour by positing such entities, irrespective of whether spirits are independent agents or cultural-psychological fictions.

Before I noted that the spirit stance subverts the person's agency by abandoning the intentional opinion, yet preserves another form of intentionality mediated by the spirit-person. This thesis requires further remark. The subversion of agency demand not be a conscious decision on behalf of the observer though it certainly can exist; at that place is a thin-line separating the inability from the unwillingness to see intentionality in the behaviour of others. The examples listed in table i—in item those applying to relationships—might seem to a modern sensibility as blatant attempts to subvert activeness and mental states of their (inter)personal meanings in favour of an externally imposed efficient cause. For example, blaming marital discord on spirit influence and sorcery subverts the couple's moods of the usual interpersonal referents such as personality 'clashes'; the problem is not in the relationship. Now, some may find it problematic that a guild disapproves of adulation towards one's wife and homosexual urges—the other examples in table 1—to the extent that they can just be understood as externally imposed states. Yet, in principle what is going on here is no dissimilar from what occurs in communities where there are no spirits: earlier I used the case of a toddler whose parents are unable to/do not wish to come across in his tantrum anything more than than tiredness. And nosotros are all enlightened of debasing references to 'hormones' when someone wishes to cast doubt on the rationality and intentionality of some other's behaviour. The deviation is not in kind, rather, it is in the values and the behaviours that attract non-intentional explanation. Abandonment of the intentional stance is common in everyday life, even if the reasons and normative distinctions that occasion this vary relative to cultural contexts and observers.

Turning to the 2d function of the thesis: that the spirit opinion preserves a form of intentionality where otherwise one might await a drop to the physical stance. This applies to inappropriate and un-understandable behaviour, as is commonly attributed to 'madness' or 'mental disorder.' The idea of 'preservation' implies that something is at take chances of being completely lost. As discussed in the previous department, it is common to both enchanted and disenchanted varieties of folk psychologies non to see method in the madness. In the former the person is 'possessed,' in the latter he is 'ill' due to a dysfunctional concrete or psychological mechanism. Physical stance explanations of 'madness' are too nowadays in societies where the institution of spirit possession is established. In this respect, the divergence between such societies and disenchanted ones is that spirit possession preserves some intentionality where elsewhere the predominant option would be a physical explanation. Note that the issue here concerns the resource of an everyday folk psychology, and not of a theoretically driven account that may return behaviour understandable.

Determination

Consideration of the connections between spirit possession, personhood, and intentionality afforded a novel perspective on spirit possession and a adult understanding of the intentional opinion. Understanding spirit possession and intentionality in this lite suggests the post-obit insight: Centuries before the modern disciplines of psychoanalysis, phenomenological-psychopathology and the philosophy of mental health came on stage and tried to accost the prejudices of folk psychology by restoring significant to 'madness,' the social institution of spirit possession had been preserving the intentionality of socially inappropriate and united nations-understandable behaviour. By contra-posing a world of human-persons to that of spirit-persons and past allowing the latter the chapters to affect, or exist the agent of, human behaviour, social deviance is not seen, at least initially, as 'mental disorder.' The representation of spirits as agents with beliefs, desires and goals lends to socially problematic behaviour an intentionality that it may otherwise lack. And this allows, in some cases, for the caption and prediction of behaviour. The exposition and analysis offered in this newspaper raise a question of importance with which I shall conclude: Is the spirit opinion (and hence some intentionality) preferable to the concrete opinion (and therefore no intentionality) in terms of the social caption of patently meaningless behaviour in contexts where these are the predominant options? It is perhaps in understanding the issues relevant to thinking about this question, that some insight can be accomplished into the value nosotros place on pregnant as such, and whether preserving meaning is a sufficient reason for u.s. to relax our conceptions of agency and personhood.

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Endnotes

¹ See review by Boddy (1994).

² Other figures: East-Eurasia (87%), Insular Pacific (88%), North America (52%), Southward America (64%).

³ At that place are at least two other reasons why spirit possession is of involvement to philosophy and psychiatry, I only mention them here briefly. First, many of the phenomena considered to be psychiatric conditions, notably psychotic and affective atmospheric condition, have phenomenological affinities with possession phenomena, or are understood by many individuals around the world to arise from the intrusion of spirits. What good can exist made of this overlap? Second, within spirit possession we observe an effortless marriage of the moral, the social and the psychological; three domains which the modernistic episteme had consciously disentangled from each other. What can nosotros acquire from their integration in spirit possession, especially in the context of electric current debates about medicalisation and the theoretical and practical difficulties of finding a place for the socio-moral in mental distress?

⁴ Prototypical definitions of spirit possession divide the phenomena into those in which possession is invoked to explain affliction or misfortune, and those in which possession manifests in altered states of consciousness (trance) (Bourguignon 2005, 1976). More recently, the domain of possession has been parsed forth unlike lines which plough non on the presence or absence of trance but on whether or not the host's agency is displaced by the spirit (see Cohen 2008). Thus, pathogenic possession involves no such deportation and spirits are understood as entities that cause affliction and misfortune. On the other hand, executive possession does involve deportation of the host's agency, which may or may not exist associated with trance.

⁵ In an essay on identity disorders, Clark (2013) suggests something like in terms of the possibility of a dissociation continuum. He writes: "maybe those who are thus diagnosed [DID] have just noticed, and melodramatically described, what actually is, for most of us, the instance" (919). We all go through multiple personae throughout the solar day and much of our mental life occurs passively. Perhaps in DID, individuals no longer feel the unity-in-multiplicity of identity (personae) which others take for granted.

^six But run into the image of experiential anthropology; e.g. Turner (2010, 1993), Fotiou (2010).

⁷ David Papineau makes a similar point in relation to moral facts (see: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism). This objection has featured against arguments for the existence of God that cite the bear witness of religious experience: how tin can a not-physical entity let of a sensory experience? Ane response offered has been to insist that religious experience is not a sensory experience every bit unremarkably understood, but an ineffable 'sense' of presence.

⁸ On dualistic thinking more generally, recent experimental evidence demonstrates the centrality of dualistic thinking to cognition. Developmental psychologists propose that infants begin parsing the globe into concrete things and immaterial things with different kinds of properties early on in development, and children from an early age are able to represent person-identity as democratic from the body (Flower 2004; Bering and Parker 2006). These natural and wide-spread cerebral capacities underpin executive possession concepts, and accept been employed by anthropologists to account, in part, for the ease with which possession concepts are memorised and communicated, and for their loftier incidence cross-culturally (Cohen 2008).

^ix I use disenchantment in the sense employed by Taylor (2007) in A Secular Age: "The procedure of disenchantment is the disappearance of this world [the world of spirits, demons, moral forces which our predecessors best-selling], and the commutation of what we alive today: a world in which the merely locus of thoughts, feelings, spiritual élan is what nosotros call minds; the only minds in the cosmos are those of humans … and minds are divisional, so that these thoughts, feelings, etc., are situated 'within them'" (29-31). Encounter Rashed (2013) for further discussion.

¹⁰ The story of Girgis is a fictional compilation of a number of case studies that I collected during my research at the Dakhla oasis of Egypt. The inquiry was carried out in 2009 and 2010, and the fieldwork was based on participant observation in everyday contexts and healing settings in which I observed and learnt near spirit possession and Qur'anic healing (Rashed 2012).

¹¹ The word in the Qur'an is mas, which has a number of meanings ranging from existence "touched" to existence made insane as a result of that "bear upon." Note that Satan (with a capital southward) refers to the Devil, otherwise satan(southward) refers to a specific type of jinn.

¹² Two farther possible responses: (one) The field of study reports nausea which indicates that magic might have been ingested. (2) Zilch happens; in such cases the trouble could be a capricious 'flighty' jinni or else the problem which brought the person is non spirit-related and, depending on its nature, may be a physical or mental illness or a consequence of mundane reasons.

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Department of Philosophy, Birkbeck College, University of London, London, UK

Mohammed Abouelleil Rashed
Department of Philosophy, King'south College London, London, UK

Mohammed Abouelleil Rashed

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Correspondence to Mohammed Abouelleil Rashed.

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Rashed, Yard.A. More Things in Heaven and Earth: Spirit Possession, Mental Disorder, and Intentionality. J Med Humanit 41, 363–378 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-018-9519-z

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Published: 19 July 2022
Result Date: September 2022
DOI : https://doi.org/x.1007/s10912-018-9519-z

Keywords

Intentional stance
Spirit opinion
Madness
Daniel Dennett
Derek Bolton
Jinn