A Consciousness that Matters

Starting from the considerations advanced in this volume by Pennisi on self-face mirror misidentification in schizophrenia, the following pages will offer semiotic reflections on the logics that articulate this phenomenon. Some general observations on the topic will be proposed from the perspective of a semiotics attentive to the enacted, embodied, embedded, and extended status of cognition. Specifically, two main aspects will be examined. A first aspect concerns the relationship between the perception of the mirror image and temporality. As illustrated by Pennisi in his contribution, this dimension plays a salient role in the stage that, within the pathogenesis of schizophrenia, can precede that of the hallucination of the mirror image. Subsequently, the role of the narrative configuration of the delusional experience of the mirror image will be investigated, whose most radical example may be identified in intermetamorphosis. In intermetamorphosis, the subject recognizes himself in the hallucinated figure of the reflection, thus determining that transitional shift which, from the perceptual alteration of the mirror image, culminates in the assumption of another personal identity. In this case, the subject does not find himself faced with an image whose movements fail to correspond congruently to the ones he performs, but rather with a well-defined hallucinated figure with which he identifies. In this regard, the role that objects and material artifacts may play within this type of experience will be explored.