Commentary on Martin & Pacherie. Out of nowhere: thought insertion, ownership and context-integration.

In their article “Out of nowhere: Thought insertion, ownership and context-integration” (2013), Jean-Remy Martin & Elisabeth Pacherie propose a novel approach to the explanation of thought insertion: the context-integration approach. Since the article contains many novel and important ideas, it is the more regrettable that it suffers from considerable conceptual confusions which result in a misled criticism of the standard approach. Contrary to what the authors claim, their own view can be construed as a refined version of the standard approach. The main problem with their discussion is an equivocation on the term ‘sense of ownership’. Moreover, they fail to recognize an ambiguity in the term ‘sense of agency’. Since the sketchiness of these two notions constitutes a shortcoming of the debate in general, I seize Martin & Pacherie’s paper as an opportunity to do some conceptual housekeeping.