Suspicion toward spirit-related practices, beliefs, and experiences is misplaced and may block a therapeutic avenue for anomalous experiences like hearing voices or sensing the presence of the dead. The argument rests on the claim that such experiences are not inherently pathological but can become so depending on how they are interpreted and reacted to. The paper provides a philosophical foundation for this claim by defending a 'contextualist' view of pathology against 'inherentist' alternatives that hold some or all anomalous experiences are inherently pathological.
Meaning emerges from interactions between individuals and their environments, as shown by signaling games. The concept of consciousness, like all concepts, forms from such games and acquires a sense, from which its reference to the world can be inferred. A representationalist account of consciousness contrasts with an enactivist account. A conscious state can be assumed and fixed by intensional reference. Although consciousness may be excluded from neurobiological explanation, it remains semantically relevant, reflecting a semantic gap between the mental and the physical.