PhronesisWe apply the Displacement Framework to Capgras Syndrome and the Delusional Misidentification Syndrome (DMS) family, formalizing the impostor belief as W_capgras — a wrong attractor formed when preserved visual face recognition is disconnected from affective familiarity recognition, creating a perceptual mismatch that the impostor belief resolves. The integrated face recognition ground state S⁰_recognition is defined as the conjunction of visual familiarity (fusiform face area → temporal cortex) and affective familiarity (amygdala autonomic response) — two-pathway integration that the Hirstein/Ramachandran model formalizes as severed in Capgras.
The impostor belief is the patient's rational attempt to explain an irrational percept: 'this looks like my wife but feels wrong — therefore it must be an impostor.' This rational-irrational paradox (Maher's anomalous experience theory) is formalized as P4: the wrong attractor is the brain's best explanation for a genuine neurocognitive anomaly, making confrontation with disconfirmatory evidence ineffective because the mismatch percept persists.
Nine formal propositions cover: S⁰_recognition four-component definition (P1), W_capgras formation as mismatch resolution (P2), the two-pathway disconnection mechanism with SCR evidence (P3), the rational-irrational paradox (P4), neurological substrate heterogeneity across Alzheimer's, LBD, right-hemisphere lesions, TBI, and schizophrenia (P5), violence risk as extreme-Φ endpoint when patients attack the 'impostor' to find the real person (P6), confrontation failure as wrong attractor sealing (P7), return path stratification by etiology (P8), and the DMS spectrum as wrong-attractor resolution variants — Fregoli, intermetamorphosis, reduplicative paramnesia (P9).