Mass-marketing frauds are on the increase. Given the amount of monies lost and the psychological impact of MMFs there is an urgent need to develop new and effective methods to prevent more of these crimes. This paper reports the early planning of automated methods our interdisciplinary team are developing to prevent and detect MMF. Importantly, the paper presents the ethical and social constraints involved in such a model and suggests concerns others might also consider when developing automated systems.

In recent years, there has been much focus on the apparent heterogeneity of schizophrenic symptoms. By contrast, this article proposes a unifying account emphasizing basic abnormalities of consciousness that underlie and also antecede a disparate assortment of signs and symptoms. Schizophrenia, we argue, is fundamentally a self-disorder or ipseity disturbance that is characterized by complementary distortions of the act of awareness: hyperreflexivity and diminished self-affection. Hyperreflexivity refers to forms of exaggerated self-consciousness in which aspects of oneself are experienced as akin (...) to external objects. Diminished self-affection or self-presence refers to a weakened sense of existing as a vital and self-coinciding source of awareness and action. This article integrates recent psychiatric research and European phenomenological psychiatry with some current work in cognitive science and phenomenological philosophy. After introducing the phenomenological approach along with a theoretical account of normal consciousness and self-awareness, we turn to a variety of schizophrenic syndromes. We examine positive, then negative, and finally disorganization symptoms—attempting in each case to illuminate shared distortions of consciousness and the sense of self. We conclude by discussing the possible relevance of this approach for identifying early schizophrenic symptoms. (shrink)

Schizophrenia involves profound but enigmatic disturbances of affective or emotional life. The affective responses as well as expression of many patients in the schizophrenia spectrum can seem odd, incongruent, inadequate, or otherwise off-the-mark. Such patients are, in fact, often described in rather contradictory terms: as being prone both to exaggerated and to diminished levels of emotional or affective response. According to Ernst Kretschmer, they actually tend to have both kinds of experience at the same time. This paper attempts to explain (...) what might be termed this 'Kretschmerian paradox'. Some relevant concepts and vocabulary for affect and emotion are discussed . The need for a phenomenological approach focusing on subjective experience is suggested. Three modes of abnormal experience in schizophrenia are investigated in light of their implications for affect or emotion: alienation of the lived body ; fragmented perception and loss of affordances ; and preoccupation with a quasi-delusional world created by the self. (shrink)

The life of Saint Teresa of Jesus, the most famous mystic of sixteenth-century Spain, was characterized by recurrent visions and states of ecstasy. In this paper, we examine social components related to Teresa’s personal crises and the historical conditions of her times, factors that must be taken into account to understand these unusual forms of experience and behavior. Many of these factors (e.g., increasing individualism and reflexivity) are precursors of the condition of modern times. Indeed, certain parallels can be observed (...) between Saint Teresa and certain present-day psychopathological disorders. The analogy should not, however, be carried too far. Religion played a particularly crucial role in Teresa’s cultural context; as a result, it would be misleading to view her mystical experiences as resulting from a mental disorder. (shrink)

This chapter offers an overview of the phenomenological approach to delusions, emphasizing what Karl Jaspers called the "true delusions" of schizophrenia. Phenomenological psychopathology focuses on the experience of delusions and the delusional world. Several features of this approach are surveyed, including emphasis on formal qualities of subjective life and questioning of standard assumptions about delusions as erroneous belief. The altered modalities of world-oriented and self-oriented experience that precede and ground delusions in schizophrenia, especially the experiences of revelation that Klaus Conrad (...) termed the outer and inner apophany, are then discussed. The chapter first considers the famous "delusional mood", then the role of ipseity-disturbance. In both cases it is explained how delusions can develop out of these distinctive alterations of perception and feeling. The classic question of the understandability or comprehensibility of schizophrenic delusion, together with the related issues of wish-fulfillment and rationalizing motives are then considered. The chapter addresses the crucial but neglected issue of the felt reality-status of delusions or the delusional world, discussing derealization, "double bookkeeping", and "double exposure". The chapter concludes by discussing delusions typically found in paranoid and affective psychoses, and monothematic delusions found in certain organic conditions. (shrink)

This paper offers a phenomenological or hermeneutic reading—employing Heidegger's notion of the 'ontological difference'—of certain central aspects of schizophrenic experience. The main focus is on signs and symptoms that have traditionally been taken to indicate either 'poor reality-testing' or else 'poverty of content of speech' (defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders III-R as: “speech that is adequate in amount but conveys little information because of vagueness, empty repetitions, or use of stereotyped or obscure phrases"). I argue (...) that, at least in some cases, the tendency to attribute these signs of illness to the schizophrenic patient results from a failure to recognize that such patients—as part of a quasi-solipsistic orientation and alienation from more normal, pragmatic concerns—may be grappling with issues of what Heidegger would call an ontological rather than an ontic type, issues concerned not with entities but with Being (i.e. not with objects in the world but with the overall status of the world itself). An application of the Heideggerian concept of the ontological difference has the potential to alter one's sense of the lived-worlds of such patients, of what they may be attempting to communicate, and of why communication with them so often breaks down. (shrink)

This paper uses certain of Michel Foucault's ideas concerning modern consciousness (from The Order of Things) to illuminate a central paradox of the schizophrenic condition: a strange oscillation, or even coexistence, between two opposite experiences of the self: between the loss or fragmentation of self and its apotheosis in moments of solipsistic grandeur. Many schizophrenic patients lose their sense of integrated and active intentionality; even their most intimate thoughts and inclinations may be experienced as emanating from, or under the control (...) of, some external being or mysterious foreign soul (‘I feel it is not me who is thinking’; ‘I have been programmed’). Yet the same patients may also experience the self as preeminent, all-powerful or all-knowing (‘My thoughts can influence things’; ‘This event happens because I think it'). Here one may feel confronted with the very paradigm of irrationality: profound contradictions suggesting regression to primitive ‘primary-process’ thinking or utter collapse of the higher faculties of mind. I argue, however, that these dualities so basic to schizophrenia can best be understood very differently: as consequences of a kind of alienation and hyper-self-consciousness (‘hyper- reflexivity') that is closely analogous to what occurs in the post-Kantian era of Western intellectual history. The parallel dualities of modern thought have been most extensively discussed by Foucault, who describes paradoxes, tensions and other dilemmas central to what he calls the modern ‘episteme'; these result from what Foucault sees as the modern human being's introverted and ultimately self-deceiving preoccupation with, and overvaluing of, the phenomenon of his own consciousness. Parallels between these contradictions and those characteristic of several withdrawn schizophrenic individuals are described and analysed. The paper concludes with an Afterword in which some possible neurobiological underpinnings of these schizophrenic experiences are discussed. (shrink)

This article considers the relationship between phenomenology and behaviorism in a new perspective. First, we present the phenomenological approach of the Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset (1883–1953). Ortega’s perspective involves a transformation of classical phenomenology in a direction that emphasizes ‘life as action’ and ‘historical reason’ as a form of explanation. These aspects of Ortega’s approach are of interest to contemporary phenomenology, and enable phenomenology’s relationship with behaviorism to be reconsidered. Second, we present Skinner’s radical behaviorism, the variant of behaviorism (...) most relevant to phenomenology. Of particular importance here is radical behaviorism’s emphasis on final causality and its approach to ‘private events’ in terms of the interpersonal functions served by these events. Third, we propose a mutual correction, both of behaviorism by phenomenology and of phenomenology by behaviorism, in which behaviorism’s notion of the environment may better be conceptualized through the phenomenological notion of the ‘lived-world,’ and phenomenology could adopt radical behaviorism’s dialectical and constructivist perspective. Finally, we discuss several implications for understanding psychopathology. (shrink)

This work begins by proposing the need for exploring the mode of being of mental disorders. It is a philosophical study in an Aristotelian perspective, with special emphasis on the anthropological–cultural dimension. It is difficult for such an inquiry to be carried out from within psychiatry or clinical psychology, committed as these fields are to their own logic and practical conditions. The issues are, in any case, more ontological than strictly clinical in nature. We therefore turn to Aristotle, and specifically (...) his doctrine of the four “causes,” to flesh out the social and cultural dimensions of mental disorders. In accordance with the present analysis, the material cause of disorders would be found in the contingencies of life; the formal cause would pertain primarily to the way clinical conditions themselves can serve as models of ‘being ill’ in our society; the efficient cause would correspond to the patients themselves, understood as active (albeit less than fully conscious) agents as well as to the pharmaceutical industry and the mass media; the final cause would be found in different adaptive functions served by the disorder. We conclude that the “mode of being” of most (if not all) mental disorders—in particular, their status as mental disorders—can often have more to do with cultural forms than with biological factors. (shrink)

This paper offers an intellectual portrait of the French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan, by considering his incorporation of perspectives associated with “modernism,” the artistic and intellectual avant-garde of the first half of the twentieth century. These perspectives are largely absent in other alternatives in psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis. Emphasis is placed on Lacan’s affinities with phenomenology, a tradition he criticized and to which he is often seen as opposed. Two general issues are discussed. The first is Lacan’s unparalleled appreciation of the (...) paradoxical nature of human experience, together with his treatment of paradox as almost a criterion of truth. These points are illustrated by considering Lacan’s conceptions of the self and of erotic desire. The second issue is Lacan’s focus on the “ontological dimension,” on overall styles or modalities of what might be termed “transcendental subjectivity”: namely, what he calls the registers of the “Imaginary,” the “Symbolic,” and the “Real.” By emphasizing the incommensurable yet interdependent nature of these modalities, Lacan offers a synthesis of dynamic/conflictual and formal/ontological dimensions of the human condition. This paper offers an encompassing portrait of Lacan’s major ideas that is at odds with the widespread assumption that Lacan is somehow a deeply anti-humanist thinker who derides the subjective dimension. Lacan’s most distinctive contributions are fundamentally concerned with the nature of human experience. They show strong affinities with hermeneutic forms of phenomenology inspired by Heidegger, a philosopher who focused on ontological modes of Being and considered paradox as a mark of truth. (shrink)

This paper offers a critique of a central psychopathological concept, the notion of "poor reality-testing. "Using ideas from the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, I consider the nature of delusions in schizophrenia, largely through examining Daniel Paul Schreber's famous Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. Many schizophrenic individuals do not in fact mistake their fantasies for reality, as is traditionally assumed. Rather, I argue, they engage in a solipsistic mode of experience, a felt subjectivization of the lived world that is associated with a (...) stance of passivity and hyperconsciousness. I discuss the existential conditions and consequences of this stance and show that certain anomalous or paradoxical features of schizophrenic delusion are explicable on this phenomenological account. (shrink)

Impairments in cognitive coordination in schizophrenia are supported by phenomenological data that suggest deficits in the processing of visual context. Although the target article is sympathetic to such a phenomenological perspective, we argue that the relevance of phenomenological data for a wider understanding of consciousness in schizophrenia is not sufficiently addressed by the authors.

It is a Pleasure to comment on Somogy Varga’s intriguing paper, which offers welcome insight into the historical sources, changing uses, and underlying assumptions pertaining to the concept of ‘melancholia,’ especially in relationship to ‘depression.’ We found Varga’s discussion of the relationship between affect and cognition in past discussions of melancholia and depression to be illuminating, especially given the emphasis on cognitive distortions in contemporary psycho-pathology. His explanation of the gradual evolution of the depression concept from melancholia sheds interesting light (...) on current notions. All in all, we find Varga’s arguments persuasive, and are inclined to agree with him (and others whom he .. (shrink)

In "Delusion, Reality, and Intersubjectivity," Thomas Fuchs offers a superb presentation of an enactive/phenomenological approach to schizophrenic delusions—an approach that is clearly superior to the poor-reality-testing formula that has dominated thinking about delusion in psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and cognitive-behavioral theory. As he convincingly argues, two key tendencies go a long way toward accounting for the distinctive features of delusion in schizophrenia: 1) withdrawal from practical, sensori-motoric interaction with the physical environment; and 2) failure to experience reality in intersubjective terms—as a realm (...) of "participatory... (shrink)

First publication of a letter of Albert Einstein to Hans Vaihinger, dated May, 1919, concerning Vaihinger's concept of "Fiktionen", the role of Geometry in Poincaré's system, and the importance of "real culture" in the intellectual's style of life. The letter is introduced and annotated.

The present paper offers a sympathetic yet critical examination of Michel Foucault's discussion of the contradictions inherent in the self-consciousness of the modern or post-Kantian mind. Foucault's account of the “empirico-transcendental doublet” of modern thought is shown to provide a useful mapping of humanist, anti-humanist, and postmodern responses to the reflexivity of the modern “ episteme”. Foucault is criticized for his insufficiently critical treatment of structuralism . Foucault is also defended against the charge that he undermines his own position through (...) a form of performative self-contradiction. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

This study in comparative phenomenology offers a description of the lived-world of the Stimmung, an experience especially characteristic of early stages of schizophrenia. In this state, the patient will stare transfixed at an alienated perceptual world that may have one or more of several anomalous characteristics. The world may seem strangely unreal; objects may seem fragmented, or devoid of standard pragmatic meanings and manifesting instead their sheer existence; or objects and events may seem imbued with a tantalizing but ineffable quality (...) of significance. Like many schizophreniform symptoms, the Stimmung has often been considered to be radically alien, beyond the pale of an empathic comprehension. The nature of these symptoms and their role in the overall development of schizophreniform illnesses is discussed, largely through examining the experiences of “Renee,” author of the Autobiography of a Schizophrenic Girl. Certain closely analogous phenomena from the culture of early modernism are then considered— focussing primarily on works by Hugo von Hoffmansthal, a turn-of-the-century Austrian writer. The possibility of a detailed phenomenological description, as well as the existence of such close modernist parallels, would seem to contradict the widely held view that such symptoms are incomprehensible. (shrink)

Reviews the books, Philosophical papers, volume I: Human agency and language by Charles Taylor and Philosophical papers, volume II: Philosophy and the human sciences by Charles Taylor. Professor Taylor of McGill University is one of a number of thinkers who are attempting the difficult and important task of taking the social sciences "beyond objectivism and relativism." One of the foremost philosophers of his generation, Taylor has long devoted himself to study of the foundations of the social sciences, especially psychology and (...) political science. Now the Cambridge University Press has issued, in a two-volume set, a selection of Taylor's essays written over the last twenty years. The essays cover a wide variety of topics. Some are focussed critiques—of mainstream cognitive psychology, of Piagetian developmental psychology, and of Michel Foucault's social studies of knowledge and power, for example. Others are historical studies which trace the development of theories of language and meaning from the Renaissance to the present day. Several essays discuss the nature of the self, and seek to show the incoherence of positions which fail to take into account the human capacity for self-consciousness, choice and responsibility. "Interpretation and the Sciences of Man," perhaps the best-known essay in the collection, is a closely argued demonstration of the irreducability of human meanings and the consequent necessity for a "hermeneutic" social science. Despite their historical range and disciplinary breadth, not to mention their casual familiarity with the Anglo-Saxon, French and German philosophical traditions, Taylor's essays form an organic, if sprawling whole. No psychologist interested in the epistemological foundations of his science should neglect these stimulating and cogent articles. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

This article presents an introductory overview of the interpretations of schizophrenia offered by three phenomenological psychiatrists: Eugene Minkowski (1885-1972), Wolfgang Blankenburg (b. 1928), and Kimura Bin (b. 1931). Minkowski views schizophrenia as characterized by a diminished sense of dynamic and vital connection to the world ("loss of vital contact"), often accompanied by a hypertrophy of intellectual and static tendencies ("morbid rationalism," "morbid geometrism"). Blankenburg emphasizes the patient's loss of the normal sense of obviousness or "natural self-evidence"—a loss of the usual (...) common-sense background that enables normal persons to cope easily with the social and practical world. Kimura focuses on certain distortions of self-experience: a distinctive splitting of the subjective self, alienated awareness of one's own ongoing consciousness, and profound uncertainty about the "I-ness" of the self. In addition to a summary, this article offers a comparison and critique of these three approaches. The three approaches are also considered in light of a more recent, phenomenological formulation of schizophrenia as a disorder of self-experience (an ipseity disturbance) involving hyperreflexivity and diminished self-affection (i.e., heightened awareness of aspects of experience that would normally remain tacit or presupposed and decline in the feeling of existing as a subject of awareness). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 11.1 (2004) 71-80 [Access article in PDF] Some Reflections on the (Analytic) Philosophical Approach to Delusion Louis A. Sass There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." —Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5 The peculiar, often problematic phenome na of psychopathology have been attract ing the attention of analytic philosophers in recent years. The topic of delusion has (...) been a particular draw, with a number of analytic philosophers attempting to use their conceptual tools, usually combined with ideas from cognitive neuroscience, to criticize the traditional understanding and to clarify the nature of this central psychiatric topic. It is useful to have this kind of interdisciplinary dialogue. Indeed, there is good reason to hope that concepts honed in the philosophy of mind and other philosophical subfields will help to sort out our understanding of a phenomenon (or set of phenomena) for which contemporary psychiatric definitions and conceptualizations are clearly inadequate and, in some respects, downright misleading (see Parnas and Sass 2001; Spitzer 1990).1Here, however, I would like to call attention to some weaknesses that, it seems to me, are rather common (I do not say universal) in many analytic philosophical approaches to psychopathology. In my opinion, there is a tendency to formulate issues and arguments in overly polarized, even dichotomous terms, and then to rely too uncritically on these essentialistic formulations in exploring the domain of inquiry. Although this polarizing tendency sometimes has the salutary effect of clarifying conceptual domains, it can, when taken too far, actually hamper our understanding of phenomena that are often fraught with ambiguities and complexities that defy many standard conceptualizations.The relationship between philosophy and psychopathology is obviously a two-way street—we are familiar, for example, with disorders that challenge deep philosophical assumptions about self and mind (e.g., blindsight, split-brain phenomena, perhaps also Dissociative Identity Disorder, and the first rank symptoms of schizophrenia). I am suggesting that, in their work on delusions, philosophers may need to put more emphasis on moving from the natural phenomena [End Page 71] of psychopathology and to the domain of philosophical analysis.I believe that a greater sensitivity to the modes of knowing associated with the phenomenological tradition, and to the forms of conceptual self-critique fostered by Ludwig Wittgenstein, are crucial ingredients for any adequate approach to delusion as well as many other topics in psychopathology. In my opinion, the work of many analytic philosophers interested in psychopathology would be enriched if they spent more time trying to discover and imagine what it might be like to experience certain kinds of abnormal psychiatric conditions, and also speculating about what implications such experiential modalities might have for action and verbal expression. I believe they would also be wise to spend more time questioning, and attempting to transcend, the philosophically derived conceptual distinctions and dichotomies that appear to organize their conceptual universes. Phenomenological imagination and Wittgensteinian critique can show how to move outside the conceptual capsule and into the rich and strange realms of actual experience, both normal and abnormal.So far I have offered only slogans. Let me use the articles by Tim Bayne and Elisabeth Pacherie (2004) and Robert Klee (2004) to flesh out the criticisms I have offered. There is much that is intelligent and much that is worthwhile in both their articles. (For example, I was largely convinced by the criticisms of John Campbell and of Donald Davidson that are central to the articles by Bayne and Pacherie and by Klee, respectively.) Here, however, I will focus only on issues that illustrate the above-mentioned tendencies—tendencies that, in my view, tend to infect even the best writings on the (analytic) philosophy of psychiatry. I will also make some remarks about the works of Campbell and Davidson, the two philosophers criticized in the articles by Bayne and Pacherie and by Klee. Because the article by Eugenie Georgaca (2004) is in a different tradition, I will say only a few words about it at the end. Bayne and Pacherie on the Preservation-Of-meaning... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.2 (2003) 125-132 [Access article in PDF] Incomprehensibility and Understanding:On the Interpretation of Severe Mental Illness Louis A. Sass Keywords hermeneutics, psychopathology, paradox, Wittgenstein, solipsism, delusion, principle of charity, phenomenological psychopathology. I would like to begin by thanking Rupert Read for the care he has put into reading my work, and into thinking through its implications in the context of the "new-Wittgensteinian" interpretation of the (...) thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein. This interpretation derives from an influential reading of this philosopher's early book, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1961), that is not explicitly discussed in Read's article, yet that lies behind much of his argument. Read does allude to this reading of the Tractatus when he refers to the concept of "logically alien thought" (see Conant [1992]), and by citing, in his endnotes, the Diamond, Conant, and Cerbone articles that appear in Crary and Read's edited collection, The New Wittgenstein (2000). In an earlier paper that also addresses my work, "On approaching schizophrenia through Wittgenstein," Read (2001) explicitly discusses the relevance of the new-Wittgensteinian interpretation of the Tractatus.According to this new-Wittgensteinian interpretation of the Tractatus, Wittgenstein took absolutely seriously his own realization (explicitly stated at the end of the Tractatus) that his book was internally self-contradictory, and he therefore realized that all or nearly all the sentences of the Tractatus must be totally devoid of any meaning or semantic reference. According to this austere view, the vast bulk of the Tractatus only pretends to be making meaningful statements about the nature of logic and semantics; its real purpose is to give the reader the illusion of meaning, and this it does in order to lead the reader to the eventual realization that there can in fact be no meaningful statements or thoughts at the level of self-referential abstraction at which the Tractatus pretends to be operating. Further, when Wittgenstein (1961) writes (in the famous last line of the book), "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" (p. 189), this statement should, supposedly, not be taken as any kind of mystical pointing toward some ineffable realm or truth, but, rather, as an austere recognition that there just are no ineffable truths—that, so to speak, there just is no mystical there there. [End Page 125]Rupert Read sees an analogy between, on the one hand, the (supposedly mistaken) readers of Wittgenstein's Tractatus who think that Wittgenstein is exploiting self-contradiction to allude to some higher, ineffable truth (i.e., something that can be pointed at even if it cannot be said), and, on the other hand, my own elucidation of Schreber's contradictions (see especially Chapter 2 of Paradoxes of Delusion [1994]) to argue that Schreber can be said to be having particular kinds of experiences, which I refer to as solipsistic or quasi-solipsistic in nature. Just as Wittgenstein's self-contradictions can (supposedly) point nowhere other than to their own failure to mean, so Schreber's self-contradictory and other nonstandard statements cannot (according to Read) be used to illuminate in any meaningful way the form of experience that supposedly lies behind them—as I, for example, have tried to do by offering a phenomenological account of Schreber and schizophrenia. Patients like Schreber and Renée cannot really be understood, just as we cannot really understand logically alien thought—which, in fact, is not really thought at all; in both cases, there is only the illusion of meaning, only the mirage of an alternative mode of thinking or of living. This, at least, is Read's new-Wittgensteinian claim.Few readers of Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology will, I suspect, be familiar with these discussions centering on Wittgenstein's Tractatus, which were introduced largely by the philosophers Cora Diamond and James Conant (see Crary and Read [2000]). (I myself have found their writings fascinating and inspiring in many ways, despite my ultimate disagreement on fundamental issues.) 1 Most readers of Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology will have no way of assessing the validity of this austere reading of the Tractatus... (shrink)

In the United States, at least 6% of all hospital beds are in the intensive care unit or coronary care unit. The cost of treating a patient in an intensive care unit averages from $2,000 to $3,500 per day. At least 10–40% of intensive care patients will not survive to hospital discharge. Today, every major category of disease may be found in the modern ICU; common diagnoses are septicemia, postsurgical complications, cerebrovascular accidents, gastrointestinal bleeding, neoplasia, and respiratory failure. ICUs employ (...) some of the most sophisticated medical technology, routinely monitoring the cardiopulmonary performance of patients and often providing assisted ventilation. ICUs are high intensity in terms of their staffing, involving 24-hour physician supervision and nurse:patient ratios from 1:3 to 1:1. (shrink)

We propose that typical schizophrenic delusions develop on the background of preexisting anomalies of self-experience. We argue that disorders of the Self represent the experiential core clinical phenomena of schizophrenia, as was already suggested by the founders of the concept of schizophrenia and elaborated in the phenomenological psychiatric tradition. The article provides detailed descriptions of the pre-psychotic or schizotypal anomalies of self-experience, often illustrated through clinical vignettes. We argue that delusional transformation in the evolution of schizophrenic psychosis reflects a global (...) reorganization of consciousness and existential reorientation, both of which radiate from a fundamental alteration of the Self. We critically address the contemporary cognitive approaches to delusion formation, often finding them inconsistent with the clinical features of schizophrenia or implausible from a phenomenological point of view. (shrink)

Karl Theodor Bayrhoffer was born in Marburg Germany on October 14, 1812. Bayrhoffer first taught philosophy at Marburg University, there becoming a Full Professor in 1845. But in 1846, having been suspended from his teaching by reason of his politically free-thinking activities on behalf of the atheistic Lichtfreunde movement, he entered into Hessian politics, becoming - during its last week - the President of the Hesse Electorial Council. To escape political persecution in the period of the 1848 revolution, he, his (...) wife, and their six children emigrated to the United States in 1852. He purchased a farm of 140 acres in Jordan, Green Country, Wisconsin. The following year, his wife died. He soon remarried to a Charlotte Draz, who lived until 1864, being survived not only by her husband but by their two children. (shrink)

: 5–7, and on Karl Theodor Bayrhoffer, “A Hegelian in South Wisconsin,” The Owl of Minerva, 12, 4, : 1–3.).

What does it mean for ethics to say, as Wittgenstein did, that philosophy “leaves everything as it is”? -/- Though clearly absorbed with ethical questions throughout his life and work, Wittgenstein's remarks about the subject do not easily lend themselves to summation or theorizing. Although many moral philosophers cite the influence or inspiration of Wittgenstein, there is little agreement about precisely what it means to do ethics in the light of Wittgenstein. -/- Ethics after Wittgenstein brings together an international cohort (...) of leading scholars in the field to address this problem. The chapters advance a conception of philosophical ethics characterized by an attention to detail, meaning and importance which itself makes ethical demands on its practitioners. Working in conversation with literature and film, engaging deeply with anthropology and critical theory, and addressing contemporary problems from racialized sexual violence against women to the Islamic State, these contributors reclaim Wittgenstein's legacy as an indispensable resource for contemporary ethics. (shrink)

This paper outlines several of the challenges that are inherent in any attempt to communicate subjective experience to others, particularly in the context of a clinical interview. It presents the phenomenological interview as a way of effectively responding to these challenges, which may be especially important when attempting to understand the profound experiential transformations that take place in schizophrenia. Features of language experience in schizophrenia—including changes in interpersonal orientation, a sense of the arbitrariness of language, and a desire for faithful (...) communication of experience —are described, together with discussion of their relevance for the interview context. Furthermore, the interview presents a unique context in which both intersubjective and interpersonal aspects of experience will be described as well as evoked. It is proposed that phenomenological interviewers should not only be familiar with these and other experiences that can occur in schizophrenia, but also capable of applying the techniques of phenomenological and hermeneutic methods in order to understand the descriptions of interviewees with sensitivity and accuracy. (shrink)

This introductory essay differentiates between divergent forms of pacifism, concerning their background assumptions, status, scope, justification and political implications. Then, it presents two versions of criticising pacifism, one external, one internal way. Finally, it will be discussed whether there is a specific coalition between religious faith and pacifism and what form that relation might take.