"An important contribution to contemporary jurisprudential debate and to legal thought more generally, Just Interpretations is far ahead of currently available work."--Peter Goodrich, author of Oedipus Lex "I was struck repeatedly by the clarity of expression throughout the book. Rosenfeld's description and criticism of the recent work of leading thinkers distinguishes his work within the legal theory genre. Furthermore, his own theory is quite original and provocative."--Aviam Soifer, author of Law and the Company We Keep.

The dispute between naturalism and anti-naturalism has been underway almost since the very beginnings of philosophy. Christian thinkers, by proclaiming that God as Creator transcends the reality He has created, and that human beings as persons transcend the material world, have entered this dispute on the anti-naturalist side. The contemporary dominance in culture of the naturalistic paradigm requires Christian philosophy to reflect on naturalism in the broadest sense (in its various forms), together with its conditions and consequences, and to rethink (...) its relationship to this philosophical tradition. Naturalism rejects the possibility of something existing, being known, or being explained that is separate from the material reality given in empirical cognition. Along with this, it denies human beings transcendence with respect to the natural or social world. In its contemporary iteration, this tradition appeals to the solutions and methods of domain-specific forms of scientific inquiry, relying on them for its own authority. For Christian philosophy, naturalism represents a powerful challenge. It is possible to see in it a threat to Christian philosophy, but it is also possible to discern in it an opportunity for a more critical evaluation of Christian philosophy’s previous solutions, and an opportunity to develop new ones. There is a need for a better understanding of naturalism itself, as well as of what the various domain-specific sciences (including the natural and social sciences, as well as the humanities and, currently, neuroscientific research in particular) have to say about the world and about human beings. Systematic and historico-philosophical questions equally still call for debate – in relation to the centuries-old dispute between naturalism and anti-naturalism, as well as the changing place of Christian thought within it. In our own time, one can witness diverse attempts by Christian thinkers both to critically discuss naturalistic positions and to implement naturalistic approaches or solutions within Christian thought itself. Certainly, the latter cannot ignore the fact that naturalism allows philosophy to maintain cognitive contact with domain-specific forms of scientific inquiry. The organizers plan to conduct this conference in hybrid mode, combining both online and onsite elements. This model will allow all interested persons to participate, while also offering those wishing to actually come to Jesuit University Ignatianum in Krakow the possibility of doing so. (shrink)

A large and growing body of research in computational psychiatry draws on Bayesian modelling to illuminate the dysfunctions and aberrations that underlie psychiatric disorders. After identifying the chief attractions of this research programme, we argue that its typical focus on abstract, domain-general inferential processes is likely to obscure many of the distinctive ways in which the human mind can break down and malfunction. We illustrate this by appeal to psychosis and the social phenomenology of delusions.

Ethics is a foundational competency in healthcare inherent in everyday nursing practice. Therefore, the promotion of qualified nurses’ and nursing students’ moral competence is essential to ensure ethically high-quality and sustainable healthcare. The aim of this integrative literature review is to identify the factors contributing to the promotion of qualified nurses’ and nursing students’ moral competence. The review has been registered in PROSPERO (CRD42023386947) and reported according to the PRISMA guideline. Focusing on qualified nurses’ and nursing students’ moral competence, a (...) literature search was undertaken in January 2023 in six scientific databases: CINAHL, Cochrane Library, PsycINFO, PubMed Medline, Scopus and Web of Science. Empirical studies written in English without time limitation were eligible for inclusion. A total of 29 full texts were retrieved and included out of 5233 citations. Quality appraisal was employed using Joanna Briggs Institute checklists and the Mixed Method Appraisal Tool. Data were analysed using inductive content analysis. Research about the factors contributing to the promotion of qualified nurses’ and nursing students’ moral competence is limited and mainly explored using descriptive research designs. The contributing factors were identified as comprising two main categories: (1) human factors, consisting of four categories: individual, social, managerial and professional factors, and ten sub-categories; and (2) structural factors, consisting of four categories: educational, environmental, organisational and societal factors, and eight sub-categories. This review provides knowledge about the factors contributing to the promotion of qualified nurses’ and nursing students’ moral competence for the use of researchers, nurse educators, managers, organisations and policymakers. More research about the contributing factors is needed using complex intervention, implementation and multiple methods designs to ensure ethically sustainable healthcare. (shrink)

This article seeks to understand the origins of the Soviet concept of ‘sluggish schizophrenia’, a diagnostic category that was used to imprison political dissidents in the post-WWII era. It focuses on the 1920s and 1930s, a period when Soviet psychiatrists attempted to find ways to diagnose schizophrenia at its earliest stages. The new Soviet state supported these efforts, funding new institutions where clinicians encountered types of patients they had not previously studied. Conceptual disagreements arose about what symptoms could be used (...) to diagnose schizophrenia, and how it could be differentiated from other ‘borderline’ mental disorders such as neurosis and psychopathy. Several research groups used their findings to propose new clinical concepts, including ‘mild schizophrenia’ and sluggish schizophrenia. By the early 1930s Soviet psychiatrists no longer shared a basic consensus about schizophrenia. At the same time, the priorities of the Soviet government under Joseph Stalin ceased to support preventative psychiatry. The result was a 1936 ‘discussion’ at which the concept of mild schizophrenia was criticized and sluggish schizophrenia was held up as a model for how the discipline should develop in the future. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 3.2 (1996) 139-142 Concurrent Contents: Recent and Classic References at the Interface of Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology Articles Abramowitz, S., C. Abramowitz, C. Jackson et al. 1973. The politics of clinical judgment. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 41: 385-391.Audi, R. N. 1972. Psychoanalytic explanation and the concept of rational action. The Monist 56: 444- 464.Barondess, J. A. 1979. Disease and illness--a crucial (...) distinction. American Journal of Medicine 66: 375-376.Barrett, R. J. 1988. Interpretations of schizophrenia. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 12: 357-388.Bechtel, W. 1993. The case for connectionism. Philosophical Studies 7: 119-154.Belzen, J. A. 1995. The impact of phenomenology on classical psychiatry: Rümke's position between Jaspers and Kraepelin. History of Psychiatry 6: 349-385.Benda, C. E. 1967. Neuroses of conscience. Journal of Existentialism 7: 425-442.Binns, P. 1995. Commentary on "Contentless consciousness." Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 2: 61-63.Blankenburg, W. 1980. Phenomenology and psychopathology. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 11: 50-78.Bloomfield, T. M. 1979. Psychoanalysis: A human science? Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 9: 271-287.Blumenfeld, D. 1972. Free action and unconscious motivation. The Monist 56: 426-443.Boudreaux, G. 1977. Freud on the nature of unconscious mental processes. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 7: 1-32.Bracken, P. J. 1995. Beyond liberation: Michael Foucault and the notion of a critical psychiatry. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 2, no. 1: 1-13.Brazier, M. 1995. Commentary on "Who should be committable?." Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 2, no. 1: 49-50.Bursztajn, J., and A. Brodsky. 1995. Authenticity and autonomy in the managed-care era: Forensic psychiatric perspectives. Journal of Clinical Ethics 5, no. 3: 237-242.Byrnes, J. F. 1979. Suggestions on writing the history of psychological data. History and Theory 16: 297-305.Campbell, E. J., J. G. Scadding, and R. J. Roberts. 1979. The concept of disease. British Medical Journal 2: 757-762.Carveth, D. 1988. In reply to Eagle's reply on "The epistemological foundations of psychoanalysis." Philosophy of the Social Sciences 18: 377-378.Chadwick, R. F. 1995. Commentary on "Karl Jaspers and Edmund Husserl." Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 2, no. 1: 83-84.Christiansen, B. 1964. The scientific status of psychoanalytic clinical evidence (III). Inquiry 7: 47-79.Davis, M. 1987. Realistic utilitarianism and the social conditions of cognitive psychotherapy. Social Theory & Practice 13: 237-259.Dega, W., et al. 1978. Ethics and mental health: Discussion. Dialectics and Humanism 5: 219-235.Dingle, H. 1949. The logical status of psycho-analysis. Analysis 9: 63-66.Dupeau, J. 1977. Freud and degeneracy. Diogenes Spring: 43-64.Eagle, M. 1988. A reply to Carveth's "The epistemological foundations of psychoanalysis. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 18: 371-375.Elevitch, B. 1974-75. Reasons, motives and psychoanalysis. Philosophical Forum (Boston) 6: 143- 162.Elliot, P. 1995. Policies, identity, and social change: Contested grounds in psychoanalytic feminism. Hypatia 10: 41-55.Fabrega Jr, H. 1980. The position of psychiatric illness in biomedical theory: A cultural analysis. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 5: 145-168.Fisk, G. 1993. Accreditation of psychotherapists. British Journal of Hospital Medicine 50: 437-438.Flynn, B. G. 1985. Reading Habermas reading Freud. Human Studies 8: 57-76.Forrow, L., R. M. Arnold, and J. Frader. 1991. Teaching clinical ethics in the residency years--preparing competent professionals. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 16: 93-112.Friedman, M. 1982. Philosophical anthropology and psychotherapy. Philosophical Context 12: 9-19.Galdston, I. 1969. The ontologic foundations of morality. Existential Psychiatry 7: 69-75.Gardner, S. 1995a. Commentary on "Irrationality and the dynamic unconscious." Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 2, no. 2: 175-176.Gardner, S. 1995b. Psychoanalysis, science, and commonsense. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 2, no. 2: 93-113.Handelsman, M. M. et al. 1995. Does legally mandated consent to psychotherapy ensure ethical appropriateness? The Colorado experience. Ethics and Behavior 5, no. 2: 119-129.Hanlon, M. D. 1977. Commentary on Dunham's "Psychiatry, Sociology and Civil Liberties." Values and Ethics in Health Care 2: 275-278.Heaton, J. M. 1972. Insight in... (shrink)

This paper reflects on the needs for close interaction between psychiatry and all partners in international mental health for the improvement of mental health and advancement of the profession, with a particular view to the relationships between mental health, development and human rights. The World Health Organisation identifies strong links between mental health status and development for individuals, communities and countries. In order to improve population mental health, countries need effective and accessible treatment, prevention, and promotion programmes. Achieving adequate (...) support for mental health in any country requires a unified approach. Strong links between psychiatrists, community leaders and patients and families that are based on negotiation and respect, are vital for progress. When strong partnerships exist, they can contribute to community understanding and advancement of psychiatry. This is the first step towards scaling up good quality care for those living with mental illnesses, preventing illnesses in those at risk, and promoting mental health through work with other community sectors. Partnerships are needed to support education and research in psychiatry, and improvements in quality of care wherever psychiatry is practiced, including primary health and community mental health services, hospitals and private practice. There are important roles for psychiatry in building the strength of organisations that champion the advocacy and support roles of service users and family carers, and encouraging partnerships for mental health promotion in the community. (shrink)

The dominance of the medical-model in American psychiatry over the last 30 years has resulted in the subsequent decline of the “talking cure”. In this paper, we identify a number of problems associated with medicalized psychiatry, focusing primarily on how it conceptualizes the self as a de-contextualized set of symptoms. Drawing on the tradition of hermeneutic phenomenology, we argue that medicalized psychiatry invariably overlooks the fact that our identities, and the meanings and values that matter to us, (...) are created and constituted by our dialogical relations with others. While acknowledging the importance of medical and pharmaceutical interventions, we suggest that it is only by means of the dialogical interplay of the talking cure that the client can both recognize unhealthy and self-defeating ways of being and be opened up to the possibility of new meanings and self-interpretations. (shrink)

The prospect of using genome technologies to modify the human germline has raised profound moral disagreement but also emphasizes the need for wide-ranging discussion and a well-informed policy response. The Hinxton Group brought together scientists, ethicists, policymakers, and journal editors for an international, interdisciplinary meeting on this subject. This consensus statement formulated by the group calls for support of genome editing research and the development of a scientific roadmap for safety and efficacy; recognizes the ethical challenges involved in clinical reproductive (...) applications of genome editing but, importantly, rejects the idea that human reproductive germline modification is necessarily morally unacceptable; and highlights the importance of meaningful engagement in discussions of genome editing and the development of regulation and oversight mechanisms to govern future uses of such technologies. (shrink)

Philosophy of psychiatry is a philosophical discipline focused on fundamental theoretical and conceptual issues in contemporary psychiatry. One of such issues is the so-called demarcation problem, which can be understood as the question about the difference between mental illness and psychological functioning which is normal, or healthy. After a brief account of the standard criteria for such differentiation the dominant naturalistic understanding of psychiatry as well as the notion of mental illness proper to the latter are subjected (...) to scrutiny. Then, in turn, critical currents are investigated with their concept of psychiatry as a discipline of humanistic and normative character. Some of these currents, such as the antipsychiatry of Szasz, are of historical importance today. Still, however, many threads are discussed, especially in the context of the notion of mental disorder developed by the American Psychiatric Association. One may expect that such discussions will be fruitfully carried on, especially in those cases when particular disorders are philosophically investigated. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: -- Notes on Contributors -- Preface; R.Dallos -- Carving Nature at its Joints? DSM and the Medicalization of Everyday Life; M.Rapley, J.Moncrieff&J.Dillon -- Dualisms and the Myth of Mental Illness; P.Thomas&P.Bracken -- Making the World Go Away, and How Psychology and Psychiatry Benefit; M.Boyle -- Cultural Diversity and Racism: An Historical Perspective; S.Fernando -- The Social Context of Paranoia; D.J.Harper -- From 'Bad Character' to BPD: The Medicalization of 'Personality Disorder'; J.Bourne -- Medicalizing Masculinity; S.Timimi (...) -- Can Traumatic Events Traumatise People? Trauma, Madness and 'Psychosis'; L.Johnstone -- Children Who Witness Violence at Home; A.Vetere -- Discourses of Acceptance and Resistance: Speaking Out About Psychiatry; E.Speed -- The Personal Is the Political; J.Dillon -- 'I'm Just, You Know, Joe Bloggs': The Management of Parental Responsibility for First-Episode Psychosis; C.Coulter&M.Rapley -- The Myth of the Antidepressant: An Historical Analysis; J.Moncrieff -- Antidepressants and the Placebo Response; I.Kirsch -- Why Were Doctors so Slow to Recognise Antidepressant Discontinuation Problems?; D.Double -- Toxic Psychology; C.Newnes -- Psychotherapy: Illusion With No Future?; D.Smail -- The Psychologization of Torture; N.Patel -- What Is To Be Done?; J.Moncrieff, J.Dillon&M.Rapley -- Figure: Papers Using Term 'Antidepressant' On Medline 1957-1965 -- Index. (shrink)

In the United States, the National Institute of Mental Health is seeking to encourage researchers to move away from diagnostic tools like the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. A key mechanism for this is the “Research Domain Criteria” initiative, closely associated with former NIMH Director Thomas Insel. This article examines how key figures in US psychiatry construct the purpose, nature, and implications of the ambiguous RDoC project; that is, how its novelty is constituted through discourse. In this (...) paper, I explore and analyze these actors’ accounts of what is new, important, or desirable about RDoC, demonstrating how they are constituted through institutional context and personal affects. In my interviews with mental health opinion leaders, RDoC is presented as overly reliant on neurobiological epistemologies, distant from clinical imaginaries and imperatives, and introduced in a top-down manner inconsistent with the professional norms of scientific research. Ultimately, the article aims to add empirical depth to current understandings about the epistemological and ontological politics of contemporary psychiatry and to contribute to science and technology studies debates about “the new” in technoscience. Accordingly, I use discussions about RDoC as a case study in the sociology of novelty. (shrink)

The hypothesis that anatomically modern homo sapiens could have undergone changes akin to those observed in domesticated animals has been contemplated in the biological sciences for at least 150 years. The idea had already plagued philosophers such as Rousseau, who considered the civilisation of man as going against human nature, and eventually.

Speculative Realism (SR) has often been characterised as a heterogeneous group of thinkers, united almost exclusively in their commitment to the critique of what Quentin Meillassoux terms ‘correlationism’ or what Graham Harman calls the ‘philosophy of (human) access.’ The terms ‘correlationism’ and ‘philosophy of access’ are in turn often treated – at times even by Meillassoux and Harman themselves – as synonymous. In this paper, I seek to analyse these terms to evaluate their similarities, but also possible differences. I shall (...) argue that the difference between the two terms ought to be retained and emphasised, since it hints at important differences between the positions of Harman and Meillassoux. (shrink)

Adi Da argues that no solutions currently proposed are sufficient to righten the present unsustainable trajectory of life on Earth, because there is no integrated approach to the ordering of society and use of the planet. The presumption of separateness—manifesting collectively as separate “tribes” vying for control—characterizes human affairs, rather than the prior (“a priori”) unity of existence. The struggle for dominance is the “stave in the wheels” of the Earth-system's inherent capacity to self-correct. A new institution, “the Global Cooperative (...) Forum,” is proposed—invoked by “everybody-all-at-once” (a global populace awakened as a single force, capable of cooperatively effecting global change). (shrink)

Exploring phenomenological philosophy as it relates to psychiatry and the social world, this book establishes a common language between psychiatrists, anti-psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers. It is an inter-disciplinary work by phenomenological philosophers, psychiatrists, and psychologists to discover the essence and foundations of social psychiatry. Using the phenomenology of Husserl as a point of departure, the meanings of empathy, interpersonal understanding, we-intentionality, ethics, citizenship and social inclusion are investigated in relation to psychopathology, nosology, and clinical research. This work, (...) drawing upon the rich classical and contemporary phenomenological tradition, touching on a broad range of thinkers such as Deleuze, Levinas, and R.D. Laing, also explicates how phenomenology is a method capable of capturing the human condition and its intricate relation to the social world and mental illness. (shrink)

What can psychoanalysis, a psychological approach developed more than a century ago, offer us in an age of rapidly evolving, hard-to-categorize ideas of sexuality and the self? Should we abandon Freud's theories completely or adapt them to new findings and the new relationships taking shape in modern liberal societies? In a remarkably prescient series of lectures delivered in the early 1960s, the French philosopher Louis Althusser anticipated the challenges that psychoanalytic theory would face as politics moved away from structuralist frameworks (...) and toward the elastic possibilities of anthropological and sociological thought. Psychoanalysis and the Human Sciences translates Althusser's remarkable seminars into English for the first time, making available to a wider audience the origins and potential future of radical political theory. Althusser takes the important step in these lectures of distinguishing psychoanalysis from psychology and especially psychiatry, which long resisted Freud's analytical concepts of the unconscious and overdetermination. By freeing psychoanalysis from this bind, Althusser can then apply these analytical concepts to the social and the political, integrated with Marxist theory. The result is an enlivened methodology for comprehending social organization and change that had a profound influence on the Frankfurt School and scholars who continue to work at the forefront of radical thought today: Judith Butler, Étienne Balibar, and Alain Badiou. (shrink)

Neuropsychiatrist Michael T. H. Wong argues that the notions of soul, mind, brain, self and consciousness are no longer adequate on their own to explain humanity. He formulates a “third discourse” that brings philosophy neuroscience theology and psychiatry together as an innovative multilayered narrative for the person in the twenty-first century.

According to a recent convention on human rights and biomedicine, coercive treatment of psychiatric patients may only be given if, without such treatment, serious harm is likely to result to the health of the patient; it must not be given in the interest of other people. In the present article a discussion is undertaken about the implication of this stipulation for the use of coercion in psychiatry in general and in forensic psychiatry in particular.

This book brings together ancient spiritual wisdom and modern science and philosophy to address age-old questions regarding our existence, free will and the nature of conscious awareness. Stuart Hameroff MD Professor, Anesthesiology and Psychology, and Director, Center for Consciousness Studies The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona This book presents a rich, broad-ranging overview of contemporary research and scholarship into consciousness and the self.... It is... to their credit that the editors have assembled a highly stimulating set of scholars whose expertise (...) cover all the relevant areas. I strongly recommend the book to anyone with an interest in understanding the directions in which contemporary thinking about the nature of consciousness is headed. B. Les Lancaster Emeritus Professor of Transpersonal Psychology Liverpool John Moores University, UK This volume is a collection of 17 essays that contribute to the emerging discipline of consciousness studies with particular focus on the concept of the self. The essays together argue that to understand consciousness is to understand the self that beholds consciousness. Two broad issues are addressed in the volume: the place of the self in the lives of humans and nonhuman primates; and the interrelations between the self and consciousness, which contribute to the understanding of cognitive functions, awareness, free will, nature of reality, and the complex experiential and behavioural attributes of consciousness. The book presents cutting-edge and original work from well-known authors and scholars of philosophy, psychiatry, behavioural sciences and physics. This is a pioneering attempt to present to the reader multiple ways of conceptualizing and thus understanding the relation between consciousness and self in a nuanced manner. (shrink)

Psychiatry is a discipline on the border between the biomedical sciences on the one hand and the humanities and social sciences (most notably psychology and anthropology) on the other. This unique position undoubtedly contributes to the attractiveness of psychiatry as a medical specialism for many young doctors, but it also causes significant problems. Unlike other medical disciplines, in which the definitions of diseases are based on objective, measurable pathophysiological underpinnings, psychiatric diagnosis and classification has been based on (...) descriptions of inherently subjective mental and behavioral symptoms that are supposed to be deviant from "normal" psychology or behavior, as reflected in the current .. (shrink)

Philosophical anthropology is concerned with assumptions about human nature, differential psychology with the empirical investigation of such belief systems. A questionnaire composed of 64 questions concerning brain and consciousness, free will, evolution, meaning of life, belief in God, and theodicy problem was used to gather data from 563 students of psychology at seven universities and from 233 students enrolled in philosophy or the natural sciences. Essential concepts were monism–dualism–complementarity, atheism–agnosticism–deism–theism, attitude toward transcendence–immanence, and self-ratings of religiosity and interest in meaning (...) of life. The response profiles ( Menschenbild ) of women and men, and of psychology students in the first and midterm of study were very similar. The method of statistical twins indicated a number of differences between students of psychology, philosophy, and the natural sciences. The majority of respondents were convinced that philosophical preconceptions on mind–body and free will have important practical implications for the way in which psychotherapists, physicians, or and judges exercise their professions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Searle and the ‘Deep Unconscious’”Dan Lloyd (bio)Can another person know my thoughts with better authority than I know them myself? With his affirmative answer to this question, Freud invented the twentieth-century human, a being whose mind is accessible to scrutiny from outside, and whose attempts at conscious self-explanation are at best partial and in many cases wrong. Even as Freud’s scientific influence wanes, the shift of authority (...) he inaugurated is still gathering strength. Now the mind is open to many outsiders. Not only psychoanalysts, but behaviorists, cognitive scientists, and neuroscientists are all striving to read my mind, and yours. Against this historical sea change stands the solitary John Searle, whose work is consistently animated by fierce adherence to first person authority and surly attacks of any theory that could be exploited to undermine that authority. To most readers Searle’s positions seem stubbornly anti-scientific and covertly dualistic, despite his insistence to the contrary. And since science is good and dualism is bad, Searle’s arguments have become standing obstacles for theorists to discuss, debate, or dismiss.Buttressing his insistence on first person authority, Searle defends a Cartesian view of mental representation or intentionality, holding that an intentional entity is a conscious entity, either in actuality or potentiality. Deeply unconscious representations are therefore impossible. Eric Gillett has joined the debate just here with a pointed critique of Searle’s argument (also discussed in Lloyd 1990). Gillett performs a double service by challenging Searle’s premises and offering some positive grounds for the deep unconscious. I agree with Gillett that establishing the existence of deeply unconscious representations requires a theory of intentionality that is independent of conscious awareness. Ruth Millikan’s evolutionary teleology is an excellent candidate, in its pursuit of real function and real content (vs. “as-if” interpretation) for mental items.Some questions remain. First, if deeply unconscious entities are clinically important, then in addition to a defense-in-principle of their existence we will need some method of identifying specific deep representations in particular cases. Millikan’s functionalism links content to broad biological and environmental contexts, and thereby seems to be an unwieldy tool for content ascription. If deeply unconscious representations get their content in the way Millikan describes, how can the clinician make use of them?Second, and more important, Millikan’s theory shares with many others the ambition to explain all intentional entities, conscious and unconscious alike. This leads to a new dualism of mental contents, a split between intentional content and conscious content, since the comprehensive theory of intentionality will assign mental content both [End Page 201] shallow and deep, irrespective of consciousness. This is a perplexity that transcends particular theories of intentionality, since what my mental states represent seems at least partly dependent on my environment or context, but my current state of consciousness is exclusively dependent on my brain. How, in theory, can these two concepts of content be reconciled?In sum, deeply unconscious representations do not come cheap. One way to escape the new dualism of content is to deny that the deep entities are representations. Instead, they might be dispositions or the “mechanisms, instinctual drives, structures, and energies which can never become conscious under any conditions,” as Gillett suggests. (In Lloyd 1994 I explore the possibility of a dispositional unconscious understood via connectionism.) On this view, mental content could remain within our first person authority, while the causal processes that manage that content remain out of sight. I wouldn’t have to guess what I’m thinking, but I would depend on the sciences of the mind to tell me how I come to think it.Related ArticlesFeature Article: Searle and the "Deep Unconscious"Commentary: Commentary by LloydDan Lloyd Dan Lloyd, Department of Philosophy, Trinity College, Hartford, CT 06106, U.S.A.ReferencesLloyd, D. 1990. Loose connections: Four problems with Searle’s argument for the ‘Connection Principle.’ Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13: 615–16. Google ScholarLloyd, D. 1994. Connectionist hysteria: Reducing a Freudian case study to a network model. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 1, no. 2: 69–88. Google ScholarCopyright © 1996 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

Philosophical anthropology is concerned with assumptions about human nature, differential psychology with the empirical investigation of such belief systems. A questionnaire composed of 64 questions concerning brain and consciousness, free will, evolution, meaning of life, belief in God, and theodicy problem was used to gather data from 563 students of psychology at seven universities and from 233 students enrolled in philosophy or the natural sciences. Essential concepts were monism–dualism–complementarity, atheism–agnosticism–deism–theism, attitude toward transcendence–immanence, and self-ratings of religiosity and interest in meaning (...) of life. The response profiles (Menschenbild) of women and men, and of psychology students in the first and midterm of study were very similar. The method of statistical twins indicated a number of differences between students of psychology, philosophy, and the natural sciences. The majority of respondents were convinced that philosophical preconceptions on mind–body and free will have important practical implications for the way in which psychotherapists, physicians, or and judges exercise their professions. (shrink)

A brief overview is provided of sociological and historical critiques of Western psychiatry before focusing on pre-empirical, non-empirical and empirical aspects of psychiatric diagnosis. These are then discussed using the analytical devices of the ontic fallacy, the epistemic fallacy and generative mechanisms. It is concluded that mental disorders do not really exist but particular presenting problems of unintelligibility, interpersonal dysfunction and common human misery, in particular social contexts, recur in modern life and thus constitute real problems for those intimately (...) implicated and for social order. These require new ways of understanding, beyond the option of deconstruction, which could displace categorical reasoning and be sensitive to causes, meanings and their situated social contexts. The paper concludes with an outline of an alternative future for research into mental health problems, which could be informed by critical realism. (shrink)

John Davis (_New Methuselahs_: _The Ethics of Life_ _Extension_, The MIT Press, Cambridge, 2018) advances a novel ethical analysis of longevity science that employs a three-fold methodology of examining the impact of life extension technologies on three distinct groups: the “Haves”, the “Have-nots” and the “Will-nots”. In this essay, I critically examine the egalitarian analysis Davis deploys with respect to its ability to help us theorize about the moral significance of an applied gerontological intervention. Rather than focusing on futuristic scenarios (...) of radical life extension, I offer a rival egalitarian analysis that takes seriously (1) the health vulnerabilities of today’s aging populations, (2) the health inequalities of the “aging status quo” and, (3) the prospects for the fair diffusion of an aging intervention over the not-so-distant future. Despite my reservations about Davis’s focus on “life-extension” vs. increasing the human “healthspan”, I agree with his central conclusion that an aging intervention would be, on balance, a good thing and that we should fund such research aggressively. But, I make an even stronger case and conjecture that an intervention that slows down the rate of molecular and cellular decline from the inborn aging process will likely be one of the most important public health advancements of the twenty-first century. This is so because aging is the most prevalent risk factor for chronic disease, frailty and disability, and it is estimated that there will be over 2 billion persons age > 60 by the year 2050. (shrink)

Critical Inquiry’s Forum on Mikhail Bakhtin [Critical Inquiry 10 : 225-319] is the latest contribution to the spectacular effort of interpretation and assimilation that is being applied to the work of this recently recovered critic. In such a situation, analysis proceeds with one eye on the work in question and the other on current debates in the field; in the case of Bakhtin, interpretation is at the same time an attempt to come to grips with challenges posed by recent (...) literary theory to certain axiomatic critical assumptions about intentionality, textuality, and the human subject. But the matter is also complicated by the fact that we are dealing here with a critic who was active in the USSR. This brings into play additional ideological pressures, generated by the cold war, which bear on the scholarly assimilation of his work.The debate on Bakhtin is made yet more difficult by the nature of his writing: immensely varied stylistically and topically but also—and more importantly, I believe—writing which strives for solutions it cannot quite articulate. It moves between alternative and contradictory formulations in a single essay and thus produces a set of concepts whose explanatory importance is matched by an unnerving tendency to slide from one formulation to the next with disturbing ease. Such ambiguities are not the sign of an open and skeptical mind, but neither are they mere inconsistencies which can be safely ignored. These internal contradictions dictate that argument over concepts like “dialogism” and “heteroglossia” cannot be settled by a definitive decision as to what they ‘really’ mean; instead, we must discuss how to manage these complexities and contradictions, and to what ends. Certain definite strategies of management are emerging, and the articles presented in the forum, while by no means reducible to a single position, share key lines of interpretive strategy that I think ought to be brought out into the open and contested. With the notable exception of Susan Stewart’s article [“Shouts on the Street: Bakhtin’s Anti-Linguistics,” pp. 265-81], the contributions share an ideological drift, the ultimate effect of which is to evade the most radical aspects of Bakhtin’s work in favor of an interpretation that renders him useful in the argument against the recent advances of post-structuralism and recent literary theory in general. Ken Hirschkop is a postgraduate student at Saint Antony’s College, Oxford University, working on a book about Mikhail Bakhtin. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hermeneutics, Neuroscience and PsychiatryMichael T. H. Wong, MBBS, MD, MA, MDiv, PhD, FRCPsych, FRANZCP, FHKAM (bio)Hermeneutic practice in mental health has been a theme in Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology (PPP) since its very beginnings. In this essay I argue that hermeneutics, the theory and practice of interpretation, promotes therapeutic interaction between mental health professionals, patients and their family.Why does this patient present in such a way at this (...) particular point in time? The distressing symptoms are there. The changes in behavior are obvious. Impairments of functions are hurting. A mental illness clearly runs in the family. There were early losses of loved ones, physical abuse at home, bullying by peers and self-medication with drugs and alcohol. Three in four adults with a mental illness first experienced that before they turned 24. The brain goes through major reorganization during adolescence and early adulthood. If synaptic pruning went wrong, psychoses emerged. When stresses activated the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis the elevated cortisol level impacted the size and function of the hippocampus and amygdala in the genetically vulnerable; anxiety, depression, bipolar, and personality disorders developed. The patient needs a voice/language to describe all these experiences and events and the psychiatrist needs a discourse to make sense of them.Eisenberg laments the swings between "brainlessness" and "mindlessness" in psychiatry. Engel argues for a "biopsychosocial" discourse. The major challenge for psychiatry is how to organize clinical information of different nature (categories, dimensions, narratives; i.e., objective vs. subjective, personal vs. interpersonal) into a coherent and comprehensible account for us all. Mental illnesses are not only neuropsychiatric spectrum disorders but also dysfunctions of social relationship and environmental/ecological adaptation. Psychiatry as a clinical neuroscience per se lacks the semantics to address the rich interactions between the physical, psychological, social, cultural, and spiritual in the illness experience of our patients. Explanation in the diagnostic formulation (objective scientific discourse on cause and effect) and understanding in the patient narrative (subjective ordinary everyday discourse on significance and meaning) are irreducible to each other (Wong, 2018). They instead interact with one another to achieve an integrative formulation, not through merging different discourses into a single assertion/monologue but via the dialectic/dialogue of "explaining more in order to understand better," as Ricoeur puts it, and between "the whole and the parts," as Schleiermacher highlights.This "therapeutic hermeneutic circle" of "explanation vs understanding" and "the whole vs the parts" includes symptoms behavior function and life events. It correlates between bio-psychosociocultural-spiritual dimensions/perspectives and does not reduce them to any particular/single [End Page 13] stance. The whole integrates the parts and the parts enrich the whole. It explains but does not explain away. It understands through an articulation of meaning and significance. This discourse is a multilayered (bio-psycho-social-cultural-spiritual) personal narrative that formulates diagnosis and care in a correlative (linking different voices/discourses) and non-reductive (no particular voice/discourse is prejudiced against) manner that is comprehensible to us all (Wong, 2021).PPP will be an excellent forum for discussing clinical hermeneutics in the future. In this digital era of social media and virtual reality, hermeneutics has the never-ending task to tackle the unprecedented challenges to meaning illness and health posed by polarizing discourses.Michael T. H. Wong Michael T.H. Wong, MBBS, MD, MA, MDiv, PhD, FRCPsych, FRANZCP, FHKAM, is Hon Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, School of Clinical Medicine, LKS Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, HKSAR, China. Michael is Chair, Section of Philosophy & Humanities in Psychiatry, World Psychiatric Association. He is an Organizational Partner & International Lead with The Collaborating Centre for Values-Based Practice in Health and Social Care, St Catherine's College Oxford. He is Advisor to the Chinese Health Foundation of Australia.ReferencesWong M. T. H. (2018). Ricoeur and the third discourse of the person: From philosophy and neuroscience to psychiatry and theology. London: Lexington Books. Google ScholarWong, M. T. H. (2021). Values, meanings, hermeneutics and mental health. In Stoyanov, D., Fulford, K. M. W. F., Stanghellini, G., Van Staden, W., & Wong, M. TH. (Eds.), International perspectives in values-based mental health practice: Case studies and commentaries (pp. 341–349... (shrink)

In response to the many changes currently going on in health care, this book offers the combined insight and wisdom of a stellar group of scholars and professionals with extensive experience in the health care field. The book opens with a look at people's actual experience of health care today, from four different perspectives. It then addresses foundational questions, including the nature of medicine, nursing, and justice. Surveyed next are the changing economics of health care as well as the impact (...) of these changes on such areas as mental health care, long-term care, health care for minorities, and legal malpractice. The closing section of the book assesses from a Christian perspective available constructive alternatives, including creative funding strategies with special attention to the needs of poor persons, physician unions, and the use of "alternative medicine" therapies. (shrink)

Working in healthcare can be fulfilling, meaningful, and sometimes exhausting. Creative endeavors may be one way to foster personal resilience in healthcare providers. In this article, we describe an annual arts and humanities program, the Ludwig Rounds, developed at a large academic children’s hospital. The event encourages staff to reflect on resilience by sharing their creative work and how it had an impact on their clinical careers. The multidisciplinary forum also allows staff to connect and learn about each (...) other. We discuss the development of the program, its format and logistics, and lessons learned over the past 15 years. (shrink)

The idea of dignity seems indissociable from that of humanity, whether in its universal dimension of ‘human dignity’, or in the individual ‘dignity of the person’. This paper provides an outlook on the ethics governing the sciences and technology, in particular the biological sciences and biotechnology, and recalls the notion of ‘glory’, both human and divine, as it infuses a great part of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance cultures, just before the scientific revolution in Europe.

These remarks preface two volumes consisting of the proceedings of the Third International Conference on the History and Philosophy of Science of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science. The conference was held under the auspices of the Union, The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Science. The meetings took place in Montreal, Canada, 25-29 August 1980, with Concordia University as host institution. The program of the (...) conference was arranged by a Joint Commission of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science consisting of Robert E. Butts (Canada), John Murdoch (U. S. A. ), Vladimir Kirsanov (U. S. S. R. ), and Paul Weingartner (Austria). The Local Arrangements Committee consisted of Stanley G. French, Chair (Concordia), Michel Paradis, treasurer (McGill), Fran~ois Duchesneau (Universite de Montreal), Robert Nadeau (Universite du Quebec it Montreal), and William Shea (McGill University). Both committees are indebted to Dr. G. R. Paterson, then President of the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Science, who shared his expertise in many ways. Dr. French and his staff worked diligently and efficiently on behalf of all participants. The city of Montreal was, as always, the subtle mixture of extravagance, charm, warmth and excitement that retains her status as the jewel of Canadian cities. The funding of major international conferences is always a problem. (shrink)

Robert Yerkes is a pivotal figure in American psychology and primatology in the first half of the twentieth century. As is well known, Yerkes first studied ape intelligence in 1915, on a visit to the private California laboratory of the psychiatrist Gilbert Hamilton, a former student. Less widely appreciated is how far the work done at the Hamilton lab, in its aims and ambitions as well as its techniques, served as a template for much of Yerkes’s research thereafter. This paper (...) uses the Hamilton–Yerkes relationship to re-examine Yerkes’s career and, more generally, that of American psychology in the early twentieth century. Three points especially are emphasized: first, the role of Freudian psychoanalysis as a spur to Hamilton’s experimental studies of ape intelligence; second, the importance of Hamilton’s laboratory, with its semi-wild population of monkeys and ape, as a model for Yerkes’s efforts to create a laboratory of his own; and third, the influence on Yerkes of Hamilton’s optimism about experimental psychological studies of nonhuman primates as a source of lessons beneficial to a troubled human world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Papirius and the Chickens, or Machiavelli on the Necessity of Interpreting ReligionJohn M. Najemy*No aspect of Machiavelli’s thought elicits a wider range of interpretations than religion, and one may wonder why his utterances on this subject appear to move in so many different directions and cause his readers to see such different things. One reason is of course his famous challenge to conventional piety in the advice to princes (...) (in chapter 18 of The Prince) that, while it is important to appear to be “all compassion, faith, integrity, humanity, and religione, and there is nothing more necessary for a prince than to appear to have the last of these,” these “qualities” can actually be “damaging” if a prince insists on observing them at all times. For it is sometimes necessary to act “against faith, against charity, against humanity, and against religione.” 1 Machiavelli probably never wrote more famous or infamous words than these, even though they express an obvious, and hardly original, truth about all politics. But the world of the later sixteenth- and seventeenth-century reformations and religious absolutisms could not tolerate such honesty, and Machiavelli’s reputation was quickly tarred with accusations of devilish immorality by the very societies that thought it was godly to burn heretics. On the issue of religion Machiavelli became, and to some extent remains, a convenient scapegoat often blamed for the decline of religion in the modern world, all of which has no doubt intensified the polemical and ideological nature of the debates surrounding his views of religion in general and Christianity in particular. [End Page 659]The polar positions in the interpretation of Machiavelli’s ideas about religion are represented by Leo Strauss and Sebastian de Grazia. For Strauss, Machiavelli was a “teacher of evil,” a “blasphemer,” and a purveyor of lessons of a “diabolical” and “soulless character” whose purpose was to sabotage the heritage of thought and morality inherited from both Christianity and Greek philosophy. 2 De Grazia, by contrast, has recently given us a Machiavelli who “discourses about God always in the conventional reverent attitude,” who “never questions that there is good and evil,” and who, “by associating virtuous political action with grace and glory... argues that through this kind of active and political virtue men conform to God’s desire.” “Behind Niccolò’s insistence on political action,” says de Grazia, “stands God. He grants His grace when it is earned—in political coin.” 3 Part of the fascination of Machiavelli scholarship is the mystery of how this most outspoken and direct of political thinkers—a writer who pulled no punches and minced no words—could be the common referent of such wildly different readings. But it is equally curious to observe how uncannily these extreme positions mirror each other. Both give us true believers, one in the Word, the other in the subversion of the Word; and in both cases a believer who is always of a piece, true to himself, and possessed of an unshakeable commitment—whether positive or negative—toward the transcendent truth of Christianity. In short, for all the obvious differences, the similarities between Strauss’s “diabolical” Machiavelli and de Grazia’s reverent “friend of God” remind one of the old myth that devils are after all only fallen angels.The papers in this forum should certainly remove any doubt about the importance of religion in Machiavelli’s thought. They remind us of the prominence of religious language and examples in Machiavelli’s texts: his call for the “redemption” of Italy in the last chapter of The Prince; the esteem in which he holds the heads and founders of religions, whom he declares, in Discourses 1.10, to be the most praised of all famous men; the crucial appeal to the figure of Moses as the prototype of both founders of states and liberators of enslaved peoples; the central role that Machiavelli attributes to religion among the factors responsible for Rome’s power, unity, and political success; and his provocative critique of Christianity, which leads him, in a number of places, to blame the Christian faith for the relative weakness of both modern states and the modern ethic of citizenship. 4 The authors... (shrink)

Maladapting Minds discusses a number of reasons why philosophers of psychiatry should take an interest in evolutionary explanations of mental disorders and, more generally, in evolutionary thinking. First of all, there is the nascent field of evolutionary psychiatry. Unlike other psychiatrists, evolutionary psychiatrists engage with ultimate, rather than proximate, questions about mental illnesses. Being a young and youthful new discipline, evolutionary psychiatry allows for a nice case study in the philosophy of science. Secondly, philosophers of psychiatry (...) have engaged with evolutionary theory because evolutionary considerations are often said to play a role in defining the concept of mental disorder. The basic question here is: Can the concept of mental disorder be given an objective definition, or is it rather a normative concept? Thirdly and finally, evolutionary thinking in psychiatry has often been a source of inspiration for a philosophical view on human nature. Thus evolutionary psychiatrists have suggested, for example, that man's vulnerability to mental disorders may well be one of the defining features of our species. -/- Written by leading authors in philosophy, psychiatry, biology and psychology, this volume illustrates that many debates in contemporary philosophy of psychiatry are profoundly influenced by evolutionary approaches to mental disorders. Conversely, it also reveals how philosophers can help contribute to the burgeoning field of evolutionary psychiatry. It is important reading for a wide range of readers interested in mental health care and philosophy. (shrink)