Philosophy of Action > Action Theory > Motivation and Will > Compulsion and Addiction

Compulsion and Addiction

Edited by Jesse S. Summers (Duke University, Duke University)
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Summary

Addictions and compulsions pose, most centrally, the question of how we ought to understand our actions when they are, by common understanding, not entirely free. On the one hand, are the compelled and addicts forced to act? If so, do they force themselves, or are they forced by their psychology, or by their neurobiology? Each of these possible explanations are problematic. How do we force ourselves? Why is part of our psychology independent of "us"? What relationship is there between neurological explanations and psychological explanations? On the other hand, if the compelled and addicts are not forced to act, what accounts for their consistently bad and even self-defeating actions and for their regularly violating their own resolutions to change their actions? Such attempts to explain addiction and compulsion also shed light on ordinary actions and action explanations and on what it means for actions to be free.
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312 found
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  1. Addictive Desires and Reasons-Responsiveness.Federico Burdman - manuscript
    In this paper, I look into one of the particular ways in which decreased reasons-responsiveness in addiction may come about, by focusing on certain anomalous features of addictive desires. The account I offer centers on two prominent features of these desires: the recalcitrance of standing or long-term dispositional addictive desires to use drugs in the face of contrary considerations, and the recurrent, intrusive nature of episodes of occurrently wanting to use drugs that addicted agents experience. Both the recalcitrance and the (...)
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  2. Addictive Desires and Reasons-Responsiveness.Federico Burdman - manuscript
    In this paper, I look into one of the particular ways in which decreased reasons-responsiveness in addiction may come about, by focusing on certain anomalous features of addictive desires. The account I offer centers on two prominent features of these desires: the recalcitrance of standing or long-term dispositional addictive desires to use drugs in the face of contrary considerations, and the recurrent, intrusive nature of episodes of occurrently wanting to use drugs that addicted agents experience. Both the recalcitrance and the (...)
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  3. Addiction and Autonomy: What Can Neuroscience Tell Us.A. Carter & W. Hall - forthcoming - 11th Annual Conference of the Australasian Bioethics Association.
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  4. Addiction and Agency.Justin Clarke-Doane & Kathryn Tabb - forthcoming - In Matt King & Joshua May (eds.), Agency in Mental Disorder: Philosophical Dimensions. Oxford University Press.
    Addicts are often portrayed as compelled by their addiction and thus as a paradigm of unfree action and mitigated blame. This chapter argues that our best scientific theories of addiction reveal that, psychologically, addicts are not categorically different from non-addicts. There is no pairing of contemporary accounts of addiction and of prominent theories of moral responsibility that can justify our intuitions about the mitigation of addicts but not non-addicts. Two conclusions are advanced. First, we should either treat addicts as we (...)
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  5. Demystifying the Deep Self View.August Gorman - forthcoming - Journal of Moral Philosophy:1-22.
    Deep Self views of moral responsibility have been criticized for positing mysterious concepts, making nearly paradoxical claims about ownership of one’s mental states, and promoting self-deceptive moral evasion. I defend Deep Self views from these pervasive forms of skepticism by arguing that some criticism is hasty and stems from epistemic injustice regarding testimony of experiences of alienation, while other criticism targets contingent features of Deep Self views that ought to be abandoned. To aid in this project, I provide original naturalistic (...)
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  6. Addiction Between Compulsion and Choice.Richard Holton & Kent Berridge - forthcoming - In Neil Levy (ed.), Addiction and Self-Control. Oxford University Press.
    We aim to find a middle path between disease models of addiction, and those that treat addictive choices as choices like any other. We develop an account of the disease element by focussing on the idea that dopamine works primarily to lay down dispositional intrinsic desires. Addictive substances artifically boost the dopamine signal, and thereby lay down intrinsic desires for the substances that persist through withdrawal, and in the face of beliefs that they are worthless. The result is cravings that (...)
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  7. Attachment, Addiction, and Vices of Valuing.Monique Wonderly - forthcoming - In Edward Harcourt (ed.), Attachment and Character: Attachment Theory and the Developmental Psychology of Vice and Virtue. Oxford, UK:
    Addiction and certain varieties of interpersonal attachment share strikingly similar psycho-behavioral structures. Neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers have often adduced such similarities between addiction and attachment to argue that many typical cases of romantic love represent addictions to one’s partner and thus might be appropriate candidates for medical treatment. In this paper, I argue for the relatively neglected thesis that some paradigmatic cases of addiction are aptly characterized as emotional attachments to their objects. This has implications for how we should understand (...)
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  8. A pluralistic account of degrees of control in addiction.Federico Burdman - 2022 - Philosophical Studies 179 (1):197-221.
    While some form of loss of control is often assumed to be a common feature of the diverse manifestations of addiction, it is far from clear how loss of control should be understood. In this paper, I put forward a concept of decrease in control in addiction that aims to fill this gap and thus provide a general framework for thinking about addictive behavior. The development of this account involves two main steps. First, I present a view of degrees of (...)
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  9. A Philosophical Psychotherapy: Logic-Based Therapy in the Treatment of Addicted Populations.Guy Pierre Du Plessis - 2022 - Presentation at the 4th International Conference on Philosophical Counseling and Practice, National Philosophical Counseling Association, 11-12 February 2022.
    In my presentation I argue for the utility of a philosophical counseling method, called logic-based therapy (LBT), in the treatment of addicted populations. In the context of addiction treatment LBT could be also classified as a philosophical psychotherapy. Philosophical psychotherapy can be understood as an umbrella term for interventions designed to treat mental health disorders, with theoretical foundations that are philosophical. Philosophical psychotherapy would be distinct from philosophical counseling, as the latter does not directly treat mental health disorders. I suggest (...)
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  10. Blame Without Punishment for Addicts.Prabhpal Singh - 2022 - Philosophia 50 (1):257-267.
    On the moral model of addiction, addicts are morally responsible and blameworthy for their addictive behaviours. The model is sometimes resisted on the grounds that blaming addicts is incompatible with treating addiction in a compassionate and non-punitive way. I argue the moral model is consistent with addressing addiction compassionately and non-punitively and better accounts for both the role of addicts’ agency in the recovery process. If an addict is responsible for their addictive behaviours, and that behaviour is in some way (...)
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  11. Defining Addictive Disorder - Abilities Reconsidered.Sanja Dembić - 2021 - Philosophers' Imprint 21 (24).
    “The addict” is a well-known figure in philosophy, but analytical attempts to define “addictive disorder” are rare. According to extant views, the “hallmark” of addiction lies in an individual’s inability or impaired ability to control the behavior the individual is addicted to doing. But how exactly are we to understand the relevant concept of (in)ability (or impaired ability) in the first place? Furthermore, what else is necessary for an individual to have an addictive disorder? I argue for a definition of (...)
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  12. Choice, Compulsion, and Capacity in Addiction’ - A Commentary on Charland, L. ‘Consent and Capacity in the Age of the Opioid Epidemic: The Drug Dealer’s Point of View’.Tania Gergel - 2021 - Bulletin of the Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry 27 (2).
    Charland's article suggests that we need to think more about whether decision-making capacity is impaired in severe addiction, working from the idea that drug dealers rely on this understanding of addiction to draw in their clients. Charland argues that it is possible to make a choice without being in control (to make decisions without having decision-making capacity). I argue in support of Charland's ideas by examining the reasons supporting a medical model of addiction and its importance. (For Charland's article and (...)
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  13. Out of Our Heads: Addiction and Psychiatric Externalism.Shane Glackin, Tom Roberts & Joel Krueger - 2021 - Behavioral Brain Research 398:1-8.
    In addiction, apparently causally significant phenomena occur at a huge number of levels; addiction is affected by biomedical, neurological, pharmacological, clinical, social, and politico-legal factors, among many others. In such a complex, multifaceted field of inquiry, it seems very unlikely that all the many layers of explanation will prove amenable to any simple or straightforward, reductive analysis; if we are to unify the many different sciences of addiction while respecting their causal autonomy, then, what we are likely to need is (...)
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  14. Understanding Addiction.Robert M. Kelly - 2021 - Dissertation, University at Buffalo
    The addiction literature is fraught with conceptual confusions, stalled debates, and an unfortunate lack of clear and careful attempts to delineate the phenomenon of addiction in a way that might lead to consensus. My dissertation has two overarching aims, one metaphysical and one practical. -/- The first aim is to defend an account of addiction as the systematic disposition to fail to control one’s desires to engage in certain types of behaviors. I defend the inclusion of desires and impaired control (...)
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  15. Freedom and Addiction in Four Discursive Registers: A Comparative Historical Study of Values in Addiction Science.Darin Weinberg - 2021 - History of the Human Sciences 34 (3-4):25-48.
    Mainstream addiction science is today widely marked by an antinomy between a neurologically determinist understanding of the human brain ‘hijacked’ by the biochemical allure of intoxicants and a liberal voluntarist conception of drug use as a free exercise of choice. Prominent defenders of both discourses strive, ultimately without complete success, to provide accounts that are both universal and value-neutral. This has resulted in a variety of conceptual problems and has undermined the utility of such research for those who seek to (...)
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  16. Peer Review Report: Ontologies Relevant to Behaviour Change Interventions, Version 1.Robert M. Kelly, David Limbaugh & Barry Smith - 2020 - Human Behaviour Change Project.
    In “Ontologies Relevant to behaviour change interventions: A Method for their Development” Wright, et al. outline a step by step process for building ontologies of behaviour modification – what the authors call the Refined Ontology Developmental Method (RODM) – and demonstrate its use in the development of the Behaviour Change Intervention Ontology (BCIO). RODM is based on the principles of good ontology building used by the Open Biomedical Ontology (OBO) Foundry in addition to those outlined in (Arp, Smith, and Spear (...)
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  17. Internet Addiction and Related Clinical Problems: A Study on Italian Young Adults.Lorenzo Zamboni, Igor Portoghese, Alessio Congiu, Silvia Carli, Ruggero Munari, Angela Federico, Francesco Centoni, Adelelmo Lodi Rizzini & Fabio Lugoboni - 2020 - Frontiers in Psychology 11.
    The considerable prominence of internet addiction (IA) in adolescence is at least partly explained by the limited knowledge thus far available on this complex phenomenon. In discussing IA, it is necessary to be aware that this is a construct for which there is still no clear definition in the literature. Nonetheless, its important clinical implications, as emerging in recent years, justify the lively interest of researchers in this new form of behavioral addiction. Over the years, studies have associated IA with (...)
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  18. An Existential Perspective on Addiction Treatment: A Logic-Based Therapy Case Study.Guy du Plessis - 2019 - International Journal of Philosophical Practice 5 (1):1-32.
    In this essay I argue that a comprehensive understanding of addiction and its treatment should include an existential perspective. I provide a brief overview of an existential perspective of addiction and recovery, which will contextualize the remainder of the essay. I then present a case study of how the six-step philosophical practice method of Logic-Based Therapy can assist with issues that often arise in addiction treatment framed through an existential perspective.
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  19. Addiction as a Disorder of Self-Control.Edmund Henden - 2019 - In Hanna Pickard & Serge Ahmed (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Science of Addiction. Routledge.
    Impairment of self-control is often said to be a defining feature of addiction. Yet many addicts display what appears to be a considerable amount of control over their drug-oriented actions. Not only are their actions clearly intentional and frequently carried out in a conscious and deliberate manner, there is evidence that many addicts are responsive to a wide range of ordinary incentives and counter-incentives. Moreover, addicts have a wide variety of reasons for using drugs, reasons which often seem to go (...)
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  20. Addiction in the Light of African Values: Undermining Vitality and Community (Repr.).Thaddeus Metz - 2019 - In Yamikani Ndasauka & Grivas Kayange (eds.), Addiction in South and East Africa. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 9-31.
    Reprint of an article that first appeared in Monash Bioethics Review (2018).
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  21. Habitual Weakness.Kenneth Silver - 2019 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 8 (4):270-277.
    The standard case of weakness of will involves a strong temptation leading us to reconsider or act against our judgments. Here, however, I consider cases of what I call ‘habitual weakness', where we resolve to do one thing yet do another not to satisfy any grand desire, but out of habit. After giving several examples, I suggest that habitual weakness has been under-discussed in the literature and explore why. These cases are worth highlighting for their ubiquity, and I show three (...)
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  22. Pornography Addiction: The Fabrication of a Transient Sexual Disease.Kris Taylor - 2019 - History of the Human Sciences 32 (5):56-83.
    While pornography addiction currently circulates as a comprehensible, diagnosable, and describable way to make sense of some people’s ostensibly problematic relationship with pornography, such a comprehensive description of this relationship has only recently been made possible. The current analysis makes visible pornography addiction as situated within a varied history of concerns about pornography, masturbation, fantasy, and technology in an effort to bring to bear a conceptual critique of the modern concept of pornography addiction. Such a critique in turn works to (...)
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  23. Review: Toward a Phenomenology of Addiction. [REVIEW]Peter Antich - 2018 - Phenomenological Reviews 1:1.
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  24. Addiction in the Light of African Values: Undermining Vitality and Community.Thaddeus Metz - 2018 - Monash Bioethics Review 36 (1):36-53.
    In this article I address the question of what makes addiction morally problematic, and seek to answer it by drawing on values salient in the sub-Saharan African philosophical tradition. Specifically, I appeal to life-force and communal relationship, each of which African philosophers have at times advanced as a foundational value, and spell out how addiction, or at least salient instances of it, could be viewed as unethical for flouting them. I do not seek to defend either vitality or community as (...)
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  25. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Science of Addiction.Hanna Pickard & Serge H. Ahmed (eds.) - 2018 - Routledge.
    The problem of addiction is one of the major challenges and controversies confronting medicine and society. It also poses important and complex philosophical and scientific problems. What is addiction? Why does it occur? And how should we respond to it, as individuals and as a society? The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Science of Addiction is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems and debates in this exciting subject. It spans several disciplines and is the first collection of (...)
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  26. How to Recover From a Brain Disease: Is Addiction a Disease, or Is There a Disease-Like Stage in Addiction?Snoek Anke - 2017 - Neuroethics 10 (1):185-194.
    People struggling with addiction are neither powerless over their addiction, nor are they fully in control. Lewis vigorously objects to the brain disease model of addiction, because it makes people lose belief in their self-efficacy, and hence hinders their recovery. Although he acknowledges that there is a compulsive state in addiction, he objects to the claim that this compulsion is carved in stone. Lewis argues that the BDMA underestimates the agency of addicted people, and hence hinder their recovery. Lewis’s work (...)
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  27. Is Addiction a Brain Disease?Kent Berridge - 2017 - Neuroethics 10 (1):29-33.
    Where does normal brain or psychological function end, and pathology begin? The line can be hard to discern, making disease sometimes a tricky word. In addiction, normal ‘wanting’ processes become distorted and excessive, according to the incentive-sensitization theory. Excessive ‘wanting’ results from drug-induced neural sensitization changes in underlying brain mesolimbic systems of incentive. ‘Brain disease’ was never used by the theory, but neural sensitization changes are arguably extreme enough and problematic enough to be called pathological. This implies that ‘brain disease’ (...)
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  28. An Integral Foundation for Addiction Treatment.Guy Pierre Du Plessis - 2017 - AZ, Tuscan: Integral publishers.
    Currently there is such a cornucopia of conflicting theories in the field of addiction studies that it has become exceedingly difficult for treatment providers, therapists, and policymakers to integrate this vast field of knowledge into effective treatment. Since such a chaotic overabundance of treatment theories, styles, and definitions cloud the field of addictionology, many therapists claim their field is in need of a paradigm shift. In the last 20 years an integrative and compound model has emerged known as the biopsychosocial (...)
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  29. Addicted to Love: What Is Love Addiction and When Should It Be Treated?Brian D. Earp, Olga A. Wudarczyk, Bennett Foddy & Julian Savulescu - 2017 - Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 24 (1):77-92.
    By nature we are all addicted to love... meaning we want it, seek it and have a hard time not thinking about it. We need attachment to survive and we instinctively seek connection, especially romantic connection. [But] there is nothing dysfunctional about wanting love.Throughout the ages, love has been rendered as an excruciating passion. Ovid was the first to proclaim: “I can’t live with or without you”—a locution made famous to modern ears by the Irish band U2. Contemporary film expresses (...)
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  30. Free Will, Black Swans and Addiction.Ted Fenton & Reinout W. Wiers - 2017 - Neuroethics 10 (1):157-165.
    The current dominant perspective on addiction as a brain disease has been challenged recently by Marc Lewis, who argued that the brain-changes related to addiction are similar to everyday changes of the brain. From this alternative perspective, addictions are bad habits that can be broken, provided that people are motivated to change. In that case, autonomous choice or “free will” can overcome bad influences from genes and or environments and brain-changes related to addiction. Even though we concur with Lewis that (...)
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  31. Addiction Doesn’T Exist, But It is Bad for You.Owen Flanagan - 2017 - Neuroethics 10 (1):91-98.
    There is a debate about the nature of addiction, whether it is a result of brain damage, brain dysfunction, or normal brain changes that result from habit acquisition, and about whether it is a disease. I argue that the debate about whether addiction is a disease is much ado about nothing, since all parties agree it is “unquestionably destructive.” Furthermore, the term ‘addiction’ has disappeared from recent DSM’s in favor of a spectrum of ‘abuse’ disorders. This may be a good (...)
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  32. Addiction and Moralization: The Role of the Underlying Model of Addiction.Lily E. Frank & Saskia K. Nagel - 2017 - Neuroethics 10 (1):129-139.
    Addiction appears to be a deeply moralized concept. To understand the entwinement of addiction and morality, we briefly discuss the disease model and its alternatives in order to address the following questions: Is the disease model the only path towards a ‘de-moralized’ discourse of addiction? While it is tempting to think that medical language surrounding addiction provides liberation from the moralized language, evidence suggests that this is not necessarily the case. On the other hand non-disease models of addiction may seem (...)
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  33. Disease or Developmental Disorder: Competing Perspectives on the Neuroscience of Addiction.Wayne Hall, Adrian Carter & Anthony Barnett - 2017 - Neuroethics 10 (1):103-110.
    Lewis’ neurodevelopmental model provides a plausible alternative to the brain disease model of addiction that is a dominant perspective in the USA. We disagree with Lewis’ claim that the BDMA is unchallenged within the addiction field but we agree that it provides unduly pessimistic prospects of recovery. We question the strength of evidence for the BDMA provided by animal models and human neuroimaging studies. We endorse Lewis’ framing of addiction as a developmental process underpinned by reversible forms of neuroplasticity. His (...)
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  34. Addiction, Compulsion, and Weakness of the Will: A Dual Process Perspective.Edmund Henden - 2017 - In Nick Heather Gabriel Segal (ed.), Addiction and Choice. Rethinking the Relationship. pp. 116-132.
    How should addictive behavior be explained? In terms of neurobiological illness and compulsion, or as a choice made freely, even rationally, in the face of harmful social or psychological circumstances? Some of the disagreement between proponents of the prevailing medical models and choice models in the science of addiction centres on the notion of “loss of control” as a normative characterization of addiction. In this article I examine two of the standard interpretations of loss of control in addiction, one according (...)
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  35. Hijacking Addiction.Neil Levy - 2017 - Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 24 (1):97-99.
    Neuroscientists and clinicians often speak of addictive drugs ‘hijacking’ the brain. Earp et al. want to do to the notion of addiction what drugs allegedly do to the brains of addicts; hijack it and put it to other purposes. There are, as they point out, clear commonalities between addiction and being in love. But there are also very important differences. These differences are significant enough to entail that it is at best highly misleading to describe love as an addiction. Hijacking (...)
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  36. Resetting the Brain as Well as the Nomenclature. Reply to Szalavitz.Marc Lewis - 2017 - Neuroethics 10 (1):87-89.
    Szalavitz’s model and mine share a good many components. Foremost among them is the conviction that addiction is a developmental trajectory, not a disease. Szalavitz is correct that we should consider controlled substance use an acceptable outcome, though I would like her to shift her terminology away from the medical mainstream. Finally, I suggest that Szalavitz's important idea of a "reset" in brain development might best be addressed by the notion of kindling.
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  37. Searching for Norms to Violate. Reply to Henden & Gjelsvik.Marc Lewis - 2017 - Neuroethics 10 (1):79-81.
    Although I reject neuronormativity -- an idea central to the Brain Disease Model of Addiction -- Henden and Gjelsvik argue that the disease definition might refer to normativity in nonneural domains. They profess that a cognitive dysfunction, or a mismatch of evolutionary intentions, could also qualify as norm violations, thus legitimizing the disease label. The need for dividing lines is questioned as well. I rebut these criticisms in turn, but I must admit they are thought provoking.
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  38. Self-Efficacy: Now You See It, Now You Don’T. Reply to Snoek.Marc Lewis - 2017 - Neuroethics 10 (1):195-197.
    Snoek, like other commentators, conflates some of my neural claims with those of the Brain Disease Model of Addiction. But she sees other details of my modeling with precision and depth. I welcome her emphasis on individual and developmental differences in addicts' capacity to recognize and deploy their personal agency. In fact we agree that belief in personal agency is a critical first step to cultivating it. Yet I wish to steer away from the disease nomenclature, to give that belief (...)
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  39. Brains Are Important Too: Reply to Hall, Carter, and Barnett.Marc Lewis - 2017 - Neuroethics 10 (1):111-114.
    The authors and I agree on many features of addiction, such as its developmental nature. But because I rely on much of the same data as the Brain Disease Model of Addiction, they seem to conflate my work with that of my opponents. Indeed they are generally skeptical of the use of neuroscientific data to help understand addiction, calling it "immature." Thus my work is also suspect. Hall and colleagues believe that it is impossible to look at neural and social (...)
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  40. Enough Comparing! Addiction is Its Own Thing. Reply to Matthews.Marc Lewis - 2017 - Neuroethics 10 (1):211-214.
    Both Matthews and I see addiction as the outcome of developmental processes that arrive at diverse levels of dysfunction for different individuals at different stages. Matthews characterizes "late-stage" addiction in terms of lost control and extreme automaticity, a degree of dysfunction he calls a "disorder" and compares to another disorder -- depersonalization. I don't mind the label "disorder." Yet addiction is no more like depersonalization than it is like other conditions, most notably obsessive-compulsive disorder. Automaticity is never pure or total. (...)
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  41. What Evolution Intended? Reply to Wakefield.Marc Lewis - 2017 - Neuroethics 10 (1):69-70.
    Wakefield doesn't mind my focus on parallels between addiction and love. But love can fall outside the bounds of what evolution intended. So, he claims, comparing addiction with love does not preclude a naturally defined "disorder." I counter with the argument that evolution handed us such highly general response systems, the bounds of normality cannot be defined.
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  42. Neurocentrism and Name-Calling: Let’s Agree to Agree. Reply to Satel & Lilienfeld.Marc Lewis - 2017 - Neuroethics 10 (1):25-27.
    Although these authors sometimes resort to medical terminology, we strongly agree that addiction is not a disease and that the Brain Disease Model of Addiction captures only one part of the story and distorts the big picture. Yet Satel and Lilienfeld continue to conflate a neurobiological model with a disease model. They also complain that my modeling of addiction reveals a hidden “neurocentric” bias, despite my integration of multiple levels of analysis, exactly as they recommend.
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  43. Yes, Precision is a Good Thing. Reply to Flanagan.Marc Lewis - 2017 - Neuroethics 10 (1):99-101.
    Flanagan asserts that my model of addiction would apply as well to sonnet writing. Yet his most interesting point is that “addiction” is an imprecise label for a cluster of distinct phenomena. I agree with him that we need to examine these distinctions, but that doesn’t negate their shared features. Neuroscience can play an important role in advancing our understanding of both commonalities and distinctions within the phenomena of addiction.
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  44. No Need for the Disease Label: Choice is Complicated. Reply to Heather.Marc Lewis - 2017 - Neuroethics 10 (1):125-127.
    Despite its historical contribution, Heather sees the Brain Disease Model of Addiction as failing to relieve stigma, increasing fatalism, and fundamentally wrong. He also sees “choice” as partly volitional and partly unconscious, implying no moral violation. I agree on all counts. Heather then presents a disorder-of-choice model of addiction, highlighting the failure of self-regulation with respect to immediate goals. Not only do I endorse such modeling, but the neural mechanisms I describe may help to explicate it more thoroughly.
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  45. Addiction and the Brain: Development, Not Disease.Lewis Marc - 2017 - Neuroethics 10 (1):7-18.
    I review the brain disease model of addiction promoted by medical, scientific, and clinical authorities in the US and elsewhere. I then show that the disease model is flawed because brain changes in addiction are similar to those generally observed when recurrent, highly motivated goal seeking results in the development of deep habits, Pavlovian learning, and prefrontal disengagement. This analysis relies on concepts of self-organization, neuroplasticity, personality development, and delay discounting. It also highlights neural and behavioral parallels between substance addictions, (...)
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  46. Chronic Automaticity in Addiction: Why Extreme Addiction is a Disorder.Steve Matthews - 2017 - Neuroethics 10 (1):199-209.
    Marc Lewis argues that addiction is not a disease, it is instead a dysfunctional outcome of what plastic brains ordinarily do, given the adaptive processes of learning and development within environments where people are seeking happiness, or relief, or escape. They come to obsessively desire substances or activities that they believe will deliver happiness and so on, but this comes to corrupt the normal process of development when it escalates beyond a point of functionality. Such ‘deep learning’ emerges from consumptive (...)
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  47. Stigma and Self-Stigma in Addiction.Steve Matthews, Robyn Dwyer & Anke Snoek - 2017 - Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 14 (2):275-286.
    Addictions are commonly accompanied by a sense of shame or self-stigmatization. Self-stigmatization results from public stigmatization in a process leading to the internalization of the social opprobrium attaching to the negative stereotypes associated with addiction. We offer an account of how this process works in terms of a range of looping effects, and this leads to our main claim that for a significant range of cases public stigma figures in the social construction of addiction. This rests on a social constructivist (...)
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  48. Introduction: Testing and Refining Marc Lewis’s Critique of the Brain Disease Model of Addiction.Steve Matthews & Anke Snoek - 2017 - Neuroethics 10 (1):1-6.
    In this introduction we set out some salient themes that will help structure understanding of a complex set of intersecting issues discussed in this special issue on the work of Marc Lewis: conceptual foundations of the disease model, tolerating the disease model given socio-political environments, and A third wave: refining conceptualization of addiction in the light of Lewis’s model.
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  49. Responsibility Without Blame for Addiction.Hanna Pickard - 2017 - Neuroethics 10 (1):169-180.
    Drug use and drug addiction are severely stigmatised around the world. Marc Lewis does not frame his learning model of addiction as a choice model out of concern that to do so further encourages stigma and blame. Yet the evidence in support of a choice model is increasingly strong as well as consonant with core elements of his learning model. I offer a responsibility without blame framework that derives from reflection on forms of clinical practice that support change and recovery (...)
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  50. If Addiction is Not Best Conceptualized a Brain Disease, Then What Kind of Disease is It?Sally L. Satel & Scott O. Lilienfeld - 2017 - Neuroethics 10 (1):19-24.
    A modest opposition to the brain disease concept of addiction has been mounting for at least the last decade. Despite the good intentions behind the brain disease rhetoric – to secure more biomedical funding for addiction, to combat “stigma,” and to soften criminal approaches – the very concept of addiction as a brain disease is deeply conceptually confused. We question whether Lewis goes far enough in his challenge, robust as it is, of the brain disease concept. For one thing, the (...)
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