The dominant philosophical conceptions of obsessive-compulsive behavior present its subject as having a deficiency, usually characterized as volitional, due to which she lacks control and choice in acting. Compulsions (mental or physical) tend to be treated in isolation from the obsessive thoughts that give rise to them. I offer a different picture of compulsive action, one that is, I believe, more faithful to clinical reality. The clue to (most) obsessive-compulsive behavior seems to be the way (...) obsessive thoughts, which are grounded in an irrational cognitive style in matters of risk, danger, and responsibility, motivate compulsions through bizarre means–end reasoning. I show that the patient with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is not weak and passive with regard to the compulsive act; rather, the act is voluntary and regarded by the patient as an instrument of control. I also defend the idea that OCD-related cognitions are either beliefs or mental states with relevantly similar functional roles. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: References Further reading.

The standard philosophical view is that compulsive behaviors are caused by “irresistible” desires. Gary Watson famously argued that this view conflates compulsion with weakness of the will, and proposed differentiating weakness and compulsion by appealing to the normal strength-of-will of members of the community. This extrinsic distinction leaves no room for phenomenological differences between weakness and compulsion. Evidence from clinical psychology shows, however, that compulsion is associated with certain phenomenological features that are absent in cases of weakness. I therefore (...) reject the irresistible desire account. Instead, I propose that psychological compulsions “wear down” an individual’s normal faculty of self-control, i.e., the will. The recurrent inhibition of the behavior by the will overexerts this faculty, causing the psychological stress noted by psychologists. This stress raises the cost of resistance until it is unbearable. The subject abandons resistance and therefore performs the behavior. (shrink)

In this highly original study of the nature of performance, Spencer Golub uses the insights of Ludwig Wittgenstein into the way language works to analyze the relationship between the linguistic and the visual in the work of a broad range of dramatists, novelists, and filmmakers, among them Richard Foreman, Mac Wellman, Peter Handke, David Mamet, and Alfred Hitchcock. Like Wittgenstein, these artists are concerned with the limits of language’s representational capacity. For Golub, it is these limits that give Wittgenstein’s thought (...) a further, very personal significance—its therapeutic quality with respect to the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder from which he suffers. Underlying what Golub calls “performance behavior” is Wittgenstein’s notion of “pain behavior”—that which gives public expression to private experience. Golub charts new directions for exploring the relationship between theater and philosophy, and even for scholarly criticism itself. (shrink)

The Diagnostic Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association defines substance dependence, more commonly known as “drug addiction,” as “a cluster of cognitive, behavioral, and physiological symptoms indicating that the individual continues use of the substance despite significant substance-related problems. There is a pattern of repeated self-administration that usually results in tolerance, withdrawal, and compulsive drug-taking behavior.” If drug addiction is a matter of compulsion, as this definition suggests, then is it correct to say that a drug addict (...) chooses to take their drug of choice? Similarly, does it make sense to say that a person in the grip of fear really chooses to flee from what frightens them? In this book, Jon Elster argues that in general drug addicts and people subject to powerful emotions should be interpreted as making choices. Although there is a compulsion to choose, there is choice nonetheless. This is different from cases where there is a compulsion to act but no choice. But what kind of choice is this? And are such choices rational or not? These are among the central questions addressed in this book. (shrink)

We group encephalitic behaviors as shown in Table 1. It is striking that the majority of these behaviors, namely groups 1 and 2, help spread viral and bacterial infections underlying encephalitis, a situation similar to Ophiocordyceps unilateralis .Could some of the behaviors in Table 1 be of utility to the host as well? Note that the behavioral symptoms may not coincide with impaired intellect . Furthermore, these symptoms may be vestigial in the sense of having been of utility to the (...) host species at a time when the latter possessed lower intelligence to begin with. It is also important to note that encephalitis is often triggered by physical and emotional stress, so that utility of behaviors is better assessed for such conditions.Continuous and compulsive exploration of one’s environment is of course a recipe for learning and discovery. Drinking, eating, biting, chewi .. (shrink)

Agnes Heller's Theory of Morals was to be composed of three parts: General Ethics, Moral Philosophy, and a Theory of Proper Behaviour. The first two were born; the third, however, before it was written, was rebaptized by the author who could not resist her inner compulsion to do so. It bears the title Ethics of Personality. This author does not conceal his one-sided preference for this last part of Heller's Theory of Morals which has only one imperative: `Be yourself! Follow (...) your own destiny!'. At the same time he raises the question whether an ethics of personality does not contradict so much a general ethics (that simply describes the functioning of the moral) but a moral philosophy that tries to prescribe how people should behave. The author concludes that the only possibility of ethics in our age is an ethics of personality. (shrink)

SummaryThe essay exposes, recognizes the astonishing originality, and showcases the shortcomings of Christoph Türcke’s Philosophy of Dreams, which offers a theory of the origin of religion inspired by both psychoanalysis and critical theory. Among the objections raised are the speculative nature of the enterprise, which is not sufficiently based on empirical data, the lack of knowledge concerning the transition from apes to humans, the impossibility for hallucinations to be the basic doxastic act, the exaggerated focus on dread, which is only (...) one form of the numinous experience, and on the repetition compulsion, which could hardly prove as creative as the author assumes particularly concerning the origin of sacrifice, and the confusion of genesis and validity. (shrink)

This article examines the role of time as a methodological tool and pathological focus of clinical psychiatry and psychology in the first half of the 20th century. Contextualizing ‘psychopathologies of time’ developed by practitioners in Europe and North America with reference to the temporal theories implicit in Freudian psychoanalysis and Henri Bergson’s philosophy of durée, it illuminates how depression, schizophrenia, and other mental disorders such as obsessive-compulsive behaviours and aphasia were understood to be symptomatic of an altered or disturbed (...) ‘time-sense’. Drawing upon a model of temporal synthesis whereby in healthy individuals, a subjective temporal sense ( Ichzeit, durée, or personal lifetime) was perceived and understood in relation to objective time frameworks ( Weltzeit, clock-time, or quantitative time models like historical chronology), clinicians argued that mentally ill patients were unable to synthesize Ichzeit and Weltzeit, using variations in this disturbance to define specific pathological conditions. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that obsessive-compulsive disorder involves irrationality. But where in the complex of states and processes that constitutes OCD should this irrationality be located? A pervasive assumption in both the psychiatric and philosophical literature is that the seat of irrationality is located in the obsessive thoughts characteristic of OCD. Building on a puzzle about insight into OCD (Taylor 2022), we challenge this pervasive assumption, and argue instead that the irrationality of OCD is located in the emotions that (...) are characteristic of OCD, such as anxiety or fear. In particular, we propose to understand the irrationality of OCD as a matter of harboring recalcitrant emotions. We argue that this account not only solves the puzzle about insight, but also makes better sense of how OCD sufferers experience and describe their condition and helps explain some otherwise puzzling features of compulsive behavior. (shrink)

This essay explores the digital challenge, how to humanize technology, and the need to rethink the digital-human divide. This is imperative in view of superintelligent Al, which may escape human control. The information age poses quandaries regarding the uses and abuses of technology. A major critique concerns the commercial design of digital technologies that engenders compulsive behavior. All technologies affect humans in a reciprocal way. The new digital technologies-from smartphones to the Internet—where humans are tethered to machines, can (...) impair our autonomy, hijack attention, rewire the brain, and diminish concentration, empathy, knowledge, and wisdom. The remedy is to restore deep reading, human interactions, personal conversations, real friendships, and respect for autonomy and privacy, building a nurturing culture of tolerance, coupled with transcendent norms and ideals worthy of a creature created in the image and likeness of God. This aspiration should be at the center of a new interdisciplinary field of inquiry—a phenomenology of communications. (shrink)

First published in 1976, this book presents a view of language as a matter of systematic communicative behaviour.

Pt. I. Philosophy and cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) -- Ch. 1. The "philosophical origins" of CBT -- Ch. 2. The beginning of modern cognitive therapy -- Ch. 3. A brief history of philosophical therapy -- Ch. 4. Stoic philosophy and psychology -- Ch. 5. Rational emotion in stoicism and CBT -- Ch. 6 Stoicism and Ellis's rational therapy (REBT) -- Pt. II. The stoic armamentarium -- Ch. 7. Contemplation of the ideal stage -- Ch. 8. Stoic mindfulness of the "here and (...) now" -- Ch. 9. Self-analysis and disputation -- Ch. 10. Autosuggestion, premeditation, and retrospection -- Ch. 11. Preditatio malorum and mental rehearsal -- Ch. 12. Stoic fatalism, determination, and acceptance -- Ch. 13. The view from above and stoic metaphysics. (shrink)

Tout animal, chaque fois qu'il surmonte une difficulté, éprouve en retour une satisfaction, que son organisme lui procure sous forme de récompense. Rien de plus universel. Mais l'homme est cet animal singulier qui a appris à jouir pour lui-même de son plaisir cognitif. Ce qui n'était qu'un instrument est devenu un but en soi, qui a libéré l'homme de son environnement tout en l'enchaînant à sa propre quête de jouissance. Il en découle une thèse historique aux conséquences capitales. Depuis que, (...) à l'aube de sa préhistoire, l'homme a découvert son aptitude au plaisir, le devenir des civilisations n'a obéi qu'à une seule logique, profondément addictive : l'intensification de ce plaisir. Le processus de très longue durée qui est alors enclenché s'appelle l'anthropocène. Car les sociétés humaines ont toujours avancé dans une même direction, mais elles le faisaient à leur insu : non pas en visant ce progrès de la civilisation qu'idéalisaient les philosophes des Lumières, mais entraînées par la poussée invisible de leur libido cogitandi. Si Ben que, de la révolution néolithique jusqu'à notre mondialisation effrénée, leur course a toujours été une course folle, ignorante de la force qui l'impulsait."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

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 to which addicts have lost free will, the other according to which their will is weak. I argue that both interpretations are mistaken and propose therefore an alternative based on a dual-process approach. This alternative neither rules out a capacity in addicts to rationally choose to engage in drug-oriented behavior, nor the possibility that addictive behavior can be compulsive and depend upon harmful changes in their brains caused by the regular use of drugs. (shrink)

This article historicizes a single stage in how the contemporary obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) category was built. Starting from the position that the two central components which make up OCD are ‘obsessions’ and ‘compulsions’, it illustrates how these concepts were taken apart by a small group of clinical psychologists working at the Institute of Psychiatry and the Maudsley psychiatric hospital in south London in the early 1970s, and why compulsions were investigated whilst obsessions were ignored. The decision to distinguish the (...) previously undifferentiated symptoms is attributed to the commitment amongst psychologists at the Maudsley, most notably Stanley Rachman, to an empirical conception of science which emphasized observability. Two aspects of this are discussed. First, compulsions were deemed ‘visible’ through their correspondence with animal behaviour. Second, the symptom was seen as open to an experimental modification procedure which privileged visible outcomes. Ultimately, the article concludes that the historical division between ‘obsessions’ and ‘compulsions’, and the extensive investigation of the latter, has had substantial implications for the development of OCD as a category centred on visible behaviours and treated through behavioural means. (shrink)

We develop the concept of a volitional disability as an aid in understanding those patients who behave in ways that are harmful to themselves in spite of their desire to do otherwise. Using this concept enables us to describe their behavior as intentional but ‘unvoluntary’. We demonstrate the clinical reality of such behavior by giving clinical examples of the behavior of those with phobic, compulsive, and addictive disorders. We then attempt to show how some kinds of (...) self-harming behavior of noncompliant patients are similar to phobic and compulsive behavior. We propose use of the concept of volitional disability to make it easier for physicians to work with these noncompliant patients and thus to improve their ability to provide better care for them. Keywords: alcoholism, volitional disability, physician attitudes, addictive, disorders, compulsions, phobias, noncompliance CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

In 'Philosophy of Mind, Brain and Behaviour' wordt het begrip 'cognitiefilosofie' voor het eerst in Nederland op de kaart gezet als een combinatie van de Angelsaksische en de fenomenologische philosophy of mind. Onderwerpen op het snijvlak van filosofie, sociale en neurowetenschappen komen aan bod, zoals sociale cognitie, persoonlijke identiteit, het lichaam-geestprobleem en theorieën over bewustzijn, emoties en vrije wil. Om een breed academisch publiek te bedienen, verschijnt dit boek in het Engels.00Marc Slors is hoogleraar cognitiefilosofie aan de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen. (...) Eerder verscheen van hem bij Uitgeverij Boom 'Dat had je gedacht!'. Leon de Bruin en Derek Strijbos werken als onderzoeker en docent aan diezelfde universiteit. (shrink)

pt. 1. Basics of eastern and western views -- pt. 2. New analytical methods and workability -- pt. 3. Predictive power and future prospects.

This essay seeks to understand Gorgias’ reflections upon language and perception in the Encomium of Helen through the threefold vocabularies of medicine, enchantment, and oratory that were often taken together in the fifth century. I demonstrate that the two modes of sorcery to which Gorgias refers have to do with language and its effect on opinion, on the one hand, and perception and its effect upon one’s affective bearing, on the other. Both effects, I claim, are grasped through their forceful (...) means of physically impressing and deforming the soul such that its reliance upon memory and habitual forms of dwelling in the world are subject to oblivion. Further, such conceptual and practical unmooring can be understood as forms of disease that rob an individual of her agency, either temporarily or permanently, and therefore reflect the problematic status of language in early democratic Greece. (shrink)

Progress in psychiatry depends on accurate definitions of disorders. As long as there are no known biologic markers available that are highly specific for a particular psychiatric disorder, clinical practice as well as scientific research is forced to appeal to clinical symptoms. Currently, the nosology of obsessive-compulsive disorder is being reconsidered in view of the publication of DSM-V. Since our diagnostic entities are often simplifications of the complicated clinical profile of patients, definitions of psychiatric disorders are imprecise and always (...) indeterminate. This urges researchers and clinicians to constantly think and rethink well-established definitions that in psychiatry are at risk of being fossilised. In this paper, we offer an alternative view to the current definition of obsessive-compulsive disorder from a phenomenological perspective.TranslationThis article is translated from Dutch, originally published in [Handbook Obsessive-compulsive disorders, Damiaan Denys, Femke de Geus (Eds.), (2007). De Tijdstroom uitgeverij BV, Utrecht. ISBN13: 9789058980878.]. (shrink)

The experiences of 90 individuals who self-identify as “excessive” or “maladaptive” fantasizers are summarized in this report. Our sample consisted of 75 female and 15 male participants, ranging in age from 18 to 63 who responded to online announcements. Participants completed a 14-question emailed survey requesting descriptions of their fantasy habits and causes of potential distress regarding fantasy. Results demonstrated that participants shared a number of remarkably specific behaviors and concerns regarding their engagement in extensive periods of highly-structured, immersive imaginative (...) experiences, including the use of kinesthetic activity which accompanies the fantasies of 79% of participants. Participants reported distress stemming from three factors: difficulty in controlling the need or desire to engage in fantasizing; concern that the quantity of fantasizing interfered with actual relationships and endeavors; and intense shame and exhaustive efforts to keep this behavior hidden from others. It is hoped that this report will encourage interest in this elusive syndrome. (shrink)

The folk Psychology frames propositional attitudes as fundamental theoretical entities for the construction of a model designed to predict the behavior of a subject. A trivial, such as grasping a pen and writing reveals - something complex - about the behavior. When I take a pen and start writing I do, trivially, because I believe that a certain object in front of me is a pen and who performs a specific function that is, in fact, that of writing. (...) When I believe that the object that stands before me is a pen, I am in relation to "believe" with the propositional content: that in front of me is a pen. Philosophers of the proposition, from Frege onwards, have dedicated their studies to the analysis of what kinds of entities are the propositional attitudes. Jerry Fodor says that now, the proper prediction of the psychology of common sense, can not be questioned and that the propositional attitudes represent the most effective way to describe our behavior. What Fodor says, however, is that propositional attitudes function, but not how they work. Most philosophers interested in the issue, we are dedicated to the search for a theory that can account consistently both a semantics for propositional attitudes, both of these entities that seem to cause the behavior of a rational subject. There are two main paradigms in the theory of the proposition that contributed to the discussion of the propositional attitudes. One is the one that begins with Gottlob Frege, the other with Bertrand Russell. Defenders of Frege argue that the paradigm scrub objects and properties can not be constituents of the propositional content which have a purely conceptual. In other words, the philosophers belonging to the paradigm of Frege, but not all, mean that you can test in a rigorous way the truth conditions of propositional attitudes. Who defends the russellian’s paradigm argues that the propositional content are made by the objects and properties on which propositional attitudes relate. The purpose of this article is not to rebuild - in detail - both paradigms, nor to reconstruct one but, in a sense, my work will be a completely partial objective is to demonstrate how the paradigm is more profitable russell not only to make a coherent semantic theory for propositional attitudes2 but also to predict the behavior of a rational subject thing, completely innovative, given the repeated objections in contemporary literature3. At the end of this paper will be drafted a proposal to build a consistent model to predict the behavior,of a rational agent, based on a referential theory of propositional attitudes. (shrink)

The interaction between intuitions about inference, and the normative constraints that logical principles applied to mechanically-recognizable derivations impose on (informal) inference, is explored. These intuitions are evaluated in a clear testcase: informal mathe­matical proof. It is argued that formal derivations are not the source of our intuitions of validity, and indeed, neither is the semantic recognition of validity, either as construed model-theoretically, or as driven by the subject-matter such inferences are directed towards. Rather, psychologically-engrained inference-packages (often opportunistically used by mathematicians) (...) are the source of our sense of validity. Formal derivations, or the semantic construal of such, are after-the-fact norms imposed on our inference practices. (shrink)

Three problems threaten any account of philosophical rule in the Republic. First, Socrates is supposed to show that acting justly is always beneficial, but instead he extols the benefits of having a just soul. He leaves little reason to believe practical justice and psychic justice are connected and thus to believe that philosophers will act justly. In response to this problem, I show that just acts produce just souls. Since philosophers want to have just souls, they will act justly. Second, (...) Socrates’ alleged aim is to demonstrate that justice is beneficial, but philosophers, who have to give up a life of philosophy to rule, actually appear to be harmed by ruling. I explain that, since the founders of the city justly command them to rule, philosophers cannot, in fact, obtain a better life, and so ruling does not harm them. Third, it seems incongruous that philosophers, who should, as just people, jump at the opportunity to rule Kallipolis, must be compelled to rule. I show that Plato carefully constructs an educational system that produces rulers who do not want to rule, since such rulers alone will rule best. (shrink)

『국가』에서 소크라테스는 사람들이 내키지 않아 하는 일을 하도록 만드는 방법으로 설득과 강제를 언급한다. 그런데 설득과 강제는 서로 결합하여 ‘강제-자발적 행동’을 만들어낼 수도 있다. 『국가』에서 철학자가 나라를 통치하는 일은 강제-자발적 행동의 대표적 예이다. 철학자들은 통치하는 일이 내키지 않지만, 이것이 정의의 요구이기 때문에 자발적으로 통치에 임한다. 정의의 요구인 통치행위가 철학자들에게 강제-자발적 행동이라는 것의 중요한 함축은 정의로운 행동 중에는 글라우콘의 좋음 분류에서 세 번째 종류의 좋음, 즉 그 자체로는 고생스러운 것이지만 결과 때문에 좋은 행동이 있을 수 있다는 것이다. 정의가 두 번째 종류의 좋음, (...) 즉 그 자체로도 좋고 결과 때문에도 좋은 것이라는 소크라테스의 주장에 비추어 볼 때 이러한 함축은 놀라워 보일 수 있다. 하지만 영혼의 조화로서의 정의와 그러한 조화를 만들어내는 정의로운 행동을 분명하게 구별하면, 정의는 두 번째 종류의 좋음이면서도 정의로운 행동 중에는 세 번째 종류의 좋음도 있을 수 있다는 것을 알 수 있다. (shrink)

Translation of: Geist, Gehirn, Verhalten.

Buddhist philosophy asserts that human suffering is caused by ignorance regarding the true nature of reality. According to this, perceptions and thoughts are largely fabrications of our own minds, based on conditioned tendencies which often involve problematic fears, aversions, compulsions, etc. In Buddhist psychology, these tendencies reside in a portion of mind known as Store consciousness. Here, I suggest a correspondence between this Buddhist Store consciousness and the neuroscientific idea of stored synaptic weights. These weights are strong synaptic connections built (...) in through experience. Buddhist philosophy claims that humans can find relief from suffering through a process in which the Store consciousness is transformed. Here, I argue that this Buddhist 'transformation at the base' corresponds to a loosening of the learned synaptic connections. I will argue that Buddhist meditation practices create conditions in the brain which are optimal for diminishing the strength of our conditioned perceptual and behavioural tendencies. (shrink)

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is considered to be one of the more common serious mental disorders, with a prevalence rate of about 1% (Heyman et al. 2006). It is characterized by obsessions, or compulsions, or both. According to the DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association 1994), obsessions are “recurrent and persistent thoughts, impulses, or images that are experienced at some time during the disturbance, as intrusive and inappropriate and that cause marked anxiety or distress.” Compulsions, on the other hand, are repetitive behaviors (...) (e.g., hand washing, ordering, checking) or “mental acts that the person feels driven to perform in response to an obsession, or according to rules that must be applied .. (shrink)

Caenorhabditis elegans is a tiny worm that has become the focus of a large number of worldwide research projects examining its genetics, development, neuroscience, and behavior. Recently several groups of investigators have begun to tie together the behavior of the organism and the underlying genes, neural circuits, and molecular processes implemented in those circuits. Behavior is quintessentially organismal—it is the organism as a whole that moves and mates—but the explanations are devised at the molecular and neurocircuit levels, (...) and tested in populations using protocols that span many levels of aggregation. Following a brief review of the main relevant features of C. elegans, I describe some of these circuits, and then discuss two contrasting approaches in behavioral genetics and neural network analysis of the worm. Finally, I outline the rudiments of a “field and focus” explanation model using the two contrasting approaches. (shrink)