A two stage model was developed and tested to explain how ethical leadership relates to followers’ ethical judgment in an organizational context. Drawing on social learning theory, ethical leadership was hypothesized to promote followers’ self-leadership focused on ethics. It was found that followers’ perceived accountability fully accounts for this relationship. In stage two, the relationship between self-leadership focused on ethics and moral judgment in a dual decision-making system was described and tested. Self-leadership focused on ethics was only related to moral (...) judgment when followers use active judgment as opposed to their intuition. This provides support that a deliberate application of self-leadership focused on ethics leads to higher moral judgment. Theoretical and practical implications as well as future research opportunities are discussed. (shrink)

Against Richard Taylor's position (Action and Purpose,Prentice Hall,1966) that there is some further factor in agency that in one of its roles supplements the contingency of an action that is freely performed.

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

Working parents in are struggling to balance the demands of their occupation with those of childcare and homeschooling during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, studies show that women are shouldering more of the burden and reporting greater levels of psychological distress, anxiety, and depression relative to men. However, research has yet to show that increases in psychological symptoms are linked to changes in stress during the pandemic. Herein, we conduct a small-N study to explore the associations between stress and psychological symptoms (...) during the pandemic among mothers using structural equation modeling, namely latent change score models. Thirty-three mothers completed questionnaires reporting current anxious and depressive symptoms, as well as stressful life experiences prior to-versus during the pandemic. Women endorsed significantly more stressful events during the pandemic, relative to the pre-pandemic period. Additionally, 58% of mothers scored as moderate-to-high risk for developing a stress-related physical illness in the near future because of their pandemic-level stress. Depressive symptoms were associated with the degree of change in life stress, whereas anxiety symptoms were more related to pre-pandemic levels of stress. The present study preliminarily sheds light on the nuanced antecedents to mothers’ experiences of anxious and depressive symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although further work is needed in larger, more diverse samples of mothers, this study highlights the potential need for appropriate policies, and prevention and intervention programs to ameliorate the effects of pandemics on mothers’ mental health. (shrink)

Early versions of satellite and radiosonde datasets suggested that the tropical surface had warmed more than the troposphere, while climate models consistently showed tropospheric amplification of surface warming in response to human-caused increases in greenhouse gases. We revisit such comparisons here using new observational estimates of surface and tropospheric temperature changes. We find that there is no longer a serious discrepancy between modeled and observed trends in the tropics. Our results contradict a recent claim that all simulated temperature trends in (...) the tropical troposphere are inconsistent with observations. This claim was based on the use of older radiosonde and satellite datasets and on two methodological errors: the neglect of observational trend uncertainties introduced by interannual climate variability and application of an inappropriate statistical “consistency test”.This emerging reconciliation of models and observations has two primary explanations. First, because of changes in the treatment of buoy and satellite information, new surface temperature datasets yield slightly reduced tropical warming relative to earlier versions. Second, recently developed satellite and radiosonde datasets now show larger warming of the tropical lower troposphere. In the case of a new satellite dataset from remote sensing systems, enhancedRSS warming is due to an improved procedure of adjusting for inter-satellite biases. When the RSS-derived tropospheric temperature trend is compared with four different observed estimates of surface temperature change, the surface warming is invariably amplified in the tropical troposphere, consistent with model results. Even if we use data from a second satellite dataset with smaller tropospheric warming than in remote sensing systems RSS, observed tropical lapse rates are not significantly different from those in all model simulations.Our results contradict a recent claim that all simulated temperature trends in the tropical troposphere and in tropical lapse rates are inconsistent with observations. This claim was based on the use of older radiosonde and satellite datasets and on two methodological errors: the neglect of observational trend uncertainties introduced by interannual climate variability and application of an inappropriate statistical “consistency test”. (shrink)

Comparative Political Theory and Cross-Cultural Philosophy explores new forms of philosophizing in the age of globalization by challenging the conventional border between the East and the West, as well as the traditional boundaries among different academic disciplines. This rich investigation demonstrates the importance of cross-cultural thinking in our reading of philosophical texts and explores how cross-cultural thinking transforms our understanding of the traditional philosophical paradigm.

In his article “Ethics and the Environment” William K. Frankena distinguishes eight types of ethical theories which could generate moral rules and/or judgments concerning how rational agents should act with regard to the natural environment. The eight types are differentiated by their conceptions of moral subjects or patients. Each has its own view of the class of entities with respect to which moral agents can have duties and responsibilities. The eight types may be briefly delineated as follows: 1. Only what (...) benefits or harms the agent himself is morally relevant to how anything else in existence should be treated. 2. Only humans are proper moral patients. How we ought to act with respect to the environment is determined ultimately by the effects of our actions on humans or on persons. 3. All conscious beings are proper moral patients. Conduct with regard to the environment is right if it alleviates the suffering or increases the pleasure of beings that can suffer or experience pleasure. 4. All living beings, conscious or not, are proper moral patients. Our moral concern should extend beyond humans to all animals and plants. 5. Everything in existence, whether taken distributively or collectively, is to be considered as that toward which we may have duties and responsibilities. 6. God is the only ultimate moral subject as far as human action is concerned. We owe duties only to God, and we should treat the natural world in such a way as to fulfill our duties to God. 7. Combinations of any two or more of the above. 8. Nature itself is a moral patient. We should either follow the ways of nature or let the ways of nature take their course without our intervention. (shrink)

© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.Genetic studies have identified single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with the risk of prostate cancer. It remains unclear whether such genetic variants are associated with disease aggressiveness. The NCI-SPORE Genetics Working Group retrospectively collected clinicopathologic information and genotype data for 36 SNPs which at the time had been validated to be associated with PC risk from 25,674 cases with PC. Cases were grouped according to race, Gleason score and aggressiveness. Statistical analyses were used to compare the frequency (...) of the SNPs between different disease cohorts. After adjusting for multiple testing, only PC-risk SNP rs2735839 was significantly and inversely associated with aggressive and high-grade disease in European men. Similar associations with aggressive and high-grade disease were documented in African-American subjects. The G allele of rs2735839 was associated with disease aggressiveness even at low PSA levels in both European and African-American men. Our results provide further support that a PC-risk SNP rs2735839 near the KLK3 gene on chromosome 19q13 may be associated with aggressive and high-grade PC. Future prospectively designed, case-case GWAS are needed to identify additional SNPs associated with PC aggressiveness. (shrink)

_International Library of the Philosophy of Education _reprints twenty-four distinguished texts published in this field over the last half-century and includes works by authors such as Reginald D. Archambault, Charles Bailey, Robin Barrow, Norman J. Bull, D. E. Cooper, R. F. Dearden, Kieran Egan, D. W. Hamlyn, Paul H. Hirst, Glenn Langford, D. J. O'Connor, T. W. Moore, D. A. Nyberg, R. W. K. Paterson, R. S. Peters, Kenneth A Strike, I. A. Snook, John and Patricia White, and John Wilson. (...) Themes discussed include: Liberal education, moral education, the aims of education, the education of teachers, adult & continuing education and the philosophical analysis of education. _Available now at a special introductory price. This price is applicable until 3 months after publication. For more information, please contact us._. (shrink)

Mental health research and care in the twenty first century faces a series of conceptual and ethical challenges arising from unprecedented advances in the neurosciences, combined with radical cultural and organisational change. The Oxford Textbook of Philosophy of Psychiatry is aimed at all those responding to these challenges, from professionals in health and social care, managers, lawyers and policy makers; service users, informal carers and others in the voluntary sector; through to philosophers, neuroscientists and clinical researchers. Organised around a series (...) of case studies in five key topic areas - concepts of disorder, the philosophical history of psychopathology, philosophy of science, ethics and philosophical value theory, and philosophy of mind - the book provides a detailed introduction to the field and a framework for study and skill development. Each case study is supported by selected readings from both philosophy and mental health, thinking skills exercises, self-test questions, key learning points and detailed guides to further reading. There is an introduction for philosophers to classification and descriptive psychopathology, and for practitioners to philosophical methods (including logic). The philosophical topics covered include philosophical methods (analytic and Continental); phenomenology, hermeneutics and existentialism, logical empiricism and its successors; idealism and realism; reasons and causes; and modern theories of mind and brain, free will and personal identity. Topics from mental health include psychiatry and 'anti-psychiatry'; Jaspers' psychopathology and the new neurosciences; the future of psychiatric classifications; strengths-based approaches, recovery practice, social inclusion and diversity; and key topics in psychopathology, such as delusion, autism, disorders of volition, thought insertion and other experiences in schizophrenia. The Oxford Textbook of Philosophy of Psychiatry aims to secure the skills-base of the discipline by bringing philosophers closer to the realities of practice in mental health, and mental health practitioners closer to the resources of philosophy as a partner to the sciences in responding to the challenges of twenty-first century mental health and social care. (shrink)

Philosophy has much to offer psychiatry, not least regarding ethical issues, but also issues regarding the mind, identity, values, and volition. This has become only more important as we have witnessed the growth and power of the pharmaceutical industry, accompanied by developments in the neurosciences. However, too few practising psychiatrists are familiar with the literature in this area. -/- The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry offers the most comprehensive reference resource for this area ever published. It assembles challenging and (...) insightful contributions from key philosophers and others to the interactive fields of philosophy and psychiatry. Each contributions is original, stimulating, thorough, and clearly and engagingly written - with no potentially significant philosophical stone left unturned. Broad in scope, the book includes coverage of several areas of philosophy, including philosophy of mind, science, and ethics. For philosophers and psychiatrists, The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry is a landmark publication in the field - one that will be of value to both students and researchers in this rapidly growing area. (shrink)

Originally published between 1925 and 1931 the volumes in this mini-set cover education, from early years to further education, as well as the role parents and society have in the moral education of children and young people. Among others the authors included are: C E M Joad, W J K Diplock, M Chaning Pearce and J F Roxburgh.

Paul C. Taylor provides an accessible guide to a well-travelled but still-mysterious area of the contemporary social landscape. The result is the first philosophical introduction to the field of race theory and to a non-biological and situational notion of race. Provides the first philosophical introduction to the field of race theory. Outlines the main features and implications of race-thinking; asks questions such as: What is race-thinking? Don’t we know better than to talk about race now? Are there any races? (...) What is it like to have a racial identity? Engages with the ideas of such important figures as Linda Alcoff, K. Anthony Appiah, W.E.B. Du Bois, Howard Winant, and Naomi Zack. Explores the enduring significance of race in relation to culture, personal relationships and social justice. (shrink)

This volume, which is part of the Clarendon Aristotle Series, offers a clear and faithful new translation of Books II to IV of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, accompanied by an analytical commentary focusing on philosophical issues. In Books II to IV, Aristotle gives his account of virtue of character in general and of the principal virtues individually, topics of central interest both to his ethical theory and to modern ethical theorists. Consequently major themes of the commentary are connections on the one (...) hand with other relevant Aristotelian texts and on the other with modern writings, both text-related and thematic. Since the main aim of the volume is to make Aristotle's thought as accessible as possible to readers who do not know Greek, considerable care is taken to elucidate both his technical vocabulary and significant features of his Greek idiom. C. C. W. Taylor also provides systematic comparisons with other translations into English and other languages, and frequent references to other commentaries, ancient, medieval, and modern. These features make the work useful to other scholars in the field as well as to students of philosophy, both undergraduate and graduate.In view of the widespread contemporary interest in the topic of virtue, the volume should appeal to students of ethics and to any reader who is concerned to see how fundamental questions of life and conduct were approached in a culture significantly different from our own. (shrink)

This chapter introduces the edited volume, The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry. Published in 2013, the centenary of Karl Jaspers' General Psychopathology, the chapter draws lessons from the last hundred years for the coming century. No predictions are made. Instead, five 'conditions for flourishing' are set out: 1) Particular Problems - the importance of focussing on well-defined particular problems rather than general theory building, 2) Product- orientation - remaining always responsibly product oriented in the specific sense that both sides (...) put in the work necessary to 'go deep' with each other's fields, 3) Partnership - working in partnerships of one kind or another, 4) Process - constant reflection on process based on peer review but leaving scope for the occasional rogue voice to cut innovatively against the grain, and 5) Q - a condition of a different kind, Q is an empirically derived measure of the balance between in-group cohesion and out-group openness required to support creativity. Illustrations are given of how these five conditions for flourishing have underpinned the rapid expansion of philosophy and psychiatry in the closing decades of the twentieth century, and, correspondingly, are also reflected in the Handbook as a whole. Overviews and commentaries on individual contributions to the Handbook are given in extended editorial introductions to each of its eight sections. (shrink)

This section concerns the question of how best to understand the scientific status of mental health care in general and psychiatry in particular. On the assumption that psychiatry is based, in part at least, on natural science, what is the nature or the general shape of that science? Some of the chapters aim at shedding light on component parts of a scientific world view: causation, explanation, natural kinds, models of medicine, etc. Others concern potentially fruitful scientific approaches to mental health (...) care, drawing on brain imaging results, phenomenology, enactivism and what can be learnt from debate of the status of psychoanalysis. One overall lesson is that twenty-first-century psychiatry needs twenty-first-century philosophy of science. (shrink)

This Section examines several moral dilemmas and epistemological aporias in clinical practice and shows how clinicians can benefit from the introduction of philosophical methods and discourse. The authors develop these issues having in mind emblematic mental disorders and typical clinical situations. One important claim shared by the Authors is that a great effort has been made to ground psychiatry on evidence-based science, and to tie it to our growing understanding of the human brain. This is obviously an exceedingly important project, (...) but it would be a mistake to assume that the central questions of psychiatry can be completely resolved through scientific inquiry. Science offers guidance for clinical practice only in light of our concepts and normative judgments. (shrink)

In the editorial introduction the stage is set for the chapters in the section by a brief discussion of the relationship between the disciplines of philosophy and psychiatry. Then each chapter briefly is summarized or highlighted.

In this introduction to the Section II, the thrust of the component chapters is described. An important strand in the philosophy of psychiatry since its beginnings has been sociopolitical critiques: criticism which aims to improve and humanize psychiatric practice and mental health systems. From this standpoint, the introduction provides an overview of this tradition, including considerations of "postpsychiatry," value commitments in psychiatry, the recovery movement, racism and sexism in the field, and technology.

A cross-disciplinary discussion of the basis of interpersonal relating is of interest to philosophers and psychiatrists for several reasons. The development of successful clinical practice may depend, at least partly, on having an accurate understanding of the basic character of unimpaired interpersonal relating because such understanding can shed light on the nature and source of its disturbed forms. How we think about the basis of "mind-minding" competencies influences how we think about the prognosis and possible treatment of dysfunctional interpersonal relating. (...) Another reason is that philosophical frameworks influence the way we think about and evaluate possible psychiatric disorders and philosophical discussions may be of direct practical importance to psychiatry given that different theories suggest different potential ways of devising therapies. (shrink)

The editorial introduction sets the stage for the chapter by identifying the roles that concepts and categories play not just in the field of mental health medicine but in the human mind itself. Then, each chapter is summarized or highlighted.

Following on from Section IV on summoning concepts, this section of the Handbook presents theoretically informed descriptions of psychopathologies. The topics of the chapters range from anxiety, depression, and body image disorders, through emotion and affective disorders, to delusion, thought insertion, and the fragmentation of consciousness. These phenomena call, not only for assessment and diagnosis, but also for understanding on the part of both the engaged clinician and the philosophical commentator. They also provide case studies for general philosophical questions about (...) different levels of description and conceptualisation and the relationships between them, and about the contributions to psychological understanding that are made by phenomenology, clinical expert knowledge, and the sciences of the mind. (shrink)

In this introduction to Section VI, the thrust of the component chapters is described. The classification and diagnosis of mental disorders collects a number of philosophical challenges to the field that call for responses from a variety of philosophical resources: hermeneutics, phenomenology, philosophy of mind, narrative theory, philosophy of science, epistemology-to name a few. The authors in this section address the general challenges in the classification of psychopathology, as well as address particular kinds of mental disorders, including autism, dementia, mania, (...) psychotic disorders, and personality disorders. (shrink)

The 14 chapters in _Ethics at the End of Life: New Issues and Arguments_, all published here for the first time, focus on recent thinking in this important area, helping initiate issues and lines of argument that have not been explored previously. At the same time, a reader can use this volume to become oriented to the established questions and positions in end of life ethics, both because new questions are set in their context, and because most of the chapters—written (...) by a team of experts—survey the field as well as add to it. Each chapter includes initial summaries, final conclusions, and a Related Topics section. TABLE OF CONTENTS John K. Davis, "Introduction" Geoffrey Scarre, "Is it possible to be better off dead?" Taylor W. Cyr, "How Does Death Harm the Deceased?" Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin, "The Significance of an Afterlife" Jens Johansson, "The Severity of Death" John K. Davis, "Defining Death" James Stacey Taylor, "Autonomy, Competence, and End of Life" Eric Vogelstein, "Deciding for the Incompetent" Paul T. Menzel, "Change of Mind: An Issue for Advance Directives" Nancy S. Jecker, "Medical Futility and Respect for Patient Autonomy" Paul T. Menzel, "Refusing Lifesaving Medical Treatment and Food and Water by Mouth" Thomas S. Huddle, "Suicide, Physician-Assisted Suicide, the Doing-Allowing Distinction and Double Effect" Michael Cholbi, "Grief and End of Life Surrogate Decision-making" Bruce Jennings, "Solidarity near the End of Life: The Promise of Relational Decision-making in the Care of the Dying" Colin Farrelly, "Justice and the Aging of the Human Species". (shrink)

The 14 chapters in _Ethics at the End of Life: New Issues and Arguments_, all published here for the first time, focus on recent thinking in this important area, helping initiate issues and lines of argument that have not been explored previously. At the same time, a reader can use this volume to become oriented to the established questions and positions in end of life ethics, both because new questions are set in their context, and because most of the chapters—written (...) by a team of experts—survey the field as well as add to it. Each chapter includes initial summaries, final conclusions, and a Related Topics section. TABLE OF CONTENTS John K. Davis, "Introduction" Geoffrey Scarre, "Is it possible to be better off dead?" Taylor W. Cyr, "How Does Death Harm the Deceased?" Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin, "The Significance of an Afterlife" Jens Johansson, "The Severity of Death" John K. Davis, "Defining Death" James Stacey Taylor, "Autonomy, Competence, and End of Life" Eric Vogelstein, "Deciding for the Incompetent" Paul T. Menzel, "Change of Mind: An Issue for Advance Directives" Nancy S. Jecker, "Medical Futility and Respect for Patient Autonomy" Paul T. Menzel, "Refusing Lifesaving Medical Treatment and Food and Water by Mouth" Thomas S. Huddle, "Suicide, Physician-Assisted Suicide, the Doing-Allowing Distinction and Double Effect" Michael Cholbi, "Grief and End of Life Surrogate Decision-making" Bruce Jennings, "Solidarity near the End of Life: The Promise of Relational Decision-making in the Care of the Dying" Colin Farrelly, "Justice and the Aging of the Human Species". (shrink)

The 14 chapters in Ethics at the End of Life: New Issues and Arguments, all published here for the first time, focus on recent thinking in this important area, helping initiate issues and lines of argument that have not been explored previously. At the same time, a reader can use this volume to become oriented to the established questions and positions in end of life ethics, both because new questions are set in their context, and because most of the chapters--written (...) by a team of experts--survey the field as well as add to it. Each chapter includes initial summaries, final conclusions, and a Related Topics section. TABLE OF CONTENTS John K. Davis, "Introduction" Geoffrey Scarre, "Is it possible to be better off dead?" Taylor W. Cyr, "How Does Death Harm the Deceased?" Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin, "The Significance of an Afterlife" Jens Johansson, "The Severity of Death" John K. Davis, "Defining Death" James Stacey Taylor, "Autonomy, Competence, and End of Life" Eric Vogelstein, "Deciding for the Incompetent" Paul T. Menzel, "Change of Mind: An Issue for Advance Directives" Nancy S. Jecker, "Medical Futility and Respect for Patient Autonomy" Paul T. Menzel, "Refusing Lifesaving Medical Treatment and Food and Water by Mouth" Thomas S. Huddle, "Suicide, Physician-Assisted Suicide, the Doing-Allowing Distinction and Double Effect" Michael Cholbi, "Grief and End of Life Surrogate Decision-making" Bruce Jennings, "Solidarity near the End of Life: The Promise of Relational Decision-making in the Care of the Dying" Colin Farrelly, "Justice and the Aging of the Human Species". (shrink)

This volume, which is part of the Clarendon Aristotle Series, offers a clear and faithful new translation of Books II to IV of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, accompanied by an analytical commentary focusing on philosophical issues. In Books II to IV, Aristotle gives his account of virtue of character in general and of the principal virtues individually, topics of central interest both to his ethical theory and to modern ethical theorists. Consequently major themes of the commentary are connections on the one (...) hand with other relevant Aristotelian texts and on the other with modern writings, both text-related and thematic. Since the main aim of the volume is to make Aristotle's thought as accessible as possible to readers who do not know Greek, considerable care is taken to elucidate both his technical vocabulary and significant features of his Greek idiom. C. C. W. Taylor also provides systematic comparisons with other translations into English and other languages, and frequent references to other commentaries, ancient, medieval, and modern. These features make the work useful to other scholars in the field as well as to students of philosophy, both undergraduate and graduate.In view of the widespread contemporary interest in the topic of virtue, the volume should appeal to students of ethics and to any reader who is concerned to see how fundamental questions of life and conduct were approached in a culture significantly different from our own. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Spiritual Experience and PsychopathologyMike Jackson and K. W. M. Fulford (bio)AbstractA recent study of the relationship between spiritual experience and psychopathology (reported in detail elsewhere) suggested that psychotic phenomena could occur in the context of spiritual experiences rather than mental illness. In the present paper, this finding is illustrated with three detailed case histories. Its implications are then explored for psychopathology, for psychiatric classification, and for our understanding of (...) the concept of mental illness. It is argued that pathological and spiritual psychotic phenomena cannot be distinguished by 1) form and content alone (as in traditional psychopathology), 2) by their relationship either with other symptoms or with pathological causes (as in psychiatric classification), or 3) by reference to the descriptive criteria of mental illness implied by the “medical” model. The distinction is shown to depend, rather, on the way in which psychotic phenomena themselves are embedded in the values and beliefs of the person concerned. This in turn is shown to have implications for diagnosis (it shows the need for clinicians to attend to the values and beliefs of individual patients), for treatment (it points to a cognitive problem-solving model), and for research in psychopathology (especially as related to the emerging sciences of dynamic brain imaging and cognitive neuroscience).Keywordsfirst rank symptoms, schizophrenia, delusion, hallucination, thought disorder, religious experience, mystical experienceIntroductionThis paper explores some of the conceptual and practical implications of the finding that phenomena which in a medical context would probably be diagnosed as psychotic symptoms, may occur in the context of non-pathological, and indeed essentially benign, spiritual experiences.The existence of non-pathological psychotic experiences of this kind (we will call them “psychotic phenomena” as distinct from “psychotic symptoms”—see also Endnote 1, terminology) was a key finding in a study carried out by one of us (MJ) at the Alister Hardy Research Centre (AHRC) in Oxford. Details are given elsewhere both of the overall empirical findings of the study, including the relationship between spiritual experience and personality variables, and of a hypothetical cognitive problem-solving model of these phenomena (Jackson 1991, and forthcoming a and b). In the present paper, 1) the background to the study is described briefly in relation to earlier work on the possible links between spiritual experience and psychopathology; 2) some of the psychotic phenomena identified are illustrated with three detailed case histories; 3) the significance of these phenomena is reviewed for our understanding respectively of psychopathology, of diagnostic syndromes, and of the concept of mental illness; and 4) some of the practical implications of the study for clinical work and research in psychiatry are indicated.BackgroundIt has long been recognized that there are similarities between spiritual and psychotic experiences. [End Page 41] William James (1902), for example, argued that “in delusional insanity, paranoia as they sometimes call it, we may have a kind of diabolical mysticism, a sort of religious mysticism turned upside down” (426). Other commentators have noted a wide variety of phenomena, such as time distortion, synesthesias, loss of self-object boundaries and the transition from a state of conflict and anxiety to one of sudden “understanding,” all of which are reported in both spiritual and psychotic experiences (Buckley 1981; Watson 1982; Wapnick 1969; and Wootton and Allen 1983).Yet the similarities notwithstanding, the distinction between these two kinds of experience can be crucially important. Spiritual experiences, whether welcome or unwelcome, and whether or not they are psychotic in form, have nothing (directly) to do with medicine (Fulford 1996a). It would be quite wrong, then, to “treat” spiritual psychotic experiences with neuroleptic drugs, just as it is quite wrong to “treat” political dissidents as though they were ill (Fulford, Smirnoff and Snow, 1993). Pathological psychotic experiences, on the other hand, or psychotic symptoms, are by definition a proper object of medical treatment, sometimes even against the wishes of the person concerned. Hence it would be both negligent and, as Wing (1978) put it, morally “repellent,” to leave untreated someone who is genuinely ill (244).Given how much turns on the distinction between spiritual experience and psychopathology, it is perhaps not surprising that scholarly discussion of the relationship between them has at times... (shrink)

This chapter outlines the origins in ordinary language philosophy of a new skills-based approach to working with complex and conflicting values in medicine called values-based practice. Ordinary language philosophy focuses on our use of words as a useful first step in coming to a more complete understanding of their meanings. The theory of values-based practice was developed by applying ideas from ordinary language philosophy to the long-running debate about the "boundary problem" presented by the concept of mental disorder. Ordinary language (...) philosophy turns this debate topsy-turvy: it shows, that the concept of mental disorder instead of being the target problem is a resource for coming to a more complete understanding of the meanings of concepts of disorder as a whole including the concept of bodily disorder; and correspondingly, that the value-laden nature of mental disorder far from being part of the problem points to an evaluative element of meaning in concepts of disorder as a whole, again including concepts of bodily disorder. It is these topsy-turvy results that underpin the development of values-based practice. In a brief concluding section we indicate the potential for further development of values-based practice supported by ordinary language and other philosophies particularly through engagement with non-Western language groups representing diverse traditions of thought and practice in mental health. (shrink)