Histories of psychoanalysis largely respect the boundaries drawn by the psychoanalytic profession, suggesting that the development of psychoanalytic theories and techniques has been the exclusive remit of professionally trained analysts. In this article, I offer an historical example that poses a challenge to this orthodoxy. Based on extensive archival material, I show how British psychiatric social workers, a little-studied group of specialist mental hygiene workers, advanced key organisational, observational, and theoretical insights that shaped mid-century British psychoanalysis. In their daily (...) work compiling patient histories, conducting home visits, and interviewing the parents of ‘maladjusted’ children, psychiatric social workers were uniquely positioned to expose the importance of family relationships in the development of childhood neuroses. As this article details, their analytic attention to these dynamics not only influenced, but fundamentally constituted the innovative research on maternal-child relationships and family therapy pioneered by eminent psychoanalyst John Bowlby. In addition, psychiatric social workers produced and published independent psychoanalytic research, and fiercely debated the limitations of analytic concepts such as transference. In presenting the relationship between British psychiatric social work and psychoanalysis, this article suggests a new way of telling the history of both. (shrink)

I Want to discuss and illustrate in this paper certain fallacies which we are all very liable to commit in our thinking about political and social questions. Perhaps “thinking” is rather too high-sounding a name to attach to the mental processes which lie behind most political talk. It is at any rate thinking of a very low grade, for a considerable proportion of such discussion in Press and Parliament and private conversation hardly rises above the intellectual level of disputes (...) between boys at a preparatory school. (shrink)

Most jurisdictions require that a mental capacity assessment be conducted using a functional model whose definition includes several abilities. In England and Wales and in increasing number of countries, the law requires a person be able to understand, to retain, to use or weigh relevant information and to communicate one’s decision. But interpreting and applying broad and vague criteria, such as the ability ‘to use or weigh’ to a diverse range of presentations is challenging. By examining actual court (...) judgements of capacity, we previously developed a descriptive typology of justifications used in the application of the Mental Capacity Act criteria. We here critically optimise this typology by showing how clear definitions—and thus boundaries—between the criteria can be achieved if the ‘understanding’ criterion is used narrowly and the multiple rationales that fall under the ability to ‘use or weigh’ are specifically enumerated in practice. Such a typology-aided practice, in theory, could make functional capacity assessments more transparent, accountable, reliable and valid. It may also help to create targeted supports for decision making by the vulnerable. We also discuss how the typology could evolve legally and scientifically, and how it lays the groundwork for clinical research on the abilities enumerated by the MCA. No data are available. This paper does not report any original data. (shrink)

Der folgende Beitrag setzt sich mit den Begriffen „Normalität“ und „psychische Erkrankung“ auseinander. Es zeigt sich, dass beide zu einem erheblichen Maße unterbestimmt sind und beiden nicht nur ein deskriptiver, sondern ein nicht unerheblicher normativer Gehalt innewohnt, der sich der Reflexion nicht selten entzieht. Problematisch ist die mitunter synonyme Verwendung von „Normalität“ und „psychische Gesundheit“ bzw. „Anormalität“ und „psychische Krankheit“, da damit nicht nur inhaltlich unterschiedlich gelagerte Begrifflichkeiten, sondern auch diskrepante Begriffslogiken vermischt werden. Während in Bezug auf ausgeprägte psychische Störungen (...) diese Tatsache weniger von Belang zu sein scheint, da hier die Zuschreibung einer psychischen Erkrankung allgemein zustimmungsfähig ist, wird die Begriffsvermischung im Graubereich zwischen psychischer Krankheit und Gesundheit deutlich relevanter. Hier scheint man sich unausgesprochen an Kriterien der Normalität zu orientieren, womit ein ausgeprägt normatives Moment zum Tragen kommt. Dieser normative Sog hin zur statistischen Mitte kann auch als eine Form von Optimierung verstanden werden, die psychisches Leiden möglichst reduzieren möchte. Auch wenn dies auf den ersten Blick wünschenswert sein könnte, übersieht man dabei doch die nicht immer nur negativ zu interpretierende Bedeutung, die psychisches Leid für menschliches Leben haben kann. (shrink)

Narrow mental content is a kind of mental content that does not depend on an individual's environment. Narrow content contrasts with “broad” or “wide” content, which depends on features of the individual's environment as well as on features of the individual. It is controversial whether there is any such thing as narrow content. Assuming that there is, it is also controversial what sort of content it is, what its relation to ordinary or “broad” content is, and (...) how it is determined by the individual's intrinsic properties. (shrink)

An ongoing philosophical discussion concerns how various types of mental states fall within broad representational genera—for example, whether perceptual states are “iconic” or “sentential,” “analog” or “digital,” and so on. Here, I examine the grounds for making much more specific claims about how mental states are structured from constituent parts. For example, the state I am in when I perceive the shape of a mountain ridge may have as constituent parts my representations of the shapes of each (...) peak and saddle of the ridge. More specific structural claims of this sort are a guide to how mental states fall within broader representational kinds. Moreover, these claims have significant implications of their own about semantic, functional, and epistemic features of our mental lives. But what are the conditions on a mental state's having one type of constituent structure rather than another? Drawing on explanatory strategies in vision science, I argue that, other things being equal, the constituent structure of a mental state determines what I call its distributional properties—namely, how mental states of that type can, cannot, or must co‐occur with other mental states in a given system. Distributional properties depend critically on and are informative about the underlying structures of mental states, they abstract in important ways from aspects of how mental states are processed, and they can yield significant insights into the variegation of psychological capacities. (shrink)

This paper discusses some issues concerning the relationship between the mental and the physical, including the so-called causal exclusion argument, within the framework of a broadly interventionist approach to causation.

The broad, ancient notion of the “soul” was replaced by Descartes with a more narrow notion of the “mind.” As well as limiting the scope of the soul, Descartes separated it from the body, giving the soul a substantive status. These two features gave rise to severe conceptual problems which remain unsolved till the present day. I believe that retaining some features of the ancient notion of the “soul”—particularly those found in Aristotle’s view—may resolve many of these problems. As (...) an alternative approach I suggest the following three assumptions concerning the nature of the soul : the soul consists of dispositional and actualized states and not of internal, isolated entities; physiological and mental states are not actually separate but belong to two different levels of description, hence the relation between them is that of correlation and not of causality; mental and physical states can be arranged along a spectrum ranging from simple to more complex states. This approach treats mental properties just as common sense and science treat other natural properties. Thus, many of the traditional problems concerning the mind-body gap disappear. Though the approach presented here returns, in some aspects, to the ancient, broad notion of the soul, I will continue to use the term “mind” which is used more today. (shrink)

Most theories of promising are insufficiently broad, for they ground promissory obligation in some external or contingent feature of the promise. In this paper, I introduce a new kind of theory. The Mental States First (MSF) theory grounds promissory obligation in something internal and essential: the mental state expressed by promising, or the state that promisors purport to be in. My defense of MSF relies on three claims. First, promising to Φ expresses that you have resolved to (...) Φ. Second, resolving to Φ commits you to Φing, all else being equal. Third, the norms on speech acts are determined by the norms on the mental states they express, such that publicly expressing that you are in a state subjects you to whatever commitments are normally incurred by being in that state, regardless of whether you really are in it. I suggest that this general approach might also explain how the norms on other sorts of speech acts work. (shrink)

This article examines one argument in favour of the position that the relational properties of mental states do not have causal powers over behaviour. This argument states that we establish that the relational properties of mental states do not have causal powers by considering cases where intrinsic properties remain the same but relational properties vary to see whether, under such circumstances, behaviour would ever vary. The individualist argues that behaviour will not vary with relational properties alone, which means (...) that they don’t have causal powers. Four replies are presented which all reject the premise that under such conditions behaviour can never be different, and each of these are refuted. The article concludes by arguing that knowing about the relational properties of mental states gives no predictive advantage over (and, in fact, is predictively worse than) knowing about the intrinsic properties of mental states plus context. (shrink)

: Fodor’s view of the mind is thoroughly computational. This means that the basic kind of mental entity is a “discursive” mental representation and operations over this kind of mental representation have broad architectural scope, extending out to the edges of perception and the motor system. However, in multiple epochs of his work, Fodor attempted to define a functional role for non-discursive, imagistic representation. I describe and critique his two considered proposals. The first view says that (...) images play a particular kind of functional role in certain types of deliberative tasks. The second says that images are solely restricted to the borders of perception, and act as a sort of medium for the fixing of conceptual reference. I argue, against the first proposal, that a broad-scope computationalism such as Fodor’s renders images in principle functionally redundant. I argue, against the second proposal, that empirical evidence suggests that non-discursive representations are learned through perceptual learning, and directly inform category judgments. In each case, I point out extant debates for which the arguments are relevant. The upshot is that there is motivation for limited scope computationalism, in which some, but not all, mental processes operate on discursive mental representations. Keywords: Computational Theory of Mind; Mental Representation; Perception; Mental Image; Jerry Fodor Fodor e le rappresentazioni mentali come immagini Riassunto: La concezione della mente di Fodor è rigorosamente computazionale, ossia le entità mentali di base sono rappresentazioni mentali “discorsive”. Le operazioni su queste rappresentazioni hanno un fine architettonico ampio, che va fino ai confini della percezione e del sistema motorio. In periodi diversi del suo lavoro, Fodor ha proposto due modi per definire un ruolo funzionale per la rappresentazione non-discorsiva come immagine. Tratterò criticamente entrambi. Per il primo, le immagini giocano un particolare tipo di ruolo funzionale in certi tipi di compiti deliberativi, mentre, per il secondo, sono relegate unicamente ai confini della percezione, agendo come medium per fissare il riferimento concettuale. Contro il primo sosterrò che un computazionalismo così ampio come quello di Fodor rende le immagini in principio funzionalmente ridondanti. Contro il secondo sosterrò che l’evidenza empirica suggerisce che le rappresentazioni non-discorsive vengono apprese percettivamente, agendo direttamente sui giudizi di categorizzazione. In entrambi i casi considererò gli argomenti più rilevanti nel dibattito corrente. Si vedrà che ci sono buone ragioni in favore di un computazionalismo più limitato, in cui alcuni processi mentali operano su rappresentazioni mentali discorsive. Parole chiave: Teoria computazionale della mente; Rappresentazione mentale; Percezione; Immagine mentale; Jerry Fodor. (shrink)

Although generally supportive of our overall position, both Zachar and Gala and Laughon raise questions about our research design. Herein, we respond to these questions by presenting counterarguments that support the soundness of this design.Subsequent to stating some broad agreement with our central thesis that mental disorder is best viewed as a disability concept and not a behavioral one, Dr. Zachar expresses a number of reservations about our work. We focus on the following discussion on what seem to (...) be the most significant of these.Dr. Zachar states the following : “In 8 of their 12 conditions, the dependent variable is evaluation of problematic behavior and the independent variable is disability... (shrink)

This paper deals with an attempt of the mathematician Riemann to develop an outstandingly broad view of the philosophy of nature encompassing basic phenomena of both the material and the mental world. Riemann's draft is traced in its main aspects, and is accompanied by a comparison with certain chapters in the philosophical writings of Herbart that were particularly relevant to Riemann's conception of mathematics and science on the whole. This applies, in particluar, to the epistemological background and to (...) Herbart's theory of the Self. (shrink)

Recently, the pandemic context in which the world finds itself has inspired studies that sought to evaluate to mental health and the way people are relating to the purpose of understanding and promoting improvements psychological health. The epidemiological and public health literature shows that social connection protects and promotes mental health, being an important clinical tool for reducing anxiety, depression, and stress. Thinking in the broad sense of connection, that is, feeling and perceiving oneself connected with the (...) environment, applied to the context of sport, it is suggested that social connection could be related to the interactions in the practice of sport. Although playing sports can promote mental health, there are few findings on the topic in the context of a pandemic and with physical sports and electronic sports players. In this sense, the present study aims to assess the extent to which social connection and mental health indicators are correlated in a sample of sports and e-sports players. The participants were 401 Brazilian physical sports and e-sports players, mostly male and single, who filled in the Social Connectedness Scale, the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale, and demographic questions. The results indicated that social connection was negatively correlated and also predict the anxiety, depression, and stress. When comparing sports and e-sports players, a statistically significant difference was identified in the levels of social connection [t = −3.41; sportsmean = 4.53 ; e-sportsmean = 4.14 ] and depression [t = 2.90; sportsmean = 1.10 ; e-sportsmean = 0.85 ]. These findings can serve as a theoretical basis for the development of intervention programs and promoting discussions that focus on the analysis of aspects promoting psychological health in sports context. (shrink)

'Principles Of Mental Imagery' offers a broad, balanced, and up-to-date introduction to the major findings of this research and identifies five general principles that can account for most of them. It considers the development of experimental techniques that have solved many of the challenging methodological problems inherent in imagery research and includes recent experimental findings not covered in other imagery books..

This chapter contains sections titled: The Cartesian Background Intentionality Functionalism Levels of Reality Causation and Broad States of Mind Qualia Zombies Conclusion.

Our knowledge of the human brain and the influence of pharmacological substances on human mental functioning is expanding. This creates new possibilities to enhance personality and character traits. Psychopharmacological enhancers, as well as other enhancement technologies, raise moral questions concerning the boundary between clinical therapy and enhancement, risks and safety, coercion and justice. Other moral questions include the meaning and value of identity and authenticity, the role of happiness for a good life, or the perceived threats to humanity. Identity (...) and authenticity are central in the debate on psychopharmacological enhancers. In this paper, I first describe the concerns at issue here as extensively propounded by Carl Elliott. Next, I address David DeGrazia’s theory, which holds that there are no fundamental identity-related and authenticity-related arguments against enhancement technologies. I argue, however, that DeGrazia’s line of reasoning does not succeed in settling these concerns. His conception of identity does not seem able to account for the importance we attach to personal identity in␣cases where personal identity is changed through enhancement technology. Moreover, his conception of authenticity does not explain the reason why we find inauthentic values objectionable. A broader approach to authenticity can make sense of concerns about changes in personal identity by means of enhancement technologies. (shrink)

The transparency of qualia to introspection has been given as reason for favoring a representationalist view of phenomenal character. Qualia realists, notably Block (1996, 2000), A.D. Smith (2008), and Kind (2003, 2008), have denied that qualia are transparent. What is clear is that the phenomenology of introspection alone cannot decide the case, but a theory of introspection could. If the qualia realist could show that our introspective access to mental properties is akin to the perceptual access we have to (...) perceived properties, then she has grounds for denying the transparency claim. On the other hand, if introspection does not provide access to intrinsic mental properties, then the representationalist has a basis for defending the transparency claim. Armstrong’s theory of introspection has been taken to be typical of perceptual theories; however, this paper will give reasons for thinking not only that his theory does not in fact constitute a perceptual theory but that such theories of introspection do not afford qualia realists with the means of denying the transparency of qualia to introspection. (shrink)

We propose capability as a universal or type intermediate between function and disposition. A capability is, broadly speaking, a disposition that is of a type whose instances can be evaluated on the basis of how well they are realized. A function, on the view we are proposing, is a capability the possession of which is the rationale for the existence of its bearer. To say for example that a water pump has the function to pump water is to say that (...) the pump exists because something was needed that would pump water. A water pump may have many capabilities, including: to be weatherproof, to run without lubricant, to be transportable, and so forth. But its function is to pump water. We focus here on capabilities possessed by humans – such as piano playing or language using – and we explore the relation between capabilities of these sorts and structures in the brain. (shrink)

This article discusses the idea of the German philosopher and psychiatrist Karl Jaspers about a close connection between a psychological disease and unleashing of a human potential. The very psychopathology of a modern man is interpreted as an urge for freedom, that has acquired ugly forms. The author suggests a solution to the problem of mental rigidity. Levels of consciousness development, a psychological triad and its possible manifestations within one’s worldview, as well as positive and negative types of psychodynamic (...) are presented as a plausible paradigm for orientation in the world. The discussed approach can serve as a method of analyzing individual conditioning and a broad range of phenomena of the modern culture. (shrink)

Mental health acts allow for interference with the liberty of the individual. As such, they serve as test cases for theories of liberty, and thus the question of what Mill would think about them arises. My aim is to answer this question. I argue that Mill would embrace mental health acts to protect mentally disturbed individuals from themselves and others from them, and that they should have broad admission criteria, allow capable patients to refuse treatment, and have (...) treatment decisions made by patients or their families on the basis of substituted judgements rather than representatives of the state acting on best interest judgements. This interpretation will show that many writers who claim Mill's support cannot properly do so. It is also a combination of views that cannot be readily found in mental health acts themselves, but which, as Mill's reasons for it show, is a serious candidate for legislative adoption. (shrink)

IntroductionThose in mental health-related consumer movements have made clear their demands for humane treatment and basic civil rights, an end to stigma and discrimination, and a chance to participate in their own recovery. But theorizing about the politics of recognition, 'recognition rights' and epistemic justice, suggests that they also have a stake in the broad cultural meanings associated with conceptions of mental health and illness.ResultsFirst person accounts of psychiatric diagnosis and mental health care (shown here to (...) represent 'counter stories' to the powerful 'master narrative' of biomedical psychiatry), offer indications about how experiences of mental disorder might be reframed and redefined as part of efforts to acknowledge and honor recognition rights and epistemic justice. However, the task of cultural semantics is one for the entire culture, not merely consumers. These new meanings must be negotiated. When they are not the result of negotiation, group-wrought definitions risk imposing a revision no less constraining than the mis-recognizing one it aims to replace. Contested realities make this a challenging task when it comes to cultural meanings about mental disorder. Examples from mental illness memoirs about two contested realities related to psychosis are examined here: the meaninglessness of symptoms, and the role of insight into illness. They show the magnitude of the challenge involved - for consumers, practitioners, and the general public - in the reconstruction of these new meanings and realities.ConclusionTo honor recognition rights and epistemic justice acknowledgement must be made of the heterogeneity of the effects of, and of responses to, psychiatric diagnosis and care, and the extent of the challenge of the reconstructive cultural semantics involved. (shrink)

In the past years, the relevance of Thomas Aquinas's theory of cognition for contemporary debates on epistemology has been widely discussed. That theory claims that mind and world are formally identical and that this relationship overcomes various problems associated with scepticism concerning mental representation. The proposal, however, is grounded on the idea that the world can act on the mind through a relation of formal causation. This thesis attempts to develop a Thomistic theory of formal causation which may be (...) suitable for a realist account of mental representation and which may meet the requirements prompted by current discussions. The suggested view is grounded on Aquinas's metaphysics, according to which the world is constituted of substances. The claim that change is possible since substances are hylomorphically constituted is defended. Aquinas's claim that some substances have forms which may act independently of matter is also supported. The paradigmatic examples are human souls, i.e. the forms of human beings, whose higher cognitive capacity, i.e. thinking, can be in principle carried on without the need of any material organ. A Thomistic theory of causation is subsequently proposed. It is argued that hylomorphism explains the distinction among four species of causes. Aquinas's attempt to explain causal relations conditionally is developed along the lines suggested by John Mackie's INUS conditional analysis. Jaegwon Kim's implementation of Mackie's proposal through an object-based metaphysics of events is then adapted to the hylomorphical account of substances. On these grounds, a theory of formal causation can be proposed and applied to Aquinas's theory of mental representation. The ensuing proposal is offered not in the spirit of historical exegesis but as a substantive philosophical account and it is Thomistic only in the broad sense that it is built on Aquinas's metaphysics and is consistent with his claims on causation. (shrink)

The Origin of Consciousness Abstract The existence of human consciousness has received a great deal of attention within the scientific community. There are some who deny its existence altogether. There are those who believe it is nothing more than the result of physical properties within the brain. And there are some who contend it exists separate and apart from the brain. Many of these theories have been shaped by the desire of evolutionists to explain human consciousness via a purely materialistic/mechanistic (...) bent. In this paper, we provide a historical background to the conflict and examine the two broad categories—monism and dualism—that are used in an attempt to explain human consciousness. We also discuss many of their subcategories, to see how each fare in light of the available facts. Increasingly, experimental data document the fact that human consciousness is separate and distinct from the mere physical matter of the brain. This understanding indicates that there is, then, a non-material aspect of human beings that must be accounted for. (shrink)

Confidentiality is a central bioethical principle governing the provider–patient relationship. Dating back to Hippocrates, new laws have interpreted it for the age of precision medicine and electronic medical records. This is where the discussion of privacy and technology often ends in the scientific health literature when Internet-related technologies have made privacy a much more complex challenge with broad psychological and clinical implications. Beyond the recognised moral duty to protect patients’ health information, clinicians should now advocate a basic right to (...) privacy as a means to safeguard psychological health. The article reviews empirical research into the functions of privacy, the implications for psychological development and the resigned sentiment taking hold regarding the ability to control personal data. The article concludes with a call for legislative, educational and research steps to readjust the equilibrium between the individual and ‘Big Data’. (shrink)

This paper defends and develops an argument against epiphenomenalism, broadly construed. I argue first for a definition of epiphenomenalism which includes ‘non-reductive’ materialism as well as classical dualistic epiphenomenalism. I then present an argument that if epiphenomenalism were true it would be impossible to know about or even refer to our conscious states -- and therefore impossible even to formulate epiphenomenalism. David Chalmers has defended epiphenomenalism against such arguments; I consider this defence and attempt to show that it fails. I (...) conclude that an adequate account of mental causation requires us to abandon the principle of the causal closure of the physical, and attempt to rebut charges that it would be ‘unscientific’ to do so. (shrink)

The concept 'health' is ambiguous [18,9, 11]. The concept 'mental health' is even more so. 'Health' compasses senses of well-being, wholeness, and sound ness that mean more than the simple freedom from illness - a fact appreci ated in the World Health Organization's definition of health as more than the absence of disease or infirmity [7]. The wide range of viewpoints of the con tributors to this volume attests to the scope of issues placed under the rubric 'mental (...) health. ' These papers, presented at the Fourth Symposium on Philos ophy and Medicine, were written and discussed within a broad context of interests concerning mental health. Moreover, in their diversity these papers point to the many descriptive, evaluative, and, in fact, performative functions of statements concerning mental health. Before introducing the substance of these papers in any detail, I want to indicate the profound commerce between philosophical and psychological ideas in theories of mental health and disease. This will be done in part by a consideration of some conceptual developments in the history of psychiatry, as well as through an analysis of some of the functions of the notions of mental illness and health. 'Mental health' lays a special stress on the wholeness of human intuition, emotion, thought, and action. (shrink)

A long-standing concern (or at least a belief) about ESP, held by both skeptics and believers in the paranormal, is that if telepathy really occurs, then it might pose a threat to mental privacy. And it’s easy enough to see what motivates that view. Presumably we like to think that we enjoy privileged access to our own mental states. But if others could come to know telepathically what we’re thinking or feeling, then (among other disquieting prospects) that would (...) mean that our sins of the heart and most embarrassing or repulsive fleeting thoughts would potentially be available for public inspection. But how well-founded is that belief or concern? To get a grip on the issues, we should begin by considering the valuable distinction (perhaps first mentioned by C.D. Broad--Broad, 1953, 1962) between telepathic (or clairvoyant) cognition and telepathic (or clairvoyant) interaction. As you would expect, every instance of the former would be an instance of the latter, but the converse doesn’t hold—that is, ESP interaction may occur without ESP cognition. To see why this matters, we must take a closer look. If telepathic cognition occurs at all, it would presumably be a form of non-sensorial knowledge about another individual’s state of mind. More specifically, it would be a state of affairs in which so-called “percipient” A comes to know something about a telepathic interaction A has with another individual B. And what kind of things might A telepathically come to know? Well, presumably, in its most robust (and most intrusively intimidating) form, A would learn what’s going on in B’s mind—that is, that B is having certain thoughts, perceptions, or emotions. But it would still be an instance of telepathic cognition—admittedly, less intimidating or threatening to one’s mental privacy—if A learned merely that B was the telepathic cause of A’s current thought or experience—that is, that B was directly influencing or interfering with A’s stream of consciousness, whether or not A’s resulting thoughts or experiences were those of B or known by A to be those of B. (shrink)

Embedded and embodied approaches to cognition urge that (1) complicated internal representations may be avoided by letting features of the environment drive behavior, and (2) environmental structures can play an enabling role in cognition, allowing prior cognitive processes to solve novel tasks. Such approaches are thus in a natural position to oppose the ‘thesis of linguistic structuring’: The claim that the ability to use language results in a wholesale recapitulation of linguistic structure in onboard mental representation. Prominent examples of (...) researchers adopting this critical stance include Andy Clark, Michael Wheeler, and Mark Rowlands. But is such opposition warranted? Since each of these authors advocate accounts of mental representation that are broadly connectionist, I survey research on formal language computation in artificial neural networks, and argue that results indicate a strong form of the linguistic structuring thesis is true: Internal representational systems recapitulate significant linguistic structure, even on a connectionist account of mental representation. I conclude by sketching how my conclusion can nonetheless be viewed as consistent with and complimentary to an embedded/embodied account of the role of linguistic structure in cognition. (shrink)

This book offers a broad, systematic philosophical approach to mental disorder. The authors spend the first half of the book presenting their basic philosophical allegiances, and they go on to apply their philosophical approach to mental disorder. As the authors note, psychiatry has been largely neglected by contemporary philosophy of mind, and this book is a laudable attempt to rectify the situation by producing a sustained and clinically well-informed philosophical treatment of mental disorder.

Our ability to attribute mental states to others ("to mentalize") has been the subject of philosophical and psychological studies for a very long time, yet the role of language acquisition in the development of our mentalizing abilities has been largely understudied. This book addresses this gap in the philosophical literature. -/- The book presents an account of how false belief reasoning is impacted by language acquisition, and it does so by placing it in the larger context of the issue, (...) how language impacts cognition in general. The work provides the reader with detailed and critical literature reviews, and draws on them to argue that language acquisition helps false belief reasoning by boosting the ability to create schemata that facilitate processing of information in some social contexts. According to this framework, it is a combination of syntactic clues and cultural narratives that helps the child to solve the classic false belief task. -/- The book provides a novel, original account of how language helps false belief reasoning, while also giving the reader a broad, precise and well-documented picture of the debate around some of the most fundamental issues in social cognition. (shrink)

In several recent essays, Sydney Shoemaker argues that introspective knowledge lacks certain central features which parallel the conditions satisfied by ordinary cases of sense perception. In one influential paper, he discusses and criticizes the “broad perceptual” model of the nature of introspective knowledge of mental states, the view which claims that our introspective awareness of internal facts is analogous to our awareness of facts about the external world. This model may be characterized by its conformance to two conditions (...) of ordinary perceptual awareness which Shoemaker dubs the causation condition and the independence condition. Shoemaker attacks the broad perceptual model by arguing that certain mental facts are “self-intimating”, with the implication being that introspective awareness of mental states does not satisfy the independence condition, and hence its character is not adequately captured by the broad perceptual model. In what follows, I will discuss the main arguments of Shoemaker’s essay. I will argue that a broad perceptual model of introspection can successfully circumvent the central problems he raises; and along the way I will develop some criticisms regarding certain aspects of Shoemaker’s positive proposal.U nekolicini recentnih tekstova, Sydney Shoemaker tvrdi da introspektivnom znanju nedostaju određene ključne centralne značajke koje odgovaraju uvjetima zadovoljenima u običnim slučajevima osjetilne percepcije. U jednom utjecajnom radu on razmatra i kritizira »široki perceptualni « model prirode introspektivnog znanja mentalnih stanja, stajalište koje tvrdi da je naša introspektivna svijest unutrašnjih činjenica analogna našoj svijesti o činjenicama izvanjskoga svijeta. Ovaj model može biti okarakteriziran njegovom sukladnošću dvama uvjetima obične perceptivne svijesti koje Shoemaker naziva uvjet kauzacije i uvjet neovisnosti. Shoemaker napada široki perceptualni model tvrdeći da su određene mentalne činjenice »samozadane«, implicirajući da introspektivna svijest o mentalnim stanjima ne zadovoljava uvjet neovisnosti, te stoga njen karakter nije adekvatno obuhvaćen širokim perceptualnim modelom. U onome što slijedi razmotrit ću glavne argumente Shoemakerovoga rada. Tvrdim da široki perceptualni model introspekcije može uspješno zaobići centralne problem koje on ističe; i usput ću razviti neke kritike vezane uz određene aspekte Shoemakerovog pozitivnog prijedloga.Dans plusieurs essais récents, Sydney Shoemaker affirme que la connaissance introspective est dépourvue de certaines caractéristiques centrales correspondant aux conditions qui, elles, sont remplies dans les cas ordinaires de perception sensorielle. Dans un article influent, il examine et critique le modèle « perceptuel large » de la nature de la connaissance introspective des états mentaux, une position qui affirme que notre conscience introspective des faits internes est analogue à notre conscience des faits du monde externe. Ce modèle peut se définir par sa conformité à deux conditions de la conscience perceptuelle ordinaire que Shoemaker appelle condition de causation et condition d’indépendance. Shoemaker attaque d’abord le modèle perceptuel large en affirmant que certains faits mentaux se « laissent entendre d’eux-mêmes », impliquant que la conscience introspective des états mentaux ne remplit pas la condition d’indépendance et que, par conséquent, son caractère n’est pas saisi de manière adéquate par le modèle perceptuel large. Dans ce qui suit, j’examinerai les principaux arguments de l’essai de Shoemaker. J’affirmerai qu’un modèle perceptuel large de l’introspection peut contourner avec réussite les problèmes centraux qu’il soulève ; ce faisant, je développerai quelques critiques à l’égard de certains aspects de la proposition positive de Shoemaker.In ein paar rezenten Essays postuliert Sydney Shoemaker, das introspektive Wissen ermangele gewisser zentraler Spezifika, die den in herkömmlichen Fällen der Sinneswahrnehmung erfüllten Umständen gleichkommen. In einem wirkungsreichen Paper behandelt und kritisiert er das „breite perzeptive“ Modell der Natur des introspektiven Wissens von Mentalzuständen, eine Betrachtungsweise, die besagt, unser introspektives Bewusstsein der internen Tatsachen sei übereinstimmend mit unserem Bewusstsein der Tatsachen über die Außenwelt. Dieses Modell lässt sich aufgrund seiner Deckungsgleichheit mit zwei Voraussetzungen des ordinären perzeptiven Bewusstseins illustrieren, die Shoemaker Bedingung der Kausalität bzw. Bedingung der Unabhängigkeit nennt. Shoemaker attackiert das breite perzeptive Modell, indem er bekräftigt, bestimmte mentale Fakten seien „selbstimplizierend“; zudem befriedige das introspektive Bewusstsein der Mentalzustände nicht die Bedingung der Unabhängigkeit, weswegen dessen Charakterzug inadäquat vom breiten perzeptiven Modell umfasst werde. Im Folgenden gehe ich die Hauptargumente von Shoemakers Essay durch. Ich stelle die Behauptung auf, das breite perzeptive Modell der Introspektion könne die von ihm aufgeworfenen Kernprobleme erfolgreich umgehen. Nebenher erarbeite ich einige Kritik in puncto gewisser Aspekte von Shoemakers positivem Vorschlag. (shrink)

Most of us have a very firm belief in mental causation; that is, we firmly believe that our own distinctly mental properties are causally efficacious in the production of our behavior. This belief is dominating in contemporary philosophy of mind as a part of the causal explanatory exclusion problem for non-reductive materialists. I do not discuss the exclusion problem; rather, I assess the conception of mental causation that is presupposed in the current debate. I propose that in (...) order to make sense of our firm belief in mental causation we need to operate with a broader conception of it than is normally seen, focusing on common-sense aspects concerning the timing, awareness, control, and tracking of mental causation. However, prominent studies in social psychology and cognitive neuroscience show that mental causation is not as self-evident, robust, and pervasive as our firm belief in it would suggest. There is therefore a tension between the common-sense, broad conception of mental causation and our empirical evidence for mental causation. A full defense of mental causation is not just a matter of securing causal efficacy but also of situating our notion of mental properties in relation to difficult issues concerning awareness, control, and judgment. (shrink)

In his preface to Mental Reality the author cautions that much of what appears in the book has surely been said before, noting that he has probably forgotten some of his own debts. However, the pages that follow turn out to be paradoxically original and unsurprising; original, against the contemporary background of all too many thick-but-thin disquisitions on the same subject, and unsurprising owing to the author's respect for such authority as mind might claim in the matter of self-understanding. (...) The broad perspective, set forth in the first chapter, is something of a common-sense and realist psychology not unlike what one might find in Reid or in William James. It is tested by post-Wittgenstein, post-Ryle philosophies of mind, but is not chastened by them. Gone is the theater of experience, but experience itself suffers neither neurophysiological nor metaphysical impertinences! (shrink)

The fast-developing field of neuroscience has given philosophy, as well as other disciplines and the public broadly, many new tools and perspectives for investigating one of our most pressing challenges: addressing the health and well-being of our mental lives. In some cases, neuroscientific innovation has led to clearer understanding of the mechanisms of mental illness and precise new modes of treatment. In other cases, features of neuroscience itself, such as the enticing nature of the data it produces compared (...) to previous behavioral methods, together with its costliness and “coldness” have complicated understanding of mental illness and decision making about mental illness. Taking neuroscientific information into account can leave practitioners in psychiatry and law with difficult questions, stemming not only from the complexity of these fields, but also from our rapidly evolving understanding of and facility with neuroscience. In this chapter, we will review several examples of the insights and dilemmas that have unfolded as mental illness has been examined through the lens of neuroscience, covering diagnoses such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), schizophrenia, addiction, and severe mood disorders. (shrink)

Background Improving the ways in which routinely-collected mental health data are shared could facilitate substantial advances in research and treatment. However, this process should only be undertaken in partnership with those who provide such data. Despite relatively widespread investigation of public perspectives on health data sharing more generally, there is a lack of research on the views of people with mental illness. Methods Twelve people with lived experience of mental illness took part in semi-structured interviews via online (...) video software. Participants had experience of a broad range of mental health conditions including anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, eating disorders and addiction. Interview questions sought to establish how participants felt about the use of routinely-collected health data for research purposes, covering different types of health data, what health data should be used for, and any concerns around its use. Results Thematic analysis identified four overarching themes: benefits of sharing mental health data, concerns about sharing mental health data, safeguards, and data types. Participants were clear that health data sharing should facilitate improved scientific knowledge and better treatments for mental illness. There were concerns that data misuse could become another way in which individuals and society discriminate against people with mental illness, for example through insurance premiums or employment decisions. Despite this there was a generally positive attitude to sharing mental health data as long as appropriate safeguards were in place. Conclusions There was notable strength of feeling across participants that more should be done to reduce the suffering caused by mental illness, and that this could be partly facilitated by well-managed sharing of health data. The mental health research community could build on this generally positive attitude to mental health data sharing by following rigorous best practice tailored to the specific concerns of people with mental illness. (shrink)

It is supposed to be common knowledge about the history of ideas that one of the few medieval philosophical contributions preserved in modern philosophical thought is the idea that mental phenomena are distinguished from physical phenomena by their intentionality, their directedness toward some object. As is usually the case with such commonplaces about the history of ideas, this claim is not quite true. Medieval philosophers routinely described ordinary physical phenomena, such as reflections in mirrors or sounds in the air, (...) as exhibiting intentionality, while they described what modern philosophers would take to be typically mental phenomena, such as sensation and imagination, as ordinary physical processes. Still, it is true that medieval philosophers would regard all acts of cognition as characterized by intentionality, on account of which all these acts are some sort of representations of their intended objects. This course is going to provide a broad survey of the conceptual relationships between intentionality, cognition and mental representation as conceived by some of the greatest medieval philosophers, including Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham and Buridan, and some of their lesser known contemporaries. The clarification of these conceptual connections sheds some light not only on the intriguing historical relationships between medieval and modern thought on these issues, but also on some fundamental questions in the philosophy of mind as it is conceived today. (shrink)

Liberals agree that free speech should be protected, where speech is understood broadly to include all forms of intentional communication, including actions and pictures, not merely the spoken or written word. A surprising view about free speech in some liberal and legal circles is that communications should be protected on free-speech grounds only if the communications are mentally mediated. By “mentally mediated communication” we mean speech which communicates its message in such a way that the message can be rationally evaluated (...) by hearers, and causes the hearers to believe it, when it does, through the mechanism of those hearers employing their rational capacity to judge that it is correct. The mental-mediation or persuasion principle, as it is sometimes called, has some important legal and public policy implications. It has been applied to argue that certain forms of expression, despite being forms of speech or expression, lack even a prima facie claim to protection on free speech grounds. -/- Our central aim is to show why the mental mediation principle is mistaken. Liberals should think that some speech which is not mentally mediated deserves protection for the very same reasons that speech which is mentally mediated is often thought to deserve protection. (shrink)

In this paper I will address the question of rationalizing mental causation which is involved in the processes of epistemic justification. The main problem concerning mental causation consists in the apparent incompatibility of the three following claims: (i) the subject's mental states (in particular his belief states) are realized by neural states of the subject's brain; (ii) the justifying character of belief transition consists in the fact that there are certain broadly logical relations between the contents of (...) the relevant beliefs; and (iii) all generations of neural states are, at bottom, governed by the purely physical laws. I try to reconciliate the physical necessity of the neural states generation with the logical rationality of the belief transition. Surprisingly enough, it will turn out that, in a sense, each thinking subject is logically perfect. However, in another sense we are exactly as fallible and irrational as our common-sense tells us. (shrink)

I am in the process of trying to organize an ethics committee at a large community mental health center in Central Massachusetts and am seeking advice from anyone with experience in this or a similar milieu. The agency is a large (almost 700 employees), nonprofit, community-based program that operates under the auspices of a broad, academically affiliated, behavioral health system. An independent board of trustees, responsible to the parent organization governs the agency. The agency primarily provides outpatient care (...) and treatment to adults and children with mental health, substance abuse, developmental disabilities, and homelessness issues. It does not provide any psychiatric emergency or acute in-patient mental health services but does operate an inpatient detoxification unit for substance abuse treatment and DUI program. Additionally, the agency has a vast network of residential programs and transitional facilities for individuals with a history of chronic mental illness and substance abuse problems. Outpatient medical care is also provided to homeless clients who reside in area shelters (including a shelter for men and women) and a large number of clients who have HIV/AIDS and/or who have been dually diagnosed (substance abuse and mental illness), and are part of a scattered-site supportive housing program. (shrink)

This paper will explore both the ways in which the practices of self-care, specifically related to mental health, have emerged as responses to the increasingly precarious status of life after the economic shocks of the Global Financial Crisis, whilst also looking to the work of Silvia Federici and Kathi Weeks to propose models for immanent critique of these practices. Although it cannot be taken as a pure origin, post-GFC mental health discourse has increasingly seen mental health discussed (...) as a form of resilience to precarity. Furthermore, practices of self-care, and psychological forms of treatment such as cognitive behavioural therapy have become vehicles for the intensification of personal resilience in the face of systemic crisis. If self-care involves an inward looking and depoliticised subject, surely political emancipation lies elsewhere. The possibility of some alternative to our present state of affairs, where self-care increasingly appears as a form of ‘voluntary servitude,’ that is to say, a form of self-subjugation with serious political risks, must surely be taken as a continual project for those engaged in critical inquiry. Then again, to suggest that those engaging in self-care are simply reproducing neoliberal subjectivity would surely miss the ways in which such forms of self-preservation might appear as unavoidable for the individuals in question. Through an engagement with their work—and one that draws parallels between their strategic critiques of reproductive labour broadly speaking, and the more specific area of mental illness and neoliberal governmentality—the question of the “necessity” of self-care will be brought into alignment with the possibilities of its practicality. (shrink)

Neurotechnologies broadly understood are tools that have the capability to read, record and modify our mental activity by acting on its brain correlates. The emergence of increasingly powerful and sophisticated techniques has given rise to the proposal to introduce new rights specifically directed to protect mental privacy, freedom of thought, and mental integrity. These rights, also proposed as basic human rights, are conceived in direct relation to tools that threaten mental privacy, freedom of thought, mental (...) integrity, and personal identity. In this paper, our goal is to give a philosophical foundation to a specific right that we will call right to mental integrity. It encapsulates both the classical concepts of privacy and non-interference in our mind/brain. Such a philosophical foundation refers to certain features of the mind that hitherto could not be reached directly from the outside: intentionality, first-person perspective, personal autonomy in moral choices and in the construction of one's narrative, and relational identity. A variety of neurotechnologies or other tools, including artificial intelligence, alone or in combination can, by their very availability, threaten our mental integrity. Therefore, it is necessary to posit a specific right and provide it with a theoretical foundation and justification. It will be up to a subsequent treatment to define the moral and legal boundaries of such a right and its application. (shrink)

In what follows, I appeal to Charles Babbage’s discussion of the division of mental labor to provide evidence that—at least with respect to the social acquisition, storage, retrieval, and transmission of knowledge—epistemologists have, for a broad range of phenomena of crucial importance to actual knowers in their epistemic practices in everyday life, failed adequately to appreciate the significance of socially distributed cognition. If the discussion here is successful, I will have demonstrated that a particular presumption widely held within (...) the contemporary discussion of the epistemology of testimony—a presumption that I will term the personalist requirement—fails to account for those very practices of knowers that I detail here. I will then conclude by suggesting that an alternate account of testimonial warrant, one that has heretofore been underappreciated, ought to be given more serious consideration—in particular because it is well suited to account for those actual practices of knowers that the personalist requirement leaves unrecognized. (shrink)

Moral particularism, broadly understood, is the position that morality resists codification into a set of rules or principles.1 Jonathan Dancy, particularism's main contemporary proponent, maintains that there are few, if any, true moral principles, and moral reasoning and judgment do not require them. Instead, acts are justified by the salient features of particular situations, and moral reasoning requires attunement to these elements. In rejecting a rule-bound approach to morality, particularists deny pictures of moral education emphasizing knowledge and application of principles. (...) While Dancy offers a competing view of competence, his explanation of the possibility of moral education is inadequate, leaving a... (shrink)

In The Elm and the Expert, Jerry Fodor tries to reconcile three philosophical positions he is presently committed to: a computational theory of mind, intentional realism and a denotational theory of meaning. One problem he faces is this: a denotational semantics, according to which the meaning of a singular term like a name is exhausted by its referent, seems to rule out there being true intentional generalizations, or generalizations which advert to the contents of a subject's mental states. That (...) there are such true generalizations is a major element in Fodor's intentional realism. Accordingly, Fodor is forced to find a way of dissolving this apparent incompatibility. This paper looks at his attempts to do so and concludes that they fail. (shrink)