Monthly Archives: June 2017

Report on the Philosophy of Psychiatry Work in Progress Day, Lancaster University, 2nd of June 2017

Causation, Classification, Methodology, Philosophy

The 2nd of June saw the annual Philosophy of Psychiatry Work in Progress Day. This has been going on for longer than I have been at Lancaster and is the fifth one I have presented at. There was good attendance and it went smoothly, an enjoyable day of seeing papers from multiple perspectives in the philosophy of psychiatry. I shall give a summery of the talks below.

Rachel Cooper (Lancaster) presented on “Intentional actions, symptom checklists, and problems with cross-cultural validity”. She discussed standardised tests for personality disorders and how they included intentional actions. She then discussed how intentional actions are often given different interpretations in different cultures, creating problems for such standardised personality tests.

Marcin Moskalewicz (Oxford) presented on “Ipseity, self-consciousness, and the problem of time in schizophrenia”. He outlined ways in which time is perceived and explained how altered self-consciousness in schizophrenia can lead to an altered sense of time.

Moujan Mirdamadi (Lancaster) presented on “Death-consciousness and Depression in Iran”. She discussed the Iranian focus upon death and described how she felt this influenced some of the descriptions she received from her qualitative study of depressed Iranian patients.

Ian Hare (UEA) presented on “Qualitative Methods: a Philosophical Toolkit for Cognitive Psychiatry”. He outlined how qualitative studies can be used to gain greater descriptive understanding of a diagnosis and this can be used to provide a firmer basis for constructing psychological and psychiatric theories.

Rachel Gunn (Birmingham) presented on “The Delusional Experience as a Breakdown in Affective Framing”. She described how experience of delusions was not just purely mental but also involved many physiological and experiential changes. She then suggested that this means non-cognitive therapy approaches could be of value.

Dan Degerman (Lancaster) presented on “If you’re not psychiatry, you’re antipsychiatry – Exploring how American psychiatrists perceive their critics”. He outlined how psychiatrists perceived anti-psychiatrists and how they often labeled critics with many divergent views as anti-psychiatrist. He then suggested this can unfairly devalue psychiatric patients, who often have valuable concerns over psychiatry, thereby reducing their political agency.

Anneli Jefferson (Birmingham) presented on “Mental disorders and brain disorders – an obsolete distinction?”. She looked popular and influential arguments against seeing mental disorders and brain disorders which employ a hardware-software analogy. She criticised this argument on causal grounds then looked at counter arguments to her claims.

Joel Kruger (Exeter) presented on “Unworlding and Affective Externalism in Schizophrenia”. He discussed notions of the external mind, how perception and cognition can involve parts of the external world, and used it to understand notions of breakdown of affective scaffolding in schizophrenia and the sense of unworlding it leads to.

Victoria Allison-Bolger presented on ” ‘A thing like the ocean’ – using metaphor in understanding psychoses”. She discussed how many psychiatric diagnosis did not fit typical notions of a good classifications and suggested this means we should modify notions of good classifications to fit the diagnosis rather than make diagnosis fit our preconceptions about what is a good classification.

Gloria Ayob (UCLan) presented on “Personal autonomy and serious psychopathology”. She discussed the difficulties and possibilities of attaining a value neutral notion of serious psychosis. She tried to see if the Liberal notion that everyone should be free to believe what they wish providing it does not harm anyone could fit the notion that some people have deluded views of the world.

Finally, I presented on “Causal Structures vs Causal Mechanisms: Implications for RDoC”. I will outline these ideas in the future.

Overall, an enjoyable day with a lot of paper presented on interesting and diverse areas. The workshop typically runs every year, usually in May, June or July, and it would be worth looking for the announcement of the 2018 workshop next year.

Philosophical analysis of Neurotribes

Autism, Classification

My article, ‘Putting the Present in the History of Autism’ has been published in Studies in the History and Philosophy of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences (a pdf of the uncorrected proofs can can be found here). Though the article title mentions history, there is much philosophical content in article.

I focus upon Silberman’s extremely positive message about autism, discussing his portrayal of the past as being mistaken about the diagnostic criteria for autism and how the modern diagnostic criteria for autism has effectively got it right. I felt strangely conflicted about Silberman’s argument. One on hand, I thought he was unfair to many historical diagnostic criteria for autism. On the other hand, I still broadly agreed with his position. I agree with Silberman with that autism is getting something right about the world, being a worthy scientific concept and describing the world to at least a reasonably degree of accuracy. On this basis I significantly share Silberman’s positive message. However, as much as I believe in modern autism, I might believe even more in an alternative diagnostic approach to autism (whether it be one similar to one used in the past or something new), such as one with a greater number of subtypes or one with slightly altered boundaries. I felt Silberman’s positive message unfairly downplayed such alternatives. I think we need do research and consider our values to decide if the current diagnostic approach is superior to alternative diagnostic criteria and possible subtypes. We need study alternative approach and subtypes to see if we can make autism get even more right about the world or, alternatively, become more confident about modern autism by showing it works better than possible alternative views. So whilst I share Silberman’s positive views, I felt they risked reducing interest in scientifically investigating alternative approaches to autism, hence I both agreed with Silberman yet was critical of his position. I outline my views fully in the article.