Monthly Archives: July 2017

On the 2nd of June 2017 the Philosophy of Psychiatry work in progress day took place at Lancaster University. The following papers were presented:

Rachel Cooper (Lancaster) – Intentional actions, symptom checklists, and problems with cross-cultural validity

Marcin Moskalewicz (Oxford) – Ipseity, self-consciousness, and the problem of time in schizophrenia

Owen Earnshaw (Durham) – Psychosis and the Grammar of Interpersonal Relations

Moujan Mirdamadi (Lancaster) – Death-consciousness and Depression in Iran

Ian Hare (UEA) – Qualitative Methods: a Philosophical Toolkit for Cognitive Psychiatry

Rachel Gunn (Birmingham) – The Delusional Experience as a Breakdown in Affective Framing

Anneli Jefferson (Birmingham) – ‘Mental disorders and brain disorders – an obsolete distinction?’

Joel Kruger (Exeter) – Unworlding and Affective Externalism in Schizophrenia

Victoria Allison-Bolger – “‘A thing like the ocean’ – using metaphor in understanding psychoses”

Gloria Ayob – Personal autonomy and serious psychopathology

Sam Fellows (Lancaster) – Causal Structures vs Causal Mechanisms: Implications for RDoC

On the 3rd of June 2016 the conference “Does the philosophy of psychiatry need metaphysics” took place in Lancaster town centre at the Story Institute.

Much recent work in the philosophy of psychiatry has presupposed some metaphysical framework or other (eg pragmatism, realism, a McDowellian or Wittgensteinian approach). This conference brings together the authors of a number of influential recent books to consider the extent to which work in the philosophy of psychiatry requires the assumption of a metaphysical framework. The following papers were presented.

Peter Zachar (University of Auburn at Montgomery) ‘Empiricism, pragmatist metaphysics and philosophy of psychiatry’

Rachel Cooper (University of Lancaster) ‘Classification: Realism versus pragmatism’

Derek Bolton (Kings College London & Institute for Psychiatry)’ Localising metaphysics: continuities with science and culture’

Tim Thornton (University of Central Lancashire) ‘The manifest metaphysics of Essential Philosophy of Psychiatry

John O’Neill (Manchester University) ‘Commentary’

Audio files of the first four presentations can be found in the Materials section of this website.

This conference was funded by the British Society for the Philosophy of Science, and by the department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion, Lancaster University

On the 2nd of June 2016 the Philosophy of Psychiatry work in progress day took place at Lancaster University. The following papers were presented:

Reinier Schuur: “Wakefield’s Harmful Dysfunction Account of Mental Disorder as a Jacksonian Conceptual Analysis”

Hane Maung: “Psychiatric Formulation as Causal Explanation”

Kevin Jones: “Shifting Conceptualisations of Mental Disorder 1930–1960”

Joel Krueger: “Psychopathology beyond the Head”

Anna Boncompagni: “Doubting the Indubitable: Philosophy and the Loss of Common Sense”

Moujan Mirdamadi: “Phenomenological Approaches to Mental illness across Cultures: A Case for Iranian Dysphoria”

Anna Bergqvist: “Value, Perspective and Integration: Reassessing Narrative Selfhood in Borderline Personality Disorder”

Claudia Cristalli: “Further Reflections on Psychophysics: The Metaphysical Frame of C. S. Peirce’s Quantitative Analysis of Sensation”

Daniel Shipsides: “The Problem of Harmfulness Judgements in the Diagnosis of Mental Disorder: The DSM’s Need for Explicit and Honest Normative Guidance”

Richard Hassall: “Can a Unified Causal Theory of Natural Kinds Act as a Yardstick for Assessing the Disease Model of Mental Disorders?”

On the 5th of June 2015 the Philosophy of Psychiatry Work in Progress day took place. This year’s workshop was dedicated to the memory of Harry Lesser. The following papers were presented.

Sam Fellowes: “Which behavioural manifestations count for symptom formulation can be relative to psychiatric classifications, with implications for DSM, RDoC and Social Constructivism”

Hane Maung: “Do Diagnoses in Psychiatry Function as Explanations?”

Dieneke Hubbeling: “Homeostatic Property Cluster and Illness Entitlements”

George Turner: “Separating causation from correlation: a cautionary tale from the history of testing depression and self esteem”

Rachel Cooper: “Where’s the problem? Laing, extended cognition and social models of disability”