In the conclusion to this multi-part article I first review the discussions carried out around the six essential questions in psychiatric diagnosis – the position taken by Allen Frances on each question, the commentaries on the respective question along with Frances’ responses to the commentaries, and my own view of the multiple discussions. In this review I emphasize that the core question is the first – what is the nature of psychiatric illness – and that in some manner all further (...) questions follow from the first. Following this review I attempt to move the discussion forward, addressing the first question from the perspectives of natural kind analysis and complexity analysis. This reflection leads toward a view of psychiatric disorders – and future nosologies – as far more complex and uncertain than we have imagined. (shrink)

In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role (...) of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM – whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part 1 of this article took up the first two questions. Part 2 took up the second two questions. Part 3 now deals with Questions 5 & 6. Question 5 confronts the issue of utility, whether the manual design of DSM-III and IV favors clinicians or researchers, and what that means for DSM-5. Our final question, Question 6, takes up a concluding issue, whether the acknowledged problems with the earlier DSMs warrants a significant overhaul of DSM-5 and future manuals. As in Parts 1 & 2 of this article, the general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances. (shrink)

In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role (...) of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM - whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part I of this article will take up the first two questions. With the first question, invited commentators express a range of opinion regarding the nature of psychiatric disorders, loosely divided into a realist position that the diagnostic categories represent real diseases that we can accurately name and know with our perceptual abilities, a middle, nominalist position that psychiatric disorders do exist in the real world but that our diagnostic categories are constructs that may or may not accurately represent the disorders out there, and finally a purely constructivist position that the diagnostic categories are simply constructs with no evidence of psychiatric disorders in the real world. The second question again offers a range of opinion as to how we should define a mental or psychiatric disorder, including the possibility that we should not try to formulate a definition. The general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances. (shrink)

In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role (...) of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM - whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part I of this article took up the first two questions. Part II will take up the second two questions. Question 3 deals with the question as to whether DSM-V should assume a conservative or assertive posture in making changes from DSM-IV. That question in turn breaks down into discussion of diagnoses that depend on, and aim toward, empirical, scientific validation, and diagnoses that are more value-laden and less amenable to scientific validation. Question 4 takes up the role of pragmatic consideration in a psychiatric nosology, whether the purely empirical considerations need to be tempered by considerations of practical consequence. As in Part 1 of this article, the general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances. (shrink)

In many communities around the world, speech to infants and small children has increased mean pitch, increased pitch range, increased vowel duration, and vowel hyper-articulation when compared to speech directed to adults. Some of these IDS and CDS features are also attested in foreigner-directed speech, which has been studied for a smaller range of languages, generally major national languages, spoken by millions of people. We examined vowel acoustics in CDS, conversational ADS, and monologues directed to a foreigner in the Towet (...) dialect of the Papuan language Nungon, spoken by 300 people in a remote region in northeastern Papua New Guinea. Previous work established that Nungon CDS entails optional use of consonant alteration, special nursery vocabulary, and special morphosyntax. This study shows that Nungon CDS to children aged 2;2–3;10 lacks vowel hyper-articulation, but still displays other common prosodic traits of CDS styles around the world: increased mean pitch and pitch range. A developmental effect was also attested, in that speech to 2-year-olds contained vowels that were significantly longer than those in speech to 3-year-olds, which in turn had vowels of similar duration to those in Nungon ADS. We also found that Nungon FDS vowel triangles, measured from monologues primarily directed to a non-native speaker, were significantly larger than those of either CDS or conversational ADS, indicating vowel hyper-articulation. The Nungon pattern may align with the patterns of vowels in Norwegian IDS, CDS, and FDS, where hyper-articulation is found in FDS, but not CDS or IDS. The languages of the New Guinea area constitute 20% of the world's languages, but neither an acoustic comparison of vowels in CDS and ADS, nor an acoustic study of FDS, has previously been completed for any language of New Guinea. The function of an FDS style in a small, closed community like those of much of New Guinea may differ from that in larger societies, since there are very few non-native speakers of Nungon. Thus, this study uses monologues recorded with a foreign researcher as interlocutor to study Nungon FDS. (shrink)

While pharmaceutical industry involvement in producing, interpreting, and regulating medical knowledge and practice is widely accepted and believed to promote medical innovation, industry-favouring biases may result in prioritizing corporate profit above public health. Using diabetes as our example, we review successive changes over forty years in screening, diagnosis, and treatment guidelines for type 2 diabetes and prediabetes, which have dramatically expanded the population prescribed diabetes drugs, generating a billion-dollar market. We argue that these guideline recommendations have emerged under pervasive industry (...) influence and persisted, despite weak evidence for their health benefits and indications of serious adverse effects associated with many of the drugs they recommend. We consider pharmaceutical industry conflicts of interest in some of the research and publications supporting these revisions, and in related standard-setting committees and oversight panels. We raise concern over the long-term impact of these multifaceted involvements. Rather than accept industry conflicts of interest as normal, needing only to be monitored and managed, we suggest challenging that normalcy, and ask: what are the real costs of tolerating such industry participation? We urge the development of a broader focus to fully understand and curtail the systemic nature of industry’s influence over medical knowledge and practice. (shrink)

Han Solo‐orphan, laconically cool Corellian smuggler, Rebel general, and martyr for the Resistance, is one of the most‐loved characters in the Star Wars universe. His emotional and moral development throughout the original trilogy into a trusted friend, Leia's lover, and a warrior for Rebel values is inspiring. In the sequel trilogy, he's returned to smuggling and reluctantly re‐assumes the mantle of father to Ben Solo, an alienated and ultimately patricidal son, but even death fails to stop him from offering fatherly (...) advice to bring Kylo Ren back to the light side. In a universe of tyrants, freedom‐fighters, Force‐sensitives, Jedi, and Sith, everybody seems to be peddling a philosophy. But Han Solo is a scoundrel, a skeptic, and a Corellian who seems to want to evade a philosophical life. Skepticism, anti‐authoritarianism, and a desire to demystify–to strip away pretensions to reveal the true, but often ugly face of reality. (shrink)

We agree with Grossmann that fear often builds cooperative relationships. Yet he neglects much extant literature. Prior researchers have discussed how fear (and other emotions) build cooperative relationships, have questioned whether fear per se evolved to serve this purpose, and have emphasized that human cooperation takes many forms. Grossmann's theory would benefit from a wider consideration of this work.

This chapter reviews Star Trek's course in wrestling with issues of political and social secularization. Any debate about secularization is a set of arguments about the best relationship between religious beliefs and institutions on the one hand, and political, social, and economic structures on the other. The chapter provides several moral arguments as to why liberal democracies like the United States should pursue greater secularism in the future. A popular but particularly unhelpful way of framing this debate is in terms (...) of religion versus reason. Deep Space Nine is the Trek series in which one society's religious interests and the Federation's secular commitments create the most friction. Some characteristics of religious thinking are quite antagonistic to political principles of a liberal democracy. Long since grown out of the antagonistic Roddenberry attitude toward religion in the public sphere, secularism in the Star Trek series reminds the human adventure is just beginning. (shrink)

The dystopian elements of the Alien films display the dark side of social mechanisms. Modern philosophy is not exempt from the temptations of this “authoritarian synthesis”. It also responds to the themes of impurity, whether through religious heresy, mental illness, or bodily invasion or corruption. In the shooting script for Alien, it is clear that Ripley has been “infected” by the Xenomorph Facehugger in the pod; on screen, that fact is held from us until much later in the film for (...) dramatic effect. Ripley's fears about contagion actually fit together well with the thinking of the German Idealist philosophers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, who were among the first philosophers of biology. Ripley does not seem much interested in sex throughout the first two Alien films, but she is interested in having a family, especially after Newt's death. (shrink)

The currents of philosophy have always been influenced by the culture in which thinkers live and work. In ancient China, the profound turmoil that eventually tore apart the Zhou dynasty led to social and intellectual unrest, out of which was born a new class of writers and thinkers who created the foundations for Chinese philosophy. There are historical and philosophical parallels with this Chinese time of uprooting in the “Dark Times” of the Star Wars universe. Few Jedi survive through the (...) Dark Times, but they are the closest thing to philosophers we can find during the Star Wars saga's most intense period of oppression and wickedness. This chapter considers Dark Horse's Dark Times series for examples of three Jedi Masters who survived Palpatine's purge. Dass Jennir (a human), Kai Hudorra (a Bothan), and K'kruhk (a Whiphid) are studied here through the Chinese philosophies of Confucianism and Daoism. (shrink)

Like many episodes of South Park, “Medicinal Fried Chicken” drags real political scenarios into the cold, hard light of the Rocky Mountains. In this chapter, the author aims at challenging the received interpretation of the moral message behind “Medicinal Fried Chicken” and many other South Park episodes, the message that legislating lifestyles is immoral at worst and ridiculous at best. This message is encapsulated by the moral perspective known of libertarianism, which takes individual rights in political and social scenarios to (...) be not only basic, but also to trump many other moral considerations. For tensions between an individual's good and the common good in the drug legalization debate, the chapter further discusses a 1989 exchange between Milton Friedman and William J. Bennett. (shrink)

Both Georg W.F. Hegel and Martin Heidegger would find the lack of art in Frank Herbert's distant future more disturbing than merely the loss of technique and beauty. The experience of truth through art is to see the elements of the artwork of Thatched Cottages at Cordeville not with the same eyes as if we were walking by this scene in person. The point of Cottages at Cordeville the Duniverse version of this painting owned by Taraza, Mother Superior Odrade, and (...) then Sheeana – as revealing a truth beyond understanding is highlighted in its brief appearance in Chapterhouse: Dune. Despite Hegel and Heidegger's bad news that “art is dead,” the gholas and their destinies make it seem as though the vast cycle of the play called Dune is ready to begin yet again – surely good news. (shrink)

In avatar, Jake Sully struggles with his sense of self at a variety of levels, including the metaphysical. In Plato's and Aristotle's book Philosophy in the Flesh, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson call this shared conjecture the “folk theory of essences.” In Avatar, the presuppositions about personal identity that ground the linkage process between human beings and avatar bodies seems to follow Locke's insights quite faithfully. This way of talking about the essential self challenges the bodyswapping scenarios of John Locke (...) and Avatar, urging us to attend not to far‐fetched thought experiments but instead to our first‐person experience of how mind and body actually interact, our ordinary sense of “what it's like” to be embodied. This approach, known as “existential phenomenology,” offers an alternative to perspectives like Locke's – perspectives. In many ways, the existential phenomenology coincides with Na'vi wisdom. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: A Bad Sign? Pictures of the Future on Your Skin Never a Tattooed Man Like This Tattoos and Human Nature Covered with Rare and Significant Beauties Creativity, Creativity, Creativity Can't You Recognize the Human in the Inhuman?

This third brand-new 'Star Wars & Philosophy' title once again takes a fresh look at the franchise with all-new chapters. The focus of this volume is the more recent entries into the franchise, including hit TV shows such as THe Mandalorian. Modern applied philosophy is also used to analyse the Star Wars universe: In addition to thorny metaphysical questions about the nature of time and free will, this volume highlights the staggering cultural impact of George Lucas's universe. The newest Star (...) Wars narratives tackle ethnicity on alien worlds and how love and sex with a droid like L3-37 would work ("It works"). The connections between the Separatist Freedom Movement and the struggle for social justice in the USA in the 21st century are brought to light. And philosophical second looks at Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi prove there is much more to this controversial entry in the Skywalker saga. (shrink)

A timely book that uses science fiction to provoke reflection and discussion on philosophical issues From the nature of mind to the ethics of AI and neural enhancement, science fiction thought experiments fire the philosophical imagination, encouraging us to think outside of the box about classic philosophical problems and even to envision new ones. Science Fiction and Philosophy explores puzzles about virtual reality, transhumanism, whether time travel is possible, the nature of artificial intelligence, and topics in neuroethics, among other timely (...) issues. This thought-provoking volume is suitable for students and general readers but also examines new and more advanced topics of interest to seasoned philosophers and scientists. Susan Schneider is Assistant Professor in the department of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania and an Affiliated Faculty Member at the Institutes for Research in Cognitive Science and Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. (shrink)

This chapter provides an introduction to The Ultimate South Park and Philosophy. South Park is one of the most important series on TV, because the show isn't afraid to lampoon the extremist fanatics that are associated with any social, ethical, economical, or religious position. This is extremely important and necessary in our diverse society of free and autonomous persons who hold a plurality of beliefs and values. Fanatics usually stop thinking issues through and, ultimately, they're primed to cause harm to (...) others through their actions. Religious fanatics get hit pretty hard by the creators of South Park and rightly so. Philosophy deals with the love and pursuit of wisdom, and this quest makes us ask what kinds of things really exist, what we're justified in believing, what we ought to do, and how we ought to be living, among other things. (shrink)

A threat to humanity portending the end of our species lurks in the cold recesses of space. Our only hope is an eleven-year-old boy. Celebrating the long-awaited release of the movie adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s novel about highly trained child geniuses fighting a race of invading aliens, this collection of original essays probes key philosophical questions raised in the narrative, including the ethics of child soldiers, politics on the internet, and the morality of war and genocide. Original essays dissect (...) the diverse philosophical questions raised in Card’s best-selling sci-fi classic, winner of the Nebula and Hugo Awards and which has been translated in 29 languages Publication coincides with planned release of major motion picture adaptation of _Ender’s Game_ starring Asa Butterfield and Harrison Ford Treats a wealth of core contemporary issues in morality and ethics, including child soldiers, the best kind of education and the use and misuse of global communications for political purposes A stand-out addition to the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series. (shrink)

This chapter examines the sense of irony along with the parallels between the persona of “Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report” and the character of the “ironist” discussed both by philosophical Romantics in the nineteenth century as well as the American philosopher Richard Rorty (1931–2007). For both Colbert and Rorty, irony can be funny and refreshing, and yet at the same time represents a challenge to our beliefs. The chapter looks at the differences between verbal irony and its more robust (...) counterpart, “existential irony,” and examines the extent to which Colbert fits this description. More importantly, the embracing irony has serious implications for how to deal with political responsibilities in the new and more precarious, “post‐ironic” world. (shrink)

_Enlightenment from the _South Park_ gang faster than you can say, "Screw you guys, I'm going home"!_ _The Ultimate South Park and Philosophy: Respect My Philosophah!_ presents a compilation of serious philosophical reflections on the twisted insights voiced by characters in TV’s most irreverent animated series. Offers readers a philosophically smart and candid approach to one of television’s most subversive and controversial shows as it enters its 17th season Draws sharp parallels between the irreverent nature of _South Park_ and the (...) inquiring and skeptical approach of Western philosophy Journeys deep beyond the surface of the show’s scatological humor to address the perennial questions raised in _South Park_ and the contemporary social and political issues that inspire each episode Utilizes familiar characters and episodes to illustrate such philosophical topics as moral relativism, freedom of expression, gay marriage, blasphemy, democracy, feminism, animal ethics, existential questions, and much more It’s a Bigger, Longer & Uncut version of the highly acclaimed _South Park and Philosophy: You Know, I Learned Something Today_—and is guaranteed to be much funnier than killing Kenny. (shrink)