The properties colored and red stand in a special relation. Namely, red is a determinate of colored, and colored is determinable relative to red. Many other properties are similarly related. The determination relation is an interesting topic of logical investigation in its own right, and the prominent philosophical inquiries into this relation have, accordingly, operated at a high level of abstraction.1 It is time to return to these investigations, not just as a logical amusement, but for the payoffs such investigation (...) can yield in solving some basic metaphysical problems. The goal in what follows is twofold. First, I argue for a novel understanding of the determination relation. Second, this understanding is applied to yield insights into property instance (e.g., trope) individuation, how different property types can share an instance, the relation between property types and property instances, as well as applications to causation (mental causation, in particular). (shrink)

In recent years deflationary accounts of self-deception, under the banner of motivationalism, have proven popular. On these views the deception at work is simply a motivated bias. In contrast, we argue for an account of self-deception that involves more robustly deceptive unconscious processes. These processes are strategic, flexible, and demand some retention of the truth. We offer substantial empirical support for unconscious deceptive processes that run counter to certain philosophical and psychological claims that the unconscious is rigid, ballistic, and of (...) limited cognitive sophistication. (shrink)

People are biased toward beliefs that are welcomed by their in-group. Some beliefs produced by these biases—such as climate change denial and religious belief—can be fruitfully modeled by signaling theory. The idea is that the beliefs function so as to be detected by others and manipulate their behavior, primarily for the benefits that accrue from favorable tribal self-presentation. Signaling theory can explain the etiology, distinctive form, proper function, and alterability of these beliefs.

Beliefs serve at least two broad functions. First, they help us navigate the world. Second, they serve as signals to manipulate others. Philosophers and psychologists have focused on the first function while largely overlooking the second. This article advances a conception of signals and makes a prima facie case for a social signaling function for at least some beliefs. Truth and rational support are often irrelevant to the signaling function. If some beliefs evolved for a signaling function, then we should (...) expect various biases that aid in the manipulation of others. (shrink)

Self-deception poses longstanding and fascinating paradoxes. Philosophers have questioned whether, and how, self-deception is even possible; evolutionary theorists have debated whether it is adaptive. For Sigmund Freud self-deception was a fundamental key to understanding the unconscious, and from The Bible to The Great Gatsby literature abounds with characters renowned for their self-deception. But what exactly is self-deception? Why is it so puzzling? How is it performed? And is it harmful? ...

This book uncovers a logical structure that is common to many, if not all, of the kinds posited by scientific taxonomies. Specification relations, such as those holding between determinates and determinables (determination), are central to this logical investigation of kinds. The species–genus relation is a familiar specification relation for substantival kinds, but this book focuses on adjectival kinds—whose instances are properties—instead. Determination relations are then used to structure kinds at the same level of abstraction into property spaces, which in turn (...) leads to a theory for individuating properties (tropes). These determination relations are contrasted with realization relations, the latter being the favored way of understanding the connection between the mental and the physical. Particular attention is given to the distinction between multiple realizability and multiple determination, and it is argued that determination and realization are mutually exclusive. The claim that multiple realizability entails various senses of autonomy is defended from various reductionist challenges. These theories of determination and realization then provide general standards for establishing the autonomy of the special sciences or, conversely, their reduction. (shrink)

One version of the Humean Theory of Motivation holds that all actions can be causally explained by reference to a belief–desire pair. Some have argued that pretense presents counter-examples to this principle, as pretense is instead causally explained by a belief-like imagining and a desire-like imagining. We argue against this claim by denying imagination the power of motivation. Still, we allow imagination a role in guiding action as a script . We generalize the script concept to show how things besides (...) imagination can occupy this same role in both pretense and non-pretense actions. The Humean Theory of Motivation should then be modified to cover this script role. (shrink)

Self-deceptive projects are frequently supported by our social environment, with others influencing both our motives and capacities for self-deception. Digital spaces offer even more opportunities for interactive self-deception. Digital platforms are incentivized to sort us and capture our engagement, and online users also have desires to be sorted and engaged. The execution of self-deception is partially offloaded to algorithms and social networks that filter our evidence, selectively draw our attention to evidence, offer rationalizations, and give us repetitive and emotion-laden feedback. (...) Nevertheless, this is not so different from what we find in offline environments. Further, most of this offloading of information processing is willingly accepted by users and is in line with their desires. As such, responsibility for any motivationally biased beliefs largely lies with the individual internet user. (shrink)

Deflationists reduce self-deception to a motivated bias, eliminating the need for doxastic tension, divided minds, intentions, or even effortful action. While deflationism fits many cases, there are others that demand more robust psychological processes and complexity. We turn to the empirical literature on self-handicapping to find commonplace examples of self-deception with high levels of agential involvement. Many self-handicappers experience non-trivial doubts, engage in strategic and purposive self-deception, and possess knowledge that must remain unconscious for their project to succeed. This occurs (...) with self-handicapping for the sake of self-esteem regulation. Such self-handicapping not only requires self-deception but also furthers it. (shrink)

Two of the most basic questions regarding self-deception remain unsettled: What do self-deceivers want? What do self-deceivers get? I argue that self-deceivers are motivated by a desire to believe. However, in significant contrast with Alfred Mele’s account of self-deception, I argue that self-deceivers do not satisfy this desire. Instead, the end-state of self-deception is a false higher-order belief. This shows all self-deception to be a failure of self-knowledge.

Some collective irrationalities, like epistemically and pragmatically reckless Covid skepticism, are especially dangerous. While we normally have incentives to avoid dangerous beliefs, there are cases in which the danger of a belief is valuable. This is not captured by most accounts of motivated reasoning. I argue that Covid skepticism can function as a costly signal (handicap) so as to more effectively communicate social identity and commitment.

Causal overdetermination worries arise in a number of domains, but most notably in the philosophy of mind. ln discussions of such worries, alleged examples of causal overdetermination are uniformly viewed as primajzcie problematic. While all alleged cases of overdetermination might be problematic, I aim to show that they are so for different reasons. Examples of causal overdetermination neatly divide into three varieties, corresponding to the connections between the mechanisms and the properties of the causes. Future debates over overdetermination, and mental (...) causation in particular, should pay heed to this distinction. (shrink)

b>: This article explains the concept of multiple realizability and its role in the philosophy of mind. In particular, I consider what is required for the multiple realizability of psychological kinds, the relevance of multiple realizability to the reducibility and autonomy of psychology, as well as further refinements of the concept that would prove helpful.

This article considers the product of self-deception. Many assume, or argue, that the product of self-deception is a belief. I argue against this being a general truth by outlining some of the ways in which the self-deceived can be deeply conflicted, such that there is no fact of the matter concerning what they believe. These situations are not adequately addressed by many accounts of self-deception. Further, I argue that this task requires going beyond our folk psychological classifications.

While the concept of multiple realizability is widely used, it is seldom rigorously characterized. This paper defends a liberal conception of multiple realizability as sameness of type through _any_ differences in the (lower-level) conditions that give rise to instances of that type. This kind of “sameness through difference” is contrasted with another type of asymmetric dependency relation between properties, multiple _specification_. This liberal conception is then defended from objections, and it is augmented by a concept of relativized multiple realizability. The (...) last section presents a survey of the ontological, explanatory, and methodological consequences of this analysis of multiple realizability. (shrink)

Recent work in the cognitive sciences has argued that beliefs sometimes acquire signaling functions in virtue of their ability to reveal information that manipulates “mindreaders.” This paper sketches some of the evolutionary and design considerations that could take agents from solipsistic goal pursuit to beliefs that serve as social signals. Such beliefs will be governed by norms besides just the traditional norms of epistemology. As agents become better at detecting the agency of others, either through evolutionary history or individual learning, (...) the candidate pool for signaling expands. This logic holds for natural and artificial agents that find themselves in recurring social situations that reward the sharing of one’s thoughts. (shrink)

Robert Trivers has proposed perhaps the only serious adaptationist account of self-deception—that the primary function of self-deception is to better deceive others. But this account covers only a subset of cases and needs further refinement. A better evolutionary account of self-deception and cognitive biases more generally will more rigorously recognize the various ways in which false beliefs affect both the self and others. This article offers formulas for determining the optimal doxastic orientation, giving special consideration to conflicted self-deception as an (...) alternative to outright self-delusion. A novel taxonomy of self-deception, as it relates to the beliefs held by others, is also presented. While Trivers makes a plausible case for the adaptive value of certain cognitive biases, a more fragmented and nuanced account of the social forces impacting the evolution of self-deception is needed. (shrink)

In traditional Frankfurt cases some conditions that make an outcome unavoidable fail to bring about that outcome. These are cases of causal preemption. I defend this interpretation of traditional Frankfurt cases, and its application to free will, against a dilemma raised by various libertarians. But I go on to argue that Frankfurt cases involving gen- uine causal overdetermination are even more effective at achieving the compatibilist’s purposes. Such cases avoid the “flicker of freedom” debate and better display the central disagreement (...) with regard to the Principle of Alternate Possibilities. (shrink)

Bernard Williams has argued that, because belief aims at getting the truth right, it is a conceptual truth that we cannot directly will to believe. Manyothers have adopted Williams’ claim that believers necessarily respect truth-conducive reasons and evidence. By presenting increasingly stronger cases, I argue that, on the contrary, believers can quite consciously disregard the demand for truth-conducive reasons and evidence. The irrationality of those who would directly will to believe is not any greater than that displayed by some actual (...) believers. So, our inability to directly will to believe is a contingent truth (at best). (shrink)

In an earlier paper, we appealed to various empirical studies to make the case that the unconscious mind is capable of robust self-deception. Paul Doody has challenged our interpretations of that empirical evidence. In this reply we defend our interpretations, arguing that the unconscious is engaged in strategic and flexible goal pursuit.

Philosophical accounts of self-deception almost invariably treat it as a phenomenon concerning belief. But this article argues that, in the very same sense that we can be self-deceived about belief, we can be self-deceived about matters that concern our practical identities — e.g., our desires, emotions, values, and lifestyles. Given that our practical identities are at least as important to us as are our beliefs, philosophical accounts of self-deception should accommodate such practical self-deception.

Prima facie, there is an incompatibility between God’s alleged omnipotence and impeccability. I argue that this incompat- ibility is more than prima facie. Attempts to avoid this appearance of incompatibility by allowing that there are commonplace states of affairs that an omnipotent being cannot bring about are unsuc- cessful. Instead, we should accept that God is not omnipotent. This is acceptable since it is a mistake to hold that omnipotence is a perfection. God’s moral perfection should be privileged over God’s (...) potency properties—and the same is true of human beings as well. (shrink)

Metaphilosophy, Volume 53, Issue 1, Page 85-99, January 2022.

ABSTRACTThis article responds to Glazer’s claim that signals must be perceptible as well as his purported counterexample to my conditions for signaling. I defend a broader sense of signal detection that allows for imperceptible signals. While we disagree over the belief-signaling thesis, Glazer and I have great agreement over the social functions of belief.

Cost-benefit analysis is a widely used governmental evaluation tool, though academics remain skeptical. This volume gathers prominent contributors from law, economics, and philosophy for discussion of cost-benefit analysis, specifically its moral foundations, applications and limitations. This new scholarly debate includes not only economists, but also contributors from philosophy, cognitive psychology, legal studies, and public policy who can further illuminate the justification and moral implications of this method and specify alternative measures. These articles originally appeared in the Journal of Legal Studies. (...) Contributors: - Matthew D. Adler - Gary S. Becker - John Broome - Robert H. Frank - Robert W. Hahn - Lewis A. Kornhauser - Martha C. Nussbaum - Eric A. Posner - Richard A. Posner - Henry S. Richardson - Amartya Sen - Cass R. Sunstein - W. Kip Viscusi. (shrink)

Common understandings of neuroethics, i.e., of its distinctive nature, are premised on two distinct sets of claims: (1) neuroscience can change views about the nature of ethics itself and neuroethics is dedicated to reaping such an understanding of ethics; (2) neuroscience poses challenges distinct from other areas of medicine and science and neuroethics tackles those issues. Critiques have rightfully challenged both claims, stressing how the first may lead to problematic forms of reductionism while the second relies on debatable assumptions about (...) the nature of bioethics specialization and development. Informed by philosophical pragmatism and our experience in neuroethics, we argue that these claims are ill-founded and should give way to pragmatist reconstructions. Namely, neuroscience, much like other areas of empirical research on morality, can provide useful information about the nature of morally problematic situations but it does not need to promise radical and sweeping changes to ethics based on neuroscientism. Furthermore, the rationale for the development of neuroethics as a specialized field need not to be premised on the distinctive nature of the issues it tackles or of neurotechnologies. Rather, it can espouse an understanding of neuroethics as both a scholarly and a practical endeavor dedicated to resolving a series of problematic situations raised by neurological and psychiatric conditions. (shrink)

Several approaches to implementing symbol-like representations in neurally plausible models have been proposed. These approaches include binding through synchrony, “mesh” binding, and conjunctive binding. Recent theoretical work has suggested that most of these methods will not scale well, that is, that they cannot encode structured representations using any of the tens of thousands of terms in the adult lexicon without making implausible resource assumptions. Here, we empirically demonstrate that the biologically plausible structured representations employed in the Semantic Pointer Architecture approach (...) to modeling cognition do scale appropriately. Specifically, we construct a spiking neural network of about 2.5 million neurons that employs semantic pointers to successfully encode and decode the main lexical relations in WordNet, which has over 100,000 terms. In addition, we show that the same representations can be employed to construct recursively structured sentences consisting of arbitrary WordNet concepts, while preserving the original lexical structure. We argue that these results suggest that semantic pointers are uniquely well-suited to providing a biologically plausible account of the structured representations that underwrite human cognition. (shrink)

In this clear and comprehensive account of Merleau-Ponty's thought Eric Matthews shows how Merleau-Ponty has contributed to current debates in philosophy, such as the nature of consciousness, the relation between biology and personality, the historical understanding of human thought and society, and many others. Surveying the whole range of Merleau-Ponty's thinking, Matthews examines his views about the nature of phenomenology and the primacy of perception; his account of human embodiment, being-in-the-world, and the understanding of human behaviour; his conception of (...) the self and its relation to other selves; and his views on society, politics, and the arts. A final chapter considers his later thought, published posthumously. The ideas of Merleau-Ponty are of immensely important to the development of modern French philosophy. Matthews evaluates his distinctive contributions and relates his thought to that of his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors, both in France and elsewhere. This unrivalled introduction will be welcomed by analytic philosophers and cognitive scientists as well as all students taking courses in contemporary continental philosophy. (shrink)

In this introduction to the life and thought of one of the most important French thinkers of the twentieth-century Eric Matthews shows how Merleau-Ponty has contributed to current debates in philosophy, such as the nature of consciousness, the relation between biology and personality, the historical understanding of human thought and society, and many others. Surveying the whole range of Merleau-Ponty's thinking, the author examines his views about the nature of phenomenology and the primacy of perception; his account of human (...) embodiment, being-in-the-world, and his understanding of human behaviour; his conception of the self and its relation to other selves; and, his views on society, politics, and the arts. A final chapter considers his later thought, published posthumously. The ideas of Merleau-Ponty are shown to be of immense importance to the development of French philosophy and the author evaluates his distinctive contributions and relates his thought to that of his predecessors, contemporaries and successors, both in France and elsewhere. This unrivalled introduction will be welcomed by philosophers and cognitive scientists as well as students taking courses in contemporary continental philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Against Definition. Eric Matthews. -/- Keywords: definition, mental illness, ideology -/- Varelius rightly says, in the very first sentence of his article, that 'The nature of mental disorder is a controversial issue.' But I do not think he recognizes just how deeply controversial it is. He hopes to be able to find a way of resolving the controversy by his chosen method, based on a consideration of (...) 'the goals that we have in classifying certain persons as mentally disordered.' However, not only does the adoption of that method presuppose that the controversy is resoluble, it is also somewhat circular. For to be able to set out the goals that we have in classifying some people as mentally disordered, we already have to know which persons we so classify, and so what is meant by calling them 'mentally disordered.' There are several appeals to alleged 'intuitions' and one to a 'paradigm case' in Varelius's article; but, if we had such intuitions, they would be all we needed to define the concept of mental disorder, and there would be no need for the further reference to our goals in demarcating this class of human conditions.I want to argue that any alleged 'intuitions' we might have in regard to mental disorder are philosophically useless, and that the controversy about the nature of mental disorder is intrinsically irresoluble. Any claimed intuition can always be met by a rival intuition that is irreconcilable with the first. It is this, indeed, that makes the dispute about mental disorder essentially philosophical, rather than scientific, in character. Philosophical positions have to be based on, and defended by, rational argument, but there necessarily comes a point in any philosophical dispute at which no rational argument can settle the matter one way or the other. Varelius derives his methodology of considering goals of demarcation from some work done using this method on the concept of science. But people have different goals for demarcating 'science' from 'non-science' or 'pseudo-science.' The demarcation is not made, as Varelius suggests, on the basis of such criteria as testability of hypotheses or clarity of concepts; or rather, the application of these criteria themselves is determined by the goals of demarcation. The debate about what is to count as a 'science' is irresoluble in part because what we classify as such has evaluative and practical consequences. To be a 'science,' in our culture, is to be a valued activity, to have a status to be aspired to. This makes arguments about what it is to be scientific what I would like to call 'ideological' in character. Similar considerations apply to the dispute about the nature of mental disorder. Human societies have always distinguished madness from reason, disturbed or disordered behavior, thoughts, and emotions from those that are not disordered. But the purpose of making the distinction, and thus the character of the distinction made, has varied from society to society and from one historical period to another. The historian Roy Porter, in his short work Madness: A Brief History (2002) describes some of the different images of madness which have prevailed at different times in Western culture—as a divine punishment for hubris, as [End Page 53] a source of poetic inspiration, as the inevitable result of moral excess, as diabolical possession, and so on. The modern idea of mental disorder as mental illness is only one possible way of classifying together certain sorts of deviations from normality. Varelius's method of arriving at a definition of mental illness involves 'considering the goals that we have in classifying certain persons as mentally disordered.' But we can ask who are the 'we' in question, and whether 'we' have only one set of goals in classifying people in this way. The history referred to in the preceding paragraph suggests that 'we' means those members of society who do not regard themselves as disordered—the 'normal' people whose behavior can be readily understood by other normal people. Classifying someone as mentally disordered is distinguishing them as 'not one of us,' and this can serve various purposes, for instance, treating them as objects of entertainment in a human zoo, as in Bedlam; or treating them as moral. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.1 (2005) 55-57 [Access article in PDF] Unconscious Reasons Eric Matthews Keywords reason-explanation, consciousness, purpose It is argued that Church's puzzlement over the idea that we can have reasons that we do not know about is itself puzzling. In daily life, we find no difficulty in understanding this idea. The problems arise only when we try to give a theoretically satisfactory account of the (...) notion of "the unconscious" in the context of a Cartesian picture of the "mind" as synonymous with "consciousness." We need to see the difference between the rational/non-rational distinction and that between the conscious and the unconscious. We (and other animals) act for reasons, not because we have something called "consciousness," but because we have purposes: we are animals, not machines.Jennifer Church finds "something deeply puzzling" about the idea that we can have reasons that we do not know about. I find this puzzlement very surprising, as, I think, would many others. Most of our reasons for doing what we do are not, and could not be, consciously entertained, and we did not need to wait for Freud before we were aware that some of our reasons for acting are so deeply hidden that we need help from others to uncover them. Freud himself is supposed to have said about the unconscious (I'm afraid I can't give the reference for this quotation, which was dredged up from memory), "Das haben die Dichter immer gekannt"—that was always known by the poets.Because human beings are not machines, whose movements can be given a complete causal explanation in terms of the laws of physics, a reason-explanation for most of the ways they behave is called for. That is, they have reasons for doing what they do. If they had to "consciously think through," in Church's words, all of their reasons for acting, they would never get down to doing anything: before they did anything, they would have to think through their reasons for doing it; and, because thinking through is also an action for which they have reasons, they would have to think through their reasons for thinking through, and so on ad infinitum. I owe this point to Gilbert Ryle, and may as well give one of his typical examples (slightly adapted) to illustrate it. The good tennis player acts intelligently: she has reasons for the movements she makes, but of necessity she does not think through these reasons, otherwise the game of tennis would never get started, let alone finished. Indeed, she may well be unable to explain in words, even afterward, why she moves her racket this way or that.As for the "Freudian" sorts of examples, we are all familiar, both from literature and from life, with the phenomena of self-deception, or of simple lack of self-knowledge. Someone, for instance, believes himself to be motivated by the highest moral principle when he gives money to the beggar in the shop doorway: but perhaps his real reason is a desire to cultivate a certain image of himself, or to be seen by others to be doing the right thing, or a fear that the beggar might embarrass [End Page 55] him in some way if he does not give him something substantial. I am not suggesting that people always deceive themselves in this way, only that the situation described is perfectly intelligible to everyone and so not at all puzzling. Nor is it in the slightest degree unintelligible that people should sometimes act without being able to say why: "I did it on impulse," they say, or "I acted instinctively"—which is just another way of saying "I just don't know why I acted as I did."Church herself accepts that our explanations of behavior are "now replete with appeals to unconscious beliefs and desires": but why only "now"—haven't they always been? And if we resort to such appeals so commonly, if indeed, as Searle says, their explanatory power is so great, then that seems to imply that we understand perfectly well what... (shrink)

Genetic explanation of complex human behavior presents an excellent test case for pluralism. Although philosophers agree that successful scientific investigation of behavior is pluralistic, there remains disagreement regarding integration and elimination—is the plurality of approaches here to stay, or merely a waystation on the road to monism? In this paper we introduce an issue taken very seriously by scientists yet mostly ignored by philosophers—the missing heritability problem—and assess its implications for disagreement among pluralists. We argue that the missing heritability problem, (...) which isn’t going anywhere any time soon, implies that pluralism in behavior genetics is both practically ineliminative and theoretically non-integrative. (shrink)

Since the 1960s, scientists, engineers, and healthcare professionals have developed brain–computer interface (BCI) technologies, connecting the user’s brain activity to communication or motor devices. This new technology has also captured the imagination of publics, industry, and ethicists. Academic ethics has highlighted the ethical challenges of BCIs, although these conclusions often rely on speculative or conceptual methods rather than empirical evidence or public engagement. From a social science or empirical ethics perspective, this tendency could be considered problematic and even technocratic because (...) of its disconnect from publics. In response, our trinational survey (Germany, Canada, and Spain) reports public attitudes toward BCIs (N = 1,403) on ethical issues that were carefully derived from academic ethics literature. The results show moderately high levels of concern toward agent-related issues (e.g., changing the user’s self) and consequence-related issues (e.g., new forms of hacking). Both facets of concern were higher among respondents who reported as female or as religious, while education, age, own and peer disability, and country of residence were associated with either agent-related or consequence-related concerns. These findings provide a first look at BCI attitudes across three national contexts, suggesting that the language and content of academic BCI ethics may resonate with some publics and their values. (shrink)

Medical aid in dying (MAiD), despite being legal in many jurisdictions, remains controversial ethically. Existing surveys of physicians’ perceptions of MAiD tend to focus on the legal or moral permissibility of MAiD in general. Using a novel sampling strategy, we surveyed physicians likely to have engaged in MAiD-related activities in Colorado to assess their attitudes toward contemporary ethical issues in MAiD.

“A Liberal Account of Addiction‘ is a major contribution to the discussion of addiction, its treatment, and the social and policy issues which arise from it. Questioning as it does many generally accepted assumptions about addictive behavior, particularly the use of hard drugs, it will provoke even those who do not agree with it to rethink their positions. Many of its suggestions are relevant also, in my opinion, to thinking about other areas of psychiatric interest. Nevertheless, I want to argue (...) that its authors have perhaps not freed themselves sufficiently from some common assumptions, in particular about the nature of mental disorder, and that their argument might benefit from such liberation. The central assumption that I have in mind is that understanding human actions is nothing but understanding the brain activity that accompanies them. If so, then a pattern of behavior can count as a ’mental disorder’ in any clinically or legally relevant sense only if it is the result of a brain disease, causing a breakdown in normal brain functioning. Starting from this assumption, the authors seek to show, by means of evidence from neuroscience, that addiction to drugs does not have a unique ’neural substrate,’ distinct from that of any other kind of pleasure-seeking behavior. When we have a pleasurable experience of any kind, as they point out, dopamine is normally released within the brain. This, they say, activates the ’reward’ pathways, making the person more likely to repeat the behavior that gives rise to the pleasurable experience in questionÑwhether it is eating, sex, or injecting heroin. Addiction, they argue, is therefore just a tendency to repeat an intensely pleasurable experience, whatever the nature of that experience might be. The particular chemistry of the substance involved in this particular form of pleasure is, they argue, irrelevantÑall that matters is that the experience it gives someone is pleasant. Addiction, they. (shrink)

Phenomenology -- Perception -- Embodiment -- Behaviour -- Being human -- Time -- Other people, society, history -- Art and perception.

How should we deal with mental disorder - as an "illness" like diabetes or bronchitis, as a "problem in living", or what? This book seeks to answer such questions by going to their roots, in philosophical questions about the nature of the human mind, the ways in which it can be understood, and about the nature and aims of scientific medicine. The controversy over the nature of mental disorder and the appropriateness of the "medical model" is not just an abstract (...) theoretical debate: it has a bearing on very practical issues of appropriate treatment, as well as on psychiatric ethics and law. A major contention of this book is that these questions are ultimately philosophical in character: they can be resolved only if we abandon some widespread philosophical assumptions about the "mind" and the "body", and about what it means for medicine to be "scientific". The "phenomenological" approach of the twentieth-century French philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty is used to question these assumptions. His conception of human beings as "body-subjects" is argued to provide a more illuminating way of thinking about mental disorder and the ways in which it can be understood and treated. The conditions we conventionally call "mental disorders" are, it is argued, not a homogeneous group: the standard interpretation of the medical model fits some more readily than others. The core mental disorders, however, are best regarded as disturbed ways of being in the world, which cause unhappiness because of deviation from "human" rather than straightforwardly "biological" norms. That is, they are problems in how we experience the world and especially other people, rather than in physiological functioning - even though the nature of our experience cannot ultimately be separated from the ways in which our bodies function. This analysis is applied within the book both to issues in clinical treatment and to the special ethical and legal questions of psychiatry. Written by a well known philosopher in an accessible and clear style, this book should be of interest to a wide range of readers, from psychiatrists to social workers, lawyers, ethicists, philosophers and anyone with an interest in mental health. (shrink)

Philosophy plays an integral role in French society, affecting its art, drama, politics, and culture. In this accessible, chronological survey, Matthews offers some explanations for the enduring popularity of the subject and traces the developments that French philosophy has taken in the twentieth century, from its roots in the thought of Descartes to key figures such as Bergson, Sartre, Marcel, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Derrida, and the recent French Feminists.

Do we need neuroethics? This provocative question, posed almost 20 years after a series of landmark neuroethics conferences in North America (Marcus 2002; Canadian Institutes of Health Research 2002), can’t be answered briefly. We can, however, consider some of the most important arguments in favor of neuroethics. First, neuroethics may appear to be needed because neuroscience offers a new lens on human morality. This is an argument made by neuroscientists Michael Gazzaniga (Gazzaniga 2005) and (to some extent) Jean-Pierre Changeux (Changeux (...) & Ricoeur 2000; Changeux 1981)— though the latter does not use the term “neuroethics” explicitly. But is neuroscience really a unique or superior source of information about morality? Second, it may seem that neuroethics is needed to address the daunting ethical problems that are raised specifically by advances in neuroscience, including new technologies. But here again, there are reasons for nurturing healthy skepticism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.3 (2005) 205-207 [Access article in PDF] The Relevance of Phenomenology Eric Matthews Keywords phenomenology, introspective psychology, Merleau-Ponty, melancholia Martin wyllie's paper raises very impor-tant issues about the relevance of phe-nomenology to psychiatry, but the language in which he presents phenomenology unfortunately makes it sound (contrary to his own intentions) too much like empirical introspective psychology. The aim of this commentary is to improve (...) the presentation of phenomenology, drawing particularly on the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, to develop Wylie's position and to bring out better the relevance of this approach to our understanding of mental disorder in general and of melancholia/depression in particular.I am essentially in sympathy with Martin Wyllie's account of the phenomenology of what he prefers to call melancholia (and indeed have discussed it with him on numerous occasions). His present paper, as well as containing many valuable insights on that topic, also raises important questions about the relevance of phenomenology to the theory and practice of psychiatry, and it is on those questions that I aim to concentrate in this commentary, in the hope of developing further what Martin has begun. To do this, it is necessary first of all to set out a more thorough account of what is meant, in this context, by phenomenology.Phenomenology is often presented as if it were a kind of empirical introspective psychology, and Martin's choice of language unfortunately sometimes (certainly not always) gives the impression that he shares that understanding of the term. For instance, he says that a phenomenological description of "lived time" tells us " 'what it is like' to experience 'lived time'" (2005, 173); and in other places uses causal terms about the relation between different aspects of lived experience, for example, that are more appropriate to an empirical, scientific, study. This is certainly one accepted use of phenomenology, but it is not what was meant by Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, the two philosophers whom he clearly has most in mind in his paper; and, more important perhaps, it is not the sort of phenomenology likely to shed the most light on the psychiatry of melancholia.In my commentary, therefore, I try to set out as clearly and briefly as I can an alternative and more appropriate account of relevant aspects of phenomenology, in the form with which I am most familiar, that which it takes in the writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. For Merleau-Ponty, phenomenology was, just as Husserl, its founder, had described it, "the study of essences" (Merleau-Ponty 2002, vii). That is, it was not an empirical study of the contingent contents of any individual's experience, but an investigation of the universal structures of human experience as such. But at the same time (and here we see a distinctive approach of Merleau-Ponty's own, derived from his reading of Heidegger and the [End Page 205] later Husserl), "phenomenology is also a philosophy which puts essences back into existence" (2002, vii). Human experience is not, for him, that of a "transcendental subject", standing outside the world and simply observing it: human being is, in the phrase he derived from Heidegger, "being-in-the-world". That is, we exist within the world, actively engaging with it, and our experience of it directly "opens on to" the world which we experience.The world is thus "objective" in the sense that it is always already there—we do not create it, we inhabit it, and the world we inhabit necessarily extends beyond our experience of it. But the world we inhabit necessarily has a "subjective" meaning for us, just because we inhabit it and actively engage with it. To take a simple example, we necessarily see some items in the world as food because we experience hunger. These subjective meanings are just as much part of the world as we experience it as the measurable properties of objects in which science is interested. They give sense to the idea that the world is our world, that "subjective" and "objective" are not polar opposites, but are necessarily entangled in our... (shrink)