Imperfect Cognitions

This week on Imperfect Cognitions, we showcased a couple of posts by authors with papers published in a special issue from the European Journal of Analytic Philosophy ( EuJAP ). The special issue on the Philosophy of Medicine was guest-edited by Anke Bueter and Saana Jukola . In this third and final post, the guest editors of the issue Anke and Saana give a summary of the special issue and the other papers included in it. Anke is an associate professor at Aarhus University. Her main research interests lie within feminist philosophy of science and philosophy of psychiatry. Saana is a post-doctoral researcher at the Ruhr-University Bochum. She is interested in the philosophy of medicine, social epistemology, and values in science. Anke Bueter Philosophy of medicine has become established as a distinct branch of philosophy relatively recently. Of course, philosophical questions concerning, for instance, the nature of disease or the ethical responsibilities of physicians are not new. Ho...

 This week on Imperfect Cognitions, we showcase a couple of posts by authors with papers published in a special issue from the European Journal of Analytic Philosophy ( EuJAP ). The special issue is on the  Philosophy of Medicine  with guest editors Saana Jukola and Anke Bueter.  Today's post is the second post of the series. Kathleen Murphy-Hollies discusses her paper in the special issue, which you can read  here . Kathleen is a philosophy PhD student and teaching fellow at the University of Birmingham, working primarily on confabulation and its effects for embodying virtuous traits.  Kathleen Murphy-Hollies In my paper, I discuss whether Wakefield’s hybrid account of disorder helps clarify the thorny issue of whether Gender Dysphoria (GD) should be included in the DSM as a disordered state or left out as merely a socially disvalued state. In the DSM-5, GD is described in individuals as “a marked incongruence between the gender they have been assigned to...

This week on Imperfect Cognitions, we showcase a couple of posts by authors with papers published in a special issue from the European Journal of Analytic Philosophy ( EuJAP ). The special issue is on the Philosophy of Medicine  with guest editors Saana Jukola and Anke Bueter.  In today's post, Anne-Marie Gagné-Julien discusses her paper in the special issue, which you can read here . Anne-Marie is a postdoctoral fellow at the Biomedical Ethics Unit at McGill University and also affiliated with the École normale supérieure (ENS). She works on philosophy of psychiatry and medicine, social epistemology, and epistemic innocence.  Anne-Marie Gagné-Julien Medicalization is the process through which nonmedical problems are conceptualized and treated as medical problems ( Conrad and Slodden 2013 ). It has become a controversial topic both within and outside psychiatry, especially since the publication of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disord...

Today's blog is by Matteo Fiorani (University of Rome, Tor Vergata) and it is the last in a series of posts associated with the special issue of the European Journal of Analytic Philosophy on Bounds of Rationality . Matteo's paper (open access) is entitled: " Rationality, Irrationality and Irrationalism in the Anti-institutional Debate in Psychiatry around the Second-Half of the 1970s in Italy ". Matteo Fiorani The 1968 movements overwhelmed psychiatry with anti-authoritarian and anti-institutional criticism. The young protesters demanded, first of all, the rights of madness and, provocatively, of unreason. At the same time, they dismissed the dominant normality, represented by bourgeois common sense. They also affirmed the need not to repress contradictions and suffering. Emotions and affectivity were indeed part of the social and political world. From these premises it was possible to develop a deep political and cultural reflection on the boundary between reason a...

Today's post is by  Sam Wilkinson . You can read Sam's recently published paper,  Expressivism about Delusion Attribution , in the  European Journal of Analytic Philosophy . It appeared in a special issue on the Bounds of Rationality . Sam Wilkinson What is delusion? While we can point to paradigmatic cases, we have struggled to produce an uncontentious definition of delusion. In my paper, I argue that we shouldn’t have been trying to define delusion in the first place, and that it becomes clear why, once we reflect on the sort of concept that delusion is. Delusion attribution, e.g. saying “This person is delusional”, is not (fully) fact-stating. It is not like saying “This person is 6ft tall”. It is fundamentally an evaluation. Some evaluations involve failing to adhere to an objective benchmark, while others are more fundamentally, irreducibly evaluative. One way of thinking about these fundamental kinds of evaluations is as expressive , rather than descriptive.  ...

Today's post is by Valentina Petrolini (University of the Basque Country – UPV/EHU). Here she talks about a recent paper she wrote, “Too Much or Too Little? Disorders of Agency on a Spectrum” published open access in a special issue of the European Journal of Analytic Philosophy on Bounds of Rationality. Valentina Petrolini   “Rock You like a Hurricane” has been playing on repeat in my head since yesterday. I am unsure where it came from, although I am afraid a binge session of Stranger Things might have something to do with it. Despite my attempts, getting rid of the song proves surprisingly difficult. In my paper I characterize these episodes as mild cases of hypoagency . An action – in this case a mental one – is attributed to an agent, who is unsure about having initiated it and lacks a robust sense of control over it. Some instances of hypoagency – such as having an 80’s song stuck in your head – strike us as relatively innocent. We may even imagine circumstances in which...

Today's post is by Emiliano Loria (Università La Sapienza, Roma). Here he summarises a recent paper he wrote, " A desirable convulsive threshold: Some reflections about electroconvulsive therapy ", published open access in a special issue of the  European Journal of Analytic Philosophy  on  Bounds of Rationality . Emiliano Loria Long-standing psychiatric practice confirms the pervasive use of pharmacological therapies for treating severe mental disorders. Nevertheless, we are far from triumphal therapeutic success. Despite the advances made by neuropsychiatry, this medical discipline remains lacking in terms of diagnostic and prognostic capabilities when compared to other branches of medicine.  An ethical principle remains as the guidance of therapeutic interventions: improving the quality of life for patients. Unfortunately, psychotropic drugs and psychotherapies do not always result in an efficient remission of symptoms. I corroborate the idea that therapists ...

Today's post is by Eugenia Lancellotta (University of Birmingham). Here she talks about a recent paper she wrote, " Delusions in the two-factor theory: pathological or adaptive? ", published open access in a special issue of the European Journal of Analytic Philosophy on  Bounds of Rationality . Eugenia Lancellotta Are delusions pathological, adaptive, or both? I investigated this issue with Lisa Bortolotti. We framed the question in the context of one of the most popular theories of delusion formation and maintenance: the two-factor theory. Two-factor theories hold that the formation and maintenance of delusions involve two factors. Factor 1 is usually a neuropsychological impairment, while Factor 2 is a cognitive deficit or bias. While two-factor theorists agree on the broad two-factor architecture involved in the formation and maintenance of delusions, they disagree on some aspects of it. Coltheart and McKay are among the most prominent two factor theorists....

Today's post is by Valentina Cardella (Università di Messina). Here she talks about a recent paper she wrote, " Rationality in Mental Disorder: Too little or too much? ", published open access in a special issue of the European Journal of Analytic Philosophy on Bounds of Rationality . Valentina Cardella Are people with mental disorders irrational? At first sight, this seems to be a trivial question: madness is the realm of non-sense. When someone tells you that her neighbour installed a tracking device in her abdomen, or that her internal organs are decomposing, you can’t help to wonder: how can she believe such impossible things? Where has her rationality gone? The common conceptualization of madness, which dates back to the Enlightenment, reflects this common-sense intuition: in people with mental disorders emotions are abnormal and unrestrained, and, on the other side, reason is severely affected. People with mental disorders can’t reason properly, healthy people can....