Imperfect Cognitions

This post is by Elly Vintiadis , a philosopher based at the American College of Greece  and interested in metaphysics and philosophy of mind. In most discussions about the mind and mental disorders the metaphysical framework within which they take place is rarely questioned. It is however, important to check our metaphysical beliefs--including our beliefs about what the world is made up of--because whether they are held consciously or not, they affect the way we understand the world and how we approach it scientifically.  For this reason, in my recent work I explore what seeing the world--and biological organisms in particular--within a metaphysical framework that puts at its centre the notion of a process can add to our understanding of the mind and its disorders. I contend that seeing the world as fundamentally ‘processual’ in nature rather than in terms of substances and things, provides the best explanation of what we know about the mind and mental disorders. I...

Today's post is by Dr Ahmed Samei Huda, a Consultant Psychiatrist working mostly in Early Intervention in Psychosis for Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust. He is introducing his book, The Medical Model in Mental Health: An Explanation and Evaluation (OUP, 2019). Huda is on Twitter (@SameiHuda), and blogs here . I am a clinician not an academic who became increasingly frustrated with the strawman depictions of psychiatry in the fraught conflicts between different professions and ideologies in mental health. So I decided to read more about what the medical model was and the more I read the more he realised there was an absence of a book explaining from first principles what the medical model was and how it was applied in mental health.  I’m not a world class expert but my over 20 years experience of clinical practice combined with extensive reading including several volumes of the excellent International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry series and David...

Five years ago I started this blog with a post by Kengo Miyazono...  Happy birthday Imperfect Cognitions!  I am very grateful to all the people who have worked hard during this time to keep the blog active and engaging: Ema Sullivan-Bissett, Kathy Puddifoot, Andrea Polonioli, Sophie Stammers, Magdalena Antrobus, Valeria Motta, and Anneli Jefferson.  And special thanks to our regular contributors and assiduous readers. To the next five years! Lisa 💛 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-  On the 5th birthday of the Imperfect Cognitions blog  Michael Larkin (Aston University)  considers some conceptual propositions of the Power Threat Meaning framework, arguing that the framework is both a step towards a more humanising concept of mental health problems, and a missed opportunity to be more inclusive. Enjoy this very rich and thought-provoking celebratory post! Often we are disappointed because we want the thing presented to us to be the thin...

This post is by Christopher Mole , Chair of the programme in Cognitive Systems at the University of British Columbia . He is the author of Attention is Cognitive Unison (OUP, 2010), and The Unexplained Intellect (Routledge, 2016). This post outlines the argument of his recent article, “ Autism and ‘disease’: The semantics of an ill-posed question ” (Philosophical Psychology, 8(3): 557-571). Discussions of autism are often euphemistic: We speak of ‘service users’ rather than patients; and ‘atypicality’ rather than illness. By avoiding the rhetoric of disease we avoid the implication that the autistic point of view is a defective one, which would be gone from a world in which everything was operating correctly. Those who do use the vocabulary of disease might reject such motivations, while congratulating themselves on their straight-talking, no-nonsense approach. This would, I think, be a mistake. According to one tradition, the mistake would be that of applying a ‘medical mod...