Imperfect Cognitions

Here  Martino Belvederi Murri (University of Ferrara) discusses research on epistemic justice and dignity for people with psychosis. A version of this post appeared on the EPIC blog in July 2024. Martino Belvederi Murri Individuals experiencing acute psychosis in inpatient psychiatric settings face unique challenges. Consider the case of Jake, a student who is struggling between familial conflicts and economic difficulties, as well as choices related to his life career. Auditory hallucinations may take the form of “voices” that comment on his everyday actions, and may lead Jake to think that people spy on him with malevolent intent. These symptoms can lead to angst and withdrawal from social activities, possibly culminating into severe anxiety and agitation. The grave societal stigma that is attached to mental illness exacerbates feelings of isolation and diminishes help-seeking. The promotion of patient empowerment is a key component of recovery, and is increasingly seen as a du...

In this post Mark Miller (Center for Human Nature, Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience, Hokkaido University) reports on a workshop Emotion and Prediction , which was held online on March 31- April 1, 2021.     Emotion permeates all mental life - it reflects our adaptivity, it imbues our activities and our environments with meaning and purpose, and it motivates and modulates our behaviours. We are emotional creatures through and through. While there has been a tremendous amount of work done on this topic, to date an integrative account capable of unifying the various theoretical perspectives and experimental results is still lacking. A recent workshop Emotion and Prediction brought together philosophers, cognitive scientists and machine learning researchers to explore the implications of a leading new framework emerging within computational neuroscience for the study of feelings, emotions and moods. The Predictive Processing (or Active Inference) framework starts from th...

Today's post is by Joseph Houlders, doctoral candidate at the University of Birmingham. In this post, he reports on the book launch for the new Oxford Handbook of Phenomenological Psychopathology . The event took place on 22 July 2019, and was chaired by one of the editors of the handbook, Professor Matthew Broome, Director of the Institute for Mental Health at the University of Birmingham. Five contributors to the handbook spoke at the launch: Professor Christoph Hoerl, Understanding, explaining and the concept of psychic illness   Dr Clara Humpston, Thoughts without thinkers: The paradox of thought insertion   Professor Femi Oyebode, Consciousness and its Disorders  Dr Anthony Vincent Fernandez, Phenomenology and Psychiatric Classification Dr Gareth Owen, Psychopathology and Law: what does phenomenology have to offer?  The launch began with an apt question: to what extent can we understand and explain psychic illness? The central theme of the aft...

Today's post is provided by Project PERFECT 's Co-investigator Michael Larkin from Aston University. In the post he outlines his plans for the coming months of the project. We’ve had a good start to this final block already, with Rachel Gunn and Magdalena Antrobus both successfully defending their theses at viva before Christmas, and subsequently being awarded their doctorates. I’ve really enjoyed working with Lisa Bortolotti and these two brilliant, creative and insightful researchers. It has been really exciting to see the interdisciplinary nature of their work take on such a distinctive character: I hope that we will see the the benefits of this in future work, post-PERFECT, too.  In Magdalena’s work, the interdisciplinary quality has taken the form of a very rigorous engagement with existing psychological evidence about the nature and context of low mood. In Rachel’s thesis, it involved conducting interviews, and engaging with phenomenological data, about th...

For our series of first-person accounts, Kitt O'Malley , blogger and mental health advocate, writes about her experience of altered states and what these mean to her. When I was twenty-one upon returning from my grandfather’s memorial mass at which I gave the eulogy, I first experienced a series of altered mental states which I chose to interpret as God calling me to the ordained ministry. I questioned that sense of call due to my intellectual skepticism, my agnosticism, and the fact that I had a history of mental illness, namely major depression and dysthymia. God did not speak to me in my altered mental states. I heard no voices and saw no visions. The altered states I entered were sometimes ecstatic and sometimes tempting and dark. My interpretation of my experiences was influenced by my familiarity with the works of Alan Watts and D.T. Suzuki on Zen Buddhism, C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters , and Roman Catholic mystic saints. As I received no definitive instruct...