Imperfect Cognitions

Today's post is by Tillmann Vierkant (University of Edinburgh) who presents his recent book The Tinkering Mind (Oxford University Press, 2022). The Tinkering Mind has at its heart a puzzle about epistemic agency and cognitive control. I was always puzzled by the notion of cognitive control, because to me it seemed to combine features that are clearly incompatible. The puzzle in question is as follows: cognitive control is often said to be voluntary, and is a form of cognition.  But cognitive control is also supposed to lead to the acquisition of new beliefs. I have always found it strange that cognitive control is supposed to have all three of these features because if it does, then that seems to indicate that the acquisition of a belief can be a voluntary action when we acquire it by means of cognitive control. This would imply doxastic voluntarism which, like most philosophers nowadays, I find unpalatable. Very many people have pointed out to me that this initial worry is just...

Today's post is by  Sam Wilkinson  (University of Exeter) on his recent book Philosophy of Psychiatry: A Contemporary Introduction (2023, Routledge). When I started teaching philosophy of psychiatry about ten years ago I noticed that, while there was plenty of literature out of which a well-structured and coherent course could be built, there was (to my knowledge) no single textbook around which to base one.  Year-on-year, as my module was tweaked and improved, largely thanks to feedback from my students, it occurred to me (wrongly, as it turns out) that it would be relatively straightforward to turn said module into a textbook. And that’s what I’ve done - eventually! Like the module itself, the textbook is divided into two parts, which reflect two quite different enterprises that fall under the category “philosophy of psychiatry”.  The first enterprise involves philosophical scrutiny of psychiatry, with “psychiatry” here including both psychiatric practice and psyc...

Today's post is by Nimra Ahsan. Nimra is a fifth year medical student at the University of Birmingham, where she is currently completing a Masters in Mental Health. She is interested in how the study of mental health can help inform and improve future clinical practice, including her own. This is the last post in a series of perspectives from students taking the Philosophy and Ethics of Mental Health and Wellbeing module. Nimra Ahsan The interaction between psychiatry and psychopathology is one that is blending (Stanghellini and Broome, 2014). With a contemporary focus on patient experience, human subjectivity (or phenomenology) is creating a holistic perspective concerning mental health conditions, such as schizophrenia. Described as a ‘disturbance of minimal self’, our understanding of schizophrenia has deepened and the ipseity-disturbance model developed by Sass and Parnas has contributed to this substantially ( Nelson, Parnas and Sass, 2014 ). This model led to the formation o...

This post is by Olivia Siegfried, currently studying for a Master’s degree in the School of Psychology at the University of Birmingham. Olivia is interested in youth mental health, personality disorders, and forensic psychology, and adopts a social constructionist perspective to understand these issues. This is part of a series of posts by students of the Philosophy and Ethics of Mental Health and Wellbeing module at the Institute for Mental Health. They share some of their views on key topics discussed in the module. Olivia Siegfried Responsibility without blame As personality disorders are notoriously hard to treat, Hannah Pickard has put forward the ‘responsibility without blame’ approach ( Pickard, 2011 ) for clinicians to adopt to foster the best clinical outcomes. Although sounding inherently paradoxical, we can hold people responsible without blaming them by segregating responsibility from morality and instead defining it through a person’s agency.  Taking responsibility for...

Today's post is by Nuria Gardia, a Mental Health Master’s student at University of Birmingham with a newly discovered passion for Philosophy. Her interests lay in the intersection between philosophy and psychology to better understand how the mind “overcomes” trauma and the relationships between mind-body and self-world. Specifically, how trauma affects human experience and thus, human reality.  This is part of a series of posts by students of the Philosophy and Ethics of Mental Health and Wellbeing module at the Institute for Mental Health. They share some of their views on key topics discussed in the module. Nuria Gardia Autistic women navigate a world made by-and-for neurotypicals within a society that ignores their strengths ( Russell et al. 2019 ), and wrongfully denies their capacity as knowers ( Catala et al. 2021 ), by underdiagnosing them and excluding them from research ( D'Mello et al. 2022 ). Moreover, without a diagnosis, autistic women are wrongly deprived vital ...

Today's post is by Jen Garbett, a part-time Mental Health MSc student at the University of Birmingham. Jen is interested in all aspects of mental health in psychology, especially in moral responsibility in psychopathy and the nature of delusions in psychosis and other psychiatric disorders.  This is part of a series of posts by students of the Philosophy and Ethics of Mental Health and Wellbeing module at the Institute for Mental Health. They share some of their views on key topics discussed in the module. Jen Garbett The concepts of responsibility and blame naturally go hand in hand for many of us. For real blame to be executed and appropriate consequences to follow, such as a prison sentence, one must be considered responsible for their actions. However, if one is to take responsibility for their actions, does this undoubtedly mean they should be blamed for them too? In 2011,  Hanna Pickard  created a framework that separates responsibility and blame, based on her exper...

Today's post is by  Matthew Shields at Wake Forest University, on his recent paper “ Rethinking Conspiracy Theories ” in Synthese .  Matthew Shields What do you think of when you think of conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists? The first image that typically comes to mind are individuals on dark corners of the internet spinning bizarre tales to explain some major event: that the moon landing was faked, that 9/11 was an “inside job”, that Sandy Hook was a false flag, or that Princess Diana was assassinated. You’re in good company: a great deal of the academic research on the topic takes just these cases to be paradigmatic of what and who conspiracy theories and theorists are. Many philosophers have followed suit. Researchers then go on to defend claims such as the following: conspiracy theorists are political extremists, not well-off socioeconomically, less educated, amateurs who lack and repudiate the relevant expert credentials. The problem of conspiracy theories, in t...