Imperfect Cognitions

This post is by Víctor Fernández Castro (University of Granada) and Miguel Núñez de Prado-Gordillo (University of Granada). It is based on their chapter “ Embodied, embedded, enactive, extended… and exclusionary? Toward an inclusive E-Cognition for cognitive diversity, ” published in Analytic Philosophy and 4E Cognition , which explores how 4E approaches can be made more inclusive of neurodiversity.  Víctor Fernández Castro (University of Granada) If, following Alice Crary and the political turn in analytic philosophy, one takes the conceptual and methodological to be political, then 4E Mental Health concepts express a range of political commitments. Some of these merit special attention in debates about how cognitive diversity and disability should be understood and recognized. In our chapter at Analytic Philosophy and 4E Cognition , this is exactly our goal: to critically examine 4E Mental Health from the lens of the Neurodiversity movement and its academic branch, the neurodiver...

This post is by Pablo Andrés López Silva (University of Valparaíso) and Miguel Núñez de Prado-Gordillo (University of Granada). It draws on their paper “A Roadmap to 4E Mental Health,” published in Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, where they develop a 4E (embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended) framework for understanding mental health and psychopathology.  Miguel Núñez de Prado-Gordillo  (University of Granada)       As a teenager, I (Miguel) spent a significant amount of my weekend nights compulsively collecting all the trash left in the parks where I used to get trashed with my friends. Back home, I would then spend some more time aligning all the stuff in my massively misaligned desk in straight angles. And I did so out of fear that a nasty, omnipotent Karmic force—whose existence I deemed almost certainly impossible—could hurt my then-partner in retaliation for my past misbehavior. Fortunately, I eventually escaped the grip of my Karmic ob...

This week we are happy to have Christophe Gauld and colleagues presenting a recent paper investigating philosophical conceptual competence among French psychiatrists.  Christophe Gauld A recent international study published in L’Encéphale aim to offer an overview of how psychiatry residents and psychiatrists in France relate to conceptual and philosophical aspects of their discipline. Based on responses from 353 participants, the survey highlights a strong endorsement (over 90%) for integrating philosophy into psychiatry curricula, with a more cautious self-assessment of conceptual confidence.   This result highlights a situation where interest and perceived importance coexist with limited perceived preparedness. While 80% support the development of specific conceptual skills, many respondents report uncertainty or limited familiarity with the relevant philosophical frameworks. Such findings suggest that the place of conceptual reflection in psychiatric training remains poten...

The first ever academic event in Chile completely devoted to the philosophy of psychiatry took place on the 16th April in Valparaíso. The I Workshop in Philosophy of Psychiatry was led by Professor Pablo López-Silva and organized by the Universidad de Valparaíso School of Psychology and the Valparaíso Institute of Complex Systems.  Poster of the event The event gathered an interdisciplinary audience of 60 people around the work of 8 local and international researchers in the field. The Keynote Speech was given by Dr Renato Matoso, Director of the Department of Philosophy at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In his talk, "Psychotic, Psychedelic, and Religious Experiences: What Can We Learn from Their Joint Study?", Matoso discussed a number of phenomenological and mechanistic similarities found in psychotic, psychedelic, and religious experiences. Matoso proposed to understand these three types of experiences as a continuum where differences can be ...

Today's post is by Simon Barker (University of Tartu) on his recent paper, "Epistemic health, epistemic self-trust, and bipolar disorder: a case study " ( Synthese 2025). Simon Barker Four years ago, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder (and later, ADHD). My mind soon after returned to the point when my PhD studies were violently derailed by what I now see as a mix of depression and mania. Then, it took an extended break and inordinate support from my partner, supervisors, and other staff in the Sheffield philosophy department to get me over the line. Now, from my post-diagnosis vantage, I saw that those struggles fit a pattern. My bipolar disorder (and ADHD) and intellectual life have always fluctuated together – as if the same thing. My depressions comes with intellectual disinterest, crashing confidence, and an inability to think; my manias with an urgent flame of intellectual grandiosity yet thoughts racing too fast to make sense of. This entangled mental health an...

The blog post today is by Arthur Krieger (Temple University) on his recent paper " Torturous withdrawal: Emotional compulsion in addiction " ( European Journal of Philosophy , 2024). Arthur Krieger   We’ve all heard addiction described as a “compulsion.” People with addictions (here I’ll just say ‘addicts’) often act in ways that are so out of character, so self-destructive, and so contrary to their own stated aims, that we feel the need for a special explanation. Compulsion is the main concept used to explain addictive behavior, particularly in health sciences like medicine and psychology. What exactly is compulsion? That’s a surprisingly difficult question. It is sometimes glossed as continuing to do something despite being aware of its serious negative consequences. But that includes far too much, like using a chair instead of a standing desk at work, or eating an eclair every night despite a recent high cholesterol reading. One traditional view is that compulsion is a c...

Today's post is by Mara Floris on her recent paper " “I’m Not Hungry:” Bodily Representations and Bodily Experiences in Anorexia Nervosa " ( Review of Philosophy and Psychology , 2024). Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is a severe psychiatric disorder characterized by an intense fear of gaining weight, leading to extreme food restriction and a distorted perception of one’s own body. In our paper, we explore how individuals with AN experience significant alterations in two primary domains: bodily representations and bodily experiences. Mara Floris Bodily Representations and Perceptual Distortions Bodily representations refer to the cognitive and perceptual processes that help us perceive and understand our body’s size, shape, and function. In individuals with AN, these representations are often distorted, leading to body image disturbances. These disturbances manifest as an overestimation of body size—patients with AN often perceive themselves as larger than they are. This mispercept...

Today’s post is by Sarah Arnaud (Clemson University) on her recent paper, " First-person perspectives and scientific inquiry of autism: towards an integrative approach " ( Synthese 2023). Sarah Arnaud In my paper, "First-person perspectives and scientific inquiry of autism: towards an integrative approach," published in Synthese , I analyse the essential role of first-person perspectives in enriching our comprehension of autism. This paper explores the interplay between scientific inquiry, activism, and the personal experiences of autistics, advocating for an approach that integrates insights from these varied sources. The paper begins by confronting widespread misconceptions about autism, focusing particularly on the debate concerning the impact of science and activism in shaping our collective understanding of autism. I analyze the perspectives of Ian Hacking and Kenneth Kendler, two influential figures in this discourse. Hacking argues for the predominance of a...

Today's post is by Themistoklis Pantazakos and Gert-Jan Vanaken. Themistoklis (he/him) is an Assistant Professor in Philosophy of Psychiatry at The American College of Greece and an Honorary Research Fellow at University College London. He works on phenomenological psychiatry, focusing on treatment methods that make sense of the point of view of client users and their communities.  Gert-Jan (he/him) is a post-doctoral researcher at KU Leuven and the University of Antwerp. He works at the intersections of bioethics, disability studies and clinical autism research. His work focuses on developing neurodiversity-affirming autism care practices. Here, they argue that interventions for autism should address autistic mental health directly, and that a first-person approach is key for adapting psychotherapy to the needs of the autistic population. The full article is here , available open access. Themistoklis Pantazakos "[R]ight from the start, from the time someone came up with the ...

Today’s post is by Eisuke Sakakibara, who is currently a lecturer at the University of Tokyo Hospital. He is a clinical psychiatrist as well as a researcher in the field of philosophy of psychiatry. Since 2013, he has been leading a study group in Tokyo, aptly named Philosophy of Psychiatry and Psychology.  His recent publication, “ Epistemic injustice in the therapeutic relationship in psychiatry ,” published in Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics , discusses the effects of epistemic injustice on the interactions between psychiatrists and their patients. Originally, this post appeared on the EPIC blog on 6 June 2023. Eisuke Sakakibara I first heard of the concept of epistemic injustice in 2019 in San Francisco. From that moment on, I intuitively knew that it is a concept suitable to highlight practical and ethical issues of communication that arise between psychiatrists and psychiatric patients. I have decided to further my research. The psychiatrist-psychiatric patient relationsh...

This post is by Eleanor Harris, Lucienne Spencer, and Ian James Kidd. A version of this post was originally published on the EPIC blog on 24th May 2023. Harris is a M4C funded doctoral researcher at the University of Birmingham, working on epistemic injustice and epistemic vigilance.  Spencer is a postdoctoral researcher working on the Wellcome Trust-funded project ‘Renewing Phenomenological Psychopathology’ at the Institute of Mental Health, University of Birmingham.  Kidd is a lecturer in philosophy at the university of Nottingham and works on epistemology, philosophy of illness and healthcare.  Eleanor Harris Does epistemic injustice matter in psychiatric contexts? Brent Kious and colleagues have recently argued ‘No’ (see paper in Psychological Medicine ). While it is welcome to have our assumptions challenged, we think the answer should still be that epistemic injustice should matter to psychiatrists. (See our full response  in Philosophy of Medicine ). Befo...

Today's post is by Lucienne Spencer , currently working on the Renewing Phenomenological Psychopathology project. In this post, she argues for the importance of an intersectional approach. Lucienne Spencer In the search for alternative approaches to psychiatry, there has been a reignited interest in phenomenological psychopathology: an approach that uses the phenomenological method to highlight the lived experience of the person with mental ill-health and invites a person-centred approach to diagnosis and treatment. Phenomenological psychopathology has its roots in Karl Jaspers’ seminal work General Psychopathology (1913), which surpassed the limited scope of pre-structured interviews and diagnostic criteria by examining the patient's life-world. After a long period during which phenomenological psychopathology fell into obscurity, new work in the field and amplification of the patient’s voice through mad-pride activism have led to a resurgence of the approach, giving it a va...

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 Şerife Tekin at University of Texas at San Antonio on her recent paper “ Participatory Interactive Objectivity in Psychiatry ” in Philosophy of Science .   Şerife Tekin  As evident from the compelling body of scholarship featured in the Imperfect Cognitions blog, the last decade has been a very exciting time to be doing philosophy of psychiatry. What has been even more exciting for me, as a philosopher who has long been promoting the view that giving uptake to the first-person perspectives and testimonies of individuals diagnosed with mental disorders is necessary for enhancing rigorous research and ethical clinical practices, is the increased philosophical interest in thinking about how to include service users/ patients/ex-patients/survivors into enhancing research.  As can be seen, for example, from the line-up of speakers and their abstracts, in a recent conference organized by Sam Fellowes on “ Philosophically Analysing the Role of Service User...

In today's post, Anneli Jefferson discusses her new book , Are Mental Disorders Brain Disorders? (Routledge 2022) .  She is a lecturer at Cardiff University who works in the philosophy of psychology, moral philosophy, and at the intersection of the two.  In the last 20 years or so, neuroscience and psychiatry have increasingly been researching what brain differences can be found in people suffering from mental distress, and how these might help to explain and treat mental disorders. There is a long-standing belief that mental disorders must be brain disorders, because whatever psychological dysfunction we find must have some basis in the brain. However, many psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and philosophers strongly resist this idea, and debates about this issue can get quite heated. In my book  I set out to get to the bottom of what makes this debate so intractable and provide a way forward in the debate. I argue that resistance to calling mental disorders brain di...

This post is by Eleanor Harris. Eleanor Harris is a Philosophy PhD candidate at the University of Birmingham, funded by the AHRC Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership. Her research explores Delusions, Epistemic Injustice, and Epistemic Vigilance. Here, she provides a report on The Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry's (AAPP) annual conference.   AAPP conference poster 2022 The Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry (AAPP) held their 33rd annual conference on 21st-22nd May 2022 at the Hilton Riverside in New Orleans, Louisiana. Unlike previous years’ conferences that had a set theme which was narrower in focus, the theme for this year’s annual conference was open to all topics that address either philosophical issues that are relevant to psychiatry, or psychiatric issues with relevance to philosophy. Over two days there were a total of 19 talks, on a wide range of topics such as psychiatric euthanasia, policing and the prod...