Imperfect Cognitions

Fiona Woollard (University of Southampton) is a moral philosopher who has worked in areas that have been traditionally neglected by analytic philosophy, such as pregnancy and motherhood. See for instance, her recent piece for The Conversation .  In this interview, she shows us that philosophy can make a difference to how we think about maternal duties and choices in pregnancy and early motherhood. Fiona Woollard Lisa Bortolotti: To start with I'd like to ask you how you got interested in pregnancy and motherhood. Fiona Woollard : Thank you, Lisa. It feels to me that I was part of a fortunate group of women philosophers who felt able to be philosophers while still being women, without having to downplay the interests that we have as women. In the past it had been seen as possible to succeed as a woman in philosophy. But it was harder to get recognized as a philosopher if you were dealing with things that were thought to as women's issues.  And it felt as if there wa...

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 Liz Atkin (pictured below) who is an artist and advocate for Compulsive Skin Picking . To learn more about Liz and what she does, you can access her YouTube channel , listen to her being interviewed by Ted Meyer in 2015 , or read this detailed feature in Like-Minded . The post is illustrated with some of Liz's beautiful artworks. Anxiety is now sited as one of the most common of mental illnesses but some anxiety disorders, Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviours such as Compulsive Skin Picking (CSP or Dermatillomania) and Hair-pulling (Trichotillomania) are seldom recognised and treatment is very hard to access. They are much more common than initially thought and among the most poorly understood, misdiagnosed, and undertreated groups of disorders. BFRBs may affect as many as 1 out of 20 people. Compulsive Skin Picking is a complex physical and mental disorder that often develops in young childhood. It provides comfort, pleasure or emotional releas...

Salpetriere Hospital, Paris The 18th Meeting of the Psychopathology Section of the European Psychiatric Association (EPA) and the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) took place on the 5th and 6th December 2014 at Salpetriere Hospital in Paris, France. Over two days those invited to speak presented their talks related to the meeting’s leading theme – Nature and Narratives of Depression: Philosophical and Psychopathological Aspects , followed by plenary discussion. The meeting was chaired by Michael Musalek and the list of presenters included: Femi Oyebode, Pedro Varandas, Maria Luisa Figueira, Luis Madeira, Norbert Andersch, Raimo Salokangas and Gilberto Di Petta.

Zoë Boden I am Zoë Boden , a post-doctoral scholar working in the field of mental health. Much of my work focuses on emotional and intersubjective experiences, and how we make sense of these, especially when they’re complex or distressing.  In thinking about distortions in beliefs and memories, in my research, I have focused on the stories we tell to help make sense of our experiences. My PhD research looked at experiences of feeling guilty and explored the relationship between our lived, bodily experiences and our narrative accounts.   A large part of feeling guilty is an experience of unfamiliarity – a feeling that your behaviour is out of character, and that you are unfamiliar to yourself. Who is this person who did this thing? How can it be the same me that is here now, knowing that thing to be wrong? This unfamiliarity can be understood as a distorted belief. It feels incongruous to acknowledge and accept that whatever was done, was done by you. So how did my rese...