Imperfect Cognitions

This post is by Helene Cæcilie Mørck (MA), academic, expert by experience and choreographer, who recently attended and talked at  Too Mad to Be True III: Paradoxes of Madness , held on October 30–31, 2024, at the Dr. Guislain Museum in Ghent, Belgium. The conference was organised by Jasper Feyaerts (Ghent University), Bart Marius (Director of the Dr. Guislain Museum), and Wouter Kusters (Foundation for Psychiatry & Philosophy).  Opening speech by Jasper Feyaerts (Ghent University) This year’s theme explored the notion of contradiction and paradox in madness, philosophy, and related fields. With over 60 speakers, including five keynote presenters, the conference offered a remarkable diversity of perspectives that challenged conventional understandings of madness. Despite the breadth of content and the tight two-day schedule, the experience was intense, deeply enriching, and empowering.  Many speakers lived with or had personal experiences of madness, bringing an i...

This blog post is by Zsuzsanna Chappell. Zsuzsanna is an independent scholar and research associate at the Centre for the Philosophy of Natural and Social Sciences, London School of Economics. She currently writes on the social philosophy and ethics of mental illness, and the role of researchers with subject-relevant lived experience in the human sciences. Previously, she held academic positions at the London School of Economics and the University of Manchester and is the author of Deliberative Democracy: A Critical Introduction , Palgrave 2012. Zsuzsanna reports from the third annual Philosophy of Psychiatry and Lived Experience workshop . The workshop was held on 17-18 April 2023, online (hosted by the University of Umeå). The aim of these workshops has been to bring together  philosophers and philosophy-adjacent scholars who self-identify as having lived experience of mental disability / difference, and are also writing on these topics.  Zsuzsanna Chappell Our first post d...

This blog post is by Zsuzsanna Chappell. Zsuzsanna is an independent scholar and research associate at the Centre for the Philosophy of Natural and Social Sciences, London School of Economics. She currently writes on the social philosophy and ethics of mental illness, and the role of researchers with subject-relevant lived experience in the human sciences. Previously, she held academic positions at the London School of Economics and the University of Manchester and is the author of  Deliberative Democracy: A Critical Introduction , Palgrave 2012. Zsuzsanna reports from the third annual  Philosophy of Psychiatry and Lived Experience workshop . The workshop was held on 17-18 April 2023, online (hosted by the University of Umeå). The aim of these workshops has been to bring together  philosophers and philosophy-adjacent scholars who self-identify as having lived experience of mental disability / difference, and are also writing on these topics.  University of Umeå Zsuzs...

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...