Imperfect Cognitions

Today's post is by Dan Stein (University of Cape Town) who writes about his new book, Problems of Living (Elsevier, 2021). It seems to me hard to practice psychiatry without asking some key “big questions”, both about the nature of the mind (and mental illness) in particular, and about the nature of life (and mental suffering) in general. More than a decade ago I published a volume, Philosophy of Psychopharmacology , in which I addressed some of the “hard problems” faced by mental health clinicians, with a particular focus on philosophical issues raised or addressed by advances in psychiatric medication.  This year I’ve published my second volume at the intersection of psychiatry and philosophy,  Problems of Living , in which I look at a range of “hard problems” raised by life as a whole, with a particular focus on philosophical issues raised or addressed by advances in the cognitive-affective sciences including psychology and neuroscience. I view my approach in both o...

In today's post I am going to present an argument I developed in an article for the Supplementary Volume of the Aristotelian Society , Doctors without 'Disorders'. The paper was recently listed among the best articles in Philosophy published by Oxford University Press in 2020 (and thus it is available open access at the moment). I also presented this idea at the Joint Session last summer in  a symposium on the concept of disorder and a video of the presentation is available (click below to watch). How do we decide whether the problems we experience deserve the attention of medical professionals? Many believe that the answer hangs on whether the problem we have is caused by a disorder: if it is caused by a disorder, then medical attention is appropriate. If it is not caused by a disorder, then it is still a problem, but not a medical problem. It is a problem in living , a problem we need to try and solve by some other means. I argue that the dichotomy between medical pr...