Philosophy Part 6: Are mental disorders brain diseases ‘in waiting’?
In this blog I look at the argument that mental disorders are brain diseases just like multiple sclerosis or dementia
Philosophy Part 5: Why disease and illness are concepts of the body.
In this blog I want to come back to the work of Thomas Szasz. The last two blogs argue that bodily states and processes need to be understood in a different way from the way we understand what human beings think and do. Mental ‘illness’ consists of things that people say and do. For Szasz,…
Philosophy Part 2: How should we think about mental states? The contribution of Ludwig Wittgenstein.
There are two broad approaches to the ‘mental’ that Wittgenstein’s ideas challenge. One is that all our feelings, thoughts and behaviours are caused by, or ‘epiphenomena’ of, a specific brain state or process. This is sometimes referred to as ‘physicalism’ (‘epiphenomenalism’ being one variant of physicalism). On this view- the one that much neuroscience is…
Philosophy Part 1: Why philosophy matters!
This is the first of a series of blogs presenting a philosophical analysis of the modern mental health system and what it is concerned with. 20th century philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, much of whose later work concerns our thinking about the ‘mind’, suggested that the role of philosophy is to identify and clear-up conceptual confusions. Many…
‘Psychiatric prejudice’- a new way of silencing criticism
‘Psychiatric prejudice’ is a term being bandied about these days, mainly by aggrieved psychiatrists who feel that psychiatry is not being given equal status with other medical specialities. Ordinary people, other doctors and medical students are all prejudiced because they do not appreciate that psychiatry is a proper medical activity, and critics of psychiatry are…
