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4Should Compassion be Included in Codes of Ethics for Physicians?Annals of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada 28 (7): 415-418. 1995.Compassion is mentioned in the Principles of the American Medical Association but not in the Code of Ethics of the Canadian Medical Association. In this article, we assess the case for including compassion in a code of ethics for physicians. We argue that, properly understood, there is a strong case for including compassion in codes of ethics for physicians on the basis that it is both clinically and ethically central to the practice of medicine.
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40Mental Competence and Value: The Problem of Normativity in the Assessment of Decision-Making CapacityPsychiatry, Psychology and Law 8 (2): 135-145. 2001.Mental competence, or decision‐making capacity, is an important concept in law, psychiatry, and bioethics. A major problem faced in the development and implementation of standards for assessing mental competence is the issue of objectivity. The problem is that objective standards are hard to formulate and apply. The aim here is to review the limited philosophical literature on the place of value in competence in an attempt to introduce the issues to a wider audience. The thesis that the assessme…Read more
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3Benevolent Theory: Moral Treatment at the York RetreatHistory of Psychiatry 18 (1): 61-80. 2007.The York Retreat is famous in the histor y of nineteenth-centur y psychiatr y because of its association with moral treatment. Although there exists a substantial historical literature on the evolution of moral treatment at the Retreat, several interpretive problems continue to obscure its unique therapeutic legacy. The nature of moral treatment as practised at the Retreat will be clarified and discussed in a historical perspective. It will be argued that moral treatment at the Retreat was pr im…Read more
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3Alexander Crichton on the Psychopathology of the PassionsHistory of Psychiatry 19 (3): 275-296. 2008.Alexander Crichton (1763—1856) made significant contributions to the medical theory of the passions, yet there exists no systematic exegesis of this particular aspect of his work. The present article explores four themes in Crichton's work on the passions: (1) the role of irritability in the physiology of the passions; (2) the manner in which irritability and sensibility contribute to the valence, or polarity, of the passions; (3) the elaboration of a psychopathology of the passions that emphasi…Read more
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7Science and Morals in the Affective Psychopathology of Philippe PinelHistory of Psychiatry 21 (1): 38-51. 2010.Building on what he believed was a new ‘medico-philosophical’ method, Philippe Pinel made a bold theoretical attempt to find a place for the passions and other affective posits in psychopathology. However, his courageous attempt to steer affectivity onto the high seas of medical science ran aground on two great reefs that still threaten the scientific status of affectivity today. Epistemologically, there is the elusive nature of the signs and symptoms of affectivity. Ethically, there is the stub…Read more
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36Ethical and Conceptual Issues in Eating DisordersCurrent Opinion in Psychiatry 26 (6): 562-565. 2013.Purpose of review This review considers the literature on ethical and conceptual issues in eating disorders from the last 18 months. Some reference to earlier work is necessary in order to provide context for the recent findings from research that is ongoing. Recent findings Empirical ethics research on anorexia nervosa includes novel ethical and conceptual findings on the role of authenticity and personal identity in individuals’ reports of their experience, as well as new evidence on the role …Read more
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25John Locke on Madness: Redressing the Intellectualist BiasHistory of Psychiatry 25 (2): 137-153. 2014.Locke is famous for defining madness as an intellectual disorder in the realm of ideas. Numerous commentators take this to be his main and only contribution to the history of psychiatry. However, a detailed exegetical review of all the relevant textual evidence suggests that this intellectualist interpretation of Locke’s account of madness is both misleading and incomplete. Affective states of various sorts play an important role in that account and are in fact primordial in the determination of…Read more
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30Decision-Making Capacity to Consent to Medical Assistance in Dying for Persons with Mental DisordersJournal of Ethics in Mental Health 1-14. 2016.Following a Canadian Supreme Court ruling invalidating an absolute prohibition on physician assisted dying, two reports and several commentators have recommended that the Canadian criminal law allow medical assistance in dying (MAID) for persons with a diagnosis of mental disorder. A key element in this process is that the person requesting MAID be deemed to have the ‘mental capacity’ or ‘mental competence’ to consent to that option. In this context, mental capacity and mental competence refer t…Read more
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10Lost in Myth, Lost in Translation: Philippe Pinel’s 1809 Medico-Philosophical Treatise on Mental AlienationInternational Journal of Mental Health 47 (3): 245-249. 2018.Philippe Pinel is widely regarded as one of the founders of modern evidence-based psychiatry. Yet, until recently, his most important contributions to psychiatric theory and practice were effectively lost in myth, or lost in translation. It is instructive to review the history of these developments in order to correct any errors or omissions that may stand in the way of an accurate recognition of Pinel’s contributions to psychiatry, while at the same time highlighting some of his achievements th…Read more
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12The Distinction between “Passion” and “Emotion” – Vincenzo Chiarugi, a Case StudyHistory of Psychiatry 25 (4): 477-484. 2014.The distinction between ‘passion’ and ‘emotion’ has been largely overlooked in the history of psychiatry and the psychopathology of affectivity. A version of the distinction that has gone completely unnoticed is the one proposed by Florentine physician Vincenzo Chiarugi (1759–1820). The purpose of the present discussion is to introduce this Italian version of the distinction and to inquire into its origins.
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22Book reviews (review)Philosophical Psychology 9 (3): 391-410. 1996.The engine of reason, the seat of the soul: a philosophical journey into the brain, Paul M. Churchland. Cambridge: Bradford Books, MIT Press, 1995 ISBN: 0–262–03244–4Cognition in the wild, Edwin Hutchins. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995. ISBN: 0–262–08231–4Dimensions of creativity, Margaret A. Boden, (Ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994 ISBN 0–262–02368–7Contemplating minds: a forum for Artificial Intelligence, William J. Clancey, Stephen W. Smoliar & Mark J. Stefik (Eds) Cambridge: Bradford Book…Read more
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12Medico-Philosophical Treatise on Mental AlienationWiley. 2008.First ever English Translation of Philippe PInel's 2nd Medico-Philosophical Treatise on Mental Alienation. The founder of French psychiatry wrote Medico-Philosophical Treatise on Mental Alienation in 1800 and reworked it nine years later. This book is the "Entirely Reworked and Extensively Expanded" version from 1809. Today, it can give historians of medicine and psychiatrists an overview of mental illnesses as they were viewed in that era. The author, Philippe Pinel, became known as the doctor …Read more
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22Fact and Value in Emotion (edited book)John Benjamins. 2008.There is a large amount of scientific work on emotion in psychology, neuroscience, biology, physiology, and psychiatry, which assumes that it is possible to study emotions and other affective states, objectively. Emotion science of this sort is concerned primarily with 'facts' and not 'values', with 'description' not 'prescription'. The assumption behind this vision of emotion science is that it is possible to distinguish factual from evaluative aspects of affectivity and emotion, and study one …Read more
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36William James on Passion and Emotion: Influence of Théodule RibotEmotion Review 11 (3): 234-246. 2019.This case study in the history of “passion” and “emotion” is based on the writings of William James. James is famous for his (1884) theory of emotion. However, like his illustrious colleague, Théodule Ribot, he also recognized the importance of “passion” in psychology. That aspect of James’s work is underappreciated. Ribot explicitly defends the necessity of including “passion” in psychology. James does not go that far. But he does utilize a very similar concept in connection with the term “pass…Read more
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38Can women in labor give informed consent to epidural analgesia?Bioethics 33 (4): 475-486. 2018.There are reasons to believe that decision‐making capacity (mental competence) of women in labor may be compromised in relation to giving informed consent to epidural analgesia. Not only severe labor pain, but also stress, anxiety, and premedication of analgesics such as opioids, may influence women’s decisional capacity. Decision‐making capacity is a complex construct involving cognitive and emotional components which cannot be reduced to ‘understanding’ alone. A systematic literature search id…Read more
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22Passion and Decision-Making Capacity in Anorexia NervosaAmerican Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 6 (4): 66-68. 2015.The question of decision-making capacity for informed consent to experimental brain surgery for severely ill anorectic patients is about as dramatic an ethical issue one can imagine. Sabine Müller and her co-authors (2015) should be commended for this extremely timely and original clinical and ethical discussion of decision-making capacity in relation to the issues raised by informed consent to such therapies. It is not only the therapies themselves that are innovative in this discussion, but al…Read more
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46Competence and Inequity Are Both Important to the Ethics of Supervised Injectable Opioid Assisted TreatmentAmerican Journal of Bioethics 17 (12): 41-43. 2017.I very much enjoyed reading the interesting and original article by Steel and colleagues (2017). But I found myself strongly disagreeing with its conclusion once the real point of the argument became clear to me. At the same time, I believe that the authors are correct to draw attention to the importance of context and inequities in framing discussions of the ethics of voluntary consent in heroin prescription research. I begin with a brief summary of the authors’ conclusion, quoting directly and…Read more
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2Emotions and the Representational Mind: A Computationalist PerspectiveDissertation, The University of Western Ontario (Canada). 1989.What follows is a case study in the foundations of cognitive science. In it I explore the relation between the computational theory of mind and the theory of emotion. The argument of the thesis is that these two domains have much more to do with one another than has traditionally been supposed. The strategy adopted is to formulate a computational theory of emotion and then go on to extol its virtues. On the whole the aim of the project is to explore the possibility of interpreting information pr…Read more
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113Reinstating the Passions: Arguments from the History of Psychopathology (edited book)In Peter Goldie (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion, Oxford University Press. pp. 237-263. 2009.The passions have vanished. After centuries of dominance in the ethical and scientific discourse of the West, they have been eclipsed by the emotions. To speak of the passions now is to refer to a relic of the past, the crumbling foundation of a once mighty conceptual empire that permeated all aspects of Western cultural life. Philosophical and scientific wars continue to be fought in these ruins; new encampments are built, rebels plot in the catacombs, and bold victors plant their flags on the …Read more
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90Decision-making capacityStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2011.In many Western jurisdictions, the law presumes that adult persons, and sometimes children that meet certain criteria, are capable of making their own health care decisions; for example, consenting to a particular medical treatment, or consenting to participate in a research trial. But what exactly does it mean to say that a subject has or lacks the requisite capacity to decide? This last question has to do with what is commonly called “decisional capacity,” a central concept in health care law …Read more
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688A Madness for Identity: Psychiatric Labels, Consumer Autonomy, and the Perils of the InternetPhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 11 (4): 335-349. 2004.Psychiatric labeling has been the subject of considerable ethical debate. Much of it has centered on issues associated with the application of psychiatric labels. In comparison, far less attention has been paid to issues associated with the removal of psychiatric labels. Ethical problems of this last sort tend to revolve around identity. Many sufferers are reticent to relinquish their iatrogenic identity in the face of official label change; some actively resist it. New forms of this resistance …Read more
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15Benevolence and discipline: the concept of recovery in early nineteenth-century moral treatmentIn Abraham Rudnick (ed.), Recovery of People with Mental Illness: Philosophical and Related Perspectives, Oxford University Press. pp. 65. 2012.This is a chapter on the history of ideas related to recovery. Moral treatment was a novel approach to caring for mentally ill patients that arose towards the end of the eighteenth century in Europe, and then spread to North America. It is most famously associated with the names of William Tuke in York, and Philippe Pinel in Paris. These two very different men—Tuke was a wealthy English Quaker businessman and philanthropist, and Pinel was a famous French medical author and doctor—formulated two …Read more
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37The Hypothesis That Anorexia Nervosa Is a Passion: Clarifications and ElaborationsPhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 20 (4): 375-379. 2013.We are grateful for these two insightful commentaries, which both see novelty and value in the manner in which we invoke the hypothesis that anorexia nervosa is a passion, to help explain data from the Anorexia Experiences Study, which provides the basis of our inquiry. In this response, we wish to clarify and elaborate on our hypothesis; in particular, the difference between passions and moods, the manner in which our hypothesis touches on issues of authenticity and identity, and the compelling…Read more
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44Review of 'What Emotions Really Are: The Problem of Psychological Categories', by Paul E. Griffiths (review)Mind and Language 17 (3): 318-324. 2002.
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76Medical or Moral Kinds? Moving Beyond a False DichotomyPhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 17 (2): 119-125. 2010.I am delighted that Zachar and Potter have chosen to refer to my work on the DSM-IV cluster B personality disorders in their very interesting and ambitious target article. Their suggestion that we turn to virtue ethics rather than traditional moral theory to understand the relation between moral and nonmoral factors in personality disorders is certainly original and worth pursuing. Yet, in the final instance, I am not entirely sure about the exact scope of their proposed analysis. I also worry w…Read more
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12How Not to Walk Away From The Science of ConsciousnessJournal of Consciousness Studies 13 (4): 17-19. 2006.
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37Cognitive Modularity of EmotionCanadian Journal of Philosophy 36 (5 (Supp.)): 213-228. 2006.In a recent survey of contemporary philosophy of emotion, Ronald de Sousa states that "in recent years … emotions have once again become the focus of vigorous interest in philosophy, as well as in other branches of cognitive science" (de Sousa 2003, 1). He then goes on to make the important observation that "in view of the proliferation of increasingly fruitful exchanges between researchers of different stripes, it is no longer useful to speak of the philosophy of emotion in isolation from the a…Read more
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54Anorexia and the MacCAT-T Test for Mental Competence: Validity, Value, and EmotionPhilosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 13 (4): 283-287. 2007.How does one scientifically verify a psychometric instrument designed to assess the mental competence of medical patients who are asked to consent to medical treatment? Aside from satisfying technical requirements like statistical reliability, results yielded by such a test must conform to at least some accepted pretheoretical desiderata; for example, determinations of competence, as measured by the test, must capture a minimal core of accepted basic intuitions about what competence means and wh…Read more
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77Affective neuroscience and addictionAmerican Journal of Bioethics 7 (1): 20-21. 2007.The author comments on the article “The neurobiology of addiction: Implications for voluntary control of behavior,‘ by S. E. Hyman. Hyman suggests that addicted individuals have substantial impairments in cognitive control of behavior. The author states that brain and neurochemical systems are involved in addiction. He also suggests that neuroscience can link the diseased brain processes in addiction to the moral struggles of the addicts.
Louis C. Charland
(1958 - 2021)
London, Ontario, Canada
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy, Misc |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics and Epistemology |