•  44
    Narrative identity and dementia
    Hungarian Philosophical Review. forthcoming.
    It seems obvious that one of the harms that dementia does is to undermine the person’s identity. One reason for thinking this is that personal identity has long been associated with continuity of a subjective perspective on the world held together by memory that that memory is severely curtailed in dementia. Hence dementia seems to threaten an individual’s identity as a particular person, gradually undermining it. But the necessity of the connection has been criticised by a number of philosopher…Read more
  •  27
    According to the recovery model, mental healthcare should be aimed towards a conception of recovery articulated by a patient or service user in accord with his or her own specific values. The model thus presupposes and emphasises the agency of the patient and opposes paternalism. Recent philosophical work on the relations between respect, self-respect, self-esteem, shame, and agency suggests, however, two ways in which mental illness itself can undermine self-respect, promote shame and undermine…Read more
  • Rethinking the Biopsychosocial Model
    Oxford University Press. 2018.
  •  19
    Values and the singular aims of idiographic inquiry
    In Raffaele De Luca Picione, Jensine Nedergaard, Maria Francesca Freda & Sergio Salvatore (eds.), Idiographic Approach to Health, Information Age Publishing. 2018.
    In response to the concern that criteriological psychiatric diagnosis, based on the DSM and ICD classifications, pigeon-holes patients, there have been calls for it to be augmented by an idiographic formulation [IDGA Workgroup, WPA 2003]. I have argued elsewhere that this is a mistake [Thornton 2008a, 2008b, 2010]. Looking back to its original proponent Wilhelm Windelband yields no clear account of the contrast between idiographic and nomothetic judgement. Abstracting from Jaspers’ account of un…Read more
  • with Kwm Filford
    . 2016.
  •  21
    Wittgensteinian Themes (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 49 (4): 931-933. 1996.
    Wittgensteinian Themes gathers together 14 previously published essays written towards the end of Malcolm's life. The majority of essays provide exegeses of Wittgenstein's thought. It is arguable that both Wittgensteinian exegesis and Wittgensteinian philosophy run the risk of parochialism. This collection makes a commendable effort to escape that charge. Even in the exegetical essays, issue is taken with conflicting contemporary philosophers whilst four essays are direct attacks on opposing phi…Read more
  •  38
    An Aesthetic Grounding for the Role of Concepts in Experience in Kant, Wittgenstein and Mcdowell
    Forum Philosophicum: International Journal for Philosophy 12 (2): 227-245. 2007.
    The paper begins by asking, in the context of McDowell's Mind and World, what guides empirical judgement. It then critically examines David Bell's account of the role of aesthetic judgement, or experience, in Kant and Wittgenstein, in shedding light on empirical judgement. Bell's suggestion that a Wittgensteinian account of aesthetic experience can guide the application of empirical concepts is criticised: neither the discussion of aesthetic judgement nor aesthetic experience helps underpin empi…Read more
  •  23
    Understanding, testimony and interpretation in psychiatric diagnosis
    with Ajit Shah and Philip Thomas
    Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 12 (1): 49-55. 2009.
    Psychiatric diagnosis depends, centrally, on the transmission of patients’ knowledge of their experiences and symptoms to clinicians by testimony. In the case of non-native speakers, the need for linguistic interpretation raises significant practical problems. But determining the best practical approach depends on determining the best underlying model of both testimony and knowledge itself. Internalist models of knowledge have been influential since Descartes. But they cannot account for testimo…Read more
  •  32
    Should comprehensive diagnosis include idiographic understanding?
    Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 11 (3): 293-302. 2007.
    The World Psychiatric Association has emphasised the importance of idiographic understanding as a distinct component of comprehensive assessment but in introductions to the idea it is often assimilated to the notion of narrative judgement. This paper aims to distinguish between supposed idiographic and narrative judgement. Taking the former to mean a kind of individualised judgement, I argue that it has no place in psychiatry in part because it threatens psychiatric validity. Narrative judgement…Read more
  •  45
    The Ambiguities of Mild Cognitive Impairment
    Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 13 (1): 21-27. 2006.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Ambiguities of Mild Cognitive ImpairmentTim Thornton (bio)Keywordsclassification, disease, mild cognitive impairment, normative, valuesCorner and Bond's paper (2006) raises some key ethical questions about the classification and diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment (MCI). In this commentary, I wish to revise some of the general issues about the classification of mental disorder raised by this particular classificatory concept. …Read more
  •  132
    Psychopathology and Two Kinds of Narrative Accounts of the Self
    Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 10 (4): 361-367. 2003.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.4 (2003) 361-367 [Access article in PDF] Psychopathology and Two Kinds of Narrative Account of the Self Tim Thornton Keywords self, narrative, reductionism, embodiment, Dennett, Strawson, McDowell The self plays an important role in psycho pathology. Conditions such as dementia raise the question of how much loss of memory and awareness there can be before there is, if ever, also a loss of the …Read more
  •  31
    The two main psychiatric taxonomies set out codifications of psychiatric diagnoses via lists of symptoms with the aim of maximizing the reliability of diagnostic judgements. This approach has been criticized, however, for failing to capture the precise connection between diagnostic judgements and symptoms as detected by skilled clinicians. Assuming that this criticism is correct, this chapter offers two related accounts of why this might be so. First, skilled diagnostic judgement may be an exerc…Read more
  • Clinical Judgment, Tacit Knowledge, and Recognition in Psychiatric Diagnosis
    In K. W. M. Fulford, Martin Davies, Richard Gipps, George Graham, John Sadler, Giovanni Stanghellini & Tim Thornton (eds.), The Oxford handbook of philosophy and psychiatry, Oxford University Press. 2013.
    This chapter contrasts the recent emphasis on operationalism as the route to reliability in psychiatry with arguments for an ineliminable role for tacit knowledge. Although Michael Polanyi popularized the idea of tacit dimension, the chapter argues that two clues he offers as to its nature-that we know more than we can tell and that knowledge is an active comprehension of things known-are better interpreted through regress arguments set out by Ryle and Wittgenstein. Those arguments, however, sug…Read more
  •  201
    Radical liberal values‐based practice
    Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 17 (5): 988-991. 2011.
    Values based practice is a radical view of the place of values in medicine which develops from a philosophical analysis of values, illness and the role of ethical principles. It denies two attractive and traditional views of medicine: that diagnosis is a merely factual matter and that the values that should guide treatment and management can be codified in principles. But it goes further in the adoption of a radical liberal view: that right or good outcome should be replaced by right process. I …Read more
  •  19
  •  45
    An intellect in view (review)
    The Philosophers' Magazine 46 (46): 108-110. 2009.
  •  93
    Thought insertion, cognitivism, and inner space
    Cognitive Neuropsychiatry. 2002.
    Introduction. Whatever its underlying causes, even the description of the phenomenon of thought insertion, of the content of the delusion, presents difficulty. It may seem that the best hope of a description comes from a broadly cognitivist approach to the mind which construes content-laden mental states as internal mental representations within what is literally an inner space: the space of the brain or nervous system. Such an approach objectifies thoughts in a way which might seem to hold out …Read more
  •  5
    Tacit Knowledge and Its Antonyms
    Philosophia Scientiae 17 93-106. 2013.
    Harry Collins’s Tacit and Explicit Knowledge characterises tacit knowledge through a number of antonyms: explicit, explicable, and then explicable via elaboration, transformation, mechanization and explanation and, most fundamentally, what can be communicated via “strings”. But his account blurs the distinction between knowledge and what knowledge can be of and has a number of counter-intuitive consequences. This is the result of his adoption of strings themselves rather than the use of words or…Read more
  •  32
    In Paradoxes of Delusion, Sass aims to use passages from Wittgenstein to characterize the feeling of “mute particularity” that forms a part of delusional atmosphere. I argue that Wittgenstein’s discussion provides no helpful positive account. But his remarks on more everyday cases of the uncanny and the feeling of unreality might seem to promise a better approach via the expressive use of words in secondary sense. I argue that this also is a false hope but that, interestingly, there can be no in…Read more
  •  20
    Tacit Knowledge
    Routledge. 2012.
    Tacit knowledge is the form of implicit knowledge that we rely on for learning. It is invoked in a wide range of intellectual inquiries, from traditional academic subjects to more pragmatically orientated investigations into the nature and transmission of skills and expertise. Notwithstanding its apparent pervasiveness, the notion of tacit knowledge is a complex and puzzling one. What is its status as knowledge? What is its relation to explicit knowledge? What does it mean to say that knowledge …Read more
  • The discursive turn, social constructionism and dementia
    In Julian Hughes, Stephen Louw & Steven R. Sabat (eds.), Dementia: Mind, Meaning, and the Person, Oxford University Press. 2005.
  •  56
    I believe that Wright’s constructivist account of intention is funda- mentally flawed [Wright 1984, 1986, 1987a, 1987b, 1988, 1989a, 1989b, 1991, 1992]. To understand why it fails it is necessary first to locate the account in its broader strategic context. That context is Wright’s response to Wittgenstein’s account of rule following. When so located the diagnosis of the account’s failure is clear. Wright’s account of intention is a species of the interpretative approach to mental content which is…Read more
  •  4
    An intellect in view (review)
    The Philosophers' Magazine 46 108-110. 2009.
  •  71
    Summary The aim of this paper is three-fold. Firstly, to briefly set out how strategic choices made about theorising about intentionality or content have actions at a distance for accounting for delusion. Secondly, to investigate how successfully a general difficulty facing a broadly interpretative approach to delusions might be eased by the application of any of three Wittgensteinian interpretative tools. Thirdly, to draw a general moral about how the later Wittgenstein gives more reason to be …Read more
  •  1
    The Philosophy of Psychiatry: A Companion (edited book)
    Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2004.
    This is a comprehensive resource of original essays by leading thinkers exploring the newly emerging interdisciplinary field of the philosophy of psychiatry. The contributors aim to define this exciting field and to highlight the philosophical assumptions and issues that underlie psychiatric theory and practice, the category of mental disorder, and rationales for its social, clinical, and legal treatment.
  •  314
    Psychiatric explanation and understanding
    European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 6 (1): 95-111. 2010.
    Jaspers’s binary distinction between understanding and explanation has given way first to a proliferation of explanatory levels and now, in John Campbell’s recent work, to a conception of explanation with no distinct levels of explanation and no inbuilt rationality requirement. I argue that there is still a role for understanding in psychiatry and that is to demystify the assumption that the states it concerns are mental. This role can be fulfilled by placing rationality at the heart of understa…Read more