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201Phenomenology as a Form of EmpathyInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 55 (5): 473-495. 2012.Abstract This paper proposes that adopting a ?phenomenological stance? enables a distinctive kind of empathy, which is required in order to understand forms of experience that occur in psychiatric illness and elsewhere. For the most part, we interpret other people's experiences against the backdrop of a shared world. Hence our attempts to appreciate interpersonal differences do not call into question a deeper level of commonality. A phenomenological stance involves suspending our habitual accept…Read more
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186Heidegger's attunement and the neuropsychology of emotionPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1 (3): 287-312. 2002.I outline the early Heidegger's views on mood and emotion, and then relate his central claims to some recent finding in neuropsychology. These findings complement Heidegger in a number of important ways. More specifically, I suggest that, in order to make sense of certain neurological conditions that traditional assumptions concerning the mind are constitutionally incapable of accommodating, something very like Heidegger's account of mood and emotion needs to be adopted as an interpretive framew…Read more
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31Introduction Emotional Experience in DepressionJournal of Consciousness Studies 20 (7-8): 7-8. 2013.
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107Heidegger, analytic metaphysics, and the being of beingsInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 45 (1). 2002.This essay begins with an outline of the early Heidegger's distinction between beings and the Being1 of those beings, followed by a discussion of Heideggerian teleology. It then turns to contemporary analytic metaphysics to suggest that analytic metaphysics concerns itself wholly with beings and does not recognize distinct forms of questioning concerning what Heidegger calls Being . This difference having been clarified, studies of identity and individuation in the analytic tradition are examine…Read more
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37IntroductionInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 16 (3). 2008.This Article does not have an abstract
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118Interpreting delusionsPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 3 (1): 25-48. 2004.This paper explores the phenomenology of the Capgras and Cotard delusions. The former is generally characterised as the belief that relatives or friends have been replaced by impostors, and the latter as the conviction that one is dead or has ceased to exist. A commonly reported feature of these delusions is an experienced ''defamiliarisation'' or even ''derealisation'' of things, which is associated with an absence or distortion of affect. I suggest that the importance attributed to affect by c…Read more
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74How scientific practices matter: Reclaiming philosophical naturalism (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 55 (1): 179-184. 2004.
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269Husserl and Nagel on subjectivity and the limits of physical objectivityContinental Philosophy Review 35 (4): 353-377. 2002.Thomas Nagel argues that the subjective character of mind inevitably eludes philosophical efforts to incorporate the mental into a single, complete, physically objective view of the world. Nagel sees contemporary philosophy as caught on the horns of a dilemma
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47Folk Psychology and the Biological Basis of IntersubjectivityRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 56 18-19. 2005.Recent philosophical discussions of intersubjectivity generally start by stating or assuming that our ability to understand and interact with others is enabled by a ‘folk psychology’ or ‘theory of mind’. Folk psychology is characterized as the ability to attribute intentional states, such as beliefs and desires, to others, in order to predict and explain their behaviour. Many authors claim that this ability is not merely one amongst many constituents of interpersonal understanding but an underly…Read more
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63Farewell to folk psychology: A response to HuttoInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 16 (3). 2008.This Article does not have an abstract
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30From folk psychology to commonsenseIn Daniel D. Hutto & Matthew Ratcliffe (eds.), Folk Psychology Re-Assessed, Springer Press. pp. 223--243. 2007.
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66Feelings of being: phenomenology, psychiatry and the sense of reality (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2008.Emotions and bodily feelings -- Existential feelings -- The phenomenology of touch -- Body and world -- Feeling and belief in the Capgras delusion -- Feelings of deadness and depersonalization -- Existential feeling in schizophrenia -- What William James really said -- Stance, feeling, and belief -- Pathologies of existential feeling.
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13El sentimiento de serIdeas Y Valores 67 (167): 289-316. 2018.RESUMEN Una vez que el foco de la reflexión pasa de las teorías ideales a la aplicación de la justicia social, centrada en las instituciones de las sociedades democráticas, se requiere prestar especial atención a los estilos de vida. Estos tienen una alta incidencia en cómo la justicia es realizada y afectan tanto a la desigualdad económica como a la disponibilidad de los recursos naturales. En nuestras sociedades es posible establecer restricciones a los estilos de vida, especialmente en aquell…Read more
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809"Folk psychology" is not folk psychologyPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 5 (1): 31-52. 2006.This paper disputes the claim that our understanding of others is enabled by a commonsense or ‘folk’ psychology, whose ‘core’ involves the attribution of intentional states in order to predict and explain behaviour. I argue that interpersonal understanding is seldom, if ever, a matter of two people assigning intentional states to each other but emerges out of a context of interaction between them. Self and other form a coupled system rather than two wholly separate entities equipped with an inte…Read more
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47Existential Feeling and NarrativeIn Oliver Müller & Thiemo Breyer (eds.), Funktionen des Lebendigen, De Gruyter. pp. 169-192. 2016.
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38Depression, Emotion and the Self: Philosophical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives (edited book)Imprint Academic. 2014.This volume addresses the question of what it is like to be depressed. Despite the vast amount of research that has been conducted into the causes and treatment of depression, the experience of depression remains poorly understood. Indeed, many depression memoirs state that the experience is impossible for others to understand. However, it is at least clear that changes in emotion, mood, and bodily feeling are central to all forms of depression, and these are the book's principal focus. In recen…Read more
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122Experiences of Depression: A Study in PhenomenologyOxford University Press. 2014.Experiences of Depression is a philosophical exploration of what it is like to be depressed. In this important new book, Matthew Ratcliffe develops a detailed account of depression experiences by drawing on work in phenomenology, philosophy of mind and psychology, and several other disciplines.
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1Depression and the Phenomenology of Free WillIn 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 offers a phenomenological account of impaired agency in depression. It begins by briefly considering some first-person descriptions of how depression affects the ability to act, which point to an altered "experience of free will." Although it is often assumed that we have such an experience, it is far from clear what it consists of. The chapter argues that this lack of clarity is symptomatic of looking in the wrong place. Drawing on themes in Sartre's Being and Nothingness, it is su…Read more
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21Das Problem mit dem Problem des BewusstseinsSynthesis Philosophica 22 (2): 483-494. 2007.In dem Artikel wird die These vertreten, dass sich das – um es in populärster Weise zu formulieren – „Problem des Bewusstseins” auf einer falschen Interpretation der Erfahrungsstruktur gründet. Der Kontrast zwischen meiner subjektiven Perspektive und der gemeinsamen Welt, in der ich meine Perspektive einnehme , ist Bestandteil meiner Erfahrung. Beschreibungen von Erfahrungen, die den Grundstein für die Bewusstseinsausbildung legen, neigen jedoch dazu, lediglich Ersteres zu betonen, wobei sie mer…Read more
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73Binary Oppositions in Psychiatry: For or Against?Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 17 (3): 233-239. 2010.In their interesting and informative paper ‘From Szasz to Foucault: On the Role of Critical Psychiatry,’ Pat Bracken and Phil Thomas contrast, in a clear and helpful way, some central themes in the works of Thomas Szasz and Michel Foucault. They go on to endorse a form of critical psychiatry inspired by the latter. Szasz’s critique of psychiatry, they explain, is premised on binary oppositions, principally that between ‘mental’ and ‘bodily.’ Szasz begins by assuming the legitimacy of the distinc…Read more
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88Existential feeling and psychopathologyPhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 16 (2): 179-194. 2009.
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90Dennett's philosophy: A comprehensive assessmentBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 53 (4): 597-602. 2002.
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232Depression, Guilt and Emotional DepthInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 53 (6): 602-626. 2010.It is generally maintained that emotions consist of intentional states and /or bodily feelings. This paper offers a phenomenological analysis of guilt in severe depression, in order to illustrate how such conceptions fail to adequately accommodate a way in which some emotional experiences are said to be deeper than others. Many emotions are intentional states. However, I propose that the deepest emotions are not intentional but pre-intentional, meaning that they determine which kinds of intentio…Read more
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74Belonging to the world through the feeling bodyPhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 16 (2): 205-211. 2009.
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3A Bad Case Of The Flu?: The Comparative Phenomenology of Depression and Somatic IllnessJournal of Consciousness Studies 20 (7-8): 198-218. 2013.This paper argues that the DSM diagnostic category 'major depression' is so permissive that it fails to distinguish the phenomenology of depression from a general 'feeling of being ill' that is associated with a range of somatic illnesses. We start by emphasizing that altered bodily experience is a conspicuous and commonplace symptom of depression. We add that the experience of somatic illness is not exclusively bodily; it can involve more pervasive experiential changes that are not dissimilar t…Read more
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83An epistemological problem for evolutionary psychologyInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 19 (1): 47-63. 2005.This article draws out an epistemological tension implicit in Cosmides and Tooby's conception of evolutionary psychology. Cosmides and Tooby think of the mind as a collection of functionally individuated, domain-specific modules. Although they do not explicitly deny the existence of domain-general processes, it will be shown that their methodology commits them to the assumption that only domain-specific cognitive processes are capable of producing useful outputs. The resultant view limits the sc…Read more
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119A Kantian stance on the intentional stanceBiology and Philosophy 16 (1): 29-52. 2001.I examine the way in which Daniel Dennett (1987, 1995) uses his 'intentional' and 'design' stances to make the claim that intentionality is derived from design. I suggest that Dennett is best understood as attempting to supply an objective, nonintentional, naturalistic rationale for our use of intentional concepts. However, I demonstrate that his overall picture presupposes prior application of the intentional stance in a preconditional, ineliminable,'sense-giving' role. Construed as such, Denne…Read more
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152Introduction to the Special Section on “Emotions and Feelings in Psychiatric Illness”Emotion Review 4 (2): 119-121. 2012.
Areas of Specialization
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