Grant Gillett

The ability to feel pain is a property of human beings that seems to be based entirely in our biological natures and to place us squarely within the animal kingdom. Yet the experience of pain is often used as an example of a mental attribute with qualitative properties that defeat attempts to identify mental events with physiological mechanisms. I will argue that neurophysiology and psychology help to explain the interwoven biological and subjective features of pain and recommend a view of pain which differs in important respects from the one most commonly accepted

The idea of cultural evolution, coined by Daniel Dennett, suggests we might be able to formulate a Darwinian type of explanation for the adaptive 'tricks' we learn as human beings. The proposed explanation makes use of the idea of memes. That idea is examined and related to semantic units linked to the terms in a natural language. It is agreed with Dennett that these are of pivotal significance in understanding the structure of human cognition. The alternative is then explored to the chaos of worddemons that Dennett appeals to in explaining why and how we think and enter into discursive relations. Beginning with certain thoughts about language games the essay moves on to consider the relations of power and knowledge that shape discursive reality and explain our subjectivities and actions. This leads to a sketch of Foucaultian theory as an advance in the philosophy of mind required to move beyond fairly gestural accounts of psychological explanation to be found in the standard biologically motivated approaches.

The idea that there is an inherent incentive in moral judgment or, in Classical terms, that there is an essential relationship between virtue and well?being is sharply criticized in contemporary moral theory. The associated theses that there is a way of living which is objectively good for human beings and that living that way is part of understanding moral truth are equally problematic. The Aristotelian argument proceeded via the premise that a human being was a rational social being. The present reworking of that thesis builds on the internal connection between rationality and concept use. Moral judgment is linked to the grasp of moral concepts and thereby to an appreciation of how it is with other persons. The judgment that another person instances a morally relevant ascription is grounded on an empathic grasp of how it is with that person and thus tied to the thought that one ought to act in such and such a way or. in other words, to a disposition to act. Because the empathically grasped content of moral concepts is related to a number of mental ascriptions and reactive attitudes, the grasp of that content is interwoven deeply in the structure of human mental life and any attempt systematically to devalue or undermine it is threatening to one's mental integrity as a rational social being. Thus there is a deep link between moral sense or the disposition to act morally and an adequately grounded conception of human well?being

Walter Freeman, the self styled neurosurgeon, became famous (or infamous) for psychosurgery. The operation of frontal leucotomy swept through the world (with Freeman himself performing something like 18,000 cases) but it has tainted the whole idea of psychosurgery down to the present era. Modes of psychosurgery such as Deep Brain Stimulation and other highly selective neurosurgical procedures for neurological and psychiatric conditions are in ever-increasing use in current practice. The new, more exciting techniques are based in a widely held philosophical position on the relationship between the mind, brain and soul, which is the key to ethical debates in this area. Psychosurgery has always posed questions of responsibility, personality, character, identity, spirit, relationship, integrity, and human flourishing and they do not go away when we enter the brave new world of neuroethics and Deep Brain Stimulation

In European philosophical psychology, the work of Jacques Lacan has exerted a great deal of influence but it has received little attention from analytic philosophers. He is famous for the view that the unconscious is a repository of influences arising from language and the meanings it captures, but the presentation of his ideas is sometimes perplexing and impenetrable and its conceptual links with analytic philosophers like Frege and Wittgenstein are not easily discerned. In fact, there are a number of such links and they are worth pursuing for those interested in language, mind, and the unconscious. If we explore Lacan's claim about the link between signification and the tuchè (the encounter with the real) we find that the mental content of the subject is essentially tied to the external world both causally and linguistically. The means of tying the two together arise in the context of human interactions and therefore are charged with personal and emotive content as well as the semantic content with which we are normally concerned in philosophy of language. When we pursue the implications of his view it becomes plausible both that the unconscious is structured like a language and that language borrows much of its meaning and significance to a subject from the interpersonal medium through which it has been inscribed on that subject. His approach is therefore illuminating both for linguistics (especially psycholinguistics) and for the psychology of the unconscious.

Libet's experiments, supported by a strict one-to-one identity thesis between brain events and mental events, have prompted the conclusion that physical events precede the mental events to which they correspond. We examine this claim and conclude that it is suspect for several reasons. First, there is a dual assumption that an intention is the kind of thing that causes an action and that can be accurately introspected. Second, there is a real problem with the method of timing the mental events concerned given that Libet himself has found the reports of subjects to be unreliable in this regard. Third, there is a suspect assumption that there are such things as timable and locatable mental and brain events accompanying and causing human behaviour. For all these reasons we reject the claim that physical events are prior to and explain mental events

Abstract:What is in the best interests of a child, and could that ever include interventions that we might regard as prima facie detrimental to a child’s physical well-being? This question is raised a fortiori by growth attenuation treatments in children with severe neurological disorders causing extreme developmental delay. I argue that two principles that provide guidance in generating a conception of best interests for each individual child yield the right results in such cases. The principles are as follows: thepotentiality principle, whereby every child should be able to develop its potential and is entitled to receive certain help in doing so, and theprinciple of psychosomatic harmony, whereby every human being is entitled to treatment that is appropriate to or enables a life in which mind and body are in tune with each other. These principles indicate a certain response to what we can call Ashley-type cases and admit certain caveats.

The human brain is subjective and reflects the life of a being-in-the-world-with-others whose identity reflects that complex engaged reality. Human subjectivity is shaped and in-formed (formed by inner processes) that are adapted to the human life-world and embody meaning and the relatedness of a human being. Questions of identity relate to this complex and dynamic reality to reflect the fact that biology, human ecology, culture, and one's historic-political situation are inscribed in one's neural network and have configured its architecture so that it is a unique and irreplaceable phenomenon. So much is a human individual a relational being whose own understanding and ownership of his or her life is both situated and distinctive that neurophilosophical conceptions of identity and human activity that neglect these features of our being are quite inadequate to ground a robust neuroethics

The first edition of The Mind and its Discontents was a powerful analysis of how, as a society, we view mental illness. In the ten years since the first edition, there has been growing interest in the philosophy of psychiatry, and a new edition of this text is more timely and important than ever. In The Mind and its Discontents, Grant Gillett argues that an understanding of mental illness requires more than just a study of biological models of mental processes and pathologies. As intensely social animals, he argues, we need to look for the causes of human mental disorders in our interactions with others; in social rule-following and its role in the organization of mental content; in the power relations embedded within social structures and cultural norms; in the way that our mental life is inscribed by a cumulative life of encounters with others. Drawing upon work from within the philosophy of mind, epistemology, post-modern continental philosophy, and philosophy of language, he tries to elucidate the nature of psychiatric phenomena involving disorders of thought, perception, emotion, moral sense, and action. Within this framework, a series of chapters analyse important psychiatric disorders such as depression, attention deficiency, autism, schizophrenia, and anorexia. Along the way, Gillett explores the nature of memory and identity; of hysteria and what constitutes rational behaviour; and of what causes us to label someone a psychopath or deviant. Updated, available in paperback, and more accessible than before, the new edition of this fascinating book will provide readers with important insights into the causes and nature of psychosis. In addition, Gillett's arguments have considerable implications for the way in which we understand and treat people suffering from psychiatric disorders. The Mind and its Discontents will be read by researchers and postgraduate students in a range of academic areas, including psychiatry, bioethics, philosophy of mind, social theory, and clinical psychology. It will also be of considerable interest to practising psychiatrists.

Truth and knowledge are conceptually related and there is a way of construing both that implies that they cannot be solely derived from a description that restricts itself to a set of scientific facts. In the first section of this essay, I analyse truth as a relation between a praxis, ways of knowing, and the world. In the second section, I invoke the third thing—the objective reality on which we triangulate as knowing subjects for the purpose of complex scientific endeavours like medical science and clinical care. Such praxes develop robust methods of “keeping in touch” with disease and illness. An analysis drawing on philosophical semantics motivates the needed account of meaning and truth and underpins the following argument: the formulation and dissemination of knowledge rests on language; language is selective in what it represents in any given situation; the praxes of a given culture are based on this selectivity; but human health and illness involve whole human beings in a human life-world; therefore, medical knowledge should reflectively transcend, where required, biomedical science towards a more inclusive view. Parts three and four argue that a post-structuralist account of the human subject can avoid both scientism and idealism or unconstrained relativism

The relationship between "causal" and "meaningful" (Jaspers) influences on behavior is explored. The nature of meaning essentially involves rules and the human practices in which they are imparted to a person and have a formative influence on that person's thinking. The meanings that come to be discerned in life experience are then important in influencing the shape of that person's conduct. The reasoning and motivational structures that develop on this basis are realized by the shape of the neural processing networks that constitute the mature human brain. This implies that meaning is not only realized by brain micro-structure but, in part, explains its workings. This in turn entails that in psychiatry we must continue to avail ourselves both of neuropsychology/neurobiology and of dynamic/meaningful explanation. Keywords: brain and mind, causality and meaning, cognitive models, meaning, mind and brain, neuropsychology and meaning CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this?

Consciousness and its relation to the unconscious mind have long been debated in philosophy. I develop the thesis that consciousness and its contents reflect the highest elaboration of a set of abilities to respond to the environment realized in more primitive organisms and brain circuits. The contents of the states lesser than consciousness are, however, intrinsically dubious and indeterminate as it is the role of the discursive skills we use to construct conscious contents that lends articulation and clarity to the mental acts which cumulatively make up our mental lives. I lay out a tripartite structure for the formation of mind in which the ongoing interaction between brain and world, the formative effect of socio-cultural context and the self production of a relatively coherent narrative all play an important part in making a mind. The latter two influences clearly transcend biological science and suggest that human minds have features which broadly align with certain Freudian insights but do not support the reification of the causally structured unconscious that Freud envisaged.

Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title What is so special about human life? What is the relationship between flesh and blood and the human soul? Is there a kind of life that is worse than death? Can a person die and yet the human organism remain in some real sense alive? Can souls become sick? What justifies cutting into a living human body? These and other questions, writes neurosurgeon and philosopher Grant Gillett, pervade hospital wards, clinical offices, and operating rooms. In Bioethics in the Clinic: Hippocratic Reflections, Gillett brings the tools of philosophy to bear on some of the most pressing issues confronting bioethicists today. Gillett draws on many schools of thought, including analytic, moral, and postmodern philosophy; utilitarianism; classical ethical theory; phenomenology; and metaphysics. He engages the reasoning of such philosophers as Aristotle, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Foucault, Habermas, Levinas, and Martha Nussbaum, and offers both practical and clinical insights into such topics as the principle of "Do no harm," informed consent, confidentiality, cloning, and euthanasia. Opening with an explanation of the axioms to be traced throughout succeeding discussions, with special emphasis on Hippocratic principles, Gillett focuses on general and specific problems of clinical practice, particularly as they affect the physician-patient relationship. The author then goes on to address ethical problems related to both the end of life, including euthanasia, and the beginning of life, such as embryo and stem cell research. Rigorous and elegant, this book will be of interest to those in medical fields, to students and scholars of philosophy, and to lay readers interested in the profound ethical dramas played out in hospitals and doctors' offices every day.