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Neuroscience and PsychopathologiesIn Benjamin D. Young & Carolyn Dicey Jennings (eds.), Mind, Cognition, and Neuroscience: A Philosophical Introduction, Routledge. 2021.Chapter Overview: This chapter looks at the foundations of modern psychiatry, with its stress on neurological malfunction, and asks about its strengths and limitations. We start by tracing some of the historical development of the ideas that have found their way into modern psychiatry from their roots in 19th-century medicine and neuroscience. Turning to the present day, we briefly look at competing conceptions of mental illness, before we discuss the philosophy of science that forms some of the…Read more
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11The Ethics of Stem Cell-Based Embryo-Like StructuresJournal of Bioethical Inquiry 1-30. forthcoming.In order to study early human development while avoiding the burdens associated with human embryo research, scientists are redirecting their efforts towards so-called human embryo-like structures (hELS). hELS are created from clusters of human pluripotent stem cells and seem capable of mimicking early human development with increasing accuracy. Notwithstanding, hELS research finds itself at the intersection of historically controversial fields, and the expectation that it might be received as si…Read more
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58Towards a Philosophical Approach to Psychiatry (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Review of Books 2021. 2021.The history of psychiatry does not inspire confidence, even among psychiatrists, and there has always been a cottage industry in medicine and psychology that wrestles with various conceptual problems around mental illness. It’s arguable that philosophers of science have not paid enough attention to this literature. Even if you aren’t interested in psychiatry, you might profit from the debates in psychometrics on the measurement of mental constructs, or look at the arguments over causation, reduc…Read more
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529Specific Phobia Is an Ideal Psychiatric KindPhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 27 (3): 299-315. 2020.The causes and underlying natures of common mental disorders are, for the most part, quite mysterious. Our best taxonomies acknowledge this poverty of causal knowledge about minds, brains, society, and whatever else, to instead classify psychopathology based on clusters of detectable signs and symptoms: what it is to be, say, depressed, is simply to exhibit the minimum number of typical features for the right amount of time. Nothing in this approach references what causes and maintains a charact…Read more
Areas of Specialization
1 more
General Philosophy of Science |
Philosophy of Psychiatry |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Mental Illness |
Psychopathology |
Psychiatric Taxonomy |
Areas of Interest
Scientific Realism |
Philosophy of Biology |