Joseph Gough

Definitions of “life” and theories of life are systematically neglected in arguments for and from fine‐tuning. Despite claims to be neutral about the definition of “life,” fine‐tuning arguments generally presuppose that life requires a form of structural complexity only afforded by physicochemical complexity of the sort with which we are familiar, and more specifically, by water and carbon molecules. Conversely, our best accounts of life construe life as a matter of dynamic rather than structural complexity, and as substrate‐ and scale‐independent. Life could be as radically different in the possible universes considered as their physics is. We have no idea whether the relevant form of dynamic complexity would develop in possible universes radically physically unlike our own.

There are two forms of argument for eliminativism which ought to be distinguished, but which generally are not. One of these, heterogeneity eliminativism, starts from the claim that the extension of a given term is heterogeneous, that is, does not form a natural kind. The other, pluralistic eliminativism, starts from the claim that a term is ‘pluralistic’, demanding different precise definitions, measures, and generalizations in different specialist contexts of use. These two claims are related in various interesting ways, but it is nevertheless worth viewing these as two distinct forms of argument for eliminativism. They make different claims about the relevant terms, face different objections, and rely on different views about the requirements of good taxonomy. My aim in distinguishing between heterogeneity eliminativism and pluralistic eliminativism is to contribute to a much broader literature on kinds of and reasons for eliminativism, one which outstrips the concerns of philosophy of mind and philosophy of science alone. However, the taxonomies on which I am most immediately building are most closely tied to philosophy of mind and philosophy of science.

There are cases of psychiatric disorder where affective states produce severely self‐destructive behavior. Sufferers do not appear to be making autonomous decisions, and appear to be severely impaired in their decision‐making capacity. Suffers of these kinds of cases of these kinds of disorders fall into a “gray area” in the law. If this gray area is to be avoided, the law requires clearer criteria for determining how affect can undermine autonomy. Existing “procedural” accounts of autonomy that explicitly set out to deal with how affective states can undermine decision‐making are unable to deal with a clinically significant class of such cases. In this class of cases, autonomy is undermined by an affective state that is relevantly coherent with the rest of the person's affective states and attitudes, and has relevantly inoffensive origins. The relevant affective state nevertheless appears to “hijack” the person, and to rule over them “tyrannically.” I argue for a necessary condition on autonomy amenable to a procedural account, non‐tyranny, according to which one is autonomous with respect to a decision only if one has the ability to resist the influence of any given affective state on that decision.

My commentary focusses specifically on Vincent’s argument against the more widely-held version of the incongruence thesis, IT1, which focusses on supposed incongruence between experienced gender and natal sex. There is a key point of agreement between Vincent’s article and IT1: that sex and gender are distinct (§1). I believe that there are some good reasons to doubt the validity of this distinction—a point also raised in Hendl and Britton’s and Chappell’s commentaries. After considering the arguments that may support this distinction (§2), I will sketch some of these reasons, although due to limitations of space and scope, I will primarily highlight others’ work rather than reproduce their arguments (§3). I will then suggest that it is possible that, if the distinction fails, there is another version of the incongruence thesis that does not fall to the arguments offered in Interrogating Incongruence (§4).

Toon (2023) argues that “the mind is a useful fiction.” The mind, for Toon, is essentially an “inner world” or “inner grotto,” which is “private” and which “houses our mental states – our beliefs, desires, hopes, fears, and the rest.” His position, according to which the metaphor of mind is a “story that we cannot avoid telling” risks elevating the concept of mind to that of a “sacrosanct given.” Work in philosophy, history, and anthropology shows that talk of the states we count as “mental” is far older and far more widespread than the concept of mind or the category mental – the metaphor of mind therefore does not appear to be inevitable. A strand of anti-Cartesian philosophy argues that not only is the concept of mind avoidable, but also that it should be avoided – that it encourages a vision of human beings which is deeply impoverished and confused. This paper offers a genealogy of the concept of mind and category mental, building on work by Rorty and Wilkes, buttressed by recent work in history and anthropology. It then reconstructs some of the arguments that the concept is harmful, rather than useful, for our understanding of ourselves and the world.

The terms ‘mind’ and ‘mental’ are used to refer to different phenomena across and within at least philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, and cognitive science. My main aim in this paper is to argue that the terms ‘mind’ and ‘mental’ are in this way ‘pluralistic’, and to explore the different options for responding to this situation. I advocate for a form of pluralistic eliminativism about the terms ‘mind’ and ‘mental’, ‘mind concept eliminativism,’ because I believe that current use of the terms results in both public and scientific confusions that hamper progress on important issues and increase stigma around certain vulnerable groups.

Intuitively, there is a close link between moral status and phenomenal consciousness. Taking the link seriously can serve as the basis of a proposal that appears to have a surprising number of theoretical benefits. This proposal is the moral option, according to which moral status is partly determinative of phenomenal consciousness, and phenomenal consciousness is sufficient for possession of a moral property I refer to as “moral status.” I argue for this view on the basis of its ability to shed light on the distribution problem of determining which systems are phenomenally conscious. I explicate it by drawing on a theory of attributions of phenomenal consciousness, and considering its relationship to positions on the metaphysics of consciousness. I defend it against a series of objections, including three based on previous theories of the link between phenomenal consciousness and moral status. The moral option should, in my view, be a serious contender among theories of phenomenal consciousness.

Originally put forward to defend history from the encroachment of physics, the distinction between understanding and explanation was built into the foundations of Karl Jaspers’ ‘phenomenological’ psychiatry, and it is revised, used and defended by many still working in that tradition. On the face of it, this is rather curious. I examine what this notion of ‘understanding’ amounts to, why it entered and remains influential in psychiatry, and what insights for contemporary psychiatry are buried in the notion. I argue that it is unhelpfully associated with the view that the mental is epistemologically and methodologically autonomous, but that it nevertheless highlights an important lacuna in many views of psychiatry and the scientific study of humans more generally.

Over the past half century, our best scientific understanding of the immune system has been transformed. The immune system has turned out to be extremely sophisticated, densely connected to the central nervous system and cognitive capacities, deeply involved in the production of behavior, and responsive to different kinds of psychosocial event. Such results have rendered the immune system part of the subject-matter of psychology and cognitive science. I argue that such results, alongside the history of psychoneuroimmunology, give us good reason to be skeptical about the characterization of cognitive science and psychology as studying the mind and the mental.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Arguing about PsychiatryNatural Selection, Austinian Conservatism, and Finding Our Way to the BestJoseph Gough (bio)Professors Murphy and Lieberman have offered two generous and interesting commentaries on my article, each very insightful and helpful in its own way, and each offering an interesting alternative characterization of the subject matter of psychiatry. I found each extremely thought-provoking, hence this rather bloated response. I strongly disagree with each. In brief, I disagree with the 'preliminaries' of each commentary, struggle to see the tension between Hull's view of science and my view of psychiatry, reject Lieberman's appeal to the history of mind-like and mental-illness-like concepts, and finally, believe my position neither suffers from the instability of psychiatry, nor blocks the route to best practice, nor counsels despair.Metaphysical Precision and Conceptual Evolution: Response to MurphyMurphy begins by offering some helpful context for the debate, and for our disagreement within that debate. Partly it is helpful because it raises a cluster of questions, which I agree with him, are related to the topic at hand. Partly it is helpful because it lays out Murphy's background metaphysics, with which I broadly agree, but where I think it is important to be more pedantic than Murphy himself is. Murphy and I agree that there are animate objects, importantly different from inanimate objects; we also agree that there is no object in nature that is a mind. However, in that [End Page 45] opening paragraph, there are a few things that look to me a little like conflations—and while I am happy to grant this as pedantry, I am not happy to deny its importance.First, not everything animate is intelligent and unpredictable—a presumably accidental implication of Murphy's use of 'these' throughout the paragraph. Second, intelligence and unpredictability do not in my view cluster in the way that Murphy suggests in the passage—a highly intelligent system may be exceptionally predictable at least so long as its goals and knowledge are fixed, and a highly unpredictable system may, of course, be entirely unintelligent. Of course, when some systems behave other than we expect, we count this as a failing of the system; but this is a feature of artifacts as well as animate systems, and perhaps also of objects that are neither artifacts nor animate (think of a farmer whose crops fail to go—might they not think there is something wrong with the soil?). The class of 'predictions' Murphy identifies is what I would describe as a class of normative expectations, that, of course, must be somewhat in line with the way things actually are, but are not 'predictions' in the paradigmatic sense of guesses about what will happen.This pedantry matters because this implied (or perhaps less charitably, enforced) alignment between non-coextensive categories in this picture of Murphy's is leveraged, I think, to gesture towards an objection. First, Murphy claims that this class of systems has required a special vocabulary, 'mental' vocabulary. Second, it is, I think, suggested in Murphy's set-up (and perhaps in Murphy's work; Murphy & Stich, 1999) that at some level this vocabulary anchors what we are talking about when we are talking about 'mental illness.'But here, of course, I disagree—or at least, I might disagree if I were clear what is being claimed. Which class of systems is that gives rise to this 'special vocabulary? Several have been mentioned. It should also come as no surprise that I think it is deeply unclear what counts as 'mental' vocabulary. Is it the vocabulary of animacy? Of normative expectation and function-ascription? Perhaps of intentionality? Or of consciousness? Maybe it is defined 'ostensively' with respect to terms like belief and desire?After these preliminaries, Murphy offers an objection to my position, and a brief defense of his own. I would like to begin with his defense of his own position:the best way to think about the claim that mental illnesses are brain diseases … is to see them as committing us to a form of explanation that treats psychiatry as continuous with other sciences of mind, in...

Abstract:The titular question, of what makes a disorder 'mental,' has an obvious answer: mental disorders are disorders of the mind. I argue that this is not so, before proposing a positive theory of what makes a disorder 'mental,' that what makes a disorder 'mental' is its relationship to psychiatry. The overall thrust of my argument is that mental disorder is mental in name only—to have a mental disorder is not to have a disorder of the mind. Instead, mental disorder is psychiatric disorder, a class of conditions grouped together not because of anything to do with the mind, but because of their relationship to psychiatry, a concrete group of methods, practices, and institutions.

Among those living systems, which are cognizers? Among the behaviours of, and causes of behaviour in, living systems, which are cognitive? Such questions sit at the heart of a sophisticated, ongoing debate, of which the recent papers by Corcoran et al. ( 2020 ) and Sims and Kiverstein ( 2021 ) serve as excellent examples. I argue that despite their virtues, both papers suffer from flawed conceptions of the point of the debate. This leaves their proposals ill-motivated—good answers to the wrong question. Additionally, their proposals are unfit to serve the legitimate roles for characterizations of cognition.

In recent philosophy of science there has been much discussion of both pluralism, which embraces scientific terms with multiple meanings, and eliminativism, which rejects such terms. Some recent work focuses on the conditions that legitimize pluralism over eliminativism – the conditions under which such terms are acceptable. Often, this is understood as a matter of encouraging effective communication – the danger of these terms is thought to be equivocation, while the advantage is thought to be the fulfilment of ‘bridging roles’ that facilitate communication between different scientists and specialisms. These theories are geared towards regulating communication between scientists qua scientists. However, this overlooks an important class of harmful equivocation that involves miscommunication between scientists and nonscientists, such as the public or policymakers. To make my case, I use the example of theory of mind, also known as ‘mindreading’ and ‘mentalizing’, and broadly defined as the capacity to attribute mental states to oneself and others. I begin by showing that ‘theory of mind’ has multiple meanings, before showing that this has resulted in harmful equivocations of a sort and in a way not accounted for by previous theories of pluralism and eliminativism.

In putting forward the modern concept of mind, Descartes identified the mind with the self. Recently, communitarian and feminist scholars have argued in favor of a conception of the self according to which it includes relations to the social world and parts of the body. If they are correct, it initially seems damning for the view that the self is the mind. I examine whether this is so, by considering whether the identification of self and mind can be saved by recent views of the mind according to which it is partly constituted by aspects of the body other than the brain and by the world beyond the skin. I argue that it cannot, before considering what this means for the mind and its relationship to selves and persons.

The distinction between explanation and understanding was foundational to Jaspers’ ‘phenomenological’ approach to psychiatry. It makes sense that those now calling for a phenomenological approach to psychiatry would look to Jaspers for inspiration, and that in doing so, they would take up this distinction. However, I argue that it is and was a mistake to use the distinction in work on psychiatry: adhering to the distinction now would undermine, rather than support, the goals of those advocating a phenomenological approach to psychiatry; furthermore, if the distinction had been adhered to, then contemporary psychiatry and its patients would be worse off.