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Conceptual and Ethical Issues in the Prodromal Phase of PsychosisIn 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.Our focus in this chapter is to address some of the philosophical issues that arise in the scientific and clinical study of the prodromal phase of psychosis. We discuss issues from both metaphysics and philosophy of science as we all as those related to phenomenological approaches and clinical ethics. A clear challenge arises in considering how models of a continuum of psychosis and of schizophrenia as a neurodevelopmental disorder can be reconciled with a scientific understanding of the prodrom…Read more
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Beyond ’Salience’ and ’Affordance’: Understanding Anomalous Experiences of Significant PossibilitiesIn Sophie Archer (ed.), Salience: A Philosophical Inquiry, Routledge. 2022.
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9The complexity of brain disorders and the worldliness of mental disorders Are mental disorders brain disorders?, by Anneli Jefferson, Oxford, Routledge, 2022, 108 pp., £48.99, ISBN: 9780367421380 (review)Philosophical Psychology 37 (3): 736-740. 2024.In this recently published book, Jefferson provides a lucid and detailed examination of, and answer to, its provocative title. In doing so, the focus of Jefferson’s analysis is largely on what a br...
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22Finding order within the disorder: a case study exploring the meaningfulness of delusionsBJPsych Bulletin. 2021.Can delusions, in the context of psychosis, enhance a person’s sense of meaningfulness? The case described here suggests that, in some circumstances, they can. This prompts further questions into the complexities of delusion as a lived phenomenon, with important implications for the clinical encounter. While assumptions of meaninglessness are often associated with concepts of ’disorder’, ’harm’ and ’dysfunction’, we suggest that meaning can nonetheless be found within what is commonly taken to b…Read more
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2Charting New Phenomenological Paths for Empirical Research on Delusions: Embracing Complexity, Finding MeaningJAMA Psychiatry 78 (10): 1063-1064. 2021.
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232Psychiatry as Cognitive Neuroscience: Philosophical Perspectives (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2009.Neuroscience has long had an impact on the field of psychiatry, and over the last two decades, with the advent of cognitive neuroscience and functional neuroimaging, that influence has been most pronounced. However, many question whether psychopathology can be understood by relying on neuroscience alone, and highlight some of the perceived limits to the way in which neuroscience informs psychiatry. Psychiatry as Cognitive Neuroscience is a philosophical analysis of the role of neuroscience in th…Read more
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36The epistemic harms of empathy in phenomenological psychopathologyPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1-22. forthcoming.Jaspers identifies empathic understanding as an essential tool for grasping not the mere psychic content of the condition at hand, but the lived experience of the patient. This method then serves as the basis for the phenomenological investigation into the psychiatric condition known as ‘Phenomenological Psychopathology’. In recent years, scholars in the field of phenomenological psychopathology have attempted to refine the concept of empathic understanding for its use in contemporary clinical e…Read more
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542Stop, look, listen: The need for philosophical phenomenological perspectives on auditory verbal hallucinationsFrontiers in Human Neuroscience 7 1-9. 2013.One of the leading cognitive models of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) proposes such experiences result from a disturbance in the process by which inner speech is attributed to the self. Research in this area has, however, proceeded in the absence of thorough cognitive and phenomenological investigations of the nature of inner speech, against which AVHs are implicitly or explicitly defined. In this paper we begin by introducing philosophical phenomenology and highlighting its relevance to …Read more
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39Scientific misconduct from the perspective of research coordinators: a national surveyJournal of Medical Ethics 33 (6): 365-369. 2007.Objective: To report results from a national survey of coordinators and managers of clinical research studies in the US on their perceptions of and experiences with scientific misconduct.Methods: Data were collected using the Scientific Misconduct Questionnaire-Revised. Eligible responses were received from 1645 of 5302 surveys sent to members of the Association of Clinical Research Professionals and to subscribers of Research Practitioner, published by the Center for Clinical Research Practice,…Read more
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54Choosing death in depression: a commentary on ‘Treatment-resistant major depressive disorder and assisted dying’Journal of Medical Ethics 41 (8): 586-587. 2015.Schuklenk and van de Vathorst's paper is a very welcome addition to the literature on the assisted dying debate and will be of great interest to clinicians working in the field of mental health.1 Many psychiatrists will have had patients who have asked them to allow them to die, to desist in their efforts to prevent their suicide, and one of us has had personal experience, outside of professional life, of being asked to aid in someone's attempt to end their life in the context of an episode of m…Read more
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160Delusional beliefs and reason givingPhilosophical Psychology 21 (6): 801-21. 2008.Philosophers have been long interested in delusional beliefs and in whether, by reporting and endorsing such beliefs, deluded subjects violate norms of rationality (Campbell 1999; Davies & Coltheart 2002; Gerrans 2001; Stone & Young 1997; Broome 2004; Bortolotti 2005). So far they have focused on identifying the relation between intentionality and rationality in order to gain a better understanding of both ordinary and delusional beliefs. In this paper Matthew Broome and I aim at drawing attenti…Read more
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107Delusions and Responsibility for Action: Insights from the Breivik CaseNeuroethics 7 (3): 377-382. 2014.What factors should be taken into account when attributing criminal responsibility to perpetrators of severe crimes? We discuss the Breivik case, and the considerations which led to holding Breivik accountable for his criminal acts. We put some pressure on the view that experiencing certain psychiatric symptoms or receiving a certain psychiatric diagnosis is sufficient to establish criminal insanity. We also argue that the presence of delusional beliefs, often regarded as a key factor in determi…Read more
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295A role for ownership and authorship in the analysis of thought insertionPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 8 (2): 205-224. 2008.Philosophers are interested in the phenomenon of thought insertion because it challenges the common assumption that one can ascribe to oneself the thoughts that one can access first-personally. In the standard philosophical analysis of thought insertion, the subject owns the ‘inserted’ thought but lacks a sense of agency towards it. In this paper we want to provide an alternative analysis of the condition, according to which subjects typically lack both ownership and authorship of the ‘inserted’…Read more
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171Most mental health research largely ignores or minimises gender and age differences in depression. In ‘Don't mind the gap: Why do we not care about the gender gap in mental health?’, Patalay and Demkowicz identify a dearth of research on the causal factors of depression in young women. They attribute this to an over-reliance on biological accounts of gender differences in depression. Patalay and Demkowicz conclude that a person-centred approach that meaningfully engages with the reports of young…Read more
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15Can an algorithm become delusional? Evaluating ontological commitments and methodology of computational psychiatryPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1-27. forthcoming.The computational approach to psychiatric disorders, including delusions, promises explanation and treatment. Here, we argue that an information processing approach might be misleading to understand psychopathology and requires further refinement. We explore the claim of computational psychiatry being a bridge between phenomenology and physiology while focussing on the ontological commitments and corresponding methodology computational psychiatry is based on. Interconnecting ontological claims a…Read more
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The ethics of early identification and intervention in psychosisIn Kelso Cratsley & Jennifer Radden (eds.), Mental Health as Public Health: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Ethics of Prevention, Elsevier. 2019.
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15Making psychiatry moral again: the role of psychiatry in patient moral developmentJournal of Medical Ethics 49 (6): 423-427. 2023.Psychiatric involvement in patient morality is controversial. If psychiatrists are tasked with shaping patient morality, the coercive potential of psychiatry is increased, treatment may be unfairly administered on the basis of patients’ moral beliefs rather than medical need, moral disputes could damage the therapeutic relationship and, in any case, we are often uncertain or conflicted about what is morally right. Yet, there is also a strong case for the view that psychiatry often works through …Read more
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11Moral and legal implications of the continuity between delusional and non-delusional beliefsIn Geert Keil, Lara Keuck & Rico Hauswald (eds.), Vagueness in Psychiatry, Oxford University Press. pp. 191-210. 2016.
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2Rationality and self-knowledge in delusions and confabulations: Implications for autonomy as self-governanceIn Lubomira Radoilska (ed.), Autonomy and Mental Disorder, Oxford University Press. pp. 100-122. 2012.
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10Affective Instability and ParanoiaIn Anna Bortolan & Alessandro Salice (eds.), Discipline Filosofiche (2018-2): Philosophical Perspectives on Affective Experience and Psychopathology, Quodlibet. pp. 123-136. 2018.
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Delusion formation and reasoning biases in those at clinical high risk for psychosisBritish Journal of Psychiatry. Supplement 51 (51). 2007.
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Imaging and delusionsIn D. Freeman, R. P. Bentall & P. A. Garety (eds.), Persecutory Delusions: Assessment, Theory, and Treatment, Oxford University Press. 2008.
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284IntroductionIn Giovanni Stanghellini, Matthew Broome, Anthony Vincent Fernandez, Paolo Fusar-Poli, Andrea Raballo & René Rosfort (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Phenomenological Psychopathology, Oxford University Press. 2018.Introduction to The Oxford Handbook of Phenomenological Psychopathology.
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111Affective Dimensions of the Phenomenon of Double Bookkeeping in DelusionsEmotion Review 4 (2): 187-191. 2012.It has been argued that schizophrenic delusions are “behaviourally inert.” This is evidence for the phenomenon of “double bookkeeping,” according to which people are not consistent in their commitment to the content of their delusions. The traditional explanation for the phenomenon is that people do not genuinely believe the content of their delusions. In the article, we resist the traditional explanation and offer an alternative hypothesis: people with delusions often fail to acquire or to main…Read more
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53Threats to epistemic agency in young people with unusual experiences and beliefsSynthese 199 (3-4): 7689-7704. 2021.A good therapeutic relationship in mental health services is a predictor of positive clinical outcomes for people who seek help for distressing experiences, such as voice hearing and paranoia. One factor that may affect the quality of the therapeutic relationship and raises further ethical issues is the impact of the clinical encounter on users’ sense of self, and in particular on their sense of agency. In the paper, we discuss some of the reasons why the sense of epistemic agency may be especia…Read more
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134The Oxford Handbook of Phenomenological Psychopathology (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2018.This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online.
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330Moral Responsibility and Mental Illness: A Case StudyCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 19 (2): 179-187. 2010.Various authors have argued that progress in the neurocognitive and neuropsychiatric sciences might threaten the commonsense understanding of how the mind generates behavior, and, as a consequence, it might also threaten the commonsense ways of attributing moral responsibility, if not the very notion of moral responsibility. In the case of actions that result in undesirable outcomes, the commonsense conception—which is reflected in sophisticated ways in the legal conception—tells us that there a…Read more
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106Prediction-error and two-factor theories of delusion formation: Competitors or allies?In Niall Galbraith (ed.), Aberrant Beliefs and Reasoning, Psychology Press. pp. 34-54. 2015.The two-factor theory (Davies, Coltheart, Langdon & Breen 2001; Coltheart 2007; Coltheart, Menzies & Sutton 2010) is an influential account of delusion formation. According to the theory, there are two distinct factors that are causally responsible for delusion formation. The first factor is supposed to explain the content of the delusion, while the second factor is supposed to explain why the delusion is adopted and maintained. Recently, another remarkable account of delusion formation has been…Read more
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6‘There’s the record, closed and final’: Rough for Theatre II as Psychiatric EncounterJournal of Medical Humanities 37 (2): 171-181. 2016.A co-authored collaboration between a theatre practitioner and a clinical psychiatrist, this paper will examine Rough for Theatre II and Beckett’s demonstration of the way records are used to understand the human subject. Using Beckett’s play to explore interdisciplinary issues of embodiment and diagnosis, the authors will present a dialogue that makes use of the ‘best sources’ in precisely the same manner as the play’s protagonists. One of those sources will be Beckett himself, as Heron will lo…Read more
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University of WarwickRegular Faculty
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King's College LondonRegular Faculty
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Continental Philosophy |