Robert Chapman

In each of their respective commentaries Dr. Steingard (2023) and Dr. Jones (2023) largely agree with the core argument I outline in ‘A Critique of Critical Psychiatry.’ In that critique, I sought to show how and why Szaszian critical psychiatry or psychology will always be incompatible with collective liberation. I am heartened by their agreement, not least because both Steingard and Jones have been prominent critics of psychiatry themselves. I am also grateful that they each raise important questions that draw attention to the limits of my analysis. While my full article focused on critique, their suggestions help point toward more positive orientations for future theory and practice. I will consider their... Read More.

The contemporary form of critical psychiatry and psychology focused on here follows Thomas Szasz in arguing that many of the concepts and practices of psychiatry are unscientific, value-laden, and epistemically violent. These claims are based on what I call the ‘comparativist’ critique, referred to as such since the argument relies on comparing psychiatry to what is taken to be a comparatively objective and useful somatic medicine. Here I adopt a Sedgwickian constructivist approach to illness and disability more generally to argue that the theoretical commitments of the comparativist critique are not just untenable, they are also epistemically harmful in much the same way criticals identify in psychiatry. This is because they commit to an unrealistic understanding of bodily health that reifies the ‘normal’ body in ways that are harmful for those who fall outside bodily, neurological, gendered, sexed, and racialized norms. Far from being a merely theoretical problem, I show how maintaining these commitments routinely contributes to the at least partial, and unintentional, marginalization of neurodivergent, disabled, and LGBTQI identity, agency, and history in critical psychiatry discourse and practice. I conclude that, although some of its critique of mainstream psychiatry is pertinent, the problems with Szaszianism’s core theoretical commitments are likely to be incompatible with critical psychiatry’s liberatory aims in the long run.

Wilderness and wildness are not related isomorphically. Wildness is the broader category; all instances of wilderness express wildness while all instances of wildness do not express wilderness. There is more than a logical distinction between wildness and wilderness, and what begins as an analytic distinction ends as an ontological one. A more rhetorical representation of this confusion is captured by the notion of synecdoche, where, in this case, wilderness the narrower term is used for wildness the more expansive term. Although this might seem obvious at first glance, I contend that the two concepts are often misused taken as synonyms thus equivocally, setting back the cause of conceptual clarity in environmental philosophy in general, and environmental restoration in particular. One notable outcome has been the unfortunate dichotomy between preservation and conservation resulting in policy choices that needlessly deny integrated alternatives by illicit exclusion. This paper will clarify this confusion by demonstrating instances where the two concepts have been systematically abused—conflated—and show how Henry David Thoreau saw them as importantly separable. Finally, a clearer understanding of the distinctions between the two concepts provides the basis for a viable program of restoration based on an ethics of place.

Standard virtue ethics approach to environmental issues do not go far enough because they often lack significant attachment to local environments. Place provides the necessary link that enlarges the arena of moral action by joining human well-being to a place -based goal of wildness or biotic harmony. Place defines a niche for human activity as part of nature. Virtuous action, then, is understood as deliberation from a position of being in and of the natural world; respect and gratitude are examples of this type of deliberation.

The current economic/political system, neoliberalism, has touched every aspect of life globally. The doctrine of neoliberalism consists of three central propositions, that the market is real and part of the natural universal law; that unlimited economic growth is both possible and even desirable; and that human nature is coincident with market values and based solely on self-interest. All three of these propositions are seriously flawed and have caused immense human suffering and staggering environmental destruction. This paper is a reminder of the failures of neoliberal policy and an appeal for change to a new institutional arrangement in which development trumps economic growth. This position is in contrast to Francis Fukuyama’s end-of-history thesis. He alleges there are no economic/political ideologies to compete with neoliberalism, the “TINA principle: There Is No Alternative”: the West has won. It is time to reintroduce Henry David Thoreau’s, and to a lesser extent, Adam Smith’s moral economies. Both have encourgaging insights, often overlooked by current academic economists, which could figure prominently in the conception of a new economy.

It is not possible to date when environmental studies became ‘Environmental Studies’. Nevertheless it has had a turbulent history marked by inconsistency, conflict and change. It is not surprising that at present it lacks disciplinary coherence and is subject to various definitions, often contradictory. There is ongoing speculation as to the cause of this identity crisis: ‘curricular universalism’ (absence of a unifying concept), academic territorialism and pedagogical clashes. I argue that a philosophical inquiry into the role of values in Environmental Studies provides the missing coherence and unity. Further, I argue that environmental problems directly related to deliberate human action are the province of applied philosophy and offer a formal argument to support this claim, and briefly address and dismiss the controversy over the teaching of values. I conclude that Environmental Studies is inherently part of the philosophical enterprise; as such it belongs with the humanities. The discussion takes as its starting point the context of college and university education in the US, but the issues raised have more general relevance.

Large populations fuelled by immigration have damaging effects on natural environments. Utilitarian approaches to immigration are inadequate, since they fail to draw the appropriate boundaries between people, as are standard rights approaches buttressed by sovereignty concerns because they fail to include critical environmental concerns within their pantheon of rights. A right to a healthy environment is a basic/subsistence right to be enjoyed by everyone, resident and immigrant alike. Current political-economic arrangements reinforced by familiar ethical positions that support property rights and preference satisfaction favours residents while directly or indirectly denying basic rights to potential immigrants and should be abandoned and a basic rights procedure adopted.

Conceptual and methodological changes in ecology have the potential to alter significantly the way we view the world. A result of embracing a dynamic model has been to make ecological restoration projects a viable alternative, whereas under 'equilibrium ecology' restoration was considered destructive interference. The logic of sustainability strategies within the context of dynamic forces promises a greater compatibility with anthropogenic activity. Unhappily, environmental restoration turns out to be paradoxical under the current identification of wilderness with wildness where wildness is, at least, a necessary condition for the possession of natural value. The solution to the paradox is to separate wilderness from wildness both conceptually and ontologically by enlarging the domain of wildness to include certain human activities.