Vaughan Bell

Current models of auditory verbal hallucinations tend to focus on the mechanisms underlying their occurrence, but often fail to address the content of the auditory experience. In other words, they tend to ask why there are AVHs at all, instead of asking why, given that there are AVHs, they have the properties that they have. One such property, which has been largely overlooked and which we will focus on here, is why the voices are often experienced as coming from agents, and often specific, individualised agents. In this article, we argue not only that the representation of agents is important in accurately describing many cases of AVH, but also that deeper reflection on what is involved in the representation of agents has potentially vital consequences for our aetiological understanding of AVH, namely, for understanding how and why AVHs come about

While philosophy of psychiatry has emerged as a well-established academic field with dedicated journals, professional organisations, and substantial scholarly output, no equivalent “philosophy of neurology” field exists despite neurology’s comparable conceptual complexity. This paper examines why this disparity exists and proposes several potential avenues for developing a field focused on philosophical inquiry in neurology focused on outstanding clinical problems, namely: phenomenology of neurological disorders; ontological analysis of neurological categories; understanding alterations to volition, intention, and agency, and the relationship between changes to identity and personality change after neurological damage. We argue that neurology’s conceptual foundations warrant serious philosophical examination and that a dedicate field could provide valuable insights for both clinical practice and our understanding of human experience.