Philosophy of mental disorder
This module will involve an in depth study of a number of contemporary debates in the philosophy of mental disorder. Topics will include the following:
What is mental disorder? Students will be introduced to some of the key accounts of mental disorder: What is the relationship between evolutionary dysfunction and disorder? Are disorders necessarily harmful?
- Antipsychiatry/ postpsychiatry - The antipsychiatrists (and more recently postpsychiatrists) argue that the very concept of mental disorder is dubious. Are mental disorders substantially like physical disorders? Or, do diagnoses of "mental disorder" simply label behaviour that is unusual, socially stigmatised, or bad?
- Conceptualising cultural variations - Do mental disorders vary from culture to culture? Would cultural variation mean that a disorder is less "real"?
- Realism and constructionism about mental disorder - What does it mean to say that a disorder is real or constructed?
- Meaning and the limits of reduction - Can symptoms be reduced to faulty brain states? Or, do symptoms such as "delusion" resist reduction?
Responsibility and disorder - Are those with