Making up symptoms: psychic indeterminacy and the construction of psychotic phenomena

Huw Green

doi:10.1192/bjb.2018.81

Making up symptoms: psychic indeterminacy and the construction of psychotic phenomena

BJPsych Bulletin ◽

10.1192/bjb.2018.81 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 43 (2) ◽

pp. 81-84 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Huw Green

Keyword(s):

Philosophy Of Mind ◽

Subjective Experience ◽

Mental Content ◽

Verbal Description ◽

Psychotic Symptoms ◽

Contemporary Philosophy ◽

Change Over Time ◽

Mental Symptoms ◽

Clinical Phenomenology ◽

Over Time

SummaryPsychotic phenomena include a far wider range of experiences than is captured by the brief descriptions offered in contemporary diagnostic guides. Given the richness of historical clinical phenomenology, what can account for the recent ascendancy of relatively impoverished descriptions of psychosis? One possible explanation is provided by Hacking's notion of dynamic nominalism, where human categories change over time in tandem with those who they classify. But although dynamic nominalism makes sense of changes in behaviour, it fails to account for change at the level of subjective experience. In this paper, psychotic symptoms are addressed in the light of the indeterminacy of subjective mental content. A naïve-introspectionist approach to mental symptoms assumes that, notwithstanding practical difficulties, such symptoms are reliably describable in principle. Contemporary philosophy of mind challenges this assumption. Lighting upon a verbal description for ineffable phenomena changes their nature, resolving them into new forms.Declaration of interestNone.

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Metaphorics of phenomenal judgments and the problem of social verification

Semiotic studies ◽

10.18287/2782-2966-2021-1-1-14-18 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 14-18

Author(s):

Pavel N. Baryshnikov

Keyword(s):

Philosophy Of Mind ◽

Subjective Experience ◽

Mental Content ◽

Interdisciplinary Approach ◽

Semantic Space ◽

The Body ◽

Communicative Interaction ◽

Phenomenal Properties ◽

Linguistic Representations ◽

Special Area

The article describes the basic semantic principles of generating phenomenal judgments. Phenomenal judgments are considered as linguistic representations of the phenomenal properties of consciousness and indirect descriptions of subjective experience that occur in a private subjective semantic space. Linguistic representation in propositional and conceptual forms creates a special area of metaphorical connections that are involved to the process of social verification in the communicative interaction. The most important component of phenomenal judgments is the speakers conviction that the recipient has similar properties of mental content. The mechanisms behind the emergence of phenomenal judgments are not entirely clear. In this case an interdisciplinary approach seems to be the most promising. The paper examines the results of methodological interferences of the body-oriented paradigm in cognitive sciences with the analytic philosophy of mind (consciousness). The problem of phenomenal judgments is an interaction area of ontology and semantics and requires a comprehensive linguo-philosophical research, a step on the path to which this article is made.

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Kant and Cognitive Science Revisited

History of Philosophy and Logical Analysis ◽

10.30965/26664275-01801008 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 18 (1) ◽

pp. 87-113 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Tobias Schlicht ◽

Albert Newen

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Science ◽

Philosophy Of Mind ◽

Mental Content ◽

Contemporary Philosophy ◽

The Mind

To which extent is it justified to adopt Kant as a godfather of cognitive science? To prepare the stage for an answer of this question, we need to set aside Kant’s general transcendental approach to the mind which is radically anti-empiricist and instead turn our attention to his specific topics and claims regarding the mind which are often not focus of Kant’s epistemological investigations. If someone is willing to take this stance, it turns out that there are many bridges connecting Kant with contemporary cognitive science. We investigate possible bridges suggested in the literature between some of Kant’s central claims about consciousness, mental content, and functions of mind, and some specific treatments of these topics in contemporary philosophy of mind and cognitive science. While doing so, we offer additional arguments for some proposed bridges, reconstruct others and completely destroy still other bridges by demonstrating that some suggested links between Kant and cognitive science remain only apparent.

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