Use this URL to cite or link to this record in EThOS: | https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.794387 |
![]() |
|||||||
Title: | Radical cognitive science in philosophical psychopathology : the case of depression | ||||||
Author: | Miller Tate, Alexander James Ibbs |
ORCID:
0000-0002-3133-1115
ISNI:
0000 0004 8499 5892
|
|||||
Awarding Body: | University of Birmingham | ||||||
Current Institution: | University of Birmingham | ||||||
Date of Award: | 2019 | ||||||
Availability of Full Text: |
|
||||||
Abstract: | |||||||
The principle purpose of this collection of papers is to explore and apply ideas from various kinds of non-traditional Cognitive Science, as well as comparing them with their more traditional counterparts, in order to reach a better understanding of the symptoms and features of depressive illness. By 'non-traditional' I mean to refer to Cognitive Science that makes minimal use of the notion of abstract, post-perceptual, and reconstructive mental representation, is computationally frugal, and treats the mind as fundamentally both embodied and environmentally embedded. This thesis in particular draws on insights from ecological psychology and action-oriented perception, embodied and situated cognition, and predictive processing. After introducing the subject matter, the first substantive paper argues that anhedonia is, in the general case, a disorder determined by disruption to affectively supportive elements of an individual's environment. The second proposes a predictive-processing approach to explaining the characteristic operation of motivational mental states. This paper supports the third, in which I argue that psychological, somatic, and (action-oriented) perceptual factors all contribute to depressed agents' struggles and failures to initiate and sustain action. I suggest that these problems should not all be thought of as disorders of motivation per se, but rather as broader kinds of action-oriented cognitive dysfunction. In the fourth paper, I reject Matthew Ratcliffe's argument for the claim that people with depression are not typically better able to empathise with other people with depression, though I find alternative evidence for this suggestion available to those happy to endorse a more mainstream view of empathy. Finally, I broaden the scope of my investigation to psychopathology in general, and argue that classical (neuro-centric and mechanical) explanations in Psychiatry have inadvertently resulted in psychiatric service users' subjection to a number of epistemic injustices. This suggests that non-classical theories of psychopathology are not just important for achieving accurate psychiatric explanation, but also for ensuring the ethical treatment of service users.
|
|||||||
Supervisor: | Not available | Sponsor: | European Research Council | ||||
Qualification Name: | Thesis (Ph.D.) | Qualification Level: | Doctoral | ||||
EThOS ID: | uk.bl.ethos.794387 | DOI: | Not available | ||||
Keywords: | B Philosophy (General) ; BF Psychology | ||||||
Share: |