Print syllabus(in Polish) Psychopatologie a reprezentacje umysłowe
General data
| Course ID: | 3501-PRU19-S-OG |
| Erasmus code / ISCED: |
08.1
|
| Course title: | (unknown) |
| Name in Polish: | Psychopatologie a reprezentacje umysłowe |
| Organizational unit: | Institute of Philosophy |
| Course groups: |
General university courses General university courses in the humanities |
| ECTS credit allocation (and other scores): |
(not available)
|
| Language: | Polish |
| Type of course: | elective seminars |
| Prerequisites (description): | (in Polish) Podstawowa wiedza z filozofii umysłu lub psychologii |
| Mode: | Classroom |
| Short description: |
In the modern philosophy of psychiatry, the assumption that people suffering from various types of psychopathology can entertain beliefs and can generally have thoughts about various things is at least partly undermined. It is an open question, however, whether their thoughts, including hallucinatory and delusional states, really have content or whether observers merely ascribe their content to them as based on their external behavior. Maybe a person suffering from amnesia who unwittingly confabulates has already lost the ability to really think? The aim of the seminar is to find out whether an antirepresentational perspective, according to which certain mental states are not is not contentful, can be justified. The research will focus on cognitive disorders, including hallucinations, confabulations, and psychoses, as well as on partially cognitive disorders, such as certain disorders of empathy, obsessive-compulsive disorders or aphantasia (the inability to create mental images). |
| Full description: |
In the modern philosophy of psychiatry, the assumption that people suffering from various types of psychopathology can entertain beliefs and can generally have thoughts about various things is at least partly undermined. It is an open question, however, whether their thoughts, including hallucinatory and delusional states, really have content or whether observers merely ascribe their content to them as based on their external behavior. Maybe a person suffering from amnesia who unwittingly confabulates has already lost the ability to really think? The aim of the seminar is to determine whether it is justified to adopt a perspective that denies certain mental states are contentful, i.e., are not representational. Thus, the antirepresentational account of cognitive disorders will be under analysis. The analyses will especially (although not only) appeal to teleosemantic accounts of mental representations, according to which representing is a function of mental mechanisms and representations are detectable by a cognitive system itself. This account is particularly well suited to the task, as delusional patients often lose the ability to critically evaluate the content of their thoughts. Do their thoughts therefore lose their content? Are these thoughts only in a figurative sense? Or maybe these disorders are even more complex in nature? The research will focus on cognitive disorders, including hallucinations, confabulations, and psychoses, as well as on partially cognitive disorders, such as certain disorders of empathy, obsessive-compulsive disorders or aphantasia (the inability to create mental images). An important point in analysis will be investigating a role of representational concepts in a broadly discussed issue of classification or systematization of mental, both in the context of RDoC and DSM-5. We will investigate a relation between classifications and general theories of mental disorders - from psychoanalitic and cognitive to recently proposed evolutionary or neuropsychoanalitic accounts. The question is whether representational concepts - especially representational content - should play an important role in such theories? |
| Bibliography: |
Bielecka K., Błądzę, więc myślę. Co to jest błędna reprezentacja?, Wydawnictwo UW, Umysł. Prace z filozofii i kognitywistyki, 2019 Bielecka K., Marcinów M., Mental Misrepresentation in Non-human Psychopathology, „Biosemiotics” 10 (2), 2017, 195-210 Bolton, D. What is mental disorder? An essay in philosophy, science, and values. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Bortolotti, L., Delusions and other irrational beliefs. Oxford / New York, Oxford University Press, 2010 Fotopoulou, A., Pfaff D., Conway M.A., From the Couch to the Lab: Trends in Psychodynamic Neuroscience. Oxford University Press, 2012 Hirstein, W., Brain fiction: self-deception and the riddle of confabulation. Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2005 Hutto, D., Radical Enactivism and Narrative Practice: Implications for Psychopathology, w: T. Fuchs, P. & H. Sattel (red.), Coherence and Disorders of the Embodied Self. Schattauer, 2010 Kincaid H., Sullivan J., Classifying Psychopathology, Mental Kinds and Natural Kinds, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2014 Nesse, R. M. Good reasons for bad feelings: insights from the frontier of evolutionary psychiatry. New York, New York: Dutton 2019. Ratcliffe, M., Experiences of depression. A study in phenomenology, Oxford University Press, 2015 Stinson, C., The absent body in psychiatric diagnosis, treatment, and research. „Synthese”, 1-24, 2017 |
| Learning outcomes: |
Acquired knowledge: K_W01, K_W02, K_W03, K_W05, K_W06, K_W07 Acquired competences: K_U01, K_U02, K_U03, K_U04, K_U05, K_U06, K_U07, K_U08, K_U09 Acquired social competences: K_K01, K_K02 |
| Assessment methods and assessment criteria: |
Short commentaries to papers under discussion, student presentation about a selected paper, activity during classes |
Copyright by University of Warsaw.
