PHIL 380DPhilosophy & Mental Health

Catalog

The concept of mental illness plays important roles in medicine, the law, education, the social sciences, the arts, and people's own self-understanding. Mental illness raises a number of pressing philosophical problems for contemporary society. Some problems concern the very idea of mental illness, how it is to be understood and whether there are limitations to the prominent medical model of mental illness. Others concern the way in which clinical conditions inform our understanding of the mind, agency, and identity. Since these conditions are lived, philosophical reflection on them has immediate and urgent consequences. In this course we will address three broad areas in what has come to be called the Philosophy of Psychiatry. The first is philosophical reflection on the nature of mental illness. What, exactly, makes a disorder "mental"? and when does a mental condition count as an "illness" or "disorder"? What is the role of culture in mental illness? What causes mental disorder? Second, we will examine specific psychiatric disorders from a philosophical point of view. We will focus on addiction, delusions, personality disorder, and autism. Third, we will consider agency, responsibility, political recognition, and morality in the context of mental disorder.