Philosophy of Mental Disorders

Catalog description

Mental disorders raise important issues in many areas of philosophy, including the nature of consciousness, free will, moral responsibility, and social and political philosophy. But what are mental disorders? Are they the result of an underlying neurological condition? Or do mental disorders arise from a failure of the individual to adapt to their environment? How do we know if someone is suffering from a mental disorder? What are the signs? Should how we treat someone with a mental disorder depend on whether we believe the underlying condition is neurological or social? How do we distinguish between these two root causes? These are some of the issues we will be exploring in this course. We will first consider the general question of what constitutes a mental disorder, reviewing phenomenological, neurological, social constructionist, dysfunction, and distress accounts. We will, then, examine current theoretical analysis of mental disorders such as depression/mania, schizophrenia, addiction, dissociative disorders, autism, and psychopathy. We will, also, investigate the DSM and the methods used therein to distinguish between disorders, paying careful attention to any cultural and historical distinctions in philosophical theories of diagnosis and treatment.