"I will teach you differences"

Seeing the current RSC production , I realised that I’d forgotten, if I ever knew, that the motto that Wittgenstein considered quoting at th...

Painting as photography

I’ve just been to the exhibition ‘ The painting of modern life ’ at the Hayward: paintings based on photography and it put me in mind of a r...

Someone must have traduced Jospeh K

Returning to Wittgenstein’s remark that ‘If a lion could talk, we could not understand him’ I’ve just been given the following delightful a...

Psychiatric virtue ethics

I’ve spent the day reviewing a manuscript for a book on psychiatric ethics written by Jennifer Radden (editor of The Philosophy of Psychiat...

New book on philosophy of psychiatry

I'm delighted to report that Rachel Cooper , a philosopher of psychiatry who, like me, graduated from the Cambridge HPS department , but...

Rationality and Compulsion #2

In the end, I was a little disappointed with Lennart Nordenfelt’s book Rationality and Compulsion (mentioned before ). The second half ‘Irr...

Contents and vehicles

One informal project that those of us from the more philosophical side of the Institute are engaged in is trying to get a better understand...

Everyday illness phenomenology

I’ve spent the last couple of days suffering a standard autumnal cold. The striking thing about such a normal experience is how bizarre aspe...

In Berlin

I’ve just got back from my final conference of 2007: kindly invited by Thomas Fuchs and Martin Heinze to give a paper at the German Psychi...

Everyday philosophy of vision?

In an article in today's Guardian which reviews an exhibition of Sidney Nolan , and successfully persuades me to look at his work afre...

Judgement, understanding and contemporary music

My colleague Pat Bracken objected at a seminar last week to me suggesting that a clinical encounter between psychiatrist and patient / servi...

Control

I had lunch with Professor John Cox yesterday who will, hopefully, act as External Examiner for the Philosophy and Mental Health MA at Ucl...

Draft reply to Damiaan Denys

I am grateful to Damiaan Denys for the friendly tone of his critical response to Natalie’s and my paper and for his mention of my own contri...

Overly rational? Overly simple?

One of the projects undertaken by recent philosophy of psychiatry has been to try to resist Jaspers’ claim that primary delusions are un-un...

A response for PEHM?

I mentioned (on this blog ) a reply to Natalie's and my overview of the OUP book series a little while ago. If anyone cares to support...

Why colours look the way they do

I went to a fascinating paper by Nick Unwin on ‘ Why colours look the way they do ’ yesterday evening but - or should that be ‘and’? - have...

Alienation with rabbits?

Having expressed some qualms about Lennart Nordenfelt’s characterisation of everyday mutual understanding (it is too intellectual and too m...

Alienation

I’d meant to spend Sunday afternoon catching up with various things I need to read, including Lennart Nordenfelt’s Rationality and Compulsi...

Categorial unity

A few weeks ago I was invited to a small conference to mark the translation into French of John McDowell’s Mind and World . (My single chapt...

Correction

Sitting in the Sun Hotel , Lancaster, with Gloria Ayob after a reading group I had a sudden enthusiasm for the view that to be a good enough...

The new philosophy of psychiatry

Natalie Banner and I published a review of 7 of the books in the OUP book series, International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry , ...

The World Psychiatric Association Institutional Program on Psychiatry for the Person

I’ve just been to a three day conference organised by the World Psychiatric Association to attempt to come up with practical ideas for their...

Journal acceptances and rejections

Having finished books this year and last (the co-authored Oxford Textbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry and a single authored Essential Phi...

Folk psychology

The reading group at the Philosophy Department at Lancaster University – one stop up the railway line from Preston – is reading Matthew Ratc...