The new
issue of Dialogues in Philosophy, Mental and Neuro Sciences is online. As usual
articles written from different perspectives enrich the interdisciplinary
dialogue in Philosophy of Psychopathology.
Jakovljevic
& Crnčevic present the most comprehensive article ever published on the
epistemological implications of psychiatric comorbidity. The following is the
abstract of their “Comorbidity as an epistemological challenge to modern
psychiatry”: In spite of a considerable
progress in comorbidity research and huge literature on it, this phenomenon is
one of the greatest epistemological, research and clinical challenges to
contemporary psychiatry and medicine. Mental disorders are very often
comorbidly expressed, both among themselves and with various sorts of somatic
diseases and illnesses. Therefore, comorbidity studies have been expected to be
an impetus to research on the validity of current diagnostic systems as well as
on establishing more effective and efficient treatment within the frame of
person centered transdisciplinary psychiatry and integrative medicine. This
review focuses first on conceptual chaos and different connotations, then on
transdisciplinary perspectives of comorbidity and multimorbidity. The authors
compiled an extensive set of various views and perspectives, dilemmas and
controversies, in order to evaluate what we know and what we don't about
comorbidity, what comorbidity is and what comorbidity is not, what are facts
and what are non-facts on comorbidity and multimorbidity.
Brian Earp
introduces the reader to the fascinating world of philosophy of mind. The
article is entitled “I can't get no (epistemic) satisfaction: Why the hard
problem of consciousness entails a hard problem of explanation”. It is an
important contribution on the discussion of Chalmers’ famous challenge to
cognitive research. In the abstract, Earp writes: Daniel Dennett (1996) has disputed David Chalmers' (1995) assertion
that there is a "hard problem of consciousness" worth solving in the
philosophy of mind. In this paper I defend Chalmers against Dennett on this
point: I argue that there is a hard problem of consciousness, that it is
distinct in kind from the so-called easy problems, and that it is vital for the
sake of honest and productive research in the cognitive sciences to be clear
about the difference.But I have my own rebuke for Chalmers on the point of
explanation. Chalmers (1995, 1996) proposes to "solve" the hard
problem of consciousness by positing qualia as fundamental features of the
universe, alongside such ontological basics as mass and space-time. But this is
an inadequate solution: to posit, I will urge, is not to explain. To bolster
this view, I borrow from an account of explanation by which it must provide
"epistemic satisfaction" to be considered successful (Rowlands, 2001;
Campbell, 2009), and show that Chalmers' proposal fails on this account. I
conclude that research in the science of consciousness cannot move forward
without greater conceptual clarity in the field.
In the
section New Ideas, Prof. Korf proposes to consider the mind as an emerging configuration
of the personal brain. It is a new and very interesting point of view that
merits to be widely discussed by neuroscientists and philosophers of mind. This
is the abstract: This essay examines the
relationship between metabolic brain processes and psycho-physiological
activities or mental activity. It is argued that metabolic brain processes,
including those involved in the production of energy, proteins and other
molecules are restorative and conditional, rather than directly involved in
mental activities. This stance suggests that life-time acquired learning and
memory is precipitated as a permanent and personal configuration of the brain,
that is in principle accessible to neurophysiological examination. Current
neuroscience largely ignores implicitly or explicitly the search for new
emergent configurations of the brain.
Biological
and psychological reflections on Religion are the focus of “Mysticism and
Science: Two Products of the Human Imagination”, by Trevors & Saier Jr. In
the abstract the authors state: We
examine that both science and religion were original products of the human
imagination. However, the approaches taken to develop these two explanations of
life, were entirely different. The precepts of evolution are well established
through the scientific method. This approach has led to the accumulation of
immense amounts of evidence for biological evolution, and much scientific
progress has been made to understand the pathways taken for the appearance of
organisms and their macromolecular constituents. The existence of spiritual
beings has not and presumably cannot be documented via a scientific approach,
no more than a fairy tale or a myth. However, science, education and knowledge
coupled to proper actions are exactly what are needed to make the correct
decisions so as to preserve and improve our common, shared biosphere which is
currently confronted with two immense problems: human population growth and
climate change.
Finally, in
the section Dialogues David Trafimow comments on the “Descriptive richness and
abstract theorizing pertaining to schizophrenic disorders”. The author argues
that: a) diagnosis
of clinical
disorders is unlikely to work well in the absence of a theory on which the
diagnostic
system can
be based, and b) at present, there is very little theory concerning
schizophrenic disorders. On this basis he argues that good descriptions are not
enough and that researchers should
collect
rich descriptions of subjective experiences of schizophrenics in the interest
of generating
a strong
theory.
