reading list
Philosophy of: Mind / Psychology / Mental Health
Richard Gipps 2026
Introductory / Holiday Reading
The Mark/s of the Mental
Other Minds
Representationalism
Mind’s Relation to Behaviour
The Science of Psychoanalysis?
Unconscious Mental Life
Phenomenal Consciousness
The Privacy of the Inner?
Perception and Hallucination
Illusionism
Blindsight
Physicalism/Materialism
Self-Consciousness
Knowing Your Own Mind
Human Nature
Mental Illness
Delusion
Disintegration
Thought Insertion
Disability and Diversity
Psychotherapeutic Action
Addiction
Personality Disorders
Hysteria
Diagnosis
Pharmacotherapy
Anxiety
Religion and Psychopathology
What Causes Mental Illness?
Making Sense of One Another
Meanings and Causes
Development of the Moral Life
Emotion and Understanding
Affect Regulation
Dreams
Critique of Scientific Psychology
Introductory / Holiday Reading
Gilbert Ryle (1949/2009) The Concept of Mind, Hutchinson’s University Library / Routledge (worth reading the Introduction by Julia Tanney in the 2009 Routledge edition)
P M S Hacker. 2025. Solving, Resolving, and Dissolving Philosophical Problems: Essays in Connective, Contrastive and Contextual Analysis. Introduction, Part 1 and Part 4 (and Part 2 if time). A useful introduction, both to the nature of mind, mind-body relations, consciousness, phenomenal experience, and encountering others (chs 1-5), and to the nature of philosophical methodology (ch 16)
Jonathan Shedler (2006) That was then, this is now, https://jonathanshedler.com/PDFs/Shedler%20(2006)%20That%20was%20then,%20this%20is%20now%20R9.pdf A non-philosophical piece to help you get your feet on the ground for when we discuss the unconscious.
The Mark/s of the Mental
What is/are the essential mark/s of mind? - Consciousness? Intentionality? Reason? Language use?
P M S Hacker (2013) The Intellectual Powers: A Study of Human Nature, Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, chs 1-3
John Searle (1983) Intentionality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ch. 1
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1958) The Blue & Brown Books pp 3, 11-12, 19-22, 31-44; and (1953) Philosophical Investigations, §§33-6, 429-465, 571-606
Anthony Kenny – Wittgenstein, ch. 7 (esp. pp 120-29)
John Perry (1994) Intentionality, in S Guttenplan (ed), A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind, Oxford: Blackwell
H Smit & P M S Hacker (2020) Two conceptions of consciousness and why only the neo-Aristotelian one enables us to construct evolutionary explanations, Humanit Soc Sci Commun 7, 93, https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-00591-y
Other Minds
Might your new philosophy tutor be a non-conscious ‘zombie’ for all you know?
A.J. Ayer (1953/1954) One’s knowledge of other minds, in his Philosophical Essays, London: MacMillan, St Martin’s Press, 191–215
Colin McGinn (1984) What is the problem of other minds?, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1984, (supplementary vol.) 58, 119-37
P M S Hacker (2012) The sad and sorry history of consciousness: being, among other things, a challenge to the 'consciousness-studies community’, Royal Institute of Philosophy, Supplement 70, 149-168
Evan Thompson (2010) Mind in Life, Harvard University Press, ch 8 (Life beyond the gap)
Norman Malcolm (1977) Wittgenstein on the nature of mind, in Norman Malcolm, Thought and Knowledge, Cornell University Press
David Chalmers (1996) The Conscious Mind, New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, §Argument 1: The logical possibility of zombies pp. 95ff
Julia Tanney (2004) On the conceptual, psychological, and moral status of zombies, swamp-beings, and other ‘behaviorally indistinguishable’ creatures, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 69, 1, 173-186 (See also ch 10 of Tanney’s Rules, Reason and Self-Knowledge, Harvard University Press)
John Cook (1969). Human Beings. In Peter Winch (ed), Studies in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein. Routledge.
H Smit & P M S Hacker (2020) Two conceptions of consciousness and why only the neo-Aristotelian one enables us to construct evolutionary explanations, Humanit Soc Sci Commun 7, 93, https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-00591-y
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953) Philosophical Investigations, §§244-250, 310-317, 344-363 (esp. para 350); Part II, ix-x
Representationalism
Is there a cogent sense of ‘representation’ at play in cognitive psychological explanation? If so, what is it, and what does it help explain? Is the concept of ‘unconscious inference’ cogent?
Is perception a controlled hallucination?
Chris Frith () Making Up the Mind.
Anil Seth () Being You.
Tim Thornton (1998) Wittgenstein on Thought and Language: The Philosophy of Content, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, chs 1 & 2
M R Bennett & P M S Hacker (2003) Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, Oxford: Blackwell, ch 3
An excerpt from the above can also be found in:
M R Bennett, Daniel Dennett, P M S Hacker & John Searle (2003) Neuroscience and Philosophy: Brain, Mind and Language, Columbia University Press
See also the replies by Dennett and Searle in the same volume.
M R Bennett & P M S Hacker (2024) The Representational Fallacy in Neuroscience and Psychology: A Critical Analysis. Palgrave MacMillan
John Heil (1981) Does cognitive psychology rest on a mistake? Mind, 90, 321-342
John Searle (1997) The explanation of cognition, in John Preston (ed), Thought and Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Frances Egan (2020) A deflationary account of mental representation, in Joulia Smortchkova, Krzysztof Dołęga, & Tobias Schlicht (eds) (2020) What Are Mental Representations? New York: Oxford University Press
William Ramsey (2020) Defending representation realism, in Joulia Smortchkova, Krzysztof Dołęga, & Tobias Schlicht (eds) What Are Mental Representations? New York: Oxford University Press
Dan Hutto and Erik Myin (2020) Deflating deflationism about mental representation, in Joulia Smortchkova, Krzysztof Dołęga, & Tobias Schlicht (eds) (2020) What Are Mental Representations? New York: Oxford University Press
Luis Favela and Edouard Machery (2023). Investigating the concept of representation in the neural and psychological sciences. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 07 June 2023, Sec. Cognition. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1165622. (Just read the introduction and skim this
Luis Favela and Edouard Machery (2025). The concept of representation in the brain sciences: The current status and ways forward. Mind & Language 40, 2, 215-225. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mila.12531
Richard Gipps (2009) Review of Making up the mind: how the brain creates our mental world, by Frith, C. Philosophical Psychology, 22(3), 393-397.
Mind’s Relation to Behaviour
How should we understand the relation between eye rolls and exasperation? Do intentions, feelings, thoughts, cause the actions and speech acts which express them? Do they enjoy an existence independent of such manifestations? Is behaviourism, or instead a conception of mind as inner in causal relations to an outer world of behaviour, a promising theory? Bearing in mind Ryle and Wittgenstein’s critiques of ‘the inner’: what if any room is left for the notion of an ‘inner life’ after we’ve absorbed what’s of value in them. (Have a think about Iris Murdoch’s (mis)reading of Wittgenstein in this regard.)
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953) Philosophical Investigations, Blackwell, §§281-308
Peter Hacker (2019) ‘Inside and outside’ §2 (pp. 155-160) of ch VIII of the 2nd edition of his Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind. Blackwell
Søren Overgaard (2007) Wittgenstein and Other Minds, Routledge, ch 7 (‘The play of expression’)
John Cook (1969/2005) ‘Human beings’ in Winch (ed) Studies in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein, Taylor and Francis
William Child (2017) The inner and the outer, in Hans Johann Glock & John Hyman (eds), A Companion to Wittgenstein, Oxford: Blackwell, ch 29; https://www.academia.edu/6231454/Wittgenstein_on_the_Inner_and_the_Outer
and/or Paul Johnston (1993) Wittgenstein: Rethinking the Inner, London: Routledge, chs 1 & 6
Ilham Dilman (1975) Matter and Mind, Macmillan, ch 8 (‘Our knowledge of other minds: mental life and human behaviour’)
Iris Murdoch (2003), Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, Vintage Classics, ch 9
Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen (2019) ‘I Think I Disagree’: Murdoch on Wittgenstein and inner life, in N. Hämäläinen & G. Dooley (eds),
Reading Iris Murdoch’s Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, Palgrave Macmillan, ch 10
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2012) Phenomenology of Perception, trans Landes, Routledge, Part I, Ch VI (‘The body as expression, and speech’)
Eric Matthews (2002) The Philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Acumen, ch 4 (Embodiment and human action)
The Science of Psychoanalysis?
Is psychoanalysis a science? What’s the status of psychoanalytic concepts like ‘internal object relation’, ‘unconscious phantasy’, ‘complexes’, ‘defence mechanisms’? Are they theoretical posits or ways of talking? Are psychoanalytic theories falsifiable? What is the character of psychoanalytic explanation?
Michael Lacewing (2013) Could psychoanalysis be a science? In K W M Fulford et al (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ch. 64
Michael Lacewing (2018) The science of psychoanalysis. Philosophy, Psychiatry, Psychology, 25 (2) 95-111
Frank Cioffi (1998) Freud and the idea of a pseudoscience - and - Psychoanalysis, pseudoscience, and testability. In Cioffi, Freud and the Question of Pseudoscience, Peru IL: Open Court Publishing Company, chs 3 & 9.
Richard Gipps (2019) A new kind of song: the art of psychoanalysis. In Richard Gipps & Michael Lacewing (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychoanalysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Drew Westen (1998) The scientific legacy of Sigmund Freud: Toward a psychodynamically informed psychological science, Psychological Bulletin, 124, 3, 333-371
On psychoanalytic explanation:
Jim Hopkins (1988). Epistemology and depth psychology. In Mind, Psychoanalysis and Science, eds. P. Clark and C. Wright. Blackwell, pp. 33-60
Michael Lacewing (2012). Inferring motives in psychology and psychoanalysis. Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology, 19, pp. 197-212
Unconscious Mental Life
What is the unconscious? Is the idea of an unconscious mind a contradiction in terms? When is an emotion properly called unconscious? What is it to make the unconscious conscious? Is this the same as the goal of ‘knowing thyself’?
Early and Recent Psychoanalysis:
Sigmund Freud (1915). The Unconscious. (e.g. in vol 11 on metapsychology of the Pelican (Penguin) Freud Library.
Jonathan Shedler (2006). That was then, this is now. https://jonathanshedler.com/PDFs/Shedler%20(2006)%20That%20was%20then,%20this%20is%20now%20R9.pdf
Philosophical Approaches:
David Finkelstein (2019). Making the unconscious conscious. In Gipps & Lacewing (Eds), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychoanalysis. ch 19. OUP.
Jonathan Lear (2005) Freud. ch 1 (Interpreting the Unconscious). Routledge.
Adam Leite (2019). Integrating unconscious belief. In Gipps & Lacewing (Eds), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychoanalysis. ch 18. OUP.
Richard Gipps (2019) A new kind of song, in Richard Gipps & Michael Lacewing (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ch 24; just the section §’Recognition vs Cognition’
Michael Lacewing 2019) How should we understand the psychoanalytic unconscious?, in Richard Gipps & Michael Lacewing (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ch 23
Hubert Dreyfus and Jerome Wakefield (1988) From depth psychology to breadth psychology, in Hubert Dreyfus and Mark Wrathall (eds), Skilful Coping: Essays on the Phenomenology of Everyday Perception and Action, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ch 8.
Thomas Fuchs (2019) Body memory and the unconscious. In Gipps & Lacewing (Eds), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ch 25
Jonathan Webber (2020). Bad faith and the unconscious. In LaFolette, Diegh & Stroud (Eds). The International Encyclopaedia of Ethics, 2nd edition. Wiley-Blackwell. https://www.jonathanwebber.co.uk/articles/BadFaithAndTheUnconscious-Revised.pdf
Bruno Bettelheim - Freud and the Soul. /. The New Yorker, March 1, 1982
Phenomenal Consciousness
Can you know what it’s like to be a bat? Is the idea of there being ‘something it’s like to be’ a bat even coherent? What, if anything, is ‘the feeling of what happens’?
Thomas Nagel (1974) What is it like to be a bat? Philosophical Review, 83, 4, 435-450 (also in his Mortal Questions)
P M S Hacker (2002) Is there anything it is like to be a bat? Philosophy, 77, 157-74
Dan Dennett (1991) Consciousness Explained, Little Brown & Co, ch 14 (Qualia disqualified; alternatively see Dan Dennett (1988) Quining qualia, in A. Marcel and E. Bisiach (eds) (1988) Consciousness in Modern Science, Oxford: Oxford University Press)
Antonio Damasio (1999) The Feeling of What Happens, Harcourt College Publishers
Matthew Ratcliffe (2007) The problem with the problem of consciousness? Synthesis Philosophica, 44, 2, 483-494
The Privacy of the Inner?
Might you see red where I see blue? What is Wittgenstein’s ‘private language argument’ - and is it successful? What is the point of Wittgenstein’s ‘beetle in the box’ argument? Does Dennett successfully ‘quine’ qualia? (See last week’s reading.) Are experiences ‘private’ - and, if so, in what sense?
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953) Philosophical Investigations, Oxford: Blackwell §§243-315
2 short explications:
Hans-Johann Glock (1996) ’private language argument’ in his A Wittgenstein Dictionary, Oxford: Blackwell
and/or PMS Hacker (2018) Wittgenstein’s legacy: The principles of the private language arguments, Philosophical Investigations, 41 (2): 123-140, §II (‘Fundamental insights’)
A longer explication:
Severin Schroeder (2001) Private language and private experience, in H-J Glock (ed), Wittgenstein: A Critical Reader, Oxford: Blackwell, 174-198
or Severin Schroeder (2006) Wittgenstein: The Way Out of the Fly Bottle, Polity Press, ch 4 §6
On phenomenal concepts and the private language argument:
David Papineau (2011) Phenomenal concepts and the private language argument. American Philosophical Quarterly, 48 (2): 175-184. http://www.davidpapineau.co.uk/uploads/1/8/5/5/18551740/phenomenal_concepts_and_the_private_language_argument.doc, esp §2 & §3
William Child (2017) Wittgenstein and phenomenal concepts, in M. Campbell & M. O’Sullivan (eds), Wittgenstein and Perception, Abingdon: Routledge, 84-103
Perception and Hallucination
What do visually hallucinating a cat and really seeing a white cat have in common? Could perception conceivably be ‘controlled hallucination’? Which is more plausible: disjunctivism or non-disjunctivism - and causalism or non-causalism - about perception?
John Hyman (1992) The causal theory of perception, The Philosophical Quarterly, 42, 168, 277-296
John McDowell (1982) Criteria, defeasibility and knowledge, Proceedings of the British Academy, 68, 455-479
Anil Seth (2022) Being You, Faber & Faber, part II
Matthew Soteriou (2020) The disjunctive theory of perception, Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-disjunctive/
Illusionism
Could conscious experience be an illusion?
Keith Frankish (2016) Illusionism as a theory of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23 (11-12), 11-39.
Keith Frankish (2016). Not disillusioned: reply to commentators. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23 (11-12): 256-289. (This whole double issue is devoted to illusionism.)
Jay Garfield https://jaygarfield.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/illusionism-and-givenness2.pdf
Dan Dennett (2017). ch 14 (Consciousness as an evolved user-illusion) of his From Bacteria to Bach and Back. Norton.
Dan Dennett (1992) Consciousness Explained. Back Bay Books. Obviously can’t read all of this! But do have a go at some of it, perhaps especially something of chs 2, 5, 10, 11, 12, 14. Don’t let this get in the way of the reading below though.
Roger Fellows & Anthony O'Hear (1993) Consciousness avoided, Inquiry, 36:1-2, 73-91, DOI: 10.1080/00201749308602312
John Dupré (2009). Hard and easy questions about consciousness. In Glock & Hyman (eds) Wittgenstein and Analytic Philosophy. pp. 228-249.
Dan Hutto (1995) Consciousness demystified: A Wittgensteinian critique of Dennett's project. The Monist, 78 (4), 464-479. [ignore §2 and §3]
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1958).just §§307-8 of his Philosophical Investigations. Blackwell.
Blindsight
What does (and what doesn’t) blindsight tell us about the nature of conscious experience?
Explication
Sarah Blakemore (2017). Ch 2, §Seeing without seeing. Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction, 2nd edition. OUP.
(V S Ramachandran (2005). ch. 4 (The zombie in the brain). Phantoms in the Brain. Harper Perennial.)
Lawrence Weiskrantz (1987). Neuropsychology and the nature of consciousness. Ch 21 of C. Blakemore and S Greenfield (eds.), Mindwaves. Blackwell.
Lawrence Weiskrantz (1998). Blindsight: A Case Study and Implications. Oxford University Press. ch 19, §g (Awareness and the definition of blindsight).
Philosophical Critique
John Hyman, (1991). Visual Experience and blindsight. In Hyman (ed) Investigating Psychology. Routledge.
M R Bennett & P M S Hacker (2003) §14.3.1 (also §3.6; §3.7) of Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. Blackwell.
Physicalism/Materialism
Could beliefs and desires be states of the brain? Do memories and perceptual experiences have a location? If so, might they be partly located outside the head?
Dualism and Physicalism
Rene Descartes - Meditations I, II, and VI
Anthony Kenny (1989) The Metaphysics of Mind, chs 1 & 2
J. J. C. Smart (1959) Sensations and brain processes, Philosophical Review,
Thomas Nagel (1974/1991) What is it like to be a bat? In Nagel’s Mortal Questions, Cambridge University Press, ch 12, pp. 165 - 180.
Donald Davidson (1970/2001) Mental events, in his Essays on Actions and Events, Oxford University Press, ch. 11.
Functionalism
Hilary Putnam – ‘The nature of mental states’, reprinted in Mind and Cognition: A Reader (3rd ed.) (ed. Lycan & Prinz)
David Lewis – ‘Mad pain and Martian pain’, in D. Lewis Philosophical Papers, Vol.1
Jane Heal – ‘Replication and functionalism’, in Language, Mind and Logic (ed. J. Butterfield)
Roger Teichmann – ‘The Functionalist's Inner State’, in Wittgenstein and Contemporary Philosophy of Mind (ed. Schroeder)
Extended Mind
Andy Clark & David Chalmers (1998) The extended mind, Analysis, 58, 1, 7-19
Self-Consciousness
What is a self? ‘Me’: a name I call myself? How do I know which person I am? What if any sense can we make of delusions which seem to somehow involve mistaking (aspects of) oneself for (those of) another?
Joel Smith (2020) Self-consciousness, Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/self-consciousness/
Elizabeth Anscombe (1981) The first person, in e.g. Anscombe’s collection: Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind, University of Minnesota Press
Sofia Miguens (2019) Anscombe on self-awareness - a re-reading of “the first person”, Forma de Vida, 17, September, https://formadevida.org/smiguensfdv17
Gareth Evans (1982) Varieties of Reference Oxford: Oxford University Press, ch 7 (Self-identification)
R G T Gipps (2022) On Madness, Bloomsbury, ch 5 (The divided self)
John Perry (2011) On knowing one’s self, in Shaun Gallagher (ed) The Oxford Handbook of the Self, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ch 16
Jean-Phillipe Narboux (2018) Is self-consciousness consciousness of oneself? in O Kuusela (et al), Wittgenstein and Phenomenology, Routledge, ch 9 [not for the faint hearted]
Peter Carruthers (2001/2020) Higher-order theories of consciousness, Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-higher/
David Rosenthal (2006) Consciousness and higher order thought, Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/0470018860.s00149
P M S Hacker (2013) The Intellectual Powers, Blackwell, ch 1, esp. §§4-8
Joseph Schear (2009) Experience and self-consciousness, Philosophical Studies, 144, 1, 95–105; this is a critique of Dan Zahavi’s position. To get to grips with that, read one of the below:
Dan Zahavi (2005) Chapter 1 (Self-awareness and phenomenal consciousness) of his Subjectivity and Selfhood. MIT
Dan Zahavi (2006) Thinking about self-consciousness: Phenomenological perspectives, in U. Kriegel & K. Williford (eds) Consciousness and Self Reference, MIT Press, 273-295
Knowing Your Own Mind
Is self-knowledge (of what we think and feel) infallible? Is there a typical means by which we gain it? How do I know that I’m thinking and experiencing what I’m thinking and experiencing? Is my ability to truthfully say that I’m thinking and experiencing this or that contingent on my enjoying something worth calling self-knowledge? Or is talk of the latter itself just a fancy way of talking about the former? Does all experience involve something worth calling ‘pre-reflective self-consciousness’?
Quassim Cassam (—) Self-Knowledge: A Beginner’s Guide http://www.self-knowledgeforhumans.com/uploads/3/9/1/1/39118991/ebook_-_self_knowledge_-_a_beginners_guide.pdf
Quassim Cassam (2014) Self-Knowledge for Humans, Oxford: Oxford University Press, chs 1 & 4
Gilbert Ryle (1949/2009) Concept of Mind, Hutchinson/Routledge, ch 6 (Self-Knowledge)
Julia Tanney (1996) A constructivist picture of self-knowledge, Philosophy, 71, 277, 405-422, (aka Some constructivist thoughts about self-knowledge, in Tanney’s (2013) Rules, Reason, and Self-Knowledge, Harvarrd University Press)
Sydney Shoemaker (1996) On knowing one’s own mind, in S Shoemaker, The First-Person Perspective and Other Essays, Cambridge University Press, ch 2
John Heil (1988) Privileged access, Mind, 97, 238–251
Richard Moran (2001) Authority and Estrangement: An Essay on Self-Knowledge, Princeton University Press, e.g. ch 1, 3, 4
John Hyman (2001) Knowledge and self-knowledge, in S Schroeder (ed), Wittgenstein and Contemporary Philosophy of Mind, Basingstoke: Palgrave, ch 9
Human Nature
What is a human being? What is in our nature? (Consider: how shall we understand the concept of something being in X’s nature? And how shall we pursue the question of what makes a thing what it is? Might there be different kinds of legitimate answer to this (or to different understandings of this) question?) Is ‘human being’ a biological kind? Is Sartre’s conception that man’s existence ‘precedes his essence’ compelling? What is wrong with the answer ‘we are featherless bipeds?’ If humans are rational animals, are the less rational among us less human? Think too - but don’t for now write - about this: If self-understanding is intrinsic to the kind of being we are, what hope is there for a scientific psychology?)
Neil Roughley (2011). Human natures. In Sebastian Schleidgen et al (Eds) Human Nature and Self Design. Brill. pp. 11-33. [if not accessible then instead look at Roughley’s useful Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy entry on "human nature”.]
Sanneke de Haan (2020). The existential dimension, §5.2 of ch 5 of her Enactive Psychiatry. Cambridge University Press.
Charles Taylor (1985). Self-interpreting animals & The concept of a person. Chs 2 & 4 in Taylor’s Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press.
Jean-Paul Sartre (1946). Existentialism is a Humanism. [just skim this for the earlier parts where Sartre talks about our ‘existence coming before our essence’.]
Raimond Gaita (1998). A common humanity. This is the last chapter in Gaita’s book A Common Humanity. Routledge.
Richard Gipps On Madness. Bloomsbury. Just p.46!
Michael Thompson (2008). The representation of the life-form itself. Chapter 4 of his Life and Action. [You can probably find a standalone version on his website.] Harvard University Press.
Cora Diamond (1991). The importance of being human. In Cockburn (ed), Human Beings. Cambridge University Press.
Mental Illness
What, if anything, is an ‘illness of the mind’? What’s the relation between mental and ordinary (physical) illness? Are mental illnesses real illnesses? Are mental illnesses brain diseases? Is talk of ‘mental illness’ just one culturally mediated way of seeing suffering or ‘problems in living’? What are the benefits and pitfalls of the ‘medical model’? Are mental illnesses ‘real’?
David Papineau (1994). Mental disorder, illness, and biological dysfunction. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, 37, 73-82.
T S Champlin (1996). To Mental Illness via a Rhyme for the Eye. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 41, 165-189.
Neil Pickering (2006). The Metaphor of Mental Illness. Oxford University Press. chs 1-3.
Elselijn Kingma (2013) Naturalist accounts of mental disorder. In K W M Fulford et al (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry, Oxford University Press, ch. 25.
Tim Thornton (2007). Essential Philosophy of Psychiatry, Oxford University Press, ch. 1.
Sanneke de Haan (2021). Enactive Psychiatry. Cambridge University Press. Ch. 7.
Richard Gipps (2022) On Madness. Bloomsbury, ch.1.
Derek Bolton (2013) What is mental illness? In K W M Fulford et al (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ch. 28.
Sam Wilkinson (2022). Philosophy of Psychiatry. Chapter 2 (What is mental illness?)
Peter Zachar (2014) A Metaphysics of Psychopathology. MIT Press. Ch. 8 (Classification and the concept of psychiatric disorder).
Sam Fellowes (2025) In Defence of Psychiatric Diagnosis. Palgrave Macmillan. Ch. 1 (Introduction) et passim..
Delusion
What is it to suffer delusion? What kind of disturbance to rationality do we find in psychosis? What is it to live in a ‘world of one’s own’? In what sense does the depressed, schizophrenic, obsessional, or socially anxious person ‘live in a different world/s’? Are clinical delusions qualitatively different from other irrational beliefs?
Chris Walker (1991) Delusion: What did Jaspers really say? British Journal of Psychiatry, 159, S14, 94-103
Louis A Sass and Elizabeth Pienkos (2013) Delusion: the phenomenological approach. In K W M Fulford et al (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ch. 39
J. H. van den Berg (1974) A Different Existence: Principles of Phenomenological Psychopathology, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press [hard to find in Oxford. Just read a bit of it!]
Lisa Bortolotti (2009) Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs. Oxford University Press. For a short précis see Neuroethics, 5, 1, 1-4. (I recommend reading the précis first, then skimming the book to find the key arguments of interest. For my critique see ch. 3 of On Madness, § Misrepresentation.)
Shaun Gallagher (2009) Delusional realities, in Matthew Broome & Lisa Bortolotti (eds), Psychiatry as Cognitive Neuroscience, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.245-266
Richard Gipps & Bill Fulford (2004) Understanding the clinical concept of delusion: from an estranged to an engaged epistemology. International Review of Psychiatry, 16, 3, 225-35
Richard Gipps (2022) On Madness, London: Bloomsbury, chs 2 - 4
Disintegration
How should we understand the distinction between the dissociation or splitting of the personality in dissociative identity disorder, in trauma reactions, and in psychosis? Are the terms ‘dissociation’ or ‘splitting’ being used in the same sense in all cases?
Tim Bayne (2013) The disunity of consciousness in psychiatric disorders, in K W M Fulford et al (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ch. 41
Johannes Roessler (2013) Thought insertion, self-awareness, and rationality, in K W M Fulford et al (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ch. 40
Richard Gipps (2022) On Madness, London: Bloomsbury, ch 5
Onno van dee Hart, Ellert Nijenhuis & Kathy Steele (2006), The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatisation, New York: Norton, ch 1
John Hyman, (1991). Visual Experience and blindsight. In Hyman (ed) Investigating Psychology. Routledge. (Offers a way to think about disintegration, albeit one that’s applied to neurological rather than the psychiatric disturbances here under discussion.)
Thought Insertion
How do we know our thoughts are our own? Is at least some of our thinking accompanied by a ‘sense of myness’? How are we to understand thought insertion?
Richard Gipps (2022). On Madness. Chapter 5: The divided self. Bloomsbury.
William James (1890). The Principles of Psychology. chapter 10: The consciousness of self. Within this long chapter, just look at §§§1) ‘Insane delusions’
within § ‘The mutations of the self’: §§2 (‘Alterations in the present bodily and spiritual selves’)
Graham & Stephens (1994) Mind and mine. In Graham & Stephens (Eds), Philosophical Psychopathology, 91-109, MIT Press.
Ratcliffe & Wilkinson (2015) Thought insertion clarified. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 22 (11-12), 246-269.
John Campbell (1999). Schizophrenia, the space of reasons, and thinking as a motor process. The Monist, 82 (4), 609-625.
Chris Frith (1992) The Cognitive Neuropsychology of Schizophrenia, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, chapter 5.
Shaun Gallagher (2000) Self-reference and schizophrenia. In Zahavi (ed) Exploring the Self, 203-239. John Benjamins.
Joseph Schear (2009) Experience and self-consciousness, Philosophical Studies, 144, 1, 95–105; this is a critique of Dan Zahavi’s position. To get to grips with that, read:
either: Dan Zahavi (2005) Chapter 1 (Self-awareness and phenomenal consciousness) of his Subjectivity and Selfhood. MIT
or: Dan Zahavi (2006) Thinking about self-consciousness: Phenomenological perspectives, in U. Kriegel & K. Williford (eds) Consciousness and Self Reference, MIT Press, 273-295
Anscombe (1975) The first person. In S Guttenplan (ed.), Mind and Language. pp 45-65. Clarendon Press.
Disability and Diversity
By what is the person with a disability disabled? By their physiological development or injury? By society? Is ‘neurodiversity’ a cogent way of reframing mental illness and/or mental disability?
Tom Shakespeare (2010) The social model of disability, in Lennard Davis (ed), The Disability Studies Reader, New York: Routledge, 266-273
Robert Chapman (2020) Defining neurodiversity for theory and practice, in N Chown, A Stenning and H Rosquvist (eds), Neurodiversity Studies: A New Critical Paradigm, Routledge
Jonas-Sébastien Beaudry (2020) Theoretical strategies to define disability, in Adam Cureton and David Wasserman (eds) (2020) The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Disability, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ch 1
Jerome Bickenbach (2020) Disability, health, and difference, in Adam Cureton and David Wasserman (eds) (2020) The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Disability, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ch 3
Jerome Wakefield, David Wasserman, & Jordan Conrad (2020) Neurodiversity, autism, and psychiatric disability: the harmful dysfunction approach, in Adam Cureton and David Wasserman (eds) (2020) The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Disability, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ch 29
Psychotherapeutic Action / Cognition and Emotional Disturbance
Are emotional disturbances cognitive disturbances? What is the ‘C’ in CBT? Need psychotherapy aim at changing your beliefs? How could mere talking resolve an illness? And how could taking a mere pill ameliorate a truly mental disturbance?
Richard G T Gipps (2013) Cognitive behaviour therapy: a philosophical appraisal. In K W M Fulford et al (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ch. 72
John Teasdale (1997). The relationship between cognition and emotion: the mind-in-place in mood disorders. In D. Clark and C. Fairburn (Eds), Science and Practice of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, pp. 67–93. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [not a philosophical paper]
Demian Whiting (2006). Why treating problems in emotion may not require altering eliciting cognitions. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 13, 237–46.
Michael McEachrane (2009). Capturing emotional thoughts: The philosophy of cognitive-behavioral therapy. In Y. Gustafsson, C. Kronqvist, and M. McEachrane (Eds), Emotions and Understanding: Wittgensteinian Perspectives, pp. 81–101. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Somogy Varga (2014). Cognition, Representations and Embodied Emotions: Investigating Cognitive Theory, Erkenn, 79:165–190.
Bruce Maxwell & Christine Tappolet. (2012) Rethinking Cognitive Mediation: Cognitive–Behavioral Therapy and the Perceptual Theory of Emotion. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 19 (1): 1-12.
Michael Lacewing (2004). Emotion and cognition: Recent developments and therapeutic practice. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 11, 175–86.
Sahanika Ratnayake (2022). It's Been Utility All Along: An Alternate Understanding of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and The Depressive Realism Hypothesis. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 29, 2, 75-89.
Julia Tanney (2021). Gilbert Ryle. Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. Section 12: On Thinking. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ryle/#Thi
Addiction
When is a person suffering an addiction / a personality disorder (not) responsible for their behaviour? Can one be morally responsible for such of one’s behaviour as yet evinces mental disorder?
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Hanna Pickard (2013) What is addiction? in K W M Fulford et al (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ch 50
Hanna Pickard (2013) Responsibility without blame: philosophical reflections on clinical practice. In K W M Fulford et al (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ch. 66
Jeffrey Poland & George Graham (2011) Addiction and Responsibility, Cambridge MA: MIT Press
Neil Levy (2011) Addiction, responsibility, and ego depletion, in Jeffrey Poland & George Graham, Addiction and Responsibility, Cambridge MA: MIT Press, ch 4
Owen Flanagan (2011) What is it like to be an addict?, in Jeffrey Poland & George Graham, Addiction and Responsibility, Cambridge MA: MIT Press, ch 11
Peg O’Connor (2016) Life on the Rocks: Finding Meaning in Addiction and Recovery, Central Recovery Press.
Personality Disorders
Are personality disorders moral problems or medical illnesses?
Jonathan Shedler (2021) The Personality Syndromes. https://jonathanshedler.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Shedler-2021-The-personality-syndromes.pdf [for clinical orientation]
Charland, L. C. (2004). Character: Moral treatment and the personality disorders. In J. Radden (Ed.), The philosophy of psychiatry: A companion (pp. 64–77). Oxford University Press. [for philosophical appraisal]
Zachar, Peter (2011). The clinical nature of personality disorders: answering the neo-Szaszian critique. Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 18 (3): 191-202.
Further interest:
Pickard, H. (2011). Responsibility Without Blame: Empathy and the Effective Treatment of Personality Disorder. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 18(3), 209-224.
Pearce, S. (2011). Answering the neo-Szaszian critique: Are cluster B personality disorders really so different? Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 18(3), 203-208.
Banicki, K. (2018). From personality disorders to the fact-value distinction. Philosophical Psychology, 32(2), 274–298.
Banicki, K. (2018). Personality Disorders and Thick Concepts. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 25(3), 209-221.
Hanna Pickard. (2015). Psychopathology and the ability to do otherwise. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, XC, 1, 135-163.
Daphne Brandenburg (). The nurturing stance: Making sense of Responsibility without blame. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly,
Marion Godman & Anneli Jefferson (). On blaming and punishing psychopaths. Criminal Law and Philosophy
Sam Wilkinson (2022). Philosophy of Psychiatry: A Contemporary Introduction. Ch. 4 (Mental illness, moral responsibility, and the boundaries of the person). Routledge.
Hysteria
How can a disorder of the mind cause disturbance of the body? How should we understand psychosomatic / hysterical / conversion / functional neurological, disorders? Is Freud’s idea of conversion really intelligible?
Daniel Tkatch (2023) Bodily unconscious as a basic phenomenon: Heidegger’s critique of Freud’s theory of conversion. Philosophical Psychology, 36, 8, 1581-1603.
Medard Boss (1963) Psychoanalysis & Daseinsanalysis, ch 6. (“Conversion hysteria” and “organ neurosis”) Basic Books.
Allan Abbass and Howard Schubiner (2018). Hidden From View. Chs 1 & 5. [let me know if you can’t find this and I will message it to you]
Suzanne O’Sullivan (2016) It’s All in Your Head. Vintage. Very readable stories; read whatever you have time for to familiarise yourself with the clinical phenomena.
Cretton, A., Brown, R. J., LaFrance, C., & Aybek, S. (2019). What does neuroscience tell us about the conversion model of functional neurological disorders? The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 32(1), 24-32.
Kim, J. (2001). Lonely souls: Causality and substance dualism. In K. J. Corcoran (Ed.), Soul, Body, and Survival (pp. 30–43). Ithaca: Cornell University Press. https://www.newdualism.org/papers/J.Kim/Kim-Lonely-Souls.pdf
Diagnosis
Tim Thornton (2013) Clinical judgment, tacit knowledge, and recognition in psychiatric diagnosis, in K W M Fulford et al (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ch. 61
Tim Thornton (2007) Essential Philosophy of Psychiatry. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ch 5 The validity of psychiatric classification. And ch 6: The relation of evidence-based medicine and tacit knowledge in clinical judgement. Or perhaps this ch 5 is just an earlier version of the first piece above. Why have chapter 5 here though?
Richard G T Gipps (2022) On Madness. Bloomsbury. ch. 10
Adrian Kind (2025) How Does the Psychiatrist Know? transcript Verlag.
Pharmacotherapy
Questions: 1. It’s been said that there are 2 different models of action of medication (see Moncrieff). But do psychiatrists - with their ‘medical model’ - really use either (see Huda’s third model)? Can you think of a fourth model? 2. Can it really make sense to treat a mental illness with a physical cure? 3. Can taking a pill really enhance rather than diminish my agency?
Answer 1 and either 2 or 3.
Lopes, M.V., Messas, G. (2023). Towards a phenomenological approach to psychopharmacology: drug-centered model and epistemic empowerment. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-023-09921-2
Moncrieff, J. (2008). The Myth of the Chemical Cure. Palgrave. chs 1 & 2.
Huda, S. (2019). The Medical Model in Mental Health. Oxford University Press. chs 5 (see section on Clinical decision making and treatment); 7; 15 (see table 13.1).
Tost, H. & Meyer-Lindenberg, A. (2010). I fear for you: A role for serotonin in moral behaviour. PNAS, 107, 40, 17071-2.
Kramer, P. (1994 ). Listening to Prozac. chs 1 and 3. (Browse to find the most relevant bits)
Elliott, Carl (). Better than Well. (Browse to find the relevant bits)
Singh, I. (2013). Not robots: children's perspectives on authenticity, moral agency and stimulant drug treatments. Journal of Medical Ethics, 39, 359-366. https://jme.bmj.com/content/39/6/359
Anxiety
1. Compare and contrast existential, psychoanalytic, cognitive-behavioural, and physiological understandings of anxiety. When are they complementary, and when are they in competition? 2. Also: What is anxiety? (To approach this philosophically, think on: when we properly attribute anxiety to someone, what would legitimately count against ascriptions of anxiety to someone, etc.)
Topics to also cover should include (but not be restricted to): difference between anxiety, fear and panic; signal anxiety in psychoanalysis; anxiety as a problem to be treated; anxiety as a valuable moment of disclosing / awakening us to life’s meaning/s. Also: what are anxiety disorders? And: is there a difference between ‘ordinary' and ‘neurotic' anxiety (Rollo May). And: the different kinds of anxiety (e.g. guilt (both toward others and toward oneself), death anxiety, meaninglessness/emptiness, depressive anxiety, paranoid-schizoid anxiety, etc).
Paul Tillich (1952/2000). The Courage to Be. New Haven, Yale University. (Esp. chapters 2&3 - just read for whatever makes ready sense and ignore the rest - see pp 35 (ie the last paragraph of §’the meaning of non-being’) - 54 (ie until the end of the 3 kinds of anxiety; leave off at §’the meaning of despair’); then ch 3 - 64-70 (i.e. § ‘the nature of pathological anxiety’).
Rollo May (1958). Contributions of existential psychotherapy. In May, Angel & Ellenberger (Eds) Existence: A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology. Basic Books. §II (just pp 50-55).
Jean Kim & Jack Gorman (2005). The psychobiology of anxiety. Clinical Neuroscience Research, 4, 5-6, 335-347. (just skim this.)
Matthew Ratcliffe (2013). Why mood matters. ch 7 in Mark Wrathall (ed), Heidegger’s Being and Time. Cambridge University Press. See esp. § Ground Moods 166ff. [maybe not this. too abstract. something simpler on anxiety as disclosive and on anxiety vs fear is required]
Martin Heidegger (1962). Being & Time. §VI; 40 (‘The basic state-of-mind of anxiety as a distinctive way in which Dasein is disclosed.’). [To be read if after reading Ratcliffe you want to see what all the fuss is about.]
Sigmund Freud. New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, Lecture 32 (‘Anxiety and Instinctual Life’. See also Mawson (below) on Freud on anxiety).
Ricky Emanuel (2000). Anxiety. Icon Books. [a very little book]
Philip S Wong (1999). Anxiety, signal anxiety, and unconscious anticipation: Neuroscientific evidence for an unconscious signal function in humans. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 47:3, 817-841.
Richard Gipps (2022). I’ve got anxiety. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 56 (1):124-128.
David Egan (2021). How to be Anxious. Psyche. https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-be-anxious-like-kierkegaard-sartre-and-heidegger
highly optional extras:
Chris Mawson (2019). Psychoanalysis and Anxiety: From Knowing to Being. Routledge. (Just that part of ch 4 on Klein’s 2 ‘positions’))
Bettina Bergo (2021). Anxiety: A Philosophical History. Oxford University Press. (ch. 1.)
J. M. Magrini (2006) “Anxiety” in Heidegger’s Being & Time: The Harbinger of Authenticity. Dialogue 77-
Rollo May (1950). The Meaning of Anxiety. (For summary and synthesis: ch. 6)
Dylan Trigg (2017). Topophobia: A Phenomenology of Anxiety. Bloomsbury. https://www.academia.edu/11312712/Topophobia_a_Phenomenology_of_Anxiety_2016_
Religion and Psychopathology
Questions: 1. How shall we psychologically understand experiences of spirit possession? (This is largely an empirical rather than a philosophical topic. But keep a philosophical eye on the cogency of the psychological explanations on offer.) 2.
Gipps and Clarke (2025). Religious delusion or religious belief? Philosophical Psychology, 38, 5, 2289-2309.
Tasia Scrutton (2024). Psychopathology AND religious experience? Toward a both-and view. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 31, 3, https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/937768
Gipps, Richard G. T. (2024). Metanoia. Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology, 31, 3, 257-260.
Rashed, Mohammed Abouelleil (2024). Deconstructing the Distinction Between Religious Experience and Psychopathology. Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 31 (3):199-209.
W R D Fairbairn (1943). The repression and the return of bad objects. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 19, 327–341.
C G Jung (1959). Aion. Collected Works of Jung, vol 9 part 2. Princeton University Press. §II The Shadow. (this is very short)
Pierre Janet (1894). Un cas de possession et l’exorcisme moderne. Bulletin de l‘Université de Lyon, 8, 41-57.
Ann-Marie Rizzuto (1976). Freud, God, the devil and the theory of object representation. International Review of Psycho-Analysis, 3, 165-180.
Graeme Taylor (1978). Demoniacal possession and psychoanalytic theory. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 51, 53-60.
Michael Lifshitza, Michiel van Elkc & Tanya Luhrmann (2019). Absorption and spiritual experience: A review of evidence and potential mechanisms. Consciousness and Cognition, 73, 102760.
Tanya Marie Luhrmann, John Dulin & Vivian Dzokoto (2024). The shaman and schizophrenia, revisited. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 48, 3, 442-469.
William James (1928). The Varieties of Religious Experience. Longmans, Green and Co.
What Causes Mental Illness?
How should we adjudicate between biological, psychological, and sociological explanations? Assess the validity of the biopsychosocial model in psychiatry.
*Schwarz, S. (2025). Problems and Prescriptions in Psychiatric Explanation. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. https://doi.org/10.1086/738034
Engel, G. L. (1977) ‘The need for a new medical model: a challenge for biomedicine’, Science, 196, pp. 129–136.Google Scholar
*Engel, G. L. (1980) ‘The clinical application of the biopsychosocial model’, American Journal of Psychiatry, 137, pp. 535–544.
*Pilgrim, David (2002) The biopsychosocial model in Anglo-American psychiatry: Past, present and future? Journal of Mental Health, 11, 6, 585-594.
Bolton, Derek (2023) A revitalized biopsychosocial model: core theory, research paradigms, and clinical implications. Psychological Medicine, 53, 16, 7504-7511. http://doi:10.1017/S0033291723002660
Shorter pieces:
Aftab, Awais (2020) The nine lives of biopsychosocial framework. https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/nine-lives-biopsychosocial-framework
Pies, Ronald W. (2020). Can we salvage the biopsychosocial model? https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/can-we-salvage-biopsychosocial-model
Ghaemi, Nassir (2009). The rise and fall of the biopsychosocial model. British Journal of Psychiatry. 195, 1, 3-4. doi:10.1192/bjp.bp.109.063859. For a far more detailed commentary and critique, see parts 1 & 2 of Ghaemi’s (2010) book of the same title.
Gipps, R G T (2024). Politics and the causes of mental illness. https://thinkful.ie/articles/politics-and-the-causes-of-mental-illness
Making Sense of One Another
How do we ordinarily make sense of one another’s behaviour? By empathy? By theorising? By something else? And: if/when this is by attributing to each other beliefs, desires, thoughts, feelings, etc., how is it that I know which beliefs etc you have? As a supplementary thing to think/write about: If I’m to understand you, when you’re feeling sad about a loss or what have you, is it helpful or useful for me to empathically resonate with you - i.e. to feel something similar or the same as what you’re feeling?
Anita Avramides (2019) Other minds, Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/other-minds/
Matthew Ratcliffe (2007) Rethinking Commonsense Psychology, Palgrave Macmillan, chs 1,2,5 & 6
Dan Hutto (2007) Folk psychology without theory or simulation, in D Hutto & M Ratcliffe (eds), Folk Psychology Reassessed, Springer
Hopkins, J. (1988). Epistemology and Depth Psychology. In Mind, Psychoanalysis and Science, eds. P. Clark and C. Wright, 33-60. Oxford: Blackwell.
George Botterill & Peter Carruthers (1999) The Philosophy of Psychology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ch 4 (Mind-reading)
Meanings and Causes
Causes vs meanings? Explanation vs understanding? Are some or all of reasons, motives and intentions the causes of actions? Did R D Laing think that families can drive patients mad? Or is there a cogent sense in which reference to family dynamics can make psychotic disturbance comprehensible without explaining its very occurrence?
Daniel Burston (2000). The Crucible of Experience. Ch. 4. Harvard University Press.
R D Laing & A Esterson (2016). Sanity, Madness and the Family. 2nd edition. Routledge Classics. Read: Preface to 2nd edition; Forward by Hilary Mantel; Introduction; Ch 1: The Abbotts.
Gavin Miller (2004). R. D. Laing. ch 3 (esp § Explanation and Understanding - but the whole chapter is worth reading as an introduction to Laing). Edinburgh University Press.
Georg Henrik von Wright. (1981). Explanation and understanding of action. Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 35, 135, 127-142.
Thomas Schramme. (2024) Empathy as a means to understand people. Philosophical Explorations, 27, 2, 157-170.
K R Stueber (2012). Understanding Versus Explanation? How to Think about the Distinction between the Human and the Natural Sciences. Inquiry, 55(1), 17–32.
Karl Jaspers (1923/1963). General Psychopathology. The introduction to Part II Meaningful Psychic Connections. University of Chicago Press. pp 301-313.
Christoph Hoerl (2013). Jaspers on explaining and understanding in psychiatry. In Thomas Fuchs & Giovanni Stanghellini (eds.) One Century of Karl Jaspers' General Psychopathology. Oxford University Press.
Matthieu Queloz (2017). Two Orders of Things: Wittgenstein on Reasons and Causes. Philosophy, 92, 3, 369-397. https://philarchive.org/archive/MATTOO-11
Gilbert Ryle (1949/2009) Concept of Mind, Hutchinson/Routledge, ch 3
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1967) Zettel, Oxford: Blackwell, §§579-604; and/or Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953) Philosophical Investigations, Oxford, Blackwell, §§611-632
G. E. M. Anscombe (1957/1963) Intention, Oxford: Blackwell, §§1-16
Donald Davidson (1963) Actions, reasons, and causes, in Davidson’s Essays on Actions and Events, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ch 1
Rosalind Hursthouse (2000) Intention, in Roger Teichmann (ed) Logic, Cause and Action, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ch 7
Julia Tanney (1995) Why reasons may not be causes, Mind & Language, 10, 1-2, 103-126
Development of the Moral Life
Does Freud’s theory of the superego offer a plausible theory of the origin of conscience? Writing tip: try to elucidate what Freud really meant by ‘superego’, rather than repeat phrases found in the literature. Something to consider: what relation could both reward and chastisement in childhood bear to a child’s moral formation?
Sigmund Freud (1962). Civilization and its Discontents. New York: W. W. Norton. chs **.
Elizabeth Reddish (2014). The Petrified Ego: A New Theory of Conscience. Karnac. chs **.
Ilham Dilman (1983). Freud and Human Nature. Oxford: Blackwell. chs 4 & 5.
Donald Carveth (2013) The Still Small Voice. London: Karnac. (something from chs 1-7)
Edward Harcourt (2021) Two routes from secure attachment to virtue, in E. Harcourt (ed.), Attachment and Character: Attachment Theory, Ethics and the Developmental Psychology of Vice and Virtue. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
David Jones (1966). Freud’s theory of moral conscience. Philosophy, 41, 155, 34-57.
Emotion and Understanding
Do emotions hinder, aid, or constitute our understanding of one another?
Matthew Ratcliffe (2010) The phenomenology of mood and the meaning of life, in Peter Goldie (ed), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion, Oxford University Press
Martha Nussbaum (2004) Emotions as judgments of value and importance, in R. C. Solomon (ed), Thinking about Feeling: Contemporary Philosophers on Emotions, Oxford: Oxford University Press
P. M. S. Hacker (2018) The Passions: A Study of Human Nature, Wiley Blackwell, chs 2 & 3 (ch 1 may provide useful orientation)
(See also P. M. S. Hacker (2009) The conceptual framework for the investigation of emotions, in Alva Gustafson et al (eds), Emotions and Understanding: Wittgensteinian Perspectives, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
Michael Lacewing (2004) Emotion and cognition: Recent developments and therapeutic practice, Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 11, 2, 175-186
Affect Regulation
What is ‘affect regulation’? Need the enjoyment of steady emotions/moods proceed from an ability to regulate them? What’s the relationship between self-understanding and self-soothing? Why should putting words to your feelings (‘I’m angry because she said…’) help you to become less overwhelmed by them? And does that ability to put words to them require you to first inwardly identify them?
J J Gross (2014) Emotion regulation: Conceptual and empirical foundations, in J. J. Gross (ed) Handbook of Emotion Regulation, 2nd edition, New York: The Guilford Press, ch 1
Allan Schore (1994/2016) Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self, Routledge, ch 28 (The emergence of self-regulation)
Joona Taipale (2016) Self-regulation and beyond: Affect regulation and the infant–caregiver dyad. Front Psychol,
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00889/full
Rockney Jacobsen (1996) Wittgenstein on self-knowledge and self-expression, The Philosophical Quarterly, 46, 182
P. M. S. Hacker (2013) The Intellectual Powers, Blackwell, pp. 29-47 (i.e. from ‘Self-consciousness: 1st sense’ to the end of ch 1 §5)
P. M. S. Hacker (2018) The Passions, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, ch 4 (‘The dialectic of the emotions’)
Julia Tanney (1996) A constructivist picture of self-knowledge, Philosophy, 71(277), 405-422
Daniele Moyal-Sharrock (2000) Words as deeds: Wittgenstein's "spontaneous utterances‟ and the dissolution of the explanatory gap, Philosophical Psychology, 13, 3, 355-372
Matthew Ratcliffe & Eleanor Byrne (2021) The interpersonal and social dimensions of emotion regulation in grief, https://www.academia.edu/45043993/The_Interpersonal_and_Social_Dimensions_of_Emotion_Regulation_in_Grief
Dreams
When do dreams take place? Are dreams conscious experiences?
P M S Hacker (2025). Essay 11: On dreams and dreaming. In Hacker’s Solving, Resolving, and Dissolving Philosophical Problems. Wiley Blackwell.
Severin Schroeder (1997). The concept of dreaming, Philosophical Investigations, 20, 15-38.
Norman Malcolm (1962). Dreaming. Routledge.
Ben Springett. Philosophy of dreaming. §3 Are dreams consciously experienced? In the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://iep.utm.edu/dreaming-philosophy/#H3
Daniel Dennett (1976). Are dreams experiences?, The Philosophical Review, 85(2): 151–171.
Critique of Scientific Psychology
Does ‘scientific psychology’ conflate empirical with conceptual truths, and in its experiments ends up at best absurdly ‘proving’ tautologies / rules of grammar with its experiments? (Try finding an example or two in the scientific psychology literature that isn’t from the readings.)
* Ilham Dilman (1997). Science and psychology. In his Raskolnikov’s Rebirth / in Anthony O’Hear (ed) Verstehen and Humane Understanding. Cambridge University Press.
P. M. S. Hacker (2013). Wittgenstein’s philosophy of psychology as a critical instrument for the psychological sciences. In Timothy Racine and Kathleen Slaney (eds), The Role and Use of Conceptual Analysis in Psychology. Palgrave.
Gavin Brent Sullivan (2017) book Wittgenstein’s Philosophy in Psychology: Interpretations and Applications in Historical Context.
Jan Smedslund (1991). The Pseudoempirical in psychology and the case for psychologic. Psychological Inquiry, 2, 325-338. (Focus on pp. 328-335.)
Jan Smedslund (1994). Non-empirical and empirical components in the hypotheses of five social psychological experiments. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 1994, 35, 1-15. (Just read the shorter ‘case studies’ for exemplification of his method.)
(Jan Smedslund. The value of experiments in psychology. In Martin, Sugarman and Slaney (Eds), The Wiley Handbook of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology.
[if student is interested in psychologic, then see commentaries by Michael McEachrane et al in Lindstad (ed) (2010) ‘Respect for Thought’]
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