Towards externalist psychopathology

Abstract

The "width" of the mind is an important topic in contemporary philosophical psychology. Support for active externalism derives from theoretical, engineering, and observational perspectives. Given the history of psychology, psychopathology is notable in its absence from the list of avenues of support for the idea that some cognitive processes extend beyond the physical bounds of the organism in question. The current project is to defend the possibility, plausibility, and desirability of externalist psychopathology. Doing so both adds to the case for externalism and suggests ways of improving our study of cognitive dysfunction. I establish the possibility of externalist psychopathology through the development of models of wide cognitive processing, and, by implication, failure of such processing, from the work of S.L. Hurley and Robert Wilson. The plausibility of wide conceptualization and explanation of cognitive disorders is shown through an examination of apraxia, disorders of learned, skilled movements. The desirability of externalist psychopathology is suggested through a look at theoretical and therapeutic virtues, again drawing on Wilson's work.

Psychiatry Beyond the Brain: Externalism, Mental Health, and Autistic Spectrum Disorder

“…7. Sneddon (2002) makes a few suggestive remarks in this direction but does not develop them in a substantive way.…”

“…The question of whether this family of analyses can be applied fruitfully to the psychiatric domain has received comparatively little attention in the literature (but see, e.g., Cooper, 2017;Davies, 2016;De Haan, forthcoming;Drayson, 2009;Glackin, 2017;Hoffman, 2016;Krueger, 2018;Krueger & Colombetti, forthcoming;Merritt, 2013;Sneddon, 2002;Sprevak, 2011), and it is our intention in this article to lay the foundations on which such a project might be constructed, and to explore how externalist ways of thinking about mental illness and disorder 1 might reconfigure some of the existing debates in the philosophy of psychiatry. Mental illnesses, too, belong to living, embodied persons who are embedded within an environment that is replete with informational resources and technologies, complicated interpersonal dynamics, and sociocultural practices.…”

Moral Responsibility: The Difference of Strawson, and the Difference it Should Make

“…Hutchins (1995) offers evidence from an observational approach. Sneddon (2002) has argued that there is some reason to think that psychopathology will support externalism about some cognitive processes. On a slightly different note, Paprzycka (2002) argues for changes to psychological theories to include ordinary and widespread externalist rationalizing explanations of everyday action.…”

The depths and shallows of psychological externalism

“…This provides another axis along which individual-environment relations could be scrutinized for candidacy for wide description and explanation. 4 SeeSneddon (2002) for discussion of externalist models of apraxia as an example.5 In principle, the deep/shallow distinction applies not just to hypotheses but also to explanations, models, theories, and to any other explanatory devices that characterize the principled discourse of science.…”