Psychopathology and the ‘Scaling Up’ Problem

This conference will focus upon the 'scaling up' problem in the context of psychopathology. More precisely, it will focus upon the extent to which phenomenological and enactive accounts of psychopathology are, or must be, 'representation hungry'. Whilst explicitly anti-cognitivist phenomenological and enactive accounts of psychopathology are present in the literature, very little work has been carried out on discerning the extent to which they require the positing of representation. This is somewhat surprising, because 'representation hungry' cognition (thought, imagery, hallucination) plays a prominent role in most psychopathologies.

During the conference, we aim to consider questions like: is it possible to provide non-representational accounts of psychopathology?; if so, is it desirable?; if not, does this damage the prospects of phenomenological and enactive explanations of psychopathology?; does the representational status (or lack thereof) of a given account have important ramifications for clinical theorising and practice?; and, more generally, is the concept “representation” helpful, harmful, or irrelevant to understanding psychopathology?.

In short, whilst anti-cognitivist accounts of psychopathology have been provided by phenomenologists and enactivists, very little has been said about the 'scaling up' problem with regards to them. The aim of the conference is to fill this gap.

The conference will be held via the Zoom platform on Monday the 5th, Tuesday the 6th, and Wednesday the 7th of October, from 15.00 to 17.30 CET.

Organization
Adrian Downey & Tobias Schlicht
Institute of Philosophy II
Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Contact: a dot downey at sussex dot ac dot uk 

My source:

Philos-L "The Liverpool List" is run by the Department of Philosophy, University of Liverpool https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/philosophy/philos-l/ Messages to the list are archived at http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/philos-l.html. Recent posts can also be read in a Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/PhilosL/ Follow the list on Twitter @PhilosL. Follow the Department of Philosophy @LiverpoolPhilos