Mind, Meaning, and Mental Disorder: The Nature of Causal Explanation in Psychology and Psychiatry

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Mind, Meaning, and Mental Disorder: The Nature of Causal Explanation in Psychology and Psychiatry
Derek Bolton | 2004-01-01 00:00:00 | Oxford University Press | 432 | Psychology
This book represents a significant leap in our understanding of mental disorder. If we existed in a world where society was guided by the latest efforts of sharp thinkers (rather than cost/benefit analysis) then we should be seeing major changes in the existing insitutions that provide care for people with 'mental health problems'. The book begins with the following thesis: Intentional (meaningful) mental states are causal as they can be used in the explanation / prediction of action. They attend to this thesis in the first part of the book. These mental states are not reducible to physical states, rather they are 'encoded' in physical states in the brain, something akin to how information for producing a particular phenotype is encoded in the DNA molecule. Their account solves the following problem: Ever since Karl Jaspers set the limits of understanding, 'true madness' has been excluded from the domain of meaning and relegated to that of biological dysfunction. Thoughout this book Bolton and Hill show how in biology as well as in psychology there are many possiblities for disorder in the absence of any physical dysruption. Disorder can be envisaged as occuring from the intentional stance only if intentional mental states can be construed as having causal power. Their account drives meaning back into previously 'meaningless' phenomena.
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