When I got sick, I experienced many changes and also losses. Because of anti-depressants, I was unable to shed a tear for two whole years. For a while, I lost my ability to read and to write. Because of the seriousness of my condition, I was unable to process text, which previously constituted my world. …
Category Archives: Mental health
The Mind-dependence of psychosis: properties of hallucinations and delusions
A long standing problem in the philosophy of mind concerns the subjective indistinguishability of hallucinations and normal perception. Macbeth’s phenomenal perception of the dagger cannot be differentiated from a normal phenomenal perception of a dagger. So there seems to be no way in which we can tell abnormal perception from normal perception. (Are hallucinations subjectively …
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Philosophy of Madness
There are many questions that can be asked in the philosophy of mental illness. For example, is mental illness a disease/ illness or is it a culturally determined label? Thomas Szasz (1961) famously argued that mental illness is simply a deviation from societal norms. According to Szasz, mental illness is a metaphor and not a …
Should madness be treated?
In this article, I associate madness with psychiatric medical conditions. For example, people who are diagnosed with schizophrenia, depression, or manic-depression have mental illnesses and have shown symptoms of madness. Symptoms of madness include psychosis- being out of touch with reality. The terms ‘mental illness’ and ‘medical condition’ imply that there ought to be some …