Home → Teaching → Phil 111

About the Course

This is a course in analytic philosophy of psychiatry. Philosophy of psychiatry is a relatively new branch of philosophy; there is still no real consensus on what the standard text is or what the classic readings are. That makes this class both difficult–there is no standard material we need to learn–and exciting–we get to decide what philosophy of psychiatry should be about and what readings are most important.

Ideally, we’d spend several weeks studying the history of psychiatry and getting up to date on the current issues of concern to psychiatrists. Then we’d move on to the philosophical questions about psychiatry that we’d like to ask. But we only have three weeks, so that’s not really feasible. Instead we’ll just jump in head-first and learn about psychiatry while we ask philosophical questions about it.

Here’s the plan. We’ll spend the first week doing some background reading from Psychiatry: A Very Short Introduction while simultaneously learning about the philosophical challenges to psychiatry raised by the anti-psychiatry movement of the ’60s and ’70s. These challenges raise some of the most interesting philosophical questions about psychiatry and we’ll read about several different ways of responding.

In the second week, we’ll look at some more specific questions about the nature and epistemology of psychiatric facts. In particular, we’ll be concerned with the classification of psychiatric diseases. How are these classifications developed? Are there reasons for thinking that they’re unreliable or invalid? Given these classification systems, how should psychiatrists go about diagnosing patients? Many of these issues will be similar to those we discuss from the anti-psychiatry movement, but here the emphasis is on the standards of good science rather than the “politics of oppression” (the scare quotes mean I find it embarrassing to type that phrase).

In the final week, we’ll look in detail at a particular psychiatric illness, schizophrenia. We’ll try to learn as much as we can about the disease and then apply some of the abstract discussion of the previous two weeks to a relatively concrete case. Additionally, we’ll have the opportunity to think in a bit more detail about the ethics of treating certain psychiatric patients without consent.

My hope is that as we go, you’ll be doing additional reading and research on topics that sound interesting to you. Whenever that happens, please feel free to suggest that the whole class read something you’ve looked at if you think it’s interesting and will help us think about something we’ve been discussing.

Hopefully, we’ll be able to make some progress in thinking about very difficult questions. We’ll often find ourselves tangled up in confusion. To try to get untangled, we’ll use logic, reason, and anything else that might be useful. In the process, we’ll learn interesting things about the subject matter in question.

New to Philosophy?

Philosophy is an area of active inquiry practiced by philosophers at leading universities around the world. If you’d like an idea of what these philosophers are working on, you might try looking at the faculty pages at a few leading departments: Rutgers, Princeton, Australia National University, Berekely, and, of course, the University of Arizona.

The New York Times has recently published several articles on current philosophical research: one on moral psychology, one on a probability puzzle, and one so-called “experimental philosophy.”

Texts

Hopefully, these are useful books. If you don’t like one of them, please let me know. If we all hate one right away, we can ditch it and figure something else out.

Requirements

There are four components to this course: reading, writing, participating, and being examined.

Reading

You are required to complete all of the readings. My way of testing this is the writing assignments and the exams. But if I get the sense that people aren’t doing the reading—it’s easy to tell—I’ll throw a pop quiz at you on material I haven’t covered in lecture. It should be easy to get the reading done, because I’ll set aside an hour of each class for reading time (for which you have to be present and reading).

Writing

Every Friday, I will post a detailed question concerning the readings from the previous week. By class on the following Tuesday, you must turn in a 250–500 word answer. Typed and printed. What I’m looking for here is writing that is concise, simple, and crystal clear.

Participating

You can’t participate if you don’t come to class, so you have to come to class. You can miss one class, no questions asked. Beyond that, you can’t miss any classes (unless you have a documetned and severe illness or you’re an athlete and you have a game). I’ll take attendance to track this (and to learn your names).

You have to ask questions in class. You have to answer questions in class. You have to argue with me and with each other in class.

Here’s how I’ll grade you for participation: if you miss no more than one class, you’ll get a C for participation. If, additionally, you quite regularly make intelligent contributions to discussion (be they helpful questions, objections, clarifications, etc), you’re looking at a B. If, in addition to that, you (once or twice) do something to lead a fruitful discussion, you’ll probably get an A. This might involve having done some relevant outside reading and bringing it up in class and getting a discussion going about it. That’s the sort of thing that makes me think, “Gosh, it sure was nice having so-and-so in class–I learned something from her.” And when I think that, I think, “I should give so-and-so an A for participation.”

Note: If you’re deathly afraid of speaking in class, please come talk to me. I may be willing to give you some other way of earning your participation points. My goal in making this such a large portion of your grade is not to penalize those who are quiet, but to encourage everyone to take an active role in learning this material.

Being Examined

This course will have one final exam. It will be multiple choice and it shouldn’t be too difficult to earn a B on it (so long as you’ve been to lectures and done the reading). Getting an A will be more tricky and will require being able to apply the concepts we’ve learned in novel ways.

Grades

Your grade will be calculated as follows:

Readings

I haven’t made a complete schedule of what we’ll be reading, because I want to be able to decide that on the fly as we go. Instead, at the end of each class I’ll add an entry here for what to read for the next day’s class.

For 19 May

Read chs. 1 & 5 of Burns and “On Going Completely Mental” by Zachary Ernst.

Boilerplate Stuff

Contacting Me

You can contact me by email: ice at email dot arizona dot edu. I guarantee a response within 48 hours, but no quicker. You’ll never get an email from me that’s longer than five sentences. If you need more than five sentences, you can set up an appointment to see me in my office.

Students with disabilities

Students with physical, psychological, or learning disabilities who anticipate needing accommodations in this course are encouraged to register with the S.A.L.T. Center or the Disability Resource Center. Students with special needs who are registered with the S.A.L.T. Center or the Disability Resource Center are reminded that they must submit appropriate documentation as soon as possible if they are requesting special accommodations. For more information contact the Disability Resource Center (621-3268).

Academic Integrity

All students taking this course are bound under the Code of Academic Integrity. Students should familiarize themselves with this code. I will punish cheaters and plagiarists with the strictest penalties possible under UA policy.

Things I should’t have to say