In his presentation, Dr Jacob Stegenga will question whether inferences from patients' first-person experiences about the effectiveness of their prescribed psychiatric drugs are reliable. The lecture is scheduled for April 18 at 11:00 CET over Zoom and live at the Institute's Grand Hall.

Imagine: a physician prescribes a drug to a patient, and in the following weeks or months, the patient’s symptoms change; perhaps they improve. The patient might think, “the drug worked for me”, and the physician might infer that too. Are such inferences reliable? The evidence-based medicine movement says no: first-person anecdotes and clinical expertise are unreliable forms of evidence when evaluating the general effectiveness of drugs, says evidence-based medicine. Yet some physicians and philosophers support such appeals to first-person experience, and people very often make the worked-for-me inference. We develop a formal model and simulate causal inference based on clinical experience. We conclude that in very particular clinical scenarios, such inferences can be reliable, while in many other routine clinical scenarios, such inferences are not reliable. Specifically, if diseases are moderately placebo-responsive or have a moderate natural course of improvement, then worked-for-me inferences are unreliable. Such inferences are particularly problematic, then, for psychiatry. 

Jacob Stegenga is a Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. He has published widely on fundamental topics in reasoning and rationality and philosophical problems in medicine and biology. Prior to joining Cambridge, he taught in the United States and Canada, and he received his PhD from the University of California San Diego. He is the author of Medical Nihilism and Care and Cure: An Introduction to Philosophy of Medicine, and he is currently writing a book tentatively titled Heart of Science. During the academic year 2023–24, he was a senior fellow at Leibniz University Hannover.

“Who is the expert when it comes to understanding people—the detached scientist or the ordinary person in everyday life?” (Vasu Reddy 2008, p. 5).

In this talk, I will try to answer this question. Specifically, I will focus on a very specific instrument: the phenomenological interview. I will explain what it consists of and why it is important in the clinical context. The undisputed merit of this instrument, for example, is the fact that it does not consider the patient an object, a mere matter to be studied, and the relationship with the therapist is not one-sided; on the contrary, the semi-structured dialogue on which it is based allows for the establishment of a reciprocal relationship and a genuine exchange between two subjectivities. Obviously, this 'we' that is created is a peculiar subject because we know that psychopathologies are often synonymous with a breakdown in the dialogue and relationality that characterises every human being. This is why it is important for the therapist to be aware of the deep phenomenological differences (Havens 1986) between her and the patient. This is what happens in EASE, EAWE and in other studies that take into account the patient's lived experience. These interviews are intended to facilitate a dialogue that captures qualitative aspects of the patient's experience. They represent a form of "descriptive phenomenology" because they are based on reports of subjective experiences, but also a form of "categorical phenomenology" because they focus on basic, structural experiential coordinates. The aim is to enrich and facilitate diagnosis and to hypothesise correlations between subjective experiences and neural factors. They may also correspond to a form of 'genetic-structural phenomenology' that seeks to identify the key structures of experience and the basic disorders that cause psychopathology. In the last part of this methodological introduction, I will therefore present a phenomenological interview that I recently developed at the University of Heidelberg: the Examination of Autistic Intersubjective Experiences (EAIE), aimed specifically at exploring the functioning of the different levels of sociality of autistic persons.

Bio: Valeria Bizzari currently works at the Husserl Archives of the KU in Leuven. Her research interests involve phenomenology, philosophy of emotions and phenomenological psychopathology.

In her lecture, doctoral student Iva Ivanović will show how the understanding of autism has changed under the influence of modern scientific research in the past 80 years. The lecture is scheduled for February 29 at 11:00 a.m. with a live audience at the Institute's Grand Hall.

More than 80 years have passed since Leo Kanner, for the first time in a scientific manuscript, described a case of autism. During those 80 years, knowledge and understanding of autism as a mental health disorder changed under the influence of the results of various scientific research, changes in clinical understanding, and its increasing recognition in the social context.

The most significant changes can be observed in the diagnostic criteria, which went from a narrower to a broader diagnostic description. In earlier studies of autism, language or speech had a key role and perspective in looking at this disorder. Current research is increasingly focusing on "high-functioning" autism, people with proper speech-language development, with the intention of better understanding the psychological and cognitive characteristics of the so-called "pure autism" and its differences in phenotypic presentation.

Along with the opinion that autism is a very rare disorder, there was a fear that the professional public did not sufficiently recognise autism. Now, there is a (justifiable) dilemma if it can be "overdiagnosed", indicating a potentially too low scale of diagnostic criteria.

Over the past 30 years, the concept of autism, especially in the last 10 years, has shifted from a medical to a social model. While the traditional view of autism as a medical disorder that arises and/or is described as a deficit that prevents adequate functioning, the social model speaks of autism as a difference that constitutes the inability to function adequately in society and according to the requirements constituted by people of typical development.

The question of the need for treatment, which therefore affects the definition of the goals of biological scientific research or the need for adaptation, currently represents a major dilemma, the solution of which could potentially lead to a radical change in the understanding and acceptance of autism.

Iva Ivanović completed her master's studies at the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery - "La Sapienza" University in Rome (Republic of Italy). Specialisation in child and adolescent psychiatry at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Belgrade. She is a child psychiatrist at the Center for Autism, Clinical Center of Montenegro. She is researching the genetic basis of autism spectrum disorders as part of his doctoral dissertation at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Belgrade. She trained at psychiatric polyclinics in Madrid and Paris. He is the author and co-author of several scientific works on the mental health of children and young people.

The author will investigate the implications of this experiential feature on individuals’ interpersonal relationships. In this regard, he will illustrate how the intersubjective dimension of the sense of unhomelikeness is characterised by reports that the experience of depression is incommunicable to, and incomprehensible by, other people. This is attributed to the fact that depression is, to such an extent, a fundamentally different way of experiencing the world that attempts to describe the experience in ordinary language are futile. As a result, depressed individuals often use metaphorical language (e.g. incarcerated, suffocating, living in a bubble) to describe their experience. He will suggest that we conceptualise these metaphors through the metaphor of ‘being a spectator in the world’ in order to understand how the feeling of unhomelikeness manifests in experiences of depression. 

Angelos Sofocleous has recently obtained his PhD in philosophy from the University of York with his thesis titled “A Phenomenological Study of Interpersonal Relationships in Experiences of Depression”. His research was focused on understanding certain disruptions that take place in the depressed individual’s interpersonal relationships. He also holds a BA in Philosophy & Psychology and an MA in Philosophy from the University of Durham. He is currently a tutor in Philosophy at the Centre for Lifelong Learning of the University of York.

In ''Scorekeeping in a Language Game'', David Lewis famously compares conversations to playing baseball. Just like baseball, conversations have a score which, together with rules for correct play, determines which utterances are acceptable or even true in the course of a conversation. For all similarities, however, there is a crucial difference between conversations and baseball games. Unlike the score of a baseball game, conversational score adjusts in such a way that the utterances made in the course of a conversation count as correct play. This is also known as accommodation. Starting from this scorekeeping approach to language use, the overall aim of the present paper is to provide a better understanding of how the methods and interventions of talking therapies work from a linguistic point of view. According to the scorekeeping model, the methods and interventions of talking therapies are effective by changing the score of the therapeutic conversation, in particular in the form of accommodation. This has significant implications for the therapeutic practice, as it highlights the importance of training therapists in the linguistic aspects of therapeutic methods, in particular in the use of accommodation.

He specialises in the Philosophy of Language with a strong focus on its application to problems of practical and ethical relevance. He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Chair for Practical Philosophy and Ethics at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Before that, he was first a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Chair for Logic and Philosophy of Language at the MCMP in Munich and then an Interim Professor in Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Hamburg. Starting in April, he will be an assistant professor in the Chair for Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

Natural language processing is a technology that has revolutionized cognitive models of language competence based on the artificial neural network research program. This technology analyzes a large amount of textual data in a statistical way, combining it with a specific type of neural network and an algorithm for training that network. The most recent models, the so-called large language models, implement artificial neural network transformers and deep learning and reinforcement learning algorithms. With such models, which are present in popular chatbots, such as ChatGPT, it is possible to process part of the text data at once, that is, to associate with each token all the contexts in which that token occurs.

Methodological challenges concerning the use of models based on natural language processing concern the explanation of human language competence. These challenges were mostly related to the model's ability to provide explanations at all or that they were not sufficiently biologically and psychologically plausible. Closely related to the methodological challenges are the ethical challenges: datasets for model training omit the cultural and ethnic diversity of idiolects, sociolects and dialects, and we cannot even assume that they are sufficiently inclusive in terms of linguistic behaviour. On the other hand, the specific application of large language models in cognitive and clinical neuroscience and psychiatry rarely intersects with these challenges. These models are understood as neutral diagnostic tools. For example, people's daily records reflect various patterns of thoughts and emotions, which, through natural language processing, can be observed and analyzed as indicators that would lead to early diagnosis of a specific mental disorder more efficiently than in the case of human expert knowledge. In her presentation, the author will critically review the assumed neutrality of this methodological tool, contrasting this assumption with the aforementioned methodological and ethical challenges.

Vanja Subotić (1994) is a researcher-associate at the Institute of Philosophy of the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Belgrade and an external collaborator on the TechEthos project within Horizon Europe (partner: Center for the Promotion of Science). Her research areas are philosophy of language and linguistics, philosophy of cognitive science and experimental philosophy. She received her PhD on the role of natural language processing models based on deep learning algorithms in explaining human language competence. He is actively engaged in scientific communication and popularization of ethical challenges of natural language processing technology (leading through a multimedia installation within the TechEthos project creating and moderating interactive workshops within the Center for the Promotion of Science).

Abstract: In this talk, I argue that to make progress on the current and longstanding debate on the concept of mental disorder, we need to adjudicate on the aims of this debate and the methods to achieve them. I maintain that the aims and methods of the investigation of the concept of mental disorder should be examined within a methodological framework of conceptual revision. 

Within this general framework, I then argue that in revising the concept of mental disorder, as applied to a condition characterized by a cluster of behaviors, inferred mental states, and personality traits, four desiderata should be satisfied. A mental disorder should involve (1) a unitary condition across the individuals that have it and (2) harmful (3) incapacities or limited capacities to align (4) with properly justified standards. 

For instance, in this framework, a condition such as depression would count as a mental disorder insofar as it is a condition that is unitary insofar as it could potentially enable predictions, explanations, and treatment of all those who share it. Moreover, this condition should involve harmful incapacities or limited capacities to satisfy certain properly justified requirements concerning the appropriateness of certain behaviors, mental states, or personality traits in certain contexts. For instance, these could be justified requirements concerning when it is not appropriate to have extreme sadness or suicidal thoughts. 

Furthermore, I show how desiderata (1)-(4) shape research projects aimed at clarifying the central notions involved in them: unitarity, incapacity, harm, and properly justified standards. To illustrate the different types of challenges that these projects should meet, I will focus on psychopathy as a case study. 

Short bio: Luca Malatesti is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Rijeka (Croatia). Before that, he worked at the University of Hull (UK) as a Lecturer and Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Fellow. He has co-authored The Methods of Neuroethics (with McMillan), Cambridge University Press 2024; he has co-edited Psychopathy: Its Uses, Validity and Status (with McMillan and Šustar), Springer 2022. 

In the lecture held on December 12th in the Grand Hall of the Institute of Social Sciences (via Zoom and in front of a live audience), a postdoctoral researcher in philosophy from Jyväskylä University, dr Boldsen, argued that social problems have been a persistent characteristic of autism from the 1940s (Kanner's descriptions of autistic children) to the present day. However, a recent challenge to this perspective comes from proponents of the "double empathy thesis" (DET) and neurodivergence movement. According to DET, breakdowns in social understanding between autistic and non-autistic individuals arise from a mismatch in the ways they experience and navigate social spaces rather than solely attributed to impairments on the part of the autistic person.

In her presentation, Boldsen aimed to identify and discuss two crucial lessons derived from DET and neurodivergence that hold significant implications for the future of phenomenological autism research. Firstly, DET emphasizes the importance of phenomenological research engaging with the actual, subjective, and intersubjective experiences of autistic individuals in their full richness and nuance. This involves not only exploring typical but also atypical and divergent modes of social being on their own terms. Secondly, phenomenological frameworks and concepts used to analyze autistic perspectives must be open to critical self-reflection, revision, and expansion when confronted with experiences that diverge from classical phenomenological descriptions of subjectivity and its essential structures. Investigating autistic experiences without the shadow of epistemic injustice will help develop more precise phenomenological frameworks in the future, for example, by incorporating consideration of materiality when analyzing intersubjectivity.

Taking these lessons into phenomenological research allows for more comprehensive and accurate accounts of autistic life. Furthermore, it establishes a foundation for a phenomenological research program capable of fulfilling its structural ambitions in capturing subjectivity and intersubjectivity more fully. To illustrate these methodological principles and provide concrete examples for the discussion, Boldsen presented qualitative data from her PhD research project focusing on social connectedness among autistic youth.

Sophie Boldsen's lecture is the fourteenth in the series of seminars on "Philosophy and Psychiatry" organized by the Center for Philosophy at the Institute of Social Sciences. The seminar aims to allow young colleagues and doctoral students to present and enhance their work through the discussions following each lecture.

Abstract: Many complex disorders defy simplistic categorization within a purely biomedical model, reducing health concerns solely to physiopathologies in the brain or body. This holds true for many psychiatric disorders as well as chronic illnesses like chronic fatigue, Long Covid, and fibromyalgia. My presentation will specifically delve into chronic pain as a central case study.

When addressing complex disorders in general and chronic pain in particular, what alternatives do we have to the biomedical model? Examining the recent history of pain science reveals a promising shift from a purely biomedical approach to a biopsychosocial model. Unfortunately, this model, despite its potential, is frequently applied in a biomedical, fragmented, and linear manner, partly due to its limited theoretical foundation. To successfully implement the biopsychosocial model in both research and clinical practice, we must confront the ontological challenge of integration. That is, it is imperative to explicitly define the ontological relationship between the biological, psychological, and social factors contributing to the generation and maintenance of chronic pain.

Several frameworks have been proposed to address the challenge of integration, such as enactivism, which explicitly defines the relationships between biological, psychological, and social factors. For instance, by rejecting naïve reductionism and atomism and by incorporating dynamic feedback loops, these approaches aim to inherently account for the complexity and variability of chronic pain. However, many approaches tend to overlook the characteristic patterns of dynamic interaction between biological, psychological, and social factors in the maintenance of chronic pain. Understanding these patterns is crucial to identifying indicative differences between groups of pain patients and conceptualizing the effectiveness of specific therapeutic measures. My primary focus will centre on examining the 'sticky' patterns of pain dynamics.

Short Biography

Sabrina Coninx is an Assistant Professor in Philosophy at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Before that, she worked at Ruhr University Bochum as a postdoctoral researcher and scientific coordinator of the Research Training Group ‘Situated Cognition’. Her work is located at the intersection of philosophy of mind and philosophy of science, taking into account insights from neuroscience, psychology, medicine, and healthcare. Her research focuses on phenomena related to human suffering and pain in their biological, psychological, and social context.

Abstract: This paper addresses the possible effects of psychedelic drugs, notably psilocybin, on moral bio-enhancement (MBE). It will be argued that non-psychedelic substances, such as oxytocin, serotonin/serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or vasopressin, have indirect effects on M(B)E, whereas psilocybin has direct effects. Additionally, morality and happiness have been shown to operate in a circularly supportive relationship. It will be argued that psilocybin also has more direct effects on the augmentation of human happiness than non-psychedelic substances. Hence, psilocybin multiplies its effects on morality and on moral enhancement (as well as on happiness) if compared with non-psychedelic substances. Still, caution is advised if psilocybin is being used, and the correct dosage should be prescribed by an appropriate physician. Furthermore, the use of psilocybin has additional effects on moral enhancement and happiness if combined with meditation, preferably under the guidance of an experienced meditation specialist. 

Bio: Vojin Rakić, Head of the Centre for Philosophy at the Institute of Social Sciences, Full Professor, Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Bioethics and Head of the European Division of the International Chair in Bioethics, Cooperating Center of the World Medical Association (WMA). He is also Chair of the Cambridge Working Group for Bioethics Education in Serbia. Rakić has a PhD in Political Science from Rutgers University in the United States (1998). He graduated in philosophy in Serbia and has MA degrees in European Studies from the Central European University in Prague and from the Department of Political Science of Rutgers University.

Abstract: Contemporary psychiatry views mental disorders/illnesses through the medical model and from a perspective of dysfunction. Such approaches to psychiatric disorders have recently been criticized (from phenomenological psychopathology, enactivism, and the neurodiversity movement). In one of the previous lectures, Justin Garson argued that schizophrenia should be seen as a strategy rather than dysfunction, a claim that can also be made for depression. Similarly, from an evolutionary perspective, one can think about other mental disorders as developed cognitive styles (ADHD and bipolar disorder). I aim to demonstrate how autism (autism spectrum disorders, DSM-5) can be viewed through this radically different approach. Can autistic behavior and experience be characterized solely as dysfunctional? In contrast to traditional psychiatry, a de-pathologizing understanding of autism has long been advocated in the neurodiversity movement. If we can change the perspective on autism, and consequently on autistic people, we can strive to create social changes that would allow the talents and abilities of these individuals to flourish and develop.

Janko Nešić, PhD, Research Associate, Institute of Social Sciences, Belgrade, Serbia. He is a researcher with international research and project management experience. He works on topics from the philosophy of mind, phenomenology, and philosophy of psychiatry, with a focus on integrative approaches to psychiatry that combine enactive, ecological and phenomenological perspectives.

This is the ninth lecture in the "Philosophy and Psychiatry" seminar series organized by the Center for Philosophy at the Institute of Social Sciences.

Abstract: I've argued for some time that psychiatry should shift from a dysfunction-centered perspective, which I call “madness-as-dysfunction,” to a function-centered perspective, which I call “madness-as-strategy.” More recently, however, I've begun to suspect that a shift of that nature is impossible within psychiatry. That's because psychiatry, as a branch of medicine, is essentially wedded to a dysfunction-centered model. To question whether, say, depression is functional rather than dysfunctional, then, is to challenge the authority of psychiatry over depression.

Short bio:  Justin Garson is a philosopher at Hunter College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York. He's the author of Madness: A Philosophical Exploration (Oxford, 2022), The Biological Mind: Second Edition (Routledge, 2022), and the forthcoming The Madness Pill: The Quest to Create Insanity and One Doctor’s Discovery that Transformed Psychiatry (St. Martin’s Press). He also contributes to PsychologyToday.com, Aeon and MadInAmerica.com on changing paradigms of mental illness.

This is the eighth lecture in the "Philosophy and Psychiatry" seminar series organized by the Center for Philosophy at the Institute of Social Sciences.

Apstrakt: Naslov našeg izlaganja nije slučajno haotičan. Odgovara zadatku ispitivanja uloge hiperaktivnosti i deficita pažnje u ublažavanju teškog depresivnog poremećaja. Jednostavnije rečeno, pokušaćemo da odgovorimo na pitanje kako nedostatak strukture naše svakodnevne “zabrinutosti” može da bude upravo ono što nam je potrebno kako bismo je prebrodili. Istovremena pojava hiperkinetičkog poremećaja (ADHD) i teškog depresivnog poremećaja (MDD) predstavlja složenu psihopatološku okolnost za pojedinca. Dok je ADHD okarakterisan impulsivnošću, hiperaktivnošću i nedostatkom pažnje, MDD je definisan kao trajni osećaj tuge, nedostatak zainteresovanosti i smanjenje funkcionalnih aktivnosti. U izlaganju ćemo ispitati hipotezu da određene osobine ADHD-a mogu da posluže kao neuobičajeni mehanizmi odbrane i suočavanja kod pojedinaca dijagnostikovanih sa MDD-om. Pokušaćemo da pokažemo da ono što se u svakodnevnom jeziku naziva “viškom energije” i “rasejanošću” može uspešno da prevlada uobičajeni umor i različite vrste stagnacije koji se pripisuju depresiji (Asherson et al., 2016; McIntosh et al., 2009). MDD je onesposobljavajuće stanje sa simptomima poput letargije, beznađa i nedostatka motivacije. Sa druge strane, hiperaktivnost i impulsivnost koje su vidno primetne kod ADHD-a predstavljaju kontrastni dijapazon ponašanja. Hiperaktivno ponašanje može privremeno da unese osećaj živosti i spontanosti, a ponekad i da se manifestuje kao aktivno učestvovanje u različitim hobijima i aktivnostima koji mogu da suzbiju apatiju povezanu sa MDD-om (Kolar et al., 2008). Izveštaji o pojedincima kojima su istovremeno dijagnostifikovani ADHD i MDD ukazuju na raznolikost iskustava. Za neke, impulsivne i proaktivne sklonosti ADHD-a služe kao katalizator za uključivanje u aktivnosti i istraživanje, što zauzvrat može da pruži kratke predaha od simptoma depresije. Drugi opisuju složenu ravnotežu između poremećaja, gde se hiperaktivnost suprotstavlja tromosti depresije, a intenzivnu usredsređenost (često nazivanu i hiperfokusom kod ADHD-a) kao korisno sredstvo za konstruktivno uključivanje u aktivnosti (Nigg et al., 2005). Prepoznavanje suptilne interakcije između ADHD-a i MDD-a je od suštinskog značaja za profesionalnce u oblasti mentalnog zdravlja. Integracija psihostimulanata antidepresiva i kognitivno-bihevioralne terapije omogućava suočavanje sa specifičnim izazovima, ali i prilikama koji proizlaze iz suživota ovih poremećaja (Safren et al., 2005). U zaključnom delu izlaganja ćemo detaljnije obrazložiti složenost i adaptivne elemente istovremene pojave ADHD-a i MDD-a. Prepoznavanje uloge ADHD-a kao mogućeg mehanizama suočavanja sa MDD-om omogućava psihijatrima i psihoterapeutima da razviju nijansiranije i temeljnije pristupe terapiji u okviru koje ne bi bio “ciljan” jedan ili drugi poremećaj, nego bi ova dvostruka dijagnoza bila razmatrana kao specifična celina.

Petar Nurkić je student doktorskih studija filozofije na Filozofskom fakultetu Univerziteta u Beogradu. Angažovan je kao istraživač saradnik na Institutu za filozofiju istog fakulteta. Oblasti interesovanja su mu epistemologija i filozofija nauke.

Ovo je sedmo predavanje u okviru seminara “Filozofija i psihijatrija” koji organizuje Centar za filozofiju Instituta društvenih nauka. 

In her talk, Dr. Lucienne Spencer will raise a tantalizing question for phenomenological psychopathology: is empathy epistemically harmful for the clinical encounter? The talk is titled "The Epistemic Harms of Empathy in Phenomenological Psychopathology" and is scheduled for October 4 at 2 p.m. CEST to be held over Zoom, with a live audience at the Grand Hall of the Institute of Social Sciences (hybrid event).

This talk is based on the joint paper published with Prof Matthew Broome. The authors start by arguing that Jaspers identifies empathic understanding as an essential tool for grasping not the mere psychic content of the condition at hand but the lived experience of the patient. This method then serves as the basis for the phenomenological investigation into the psychiatric condition known as ‘Phenomenological Psychopathology’.

In recent years, scholars in the field of phenomenological psychopathology have attempted to refine the concept of empathic understanding for its use in contemporary clinical encounters. Most notably, they are Stanghellini’s contribution of ‘second-order’ empathy and Ratcliffe’s ‘radical empathy’. The authors reject the pursuit of a renewed version of ‘empathic understanding’ on the grounds that the concept is fundamentally epistemically flawed.

Lucienne Spencer is a Wellcome Trust-funded postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Mental Health, University of Birmingham. Her research interests include phenomenology, epistemic injustice, and the philosophy of psychiatry. She is also a member of the executive committee for the Society for Women in Philosophy UK.

This is the sixth lecture in the "Philosophy and Psychiatry" seminar series organized by the Center for Philosophy at the Institute of Social Sciences

U moralnu zajednicu ulaze neurotipični ljudi, osobe sa visokofunkcionalnim autizmom i osobe s blagom mentalnom retardacijom, zaključila je Marina Budić svom predavanju „Moralna odgovornost osoba sa mentalnim poremećajima: etičko razmatranje”.

U predavanju održanom 27. septembra u Velikoj sali IDN-a, Marina Budić pokušala je da odgovori na etičke i filozofske izazove dilema vezanih za pripisivanje moralne odgovornosti osobama sa mentalnim poremećajima. Da li i koje osobe čine moralnu zajednicu i mogu se smatrati moralno odogovornim za svoje psotupke, uprkos mentalnim poremećajima? Da li je psihopata (antisocijalni poremećaj ličnosti) deo moralne zajednice? Ovo su samo neka od teških filozofskih pitanja na koje je iztraživačica ponudlila iscrpne i argumentovane odgovore potkrepljene empirijskim istraživanjima.

Moralnu zajednicu čine moralni delatnici, dakle osobe koje su moralno odgovorne. Za moralnu odgovornost potrebne su racionalna i motivaciona komponenta. Ono što bi nedostajalo osobama van moralne zajednice jesu sposobnost za učešće u moralnoj konverzaciji i kontrolisanje ponašanja. 

Kako se pokazalo u izlaganju doktorandkinje Budić, krivično ponašanje ne povezuje se sa osobama sa autizmom i osobama s blagom mentalnom retardacijom, mada takva veza može postojati u slučaju psihopatije. Predstavnici prve dve grupe češće su upravo žrtve nasilja i nepravde. Psihopate su odgovorne u smislu pripisivosti. Psihopate zanemaruju u potpunosti moralnu zajednicu, ne razumeju ili se ne brinu za odnose koji vladaju u moralnoj zajednici. Može se dodati da su osobe sa autizmom i blagom mentalnom retardacijom na rubu moralne zajednice, a da van zajednice ostaju deca, osobe sa demencijom i psihopate. 

Predavanje Marine Budić peto je u okviru seminara „Filozofija i psihijatrija” Centra za filozofiju Instituta društvenih nauka.

In the lecture held on September 19 in the Grand Hall of the Institute of Social Sciences, Dr. Dings presented his new work, while relating to already published papers, on the nature of experiential knowledge and expertise-by-experience. Since there is mounting criticism that such knowledge is too vague to be used in practice, he attempted to answer these dilemmas by drawing on sources from the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of science, as well as contemporary phenomenological theories. He mainly presented his “positive” project in which he developed an account of experiential knowledge that can be conceptually, epistemologically and phenomenologically sound.

Dings argued that he aims to understand experiential knowledge as responsiveness, in the sense that what is felt (experience) has relevance and meaning to us (we respond to relevant affordances in the world). He, then, accordingly, understands experiential expertise as attuned responsiveness. Experiences can be very diverse, but everyone has a particular responsiveness profile, and people who work as experiential experts have to achieve attuned responsiveness with others. This is one way, he argues, to grasp how someone with mental illness experiences the world, although these suggestions are tentative and need more work, as he added at the end of the lecture. After the presentation, a lively debate with many questions was held, and the author admitted that the discussion was helpful for his future work.

This lecture is the fourth in the series of seminars titled "Philosophy and Psychiatry" organised by the Center for Philosophy at the Institute of Social Sciences. The seminar aims to provide young colleagues, doctoral students and early career researchers with an opportunity to present their work and develop it through the ensuing discussions.

Everyday experience shows that a person's affective life greatly influences their interaction with the world. In line with this, the intention of the lecture is to emphasize the importance of affectivity in creating harmonious and synchronized interactions with one's own environment.

By creating an ecological niche or an environment that aligns with its needs, the embodied subject engages in a dynamic relationship with the world based on a relation of coupling. The creation of this niche is based on a process called affective scaffolding, which can further be explained by the sensorimotor skill that Alva Noë calls "know-how."

In the case of a breakdown in know-how, there is a disturbance in the relationship with the environment and a collapse of the external constituents of mental life, leading to a feeling of being "in discrepancy with the world." This feeling stands out as one of the main phenomenological characteristics of psychopathologies such as depression and schizophrenia. Therefore, know-how is crucial for establishing a harmonious interaction with the world.

Anastasija Filipović is a research assistant at the Institute of Philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade. In her doctoral work, she explores the theory of emotions and the relationship and role that the external environment plays in personal affective experience. She has presented at several international conferences in the region.

In the lecture held on August 3rd, 2023, in the Grand Hall of the Institute of Social Sciences, psychiatrist from the Clinic for Psychiatry at the Clinical Center of Serbia "Dragiša Mišović," Vuk Vuković, traced the points of intersection between psychiatry and phenomenology, both in historical context and in relation to numerous recent neuroscientific findings.

The past decade is often referred to as the "psychedelic renaissance" due to the renewed interest in the application of psychedelics, especially in the fields of neuroscience and empirical psychiatric research, including their use in various therapeutic indications (depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction, terminal stages of cancer).

The application of the phenomenological method in this area is of crucial importance because it provides insights into the fundamental structures of altered experience and their clear methodological differentiation. This, on one hand, points to potential etiological mechanisms of different disorders (such as depression), and on the other hand, clarifies everyday modes of experience (imagination, fantasy).

Critiques directed at this field point to a tendency towards medicalization of incomprehensible experiences under these substances, epistemological extractivism, cultural appropriation of indigenous peoples, and the development of psychedelic tourism. However, Dr. Vuković believes that through an interdisciplinary approach to psychedelics, primarily through a phenomenological understanding of their effects on human consciousness, we can achieve a more precise therapeutic application of these substances.

The phenomenological philosophical tradition provides a systematic method for investigating and articulating the contents of consciousness. By focusing on the "first-person" perspective, phenomenology enables a deeper insight into the structure of subjective experience, making it an ideal tool for exploring human consciousness and subjectivity.

On the other hand, psychopathology represents the foundation of clinical psychiatry, requiring a detailed and systematic approach to analyzing subjective experience. Psychopathology focuses on studying pathological variations in mental processes and their manifestations, providing insights into how psychiatric disorders affect consciousness and subjectivity.

The intersection of these two fields gives rise to phenomenological psychopathology, a discipline that uses the methodological framework of phenomenology to investigate and describe changes in the structure of subjectivity underlying psychopathological conditions. Phenomenological psychopathology has identified and articulated central structures of consciousness, such as selfhood, intersubjectivity, embodiment, temporality, spatiality, and existential orientation.

Through examples of different patterns of disturbances in selfhood in psychosis and depression, the presentation will demonstrate how phenomenological psychopathology can be helpful in clinical practice.

Dr Stefan Jerotić is a psychiatrist employed at the Clinic for Psychiatry of the University Clinical Center of Serbia and an assistant at the Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Belgrade. His scientific research focuses on the study of schizophrenia and other disorders within the spectrum of psychoses, as well as the border areas of philosophy and psychiatry. He has also written on the subject of the application of psychosocial interventions and psychopharmacotherapy. He is the recipient of multiple international awards and recognitions.