View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Birmingham Research Archive, E-theses Repository RADICAL COGNITIVE SCIENCE IN PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY: THE CASE OF DEPRESSION By ALEXANDER JAMES IBBS MILLER TATE A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Philosophy School of Philosophy, Theology, and Religion College of Arts and Law University of Birmingham January 2019 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Radical Cognitive Science in Philosophical Psychopathology: The Case of Depression Abstract The principle purpose of this collection of papers is to explore and apply ideas from various kinds of non‐traditional Cognitive Science, as well as comparing them with their more traditional counterparts, in order to reach a better understanding of the symptoms and features of depressive illness. By ‘non‐traditional’ I mean to refer to Cognitive Science that makes minimal use of the notion of abstract, post‐perceptual, and reconstructive mental representation, is computationally frugal, and treats the mind as fundamentally both embodied and environmentally embedded. This thesis in particular draws on insights from ecological psychology and action‐oriented perception, embodied and situated cognition, and predictive processing. After introducing the subject matter, the first substantive paper argues that anhedonia is, in the general case, a disorder determined by disruption to affectively supportive elements of an individual’s environment. The second proposes a predictive‐ processing approach to explaining the characteristic operation of motivational mental states. This paper supports the third, in which I argue that psychological, somatic, and (action‐oriented) perceptual factors all contribute to depressed agents’ struggles and failures to initiate and sustain action. I suggest that these problems should not all be thought of as disorders of motivation per se, but rather as broader kinds of action‐oriented cognitive dysfunction. In the fourth paper, I reject Matthew Ratcliffe’s argument for the claim that people with depression are not typically better able to empathise with other people with depression, though I find alternative evidence for this suggestion available to those happy to endorse a more mainstream view of empathy. Finally, I broaden the scope of my investigation to psychopathology in general, and argue that classical (neuro‐centric and mechanical) explanations in Psychiatry have inadvertently resulted in psychiatric service users’ subjection to a number of epistemic injustices. This suggests that non‐classical theories of psychopathology are not just important for achieving accurate psychiatric explanation, but also for ensuring the ethical treatment of service users. Dedication For Becki Luscombe and Bryn Gough. Wise beyond their years, and gone too soon. Their voices inspired and guided this work. I hope they would have found something worth reading within its pages. “It is quite often said that depression, or indeed any form of chronic mental unease, is like being followed by a cloud. I disagree. Clouds can be nice. If clouds form in a certain way they can sometimes resemble a family of turtles playing volleyball. Mental illness very rarely resembles even a SINGLE turtle playing volleyball.” Becki Luscombe, The Boxticker Acknowledgments I would never have completed this thesis without the support, both personal and philosophical, of an enormous number of people who I have had the good fortune to know for some or all of the last 26 years. What follows is probably an incomplete, but hopefully representative, list of the most important folks. In a very real sense, everything that comes next is their fault1. Mae Rohani, Ash Allen, Rachel Elkin, Chris Forster, Caroline Miller Tate, Philip Miller Tate, Nick Davidson, Sarah Dovey, Rosie Ellis, Amber Culley, Ben Puusta, Jen Elliott, Freya Watkins, Nikk Effingham, Malcolm Price, Farrell Baker, Robert Lydiard, Chris Harding, Sarah Davies, Lisa Bortolotti, Iain Law, Will Davies, Rachel Upthegrove, Joel Krueger, Michael Larkin, Matthew Parrott, Matilde Aliffi, Em Walsh, Federico Bongiorno, Michael Roberts, Kash Sunghuttee, Rachel Gunn, Maisie Gibson, Yingna Li, Alex Blanchard, Lauren Melchor, Marco di Natale, John Parry, Lauren Graham‐Symonds, Sophie Stammers, Herjeet Marway, Anneli Jefferson, Elisabeth Muchka, Eugenia Lancellotta, Henry Taylor, Scott Sturgeon, Maja Spener, Ema Sullivan‐Bissett, Matthew Parrott, Joel Krueger, Tom Davies, Tom Baker, Ray Schuur, Stew Yarlett, Casey Elliott, Femi Taiwo, Amy Conkerton‐Darby, Helen Ryland, Will Sharp, Josh Brown, David Irvine, Jodie Neville, Kate MacKay, Matt Tugby, Andy Clark, Aidan McGlynn, Dave Carmel, Alistair Isaac, Till Vierkannt, Laura Jenkins, Emma Foster, Pete Kerr, Stephen Bates, Joanna Nowlan, Joe Cunningham, Philip Ellwood, Melvin Tiley, Andrew Watters, Shelagh Frawley, Mike Fitzgerald, Rob Nayman, Peter Lamb, Rory Scott, Tom Russell, Norma Robertson, James Bowker, Will Sandys, Matt Hewson, Alice Moneypenny, Ruth Samuel, Sophie White, Kathleen Murphy‐Hollies, Julius Elster, Jonny Lee, Joe Dewhurst, Urtė Laukaitytė, Tamarinde Laura, Wout van Praet, María Jiménez, Dig Wilk, Mahi Hardalupas, Imke von Maur, Valentina Petrolini, André Grahle, Rebekka Hufendiek, François Jaquet, Andrea Valentino, Amica Nowlan, Dan Fisher, Jack Kirkby, Sam Boocock, Emma Graham, Ellie Price, Jamie Banurji, Inge Hertzog, Tim Liversage, Cat Bawtree, Emily Kitson, Katharine Jenkins, Bren Markey, Nora Berenstain, Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman, Joseph Kisolo‐Ssonko, Rachel Cooper, Hane Maung, Phoebe Friessen, Moujan Mirdamadi, Sabine Wantoch, Natalie Ashton, Nadia Mehdi, Cecily Whiteley, and Stephanie Harvey. 1 Apart from the typos; those are on me. Contents Chapter 1: Motivating Novel Explanatory Strategies in Depression Research ............. 1 1.1. Introduction .................................................................................................................. 1 1.2. Traditional Cognitive Science .................................................................................... 4 1.2.1. Representations and Internalism ........................................................................ 4 1.2.2. Phenomenal Irrelevance ...................................................................................... 6 1.3. Traditional Depression Research............................................................................... 8 1.3.1. Strong Representationalism in Depression Research ...................................... 8 1.3.2. Internalism in Depression Research ................................................................ 10 1.3.3. Phenomenology in Traditional Depression Research ................................... 11 1.4. Challenges to Tradition ............................................................................................ 13 1.4.1. Challenges to Strong Representationalism and Internalism ........................ 13 1.4.2. The Renewed Significance of Phenomenology .............................................. 17 1.4.3. Predictive Processing ............................................................................................. 19 1.4.4. Psychiatric Ethics ................................................................................................ 22 1.5. Paper Summary ......................................................................................................... 24 1.6. References ................................................................................................................... 26 Chapter 2: Anhedonia and the Affectively Scaffolded Mind ......................................... 30 2.0. Abstract ....................................................................................................................... 30 2.1. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 31 2.1.1. Biomedical Materialism ..................................................................................... 32 2.2. Two theories of anhedonia ....................................................................................... 34 2.2.1. Capacity Theory .................................................................................................. 35 2.2.2. Sustainability Theory ......................................................................................... 36 2.3. Situating Affect & Affective Niche Construction .................................................. 37 2.3.1. Functional Gain and Reciprocity ...................................................................... 38 2.3.2. Constructing and Deconstructing Affective Niches ...................................... 42 2.4. Situating Hedonic Capabilities ................................................................................ 43 2.4.1 Situating Hedonic Capacity ..............................................................................