A number of people in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion PPR have research interests in the philosophy of mind, psychology, psychoanalysis and psychiatry, and there is a reading group devoted to these areas. We would especially welcome applications from post-graduate students wishing to work in these areas.

Reading Group in the Philosophy of Mind and Psychology

The reading group meets weekly in term time to discuss texts in the philosophy of mind and psychology. Recently we have read:

Richard Moran - Authority and Estrangement
Gilbert Ryle - The Concept of Mind
Andy Clark - Being There
J.L. Austin - Sense and Sensibilia
Wilfred Sellars - Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind
Donald Davidson - Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective.
For further details please email Rachel Cooper R.V.Cooper@lancaster.ac.uk

Staff with research interests in Philosophy of Mind and Psychology:

Rachel Cooper

I have a background in the History and Philosophy of Science, and currently work mainly on the philosophy of psychiatry. I am particularly interested in issues to do with psychiatric classification, the nature of mental illness, and issues related to the scientific status of psychiatry. My first book Classifying madness: A Philosophical Examination of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders was published by Springer in 2005. My second book, Psychiatry and the Philosophy of Science, which examines the ways in which psychiatry is like and unlike more established sciences, is due to be published by Acumen in 2008.

Brian Garvey

My research interests are primarily in philosophy of science (especially in relation to biology), philosophy of mind and psychoanalysis. The title of my PhD thesis was 'Freud's Psychoanalysis of Religion', and since completing it I have written a number of articles exploring links between Freud's work on the one hand, and evolutionary psychology and cognitive science on the other. I am also interested in the problem of consciousness, and in the question of the status of 'special sciences', including psychology and psychoanalysis.

Neil Manson

My research background is in philosophy of mind and psychology; and, more recently, in applied philosophy. I am particularly interested in the contrast, or contrasts, between conscious and unconscious mentality, and upon the nature of psychological explanation, and have published a number of papers on these topics (see web page for more details). I am writing a book on Philosophy and Unconscious Mentality, about (unsurprisingly!) unconscious mentality, and philosophical thinking about unconscious mentality, in history and in contemporary thought. I also have an interest in the history and epistemology of psychoanalysis, and in the foundations of cognitive psychology and in the metaphors and assumptions that shape, direct, and perhaps distort, discourse about mind.

Alison Stone

I work in continental philosophy and feminist philosophy, but within these areas the topics that interest me overlap with topics in psychoanalysis and psychology. I am interested in the psychoanalytic theories of Freud and Lacan, especially their views of culture, civilisation, and language. I am also interested in feminist criticisms and defences of psychoanalysis, and in recent reinterpretations of psychoanalytic theory by feminist authors. Within feminist philosophy more generally, I am currently looking at theories of sex, gender and sexual identity, theories which are often partly philosophical and partly psychological, and which often draw on psychological research. For a more detailed account of my research please see my web page.

Cain Todd

My research interests lie primarily in the areas of aesthetics and ethics, but within these I am interested in the role of the imagination in the appreciation and understanding of art works, particularly fiction, and the relationship between emotion and imagination more generally. More specifically, I have worked on the application of simulation theory to the appreciation of fiction and its use in moral psychology. I have also written on the problem of 'imaginative resistance' in fiction, and the use of imagination in conceptual analysis, specifically in relation to moral concepts. I am currently also interested in the relation of emotion to fiction, and the nature of moral emotions.