tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8331917990627226586.post6815829380380064017..comments2023-08-29T04:35:15.852-07:00Comments on The Trent Philosophy Blog: Sane in the MembraneNeil Turnbullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07757980706607642699noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8331917990627226586.post-71681606311796950452010-03-26T03:53:21.593-07:002010-03-26T03:53:21.593-07:00This is an important question for me...
Yes, '...This is an important question for me...<br /><br />Yes, 'anti-philosophy' is part of the discourse of philosophy. But the question is the extent to which we can differentiate anti-philosophy from the social sciences.<br /><br />Many social scientsts believe that they are the heirs to discipline 'the used to be called philosophy'. Is Foucault a social scientist or a philosopher? Is he part of the post-68 movement that became known in lieterary circles as 'Theory', or do his ideas relate to 'classically philosophical' themes and debates?<br /><br />I am not sure, but Foucault's influence has certainly been much greater in the social sciences that in philosophy.<br /><br /><br />Neil TurnbullNeil Turnbullhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07757980706607642699noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8331917990627226586.post-83447622647998281012010-03-25T10:46:01.836-07:002010-03-25T10:46:01.836-07:00Interesting--so post/structuralists can't be c...Interesting--so post/structuralists can't be classed as philosophers? I would like to think that there a space within the broad church that is Philosophy to question its humanist premises (if we assume that Philosophy is essentially humanist, of course!)<br />RuthRuth Griffinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16653229851182852342noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8331917990627226586.post-68133359609900141232010-03-25T10:30:15.146-07:002010-03-25T10:30:15.146-07:00The Foucauldain take on all this is interesting. ...The Foucauldain take on all this is interesting. <br /><br />It tends to assume that we can no longer see selves as fixed and static things. For Foucauldians selves are not fixed but historically fluid; not trapped in the skin but dispersed across social space; not simply a matter of consciousness but a matter of language. Selves in this sense are narrated and through narrating them we develop a sense of our own identity. And of course official psychological discourses of mental health are key narratives in just this respect.<br /><br />Suffice to say that this philosophy goes against the grain of common-sense in some quite significant ways. <br /><br />Humanists, however, would like to view selves as uniquely contained within the individual and in possession of some unique qualities – autonomy, rationality, and responsibility.<br /><br />I think humanism is important because philosophy is essentially a humanistic discipline.<br /><br />Focuault is an anti-philosopher I think (like Lacan).<br /><br />Neil TurnbullNeil Turnbullhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07757980706607642699noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8331917990627226586.post-75514416161994543832010-03-25T09:35:10.871-07:002010-03-25T09:35:10.871-07:00I guess that there tends to be ambiguity attached ...I guess that there tends to be ambiguity attached to any set of statistics, which we must be wary of. Rather than a literal rise in people with mental illness, there may instead have have been increasing numbers of people who are judged-or who view themselves to have-mental health "issues". If what Foucault says has any purchase whatsoever, then the medicalisation and classificatory mechanisms of mental health (here's a pill, it will make you better) is responsible for a rise in people who seek help, who think that they have a "problem". Perhaps prior to this historical phase, people still got symptoms of depression but they weren't classified-and therefore officially recognised, or statistically counted-as such. Certainly the pills rather than talking cure approach seems to be on the increase in certain quarters, treat the symptoms, not the cause.Ruth Griffinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16653229851182852342noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8331917990627226586.post-77456047913320412792010-03-25T09:06:47.008-07:002010-03-25T09:06:47.008-07:00We need to aware that there has been a massive inc...We need to aware that there has been a massive increase in people with mental health problems in recent years. <br /><br />Official figures show that about 1 in 3 people will experience a ‘mental health problem’ at some point in their lifetime. Depression is by far the most common ‘mental health problem’ in terms of people presenting themselves with problems to official health practitioners – but increasingly people are presenting themselves to therapists of various kinds with unspecified symptoms – vague feelings of dissatisfaction, a 'Mick Jagger syndrome' - that are hard to fit into conventional diagnostic categories. Many people feel a sense that they cannot manage their identities well; they feel lost and don’t really know who they are.<br /><br />How are philosophers to respond to these problems? By advocating more therapy and more money spent on mental health provision in the NHS? This kind of response only individualises the problem. <br /><br />Moreover, often there is a social cause underlying these feelings of personal distress.Perhaps people are legitimately depressed - in fact, certain social psychologists, such as Alloy and Abramson, suggest that depressives are depressed because they have a more accurate view of the world than non-depressives! Where war, economic insecurity, and global poverty prevail – who wouldn’t get depressed at times? In a way, it is non-depressives who 'view the world through rose-coloured spectacles'. <br />So – as the old Tears for Fear song goes – its not us who are mad, 'it’s a mad world'.<br /><br />Neil TurnbullNeil Turnbullhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07757980706607642699noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8331917990627226586.post-49441071397931686232010-03-25T02:39:12.597-07:002010-03-25T02:39:12.597-07:00I think that the reason why writers in any genre h...I think that the reason why writers in any genre have little interest in sanity per se (and I am talking about fiction here) is because sanity is perceived as "the norm" and therefore not considered to be worthy of representation. The idea being that audience/readers themselves are ordinary, and therefore "normal" sane people, and thus seek the extraordinary (ie different degrees of madness, or at least lesser sanity/normality) in their escapist material. One finds it difficult to escape from everyday reality into a reality which too closely resembles our own.<br />So, for example, a protagonist requires some minimal points of identification for the audience ie is seldom totally "insane", or at least not till the cathartic moment in the narrative is reached. The audience may then relax, once the tension generated by the blurred borderlines between the sane/insane dichotomy is resolved, and normality ie sanity, resumes...<br />RuthRuth Griffinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16653229851182852342noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8331917990627226586.post-50472545016451638072010-03-25T01:11:39.600-07:002010-03-25T01:11:39.600-07:00Yes, more Wittgenstein of course!
Wittgenstein ca...Yes, more Wittgenstein of course!<br /><br />Wittgenstein castigated philosophy for its insanities and believed that his philosophy was a therapeutic cure for philosophy's 'metaphysical excessess'.<br /><br />For him, by returning to the safe routines of everyday practices we achieve a kind of 'sanity'. There is of course something to this. <br /><br />However, this of course begs an important question - posed by Laing in the 1960s. Is it really possible to be 'sane in an insane world'?<br /><br />Might accommdtion to this world be the ultimate insanity, to the extent that all calls for sanity are an apologia for a collective madness that has to be contested; critqued?<br /><br />Can we only achieve sanity in a 'sane society'? And what would such a society look like?<br /><br />Neil TurnbullNeil Turnbullhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07757980706607642699noreply@blogger.com