Overview

This book has three basic purposes. First, it is an introduction to philosophical action theory. Second, the book offers a development of certain crucial notions within action theory, i.e. the notions of ability, rationality, and compulsion. These notions are particularly relevant for the third purpose which is to analyze the concepts of health and mental disorder. The main pathological feature in focus here is delusion. Delusion involves some defect in the subject's understanding of the world. In the book it is argued that delusions normally rationalize actions perfectly well in the light of the action-theoretic machinery spelt out. Delusions can, however, be said to be defective in the sense that they are alien elements in the mind of the subject. Moreover, they normally function as compelling reasons for the actions they rationalize. In order to substantiate this, the book presents a new analysis of the notion of compulsion. Beginning with a criticism of some contemporary theories the book develops an analysis of compulsion emphasizing the element of unavoidability. The book argues for the following thesis: what is fundamentally disturbing to the person suffering from delusion is not so much the fact that the disorder tends to lead to irrational actions but rather the fact that he or she is unable to avoid performing these. The subject is or feels cmopelled to act in the way he or she does. The book contains some concrete illustrations of this idea as applied to several psychiatric diagnoses, such as paranoia, phobia, and psychopathy.

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9780199214846

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