Research
An early (circa 2021) AI image produced by inputting the title of my dissertation: Loss of Control and Phenomenology in Mental Disorder*
Research Overview
I am interested in the philosophical implications of mental disorder, which I approach through a careful examination of the phenomenology that is present in the mental lives of subjects who experience mental illness. The philosophical projects I pursue are further motivated by a general skepticism regarding the trustworthiness of all of our experiences of agency under certain conditions.
Crucially, the findings from these philosophical inquiries are thoroughly interdisciplinary in nature and are intended to have real-world import in addition to their philosophical significance. In this way, my research has a decidedly sociopolitical and applied element running through it, since the answers to the research questions I am engaged with have direct bearing on which sorts of mental healthcare paradigms and policies we ought to either advocate for or avoid.
This research program straddles the philosophical subfields of empirically informed philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychiatry, and biomedical ethics, which I have opted to separate into two (interrelated) research categories below.
Work at the intersection of philosophy of mind and philosophy of psychiatry
In this strand of my research I am primarily interested in developing a deeper philosophical understanding of the so-called “loss of control” that occurs in mental disorder in a way that places the phenomenology of agency at the forefront.
Work at the intersection of philosophy of psychiatry and biomedical ethics
In this area of my research I have become interested in values-based medicine (VBM) and the ways in which it can (or cannot) act as an antidote to medical paternalism, particularly in the psychiatric context.
“Anorexia Nervosa: Illusion in the Sense of Agency” (Click through to find the article on the Mind & Language website, and click here for preprint)
This paper provides a novel analysis of anorexia nervosa (AN) in the context of the sense of agency literature. I first show that two accounts of anorexia nervosa that we ought to take seriously— i.e., the first personal reports of those who have experienced it firsthand as well as the research that seeks to explain anorexic behavior from an empirical perspective— appear to be thoroughly in tension with one another in their descriptions of anorexic actions. Rather than proceeding at this point by way of disregarding anorexic testimony as meaningless or insincere, I instead offer a positive account of the sense of agency in anorexia nervosa that renders these two depictions compatible. The resultant picture of anorexic behavior is one that accommodates current empirical findings while also providing valuable insight into how it is that anorexics can sincerely report feeling fully in control over their food restriction.
"Medical Paternalism, Anorexia Nervosa, and the Problem of Pathological Values" (Click through to find the article on the Synthese website, and click here for preprint)
This paper focuses on the problem posed by egosyntonic mental disorders (such as anorexia nervosa and the personality disorders) in the context of medical paternalism and values-based medicine. I argue that the directive to incorporate patient values (as dictated by values-based medicine) cannot do the work of mitigating medical paternalism in the treatment of AN. Rather than chalking this up as a failure due to AN being a particularly challenging case, I instead conclude that the failure of values-based medicine in this context cuts to the heart of the limitations of trying to rectify medical paternalism within psychiatry as it currently exists.
[A paper about the fundamental nature of pathological loss of control] (Title redacted for blind review)
In this paper I argue that although anorexia nervosa and substance use disorder are, prima facie, diametrically at odds with one another with respect to their associated phenomenologies of self-control (or lack thereof), these two conditions are deeply similar at the psychological, neurological, and functional-behavioral levels. I conclude by suggesting that this unified understanding of pathological loss of control has been obscured in the philosophical (and, to some extent, the scientific) literature due to the differing phenomenologies of agency that are typically associated with these disorders.
Deep brain stimulation for psychiatric versus neurological disorders: A call for nuance (Accepted at Philosophy and the Mind Sciences) (Click link above for preprint)
In this (peer-reviewed) contribution to the Book Symposium for Josh May's Neuroethics: Agency in the Age of Brain Science, I critique what I take to be an overly optimistic picture of deep-brain stimulation (DBS) therapy put forward by May. I argue, first, that May does not sufficiently distinguish between disorders that are properly considered neurological and those that are properly considered psychiatric (or psychopathological). After motivating this distinction, I argue that May’s discussion of DBS fails to account for the added complexities and potential ethical harms of DBS for psychiatric conditions.
[A paper about the phenomenology of cognitive dissonance] (Title redacted for blind review)
In this paper I take up an idea first proposed by Tim Schroeder and Nomy Arpaly (1999), which is that Frankfurtian alienation, although typically associated with the structure of the (Frankfurtian) will, is better characterized as the unpleasant feeling of acting in a way that is at odds with one’s conception of oneself (thereby divorcing it from the structure of the will). I bring this core idea up to speed with modern philosophical work on dissonance theory and the “psychological immune system” popularized by philosophers such as Eric Mandelbaum, Nic Porot and Jake Quilty-Dunn. I ultimately argue that Frankfurtian alienation can be usefully recast as the (negatively valenced) phenomenology of cognitive dissonance.
[A paper about the quantitative impact of values-based medicine] (Title redacted for blind review)
Although I do not think VBM has what is needed to “cure” psychiatry of these foundational issues, I do think it is an invaluable framework for medicine in general and should be promoted to the broader medical community as such. I argue as much in this co-authored paper, which situates what we take to be as-yet-unrecognized quantitative evidence of the efficacy of values-based medicine within the broader theoretical and qualitative literature on VBM.
*This image was generated as part of an academic Twitter trend in which people inputted the titles of their dissertations into the (now defunct) Wombo.ai art generator. This was done before the environmental impact of these technologies was common knowledge (and also before AI art started to look worse). Since the resources required to make this image have already been expended, I have opted to make use of it.