Abstract

The focus of our commentary will be on two of the four ways in which philosophy can contribute to psychiatry: (i) an analysis of issues of explanation, reduction and classification as these arise when we treat psychiatry as a special science; and (ii) the proposal and evaluation of models of mental disorders. Regarding the first point, we first explore the bleak implications of Fodor's pessimism about a computational psychology of central processing for Murphy's project of a clinical cognitive neuroscience; and then we identify the Global Neuronal Workspace architecture as a promising solution to the problem of central cognition. Concerning the second point, we regard Philip Gerrans' hypothesis that delusions are narrative models that accommodate anomalous experiences as a most welcome example of an explanatory framework that interweaves mechanisms at personal and subpersonal levels.