Philosophy and neuropsychiatry

This chapter explores the distinction between the mind and the body through the lens of empiricism in neuropsychiatry. The argument is made that, although much of our understanding of the relationship between the functioning mind and its abnormalities comes from rationalization, neuropsychiatric practices cannot be based entirely in a materialist idea of the mind and body as identical. Although the tests a neuropsychiatrist performs, such as neuroimaging, blood tests, and neuropsychology, appear more objective, the relation between their results and mental disorders is not empirically clear. By citing Daniel Dennet’s intentional stance theory, the perception that psychopathological phenomena are meaningless is questioned. Dennet’s stances are applied to clinical scenarios in order to demonstrate that while physical-level investigations may be conceptually incompatible with those on the intentional level, there is often no way to cleanly separate the two, and both must be considered in the line of a neuropsychiatrist’s work.