Radboud University Nijmegen

Graduate Student, Filosofie

About

I received my MD in 2004 and my MA in philosophy in 2006 at the Radboud University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands. From 2004-2008 I worked at an addiction treatment center in Nijmegen. I am currently finishing my PhD-thesis at the department of philosophy of the Radboud University Nijmegen. My main research interests are philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, philosophical psychology, philosophical anthropology, philosophy of cognitive science and philosophy of psychiatry.

I am writing a PhD-thesis on social cognition and the folk concept of mind. It has been a dominant strategy in analytic philosophy to articulate the concept of mind by giving an account of our folk psychological practices. I argue against classical meta-representational accounts of social understanding - reason attribution in particular. Adopting mentioned strategy, my arguments point in the direction of a thoroughly non-representational folk concept  of mind. Some questions are raised regarding the relation between the level of folk psychological interpretation of behavior on the one hand and the level(s) of cognitive scientific explanation of behavior on the other.

Another project I am currently working on involves the nature of mental health and pathology. Drawing from influential theories in action theory, I argue that some forms of psychopathology can be viewed as failures of strong agency, i.e. the capacity to act on reasons of one's own. From this perspective, clinical practice is first and foremost about strong agency reinforcement.

I am co-organizer and coordinator of the Dutch Interdisciplinary Expert Meetings Philosophy and Psychiatry. For more information see:
http://www.ru.nl/filosofie/cognitiefilosofie/onderzoek/item_414378/

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