Postgraduate "Work In Progress" Seminar
Postgraduate Work-In-Progress SeminarA weekly seminar for Philosophy postgraduates to present their in-progress work, followed by a well-spirited trip to the pub. OverviewThe WIP provides a risk-free and supportive space for postgraduates to present their work and receive feedback from other graduates and faculty.
Attendance optional but highly recommended. All postgraduates are welcome to present or attend -- whether MA, MPhil, PhD, Visitors, etc. Useful InfoThe WIP is a unique opportunity for graduates to develop their presenting and writing skills, take risks, test out ideas, and receive constructive feedback from peers.
Presentations need not be watertight or polished pieces at all. You are encouraged to present work at all stages of the writing process. Should you present?Are you a postgraduate? Then yes, you should present. |
NEXT TALKRozemin Keshvani (PhD) Kant Thursday 25/06/2026 5pm - 6:15pm S1.50 ORGANISERS |
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Knowledge and Understanding Seminar
Speaker: Richard Gipps (Oxford)
Title: 'On the Importance of Not Understanding the Patient'
In this paper I suggest that certain theories of thought disorder, passivity experience and delusion – theories which hope to understand the patient by retrieving his speaker鈥檚 meaning – radically fail. They do so because they trade on an alienated conception of ordinary mental life which is itself only sustained by illusions of sense; they attempt to reduce delusion to illusion; and they fail the patient by evading the fact of, rather than meeting him in the midst of, his brokenness.
Despite the impossibility of retrieving speaker鈥檚 meaning from truly psychotic discourse, this does not render unavailable other forms of understanding (symbolic/motivational, neurological, situational etc.) of the psychotic subject. Even so, if we鈥檙e to achieve, with the psychotic subject, that (moral) form of understanding which can be said to be shown someone, we must first learn to avoid the temptation of attributing speaker鈥檚 or agent鈥檚 meaning to his psychotic words and acts. To this end this paper outlines what I鈥檒l call an 鈥榓pophatic鈥� (as opposed to a 鈥榗ataphatic鈥�) psychopathology. This 鈥榓pophatic鈥� approach aims at understanding the patient not through positively understanding her words鈥� meaning but instead through understanding just why some of the things we鈥檙e most tempted to say of her fail her.&辩耻辞迟;鈥�