The Conclusion draws together the book’s various thematic strands: the perceived primacy of the ‘reason’, the right of its possessors to rule, the exculpatory effect of a frenzy diagnosis, and the high cost paid by those who received one. It returns to the larger question posed at the outset: whether the organ of the brain and the faculties of the mind were seen as constitutive of ‘personhood’ in pre-1700s England. The responses to frenzy which we have encountered in this book suggests that they were. The operations of the mental faculties known as ‘reason’, ‘will’, and ‘memory’ (or simply the ‘wits’) were located in (and often colloquially identified with) the brain. The functionality and continuity of these faculties was integral to the maintenance of legal, social, and spiritual personhood. Yet what troubled frenzy’s witnesses the most, the Conclusion argues, was the way it disrupted its sufferers’ predictable ways of being in the world – the values they had once held dear, the ways they had once looked and spoken. It was a disease which had the power to change friends, neighbours, and loved ones beyond recognition.

This article presents a comprehensive neuroethical framework that seeks to deepen our understanding of human consciousness and free will, particularly in the context of psychiatric and neurological disorders. By integrating insights from neuroscience with philosophical reflections on freedom and personal identity, the paper examines how various states of consciousness from interoception to self-awareness influence an individual’s autonomy and decision-making capabilities. The discussion utilizes a multidimensional, bottom-up approach to explore how neurobiological processes underlie different levels of conscious experience and their corresponding types of freedom, such as “intero-freedom” related to internal bodily states and “self-freedom” associated with higher self-awareness. This stratification reveals the profound impact of neurological conditions on patients’ freedom of choice and the ethical implications therein. The insights gained from this analysis aim to inform more tailored and effective treatments for psychiatric patients, emphasizing the restoration of autonomy and respect for their inherent dignity. This work underscores the essential unity of the human person through the lens of neuroethics, advocating for healthcare policies that recognize and enhance the personal freedom of those with mental health challenges.

This chapter delves into the ethical dimensions of treating individuals with schizophrenia, emphasizing the need for a new perspective that integrates neuroethics into interventions. The author proposes a bio-systemic model to understand how schizophrenia impacts different levels of consciousness and freedom, highlighting the necessity for tailored interventions that restore autonomy rather than coercive measures. The chapter calls for a shift in policy towards early and assertive treatment, focusing on rebuilding autonomy and dignity for individuals with schizophrenia. Ultimately, the chapter serves as a call to action for a neuroethically informed approach to care that prioritizes the restoration of freedom and dignity for those affected by schizophrenia.

This chapter explores the ethical, legal, and clinical dimensions of treatment without consent in psychiatry, particularly in the context of neuroethics. Drawing on principles from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the authors argue for a goal-oriented, process-based approach to ethical decision-making that prioritizes restoring mental capacity, dignity, and autonomy. The chapter critiques the limitations of functional mental capacity assessments and advocates for a layered understanding of consciousness grounded in neuroscience. It emphasizes the ethical duty to intervene when necessary, especially in cases involving neurodegenerative psychotic disorders (NDPPD), and highlights the importance of early, potentially disease-modifying interventions. The authors call for inclusive research practices, structured clinical decision-making, and a compassionate, scientifically grounded framework that transcends simplistic dichotomies of paternalism and liberty.

Chapter 1 establishes the foundational concepts of neuroimaging by exploring the complex relationship between brain structure and mental function. It traces the historical progression from ancient surgical approaches to modern noninvasive techniques, contextualizing how technological innovations have transformed our understanding of neural processes. The chapter examines the multiscale nature of brain investigation, from single-neuron recordings to population-level measurements, and evaluates the critical tradeoffs between spatial and temporal resolution across imaging modalities. Key neurophysiological principles underlying these technologies are introduced, including neuronal action potentials, hemodynamic responses, and the chemical processes that support neural activity. The text challenges common neuromyths while addressing fundamental questions about functional organization, from modular specialization to distributed network processing. By comparing the relative strengths and limitations of major neuroimaging tools (fMRI, EEG, MEG, PET, and TMS), the chapter provides an analytical framework for understanding how these methodologies collectively advance our ability to correlate brain activity with cognitive and behavioral processes, setting the stage for more detailed exploration in subsequent chapters.

This chapter is about how William James’s ideas about consciousness can elucidate our understanding of what literature is and does. The thrust of the argument is that James’s psychology, in its insistence on and poetic invocation of consciousness as being nothing outside of the processing of the world as experienced, and the radically experiential and pluralistic philosophy built on this claim, offers a powerful alternative to the psychoanalytical models of consciousness as a mechanism of suppression and censorship that dominate the field of literary studies to this day, with vast implications for our conception of literature’s social function and use. The aim is to show how James’s ideas about consciousness are endowed with a radical openness to sense perception that comes with both an aesthetics of cognition and an ethics of democratic receptivity in tow; and to demonstrate that James fathoms these two strands as mutually engaged in a world-making operation that necessitates a literary imagination.

This chapter contributes to the rich vein of scholarly literature around the relationship between William and Henry James in his exploration of the latter’s presentation of consciousness – and attempts to probe it – in Washington Square. Drawing on William’s “conception of truth as matter of inductive fallibilism” as well as his psychology of religious belief, this essay uncovers the dynamic at the center of the novel: The struggle between the overbearing Dr. Sloper and his daughter Catherine, whose consciousness moves, through the course of the novel, out of the reach of his ability to probe and thus control it. Concluding with an articulation of the novel’s “ethics of opacity” – its refusal of our urge toward the fixation of belief – this reading of the Jameses provides a granular case study of the deep resonance between the brothers’ thinking and writing.

James insisted on the existence and importance of consciousness and, unlike so many explorers in the new field of psychology, he resisted any idea of the unconscious or of intelligent automatisms, like “unconscious cerebration.” But his “stream of consciousness” included not only definite images, but also the “free water of consciousness” that flows around them, which he would call a “halo,” “penumbra,” or most often, a “fringe.” This was the elusive, transitory territory of “the vague” and evanescent, the peripheral and unarticulated, of feelings, recognitions, meaningfulness. Not unconscious, but on the margin, it provided the necessary context for the focus of attention. This essay extends James’s conception (more fully than he did) to aesthetic experience, which is also nondiscursive, unarticulable, ineffable – but not unconscious. And it draws James’s “fringe” into the twenty-first century by nudging it toward the nonconscious cognitive processing that has captured the interest of so much contemporary psychology.

This manifesto argues that education should incorporate philosophical exploration to help young people address existential questions and find meaning and purpose in their lives. The manifesto suggests that to understand the meaning of one’s life, one must consider personal existence and consciousness and the reality beyond the here and now. It proposes that education should provide a neutral forum for discussing these big questions, without bias towards any particular belief system, and incorporating both scientific and spiritual perspectives. By engaging in such philosophical discourse, young people can develop a clearer sense of self and purpose, fostering resilience, mental well-being and a commitment to values and moral behaviour. This can support them to survive and thrive through the opportunities and challenges of the future.

Like their forerunners, post-Hellenistic doctors also grappled with the unclear boundaries between healthy versus pathologic sleep, and consciousness-unconsciousness. Furthermore, they incorporated new diseases and redefined others - like lethargy - that were specifically associated with this process. Celsus considered sleep as all-or-nothing phenomenon, without recognising different depths. Regarding mental capacities, he subsumed most of them in his idea of mens/animus. Aretaeus, on the other hand did conceive different depths of sleep, and his eclectic method enabled him to find alternative pathophysiological explanations to characterise several of its main features. Similarly, although his organization of mental capacities varied according to what he was explaining, the opposition gnômê-aisthêsis was important in his idea of mind.