One of the key questions at the heart of Heckers’s reflections on the uses of neuroimaging in psychiatry is whether the actual uses to which neuroimaging are being put in experimental research on the neural markers and mechanisms of psychiatric disorders have application in clinical psychiatry. He points to a mismatch in goals and methods that, it seems to me, demands further scrutiny, and scrutiny of a sort that philosophers might usefully supply. In addition to the questions of causal inference, to which I direct my attention immediately in what follows, are important questions about the difference between general truths about the brains of people with schizophrenia and truths about specific, single cases. Even if the tools of psychiatric research succeed in gleaning causal information about psychiatric disorders in general terms, there will always be an inductive leap in relating the general to the particular, in seeing the individual as properly both an example of the generalizations discovered in research on populations (and controls) and, consequently, as a fitting recipient of the predictions and explanations those generalizations deliver. This gap between the general and the particular lurks in the background of Heckers’s important discussion, but perhaps could be given more of a central place, and would help us distinguish which problems attend the causal uses of neuroimaging and which attend the uniquely messy business of drawing conclusions about single-case causes on the basis of causal knowledge that holds, only for the most part, in certain conditions that we cannot fully adumbrate.

There has been a lot of interest lately in the possibility of downward causation, the idea that higher-level processes or events can cause lower-level ones. Downward causation, if it could be made sense of, is seen by some as a way to approach the philosophical problem of free will naturalistically, while others have heralded it as a promising way to explain aspects of the pathogenesis or treatment of psychiatric conditions. But the possibility of downward causation has been called into question because it is claimed to require causation across levels, and interlevel causation has been viewed as problematic. Reductionist accounts, for example, hold that entities or processes at higher levels can be reduced to entities or processes at lower levels, and that causal relations only “really” occur at the most fundamental level. On this basis, Kim’s (1998) causal exclusion argument holds that mental states do not enter causal relations and are merely epiphenomenal. Alternatively, the New Mechanist account holds that neuroscientific explanation is mechanistic explanation, and that the relationship between mechanisms at different levels is one of constitution (part/whole). Because constitution relations are not causal relations, interlevel causation does not exist: causation can only occur within a level (see, e.g., Bechtel & Craver, 2007; Craver, 2007). Several thinkers have suggested that if we can rid ourselves of levels, these problems and others would disappear (Eronen, 2013).

In dialogue with Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Shakespeare, this chapter articulates the difference between an “idol” of experience, which necessarily disappoints desire, and an “icon” of experience, which necessarily surprises; it sketches the parallels between two iconic modes of experience, Heidegger’s wonder for being and St. Francis’s thanksgiving for existence, and it argues that the latter constitutes a unique phenomenological reduction, which distinguishes aletheism from other forms of phenomenology as well as separates it from other sciences. “That desired and hidden other, which thankfully causes the world and me to be, is ‘God’.”

Human rights violations often form part of a pattern or practice of violations, rather than being purely isolated incidents. This context is not consistently taken into account by UNTBs during individual case consideration, however. This chapter explores several ways in which awareness of human rights violations’ embeddedness in wider contexts of violations should inform UNTB practice. In particular, the chapter considers the impact, or potential impact, of patterns and practices of violations on the manner in which UNTBs receive information, and the sorts of sources they recognize in their decisions; on UNTBs approaches to the exhaustion of domestic remedies and the burden of proof; on case structuring; and on findings, recommendations and follow-up procedures. The chapter ends by observing that UNTBs are not only receivers but also key disseminators of information, and suggests ways in which their findings as to the patterns and practices of violations may be more effectively disseminated.

Carl Craver begins his chapter by noting that in psychiatry, mechanistic models attempt to understand the causal factors that produce, underlie, or maintain disorders. Knowledge of mechanisms, therefore, would support the goals of preventing, ameliorating, and even curing psychiatric disorders and thus represent the discipline’s highest aspirations for psychiatric explanation. Some thinkers, however, are concerned that under the banner of mechanism resides a static view of phenomenon that does not bear in mind that things constantly change. Another perceived problem with a mechanistic approach is a reductionism that dismisses higher-level causal structures in favor of using new technologies designed primarily to study the smallest things. This chapter argues that such concerns are not applicable to the new mechanists in the philosophy of science.

This chapter seeks to triangulate three key figures in the world of books: Pope, the elite author; John Dennis, a writer in the middle ranks (though he aspired to a higher station, something that he has partially achieved in modern times as a critic); and Curll, the populist bookseller who did not know his place. The discussion follows the interweaving careers of this trio, as the story of their dealings confirms how central their role was in the battle of the books taking place before and after The Dunciad – a site where Dennis as author and Curll as publisher are made to stand for their respective professions. Each man was useful to the others in one way or another. His adversaries would take advantage of the resources of print culture to engage Pope where the literary, the religious, and the political routinely met. In this way, the critic and the publisher came to operate in a perverse synergy with the poet.

The interventionist approach to causation has become a dominant perspective in the philosophy of science, for many reasons. One reason is that it can be generalized to causation across the physical sciences, biological sciences, psychological sciences, and social sciences without losing plausibility; in other words, in an interventionist framework, causality is not “softer” in psychology than it is in the physical sciences. That is not to say that the applications work the same way across sciences. For instance, in their chapter, Roskies, Busch, and Walton note that applying a neuroscientific intervention directly to the interconnected causal network that constitutes the brain is laden with complications.

Jim Woodward has, for a number of years, been a leading philosophical theorist of causation, playing a particularly prominent role in the articulation of the influential theory of interventionism as outlined in his book, Making Things Happen (Woodward, 2003). Readers are therefore in for a treat in this essay (Chapter 2) in which he reviews his current thinking about causation as it applies to psychiatric research and more particularly to the clarification of the impact of environmental risk factors by epidemiological methods. In this introduction, I will seek only to expand on a modest number of points among the many he covers in this review. Most of my points are focused on one relatively well researched risk factor for psychiatric disorders – childhood sexual abuse.

Continuing the aletheistic tradition, Anselm’s most innovative writing, the Proslogion, adopts the form of Augustine’s Confessions, namely an overheard address to God, but he makes progress on the question of divine reference by deploying, in dialogue with the point of view of the atheist, a linguistic deferred ostension of God as that than which nothing greater can be thought. One and the same formula picks God out, establishes his reality, and guides our continued reflection.

Phenomenology is necessary if the phenomenon in question is hidden. But, as Schellenberg and Nietzsche before him observe, God is hidden; therefore, a phenomenology of God is necessary. This phenomenology of God is called “aletheism” from the Greek word for truth, which, with its alpha-privative, implies that the condition for the possibility of truth is hiddenness; aletheism explores the way God, just to be the creator, would have to be hidden to creation.

The central topic here is the entity known as ‘Grub Street’, referring to the milieu comprising figures in the book trade and to their output. Various ways of defining this term are outlined, including historical, sociological, topographical, national, legal, political, educational, technical, moral, and conceptual modes of approach. A brief comparison is made between English experience and the world of clandestine literature in France during the Enlightenment. The bookseller’s quarrels with Pope and Defoe are analysed, along with the notion of ‘Curlicism’, invented by Defoe and proudly adopted by Curll himself. A range of publishing stratagems and misleading devices are described to illustrate Curll’s practice. Two notable features are his proclivity for issuing wills of recently deceased figures of note; and his repeated insertion of ‘keys’ to scandalous materials he published on current celebrities.