Thursday, April 9, 2009

Philosophy

I have been writing academic philosophy for quite a number of years now. When I arrived to start my PhD, my supervisor was very keen for me to give papers at conferences. I was initially reluctant, but he was persistent. I then, over a number of years, was to give a number of papers at philosophy conferences. I mention this, because some of these papers, or at least their abstracts, have become quite popular online. I googled a few of my papers recently, and found them quite high up on the search rankings. One of my papers, 'A Wittgensteinian Analysis of Schizophrenia' is, at my last look, the top search result for the search "Wittgensteinian" and "schizophrenia". The abstract for a paper I am giving in the middle of this year, 'Heidegger, Being-in-the-world and Schizophrenia' was on the third page of results for the search "Heidegger" and "schizophrenia", although it has now fallen down the rankings a bit. This was a nice discovery for me. It means that people are interested in my thoughts on schizophrenia, which for someone suffering from the condition, is encouraging. If someone who suffers from schizophrenia can write of the disease and have their thoughts read, then hopefully we can come to a better understanding of what the syndrome is. Schizophrenia is very much an opaque condition, that has so far resisted research and analysis. We haven't come to many definite conclusions about exactly what it is, despite all our efforts. So hopefully, if someone suffering from schizophrenia can have their voice heard, and heard regrading what they think the condition is, then maybe we can move further forward to our understanding of this baffling condition. Anyway, here's hoping.

1 comment:

Richard said...

could you tell me where to get your essay about schizophrenia and wittgenstein? I am really interested in that matter.
Thanks