The Ontology of Psychology Questioning Foundations in the Philosophy of Mind

Here she proposes a view of psychoanalysis as a treatment that owes its successes largely to its biological nature—biological in its capacity to best approximate the extinction of problems arising owing to aversive conditioning. She also discusses whether “the mental” can have any real ontological standing, advancing a new form of reductive physicalism— diachronic conjunctive token physicalism (DiCoToP)—which not only provides an understanding of mind/brain properties synchronically but can also be sufficient to address human-sized epistemological considerations that require a diachronic view. She then notes the positive implications of her account for psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Finally, she investigates the uses and abuses of consistency, both in method and content, in the several domains of interest: empirical research, psychoanalysis, thought experiments, and experimental philosophy.