This paper examines Ramsey’s use of the concepts of habit and disposition, challenging the common interpretation that he employs them interchangeably in his theory of belief. This interpretative trend reflects a broader tendency to equate habit and disposition, based on the assumption that a habit is an acquired disposition to act. However, the precise relationship between these concepts often remains underexplored and it is not clear whether habits are merely a subset of dispositions or if they are conceptually distinct. Using Ramsey’s writings as a case study, this paper argues that their relationship is more nuanced than a reductive equivalence suggests. I advance a twofold thesis: first, I argue that Ramsey’s use of the notions of habit and disposition is more complex than typically assumed, as he employs them in distinct philosophical contexts and conceptualizes them in different ways. Second, I distinguish between a logical-grammatical kind of dispositionalism and a metaphysical one to argue that the notion of habit is dispositional but habits are not metaphysically equivalent to dispositions. Ramsey conceptualizes habits as methods, rules, procedures of thought, whereas dispositions are understood as tendencies or inclinations engendered and shaped by habits.

The following provides the author’s responses to the four commentaries on Madness: A Philosophical Exploration, written by Muhammad Ali Khalidi, Eleanor Palafox-Harris and Ema Sullivan-Bissett, Miguel Núñez de Prado Gordillo, and Sofia Jeppsson and Paul Lodge.

A central notion in Mad Pride activism is that “madness is a natural reaction” (Curtis et al. 2000, 22). In Madness: A Philosophical Exploration (2022), Justin Garson provides a compelling exploration and defence of this idea through the book’s central concept: madness-as-strategy, i.e., the view of madness as “a well- oiled machine, one in which all of the components work exactly as they ought” (1). This contrasts with the dominant view in 20th- and 21st-century psychiatry, madness-as-dysfunction, which understands madness as a failure of function. The paper provides a critical analysis of the notion of madness-as-strategy as a political tool, pointing out its main virtues and limitations in terms of Garson’s overarching political project: to carve out the conceptual landscape of madness in ways that pay tribute to mad people’s own perspectives. The analysis draws on two central commitments of contemporary neurodiversity theory: a) its relational-ecological model of cognitive (dis)ability; and b) its non-essentialist, sociopolitical critique of the “normalcy paradigm”. I argue that these two insights contribute to both expand the applicability of madness- as-strategy and highlight its limitations as a tool for the political struggles of mad, cognitively divergent, and mentally ill or disabled people. The paper concludes by outlining a way to move beyond both madness-as-dysfunction and madness-as-strategy, toward what I call madness-as-right.

In his bold and illuminating book Madness: A Philosophical Exploration, Justin Garson makes a case for thinking about madness as strategy, rather than as dysfunction. The reader is invited to take away a better appreciation of the historical provenance of madness as strategy, that is, this is not a new idea, destined for the fringes or of interest only to those of a more radical bent. It is rather an idea which has firm roots in the history of psychiatry. Garson’s lens is wide, he is advocating a strategy over dysfunction approach for, at least, anxiety, depression, schizophrenia (and its spectrum disorders), and delusion. In this exploratory paper, we focus on delusion. We discuss what a madness-as-strategy approach might say about delusion, and how that fits with the idea that such beliefs are evolutionarily adaptive. We turn then to explore the implications of this reconceptualization of delusion for epistemic injustice in psychiatry. Our discussions will support the idea that much of the theoretical action lies not in the distinction between dysfunction and strategy, but rather in the distinction between everyday and abnormal dysfunction.

Justin Garson introduces the distinction between two views on Madness we encounter again and again throughout history: Madness as dysfunction, and Madness as strategy. On the latter view, Madness serves some purpose for the person experiencing it, even if it’s simultaneously harmful. The strategy view makes intelligible why Madness often holds a certain allure—even when it’s prima facie terrifying. Moreover, if Madness is a strategy in Garson’s metaphorical sense—if it serves a purpose—it makes sense to use consciously chosen strategies for living with Madness that don’t necessarily aim to annihilate or repress it as far as possible. In this paper, we use our own respective stories as case studies. We have both struggled to resist the allure of Madness, and both ended up embracing a kind of Pyrrhonian scepticism about reality instead of clinging to sane reality.

Psychiatric conditions are commonly regarded as mental disorders or dysfunctions of the mind. Yet there is a wealth of historical theorizing about the mind that conceives of these conditions as, in some sense, a matter of design rather than dysfunction. This intellectual legacy is the topic of Justin Garson’s penetrating study, Madness: A Philosophical Exploration (2022). In this paper, I interpret Garson’s book as a genealogy (in the Foucauldian sense) of the “anti-tradition” that he labels “madness-as-design”. I argue that viewing the intellectual legacy that Garson analyzes through this genealogical lens has two benefits. First, it encourages us to identify other instances of madness-as-design (or madness-by-design), particularly those with an overtly political dimension, such as psychiatric conditions in a colonial context. Second, it should lead us to question the category of madness itself, which turns out to be radically disjointed, particularly since it cannot be unified under the rubric of disorder or dysfunction.

Given the pervasive presence of stereotypes’ negative effects, there is a widely shared view according to which almost all stereotypes are harmful. However, some scholars have claimed that we should distinguish between stereotypes: those with and those without statistical support. In her book, Katherine Puddifoot claims that the statistical criterion falls short of what we need to develop a full theory of the epistemology of stereotyping, so she advocates for a Multifactorial view. While I share Puddifoot’s discomfort with the accuracy criterion, in these comments I will put forward some critical considerations. Firstly, I will introduce a methodological concern regarding the discussion about the normative versus non- normative conception of stereotypes. Secondly, I will introduce some doubts about the extent to which the additional factors pointed out by Puddifoot’s Multifactor view, are actually a challenge to the accuracy criterion. Thirdly, I will also critically comment on the argument that not having stereotypes or having egalitarian stereotypes that do not reflect some aspect of social reality improves our chances of attaining certain epistemic ends regarding the perceptions of individuals. Finally, I will briefly introduce a further factor of deception: the normativity of stereotypes, which is not considered within Puddifoot’s proposal.

This paper provides responses to the 4 commentaries by Federico José Arena, Leonie Smith, Federico Picinali, and Jennifer Saul under the main headings: “Definition of stereotypes”; “Single/dual factor view”, “Epistemic benefits of egalitarian beliefs”, “Beyond stereotyping beliefs”, “Which disposition?”, “More radical implications of evaluative dispositionalism”, “Stereotypes, reality and testimonial injustice”, “Normative stereotypes”, and finally “Moral encroachment”.

The goal of this paper is to identify and discuss the weaker aspects of some of the arguments in Kathy Puddifoot’s fascinating and thought-provoking book. Section 1 deals with Puddifoot’s treatment of the “single factor view” and the “dual factor view” of stereotyping. Section 2 deals with Puddifoot’s treatment of egalitarian attitudes. Section 3 deals with Puddifoot’s treatment of the moral encroachment approach to stereotyping. Finally, section 4 deals with Puddifoot’s theory of evaluative dispositionalism. The sections can be read independently.

This paper argues that Puddifoot’s arguments in How Stereotypes Deceive Us have more radical consequences than those argued for in the book. It does this by pointing out two problems for evaluating stereotypes via Evaluative Dispositionalism, Puddifoot’s view. The first problem concerns the very large number of dispositions associated with any stereotype, and the second the difficulty of evaluating a stereotype in isolation from other elements of a person’s psychology. The paper suggests that, when we take seriously Puddifoot’s arguments, we’ll end up concluding that it’s not possible to assess the epistemic worth of any individual belief or stereotype. We could still discuss the epistemic merits of how it was formed, and discuss the epistemic consequences that this belief or stereotype has for a particular person in a particular situation. But overall epistemic evaluations of stereotypes, or even acts of stereotyping, would be something that we should try to avoid.