The Umeå Cognitive Science Seminar invites you to a a seminar with James Turner, postdoc in philosophy at the Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, "The Overdiagnosis of Depression".
All interested are welcome to attend this seminar.
The idea that mental health conditions such as depression are over-diagnosed has been gaining traction both inside and out of academia, but the jury is still out on whether depression really is over-diagnosed. I will argue that depression, understood as a dysfunctional form of low mood, is, in fact, over-diagnosed. However, I will also argue that this does not mean that people should not be treated for it. Rather, I contend that we should instead should alter the way depression is treated. Specifically, that we should treat depression in a similar way to how we treat pain—as a functional signal that something is else is going wrong.
I am a Postdoctoral Fellow at Umeå Universitet, funded by the Kempe Foundation. In 2024, I completed my PhD in Philosophy at the University of Sheffield.
I have a general research interest in cognitive science, evolutionary theory, and the philosophy of psychiatry. In particular, I am interested in a number of philosophical questions surrounding low mood and depression, including questions regarding the evolution of the low mood system, the intentional content of low mood, and depression's status as a mood disorder. I also work in the philosophy of AI, where I take a functional approach to understanding whether AI systems could have states with representational content
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