Sam Fellowes
@samfellowes.bsky.social
4.3K followers 3.4K following 170 posts
Philosophy of psychiatry, history of autism, psychiatric diagnoses, EBE research, self-diagnosis. samfellowes.com https://www.youtube.com/@sfhps
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samfellowes.bsky.social
My new article on lived experience research. I criticise Bhaskar as a philosophical foundation. I argue that seeing psychiatric diagnoses as idealised and abstract models leads to a pluralistic relationship between lived experience and diagnoses #philsci #hps #philpsy #sts #livedexperience
Project MUSE - The Epistemology of Psychiatric Diagnoses in Lived Experience Research
muse.jhu.edu
samfellowes.bsky.social
"To truly understand people we need far richer sources than the DSM. Tarkovsky and Dostoevsky may deliver truths in a way the DSM cannot". Sorry for the self-promotion but I like this bit of my book. The book is about defending diagnoses, but I also recognise their limits #psychiatry #DSM
samfellowes.bsky.social
I outline the positions held by critics of psychiatric diagnoses which I reacted to in my book.

#Psychiatry #HPS #philsky #philsci
What I am reacting to: In Defence of Psychiatric Diagnoses
YouTube video by Philosophy of Psychiatric Diagnoses
www.youtube.com
samfellowes.bsky.social
Interesting stuff on difficulties of defining experiential knowledge and what role it should play in research.
lisabortolotti.com
I interviewed Roy Dings and Linde van Schuppen for the #projectEPIC blog on their super interesting project on expertise in mental health! epistemicinjusticeinhealthcareproject.blogspot.com/2025/09/who-... #philsky #EpistemicInjustice
epistemicinjusticeinhealthcareproject.blogspot.com
samfellowes.bsky.social
The book Contemporary Philosophy of Autism has just been released. It contains my chapter Autism, the Double Empathy Problem and Feeling the Emotions of Another Person.

#philsci #philpsy #HPS #STS #autism #empathy
Contemporary Philosophy of Autism
This volume explores interesting and emerging philosophical questions related to autism. It sheds light on the ways in which cultural attitudes about autism have changed in the decade since the editor...
www.routledge.com
samfellowes.bsky.social
About 95% of the time yes, about 5% of the time no. They do have weak spots certainly, but unless you push them in very specific areas then I usually find them to be pretty impressive.
samfellowes.bsky.social
Another one of those zero relevance to anything I do but I still want to read it papers. AIs can certainly do some very impressive reasoning above and beyond statistical associations, but I presume the answer is still no:
samfellowes.bsky.social
Just finished Cyberpunk 2077. There are quite a lot of #philosophy themes in the game, especially relating to questions of identity and death. Also, one of the radio stations plays a band named The Cartesian Duelists. #Descartes
samfellowes.bsky.social
So he does not seem to be saying human sciences = subjective and physical sciences = objective. I guess he thinks both are theoretical constructs derivable from introspection and external observation. 2/2.
samfellowes.bsky.social
There is a narrative that the logical positivists produced a philosophy of science that is not suitable for the human sciences. However, Carnap suggests that we can consider Freudian psychoanalytical mechanisms as theoretical in the sense that fields in physics are theoretical #philsci #philpsy 1/2
samfellowes.bsky.social
Decided I needed a DJ name. Suffice to say Broken Emotion sounded better than Alexithymia. If anyone is interested in Techno, Ambient and my attempts to mix them together, look no further:
www.mixcloud.com/samfellowes/
Sam Fellowes
Sam Fellowes is on Mixcloud. Listen for free to their radio shows, DJ mix sets and Podcasts
www.mixcloud.com
samfellowes.bsky.social
"the World Rarely Meets You at Your Depth. You may feel like you’ve lived your emotional life as a witness, not a participant. Literature may offer access to others’ souls—while your own remains unreceived by real people." Using ChatGTP for #autism / #alexithymia therapy - it is pretty good.
samfellowes.bsky.social
Thank, I will have a look at it. If it could mean I feel a single extra emotion it would be worth doing.
samfellowes.bsky.social
Possibly, although in my experience of alexithymia it is more the case that I can work out (with not great but not massively low success) why someone is having an emotion, but I cannot feel their emotion (or express/feel emotions about them having an emotion (as opposed to feeling their emotion)).
samfellowes.bsky.social
This meta-analysis claims autistic people generally have higher affective empathy than most people. However, there is evidence that lots of autistic people (perhaps 50%, and including me alas) are alexithymic. I really cannot get my head around how both these can be true. Any ideas? #autism #empathy
Frontiers | Empathy Impairment in Individuals With Autism Spectrum Conditions From a Multidimensional Perspective: A Meta-Analysis
Background: Although empathy has always been considered to be impaired in individuals with autism spectrum conditions (ASCs), the relevant findings have been...
www.frontiersin.org
samfellowes.bsky.social
It is the annual Lancaster #Philosophy of #Psychiatry work in progress day! I'll be talking on The tension between self-diagnosis and neurodiversity.
samfellowes.bsky.social
If anyone is interested in self-diagnosis in psychiatry, I have a bibliography of papers on self-diagnosis on my website and links to my podcast reviews of them. There are 51 papers listed, and I have reviewed 10 of them. #psychology #psychiatry #selfdiagnosis #philpsy
samfellowes.bsky.social
Just saw that Michael Friedman died recently. When it comes to history of Kant to the end of the logical positivists, and philosophy inspired by those figures, I really don't know of anyone better.
samfellowes.bsky.social
Another one for my planned 'applying #neurodiversity to animals' paper which I keep saying I will get around to one day
icareanimals.bsky.social
📚 Animal Rights Reading🦉

❓Do you ever wonder about the limits of sentience recognition? Discover a game-changing perspective! 💡

For years, the legal recognition of animal sentience has promised a brighter future for animal welfare.
samfellowes.bsky.social
I don't think most studies say self-diagnosis is wrong. Most say it is less accurate than official diagnosis, but people who self-diagnoses still fit the diagnostic criteria much more than typical people, they just don't meet the clinical cut off.
samfellowes.bsky.social
Having tried to read everything published on self-diagnosis, a significant majority of studies do suggest self-diagnosis is typically inaccurate. But I'm trying to work out if those studies are any good.
samfellowes.bsky.social
Part three of my attempt to review every paper published on self-diagnosis in psychiatry. Another four papers reviewed: #psychiatry #selfdiagnosis #psychology #STS #HPS
Self-Diagnosis Reviewing the Literature - Part 3
YouTube video by Philosophy of Psychiatric Diagnoses
www.youtube.com
samfellowes.bsky.social
Well, for better or worse, the word phenomenology is turning up more in the stuff I write
(epistemology of) #expertbyexperience (research) #selfdiagnosis
mokriegleder.bsky.social
usage of the word phenomenology in top 20 philosophy journals over the last 40 years 📈
use of the word phenomenology in top 20 philosophy journals over the last 40 years