The Disordered Mind Theory of Mental Illness
In a series of articles and books over the past decade, the philosopher George Graham develops a theory of mental disorder with the following qualities: 1. is non-reductionist with respect to the mind and the brain; 2. is informed by the philosophy of mind; and 3. coheres with the experiences of patients and clinicians. Grahamâs theory holds that mental illness is distinct from somatic/bodily illness though may co-occur or otherwise be bound up with so-called broken brains. A helpful analogy for what is meant here by âthe mentalâ or âthe mindâ is to view the brain as computer hardware, whereas the mind is software. On this picture, the mind and the brain are surely not independent; a hardware issue may impede the computation of some software. However, one may have bugs in oneâs software - âgumming up the worksâ to use a common phrase of Graham - on perfectly functioning hardware.