Neurodiversity and Madness: toward a non-ideal philosophy of mind (PID2024-155717NB-I00)
Recent trends within the political turn in analytic philosophy have converged on the need for non-ideal theory. Engaging in non-ideal theory involves taking oppressive practices as a starting point, questioning pernicious theoretical idealizations that reflect and reinforce them, also distorting knowledge production. Given this background, NADIA aims to develop a non-ideal philosophy of mind based on the claims and demands of two civil rights movements that have questioned hegemonic assumptions about the mind and mental health: the Mad Pride and Neurodiversity movements. These movements offer a critical view of both traditional psychiatric and critical discourses, aiming to make visible the oppression, resistance, and varied perspectives of mad and neurodivergent people and seeking a paradigm shift in mental health science.
The project advances an interdisciplinary framework that brings together philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychiatry, social cognition, and empirical psychology, combining conceptual analysis with empirically informed and socially engaged methodology. The working hypothesis is that mental expressivism—the view that mental-state attribution is a primarily normative, regulative, and expressive practice embedded in social dynamics of “mindshaping”—can ground a genuinely non-ideal account of the mind that accommodates mad and neurodivergent perspectives. To test it, NADIA’s specific objectives address key conceptual challenges concerning the relationship between cognitive diversity and disorder, identity and diagnosis, autonomy and self-regulation, and the role of social structures in producing distress and injustice. Ultimately, the project seeks not only to advance philosophical debate, but also to contribute to more inclusive forms of knowledge production and to inform mental health research, policy, and practice.