Are psychotic illnesses category disorders?
proposal for a new understanding and classification of the major forms of mental illness
pp. 59-70
in: Manfred Spitzer, Brendan A. Maher (eds), Philosophy and psychopathology, Berlin, Springer, 1990Abstract
At least since Aristotle, philosophers have been aware that human experience only becomes possible when specific instances of things are brought under more general concepts relating to them. For many years, this was discussed in terms of the relationship between "particulars" and "universals." I can only experience this piece of paper as a piece of paper when I recognize this particular one as belonging to a more general class of things.
