ABSTRACT
The disturbances or conditions that are mental disorders are not best understood as brain disorders. Or more exactly: If a disorder has a causal explanatory foundation whose description requires referring to its psychology (Intentional content and so on) and not just or only to its underlying neural mechanisms, then it qualifies as a mental disorder and not as a disorder of the brain. Or so I have argued. This is true, I have claimed, even if or though mental disorders are based existentially in the brain and central nervous system. The disorderliness of a mental disorder is connected, in part, with its being undesirable and
its undesirability is constituted, again, in part, by the fact that a disorder makes a person worse off and does so involuntarily. Diseases do that too, of course. They unwillingly make persons worse off. But mental disorders may not best be understood as forms of disease. I have argued for those claims as well. I am not finished examining what makes a mental disorder a disorder or undesirable for a
person. In this and the next chapter I hope to complete the task. Here, in this chapter, I plan to examine three candidate norms or standards that may be relevant to negative judgments or appraisals of a person’s mental condition and could help to warrant the clinical attribution of a disorder to the condition of a person. The chapter addresses a tough issue. Norms for disorder. What are they? Many controversies
associated with the topic of mental illness or disorder stem from disagreement over which standards or norms are germane to a disorder. A little saintly assistance should help.
