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This paper argues that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) constitutes a biopolitical problem, a scientific object which needs to be studied, classified and regulated. Assemblages of authorities, knowledges and techniques make CFS/ME subjects and shape their everyday conduct in an attempt to increase their supposed autonomy, wellbeing and health. CFS and CFS/ME identities are however made not only through government, scientific, and medical interventions but also by the patients themselves, a biosocial community who collaborates with scientists, educates itself about the intricacies of biomedicine, and contests psychiatric truth claims. CFS/ME is an illness trapped between medicine and psychology, an illness that is open to debate and therefore difficult to manage and standardise. The paper delineates different interventions by medicine, science, the state and the patients themselves and concludes that CFS/ME remains elusive, only partially standardised, in an on-going battle between all the different actors that want to define it for their own situated interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the relationship between the ‘elusive’ science of psychical research and experimental physics in the period approximately, 1870–1930. Most studies of the relationship between psychical research and the established sciences have examined the ways in which psychical researchers used theories in the established sciences to give greater plausibility to their interpretations of such puzzling phenomena as telepathy, telekinesis and ectoplasm. A smaller literature has examined the use of laboratory instruments to produce scientific evidence for these phenomena. This paper argues that the cultures of experiment in the established science of physics could matter to psychical research in a different way: it suggests that experience of capricious effects, recalcitrant instruments and other problems of the physical laboratory made British physicists especially sympathetic towards the difficulties of the spiritualistic séance and other sites of psychical enquiry. In the wake of widely-reported claims that the mediums they had investigated had been exposed as frauds, these scientific practitioners were eventually persuaded by the merits of an older argument that human psychic subjects could not be treated like laboratory hardware. However, well into the twentieth century, they maintained that experimental physics had important lessons for psychical researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs a case study from the history of neuroscience—brain reward function—to scrutinize the inductive argument for the so-called ‘Heuristic Identity Theory’ (HIT). The case fails to support HIT, illustrating why other case studies previously thought to provide empirical support for HIT also fold under scrutiny. After distinguishing two different ways of understanding the types of identity claims presupposed by HIT and considering other conceptual problems, we conclude that HIT is not an alternative to the traditional identity theory so much as a relabeling of previously discussed strategies for mechanistic discovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existence of psychological altruism is hotly debated in the psychological and philosophical literature. In this paper I argue that even if psychological altruism does exist in some (or all) human groups, there may be no purely evolutionary explanation for existence of psychological altruism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues that transfer of assumptions, concepts, models and metaphors from a variety of Lamarckisms played a significant role in the endeavors to constitute psychology as a scientific discipline. It deals with such efforts in the second half of the nineteenth century and until early twentieth century in Britain and in France. The paper discusses works by Herbert Spencer, John Hughlings-Jackson, Théodule Ribot and Sigmund Freud. It argues that certain crucial facets of their work as discipline-founders could and should be looked upon as resulting from such transfer of/from Lamarckisms. Specifically it looks at the constitutive roles of notions of hierarchical order, parallelism, self, memory and collectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the metaphorical nature and meaning of a concept, inhibition, ubiquitous in physiological, psychological and everyday descriptions of the controlling organization of human conduct. There are three parts. The first reviews the established argument in the theory of knowledge that metaphor is not 'merely' figure of speech but intrinsic to language use. The middle section provides an introduction to the history of inhibition as a concept in nervous physiology and in psychology. This emphasizes the conjoined descriptive and normative character the concept has had, integrating science and the ordinary person's understanding of the achievement of top-down control in organized systems. The last section introduces a different dimension to the history and logic of control, pointing out that 'economic', as opposed to hierarchical, models of control also exist. The conclusion asserts the flexible, particular character of metaphor, encompassing mental and bodily realms – and hence the importance of historical work for its comprehension. • Discussion of metaphor in common in psychology, physiology and everyday language. • History of concept of inhibition, a key concept in psychology and physiology. • Case study of relations between descriptive and normative knowledge in biological science and society. • Discussion of relations between 'top-down' and 'economic' models of the achievement of organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]