About

I am an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, PA.   I earned my Ph.D. in philosophy at MIT; my dissertation is entitled “Antidepressants, Bioenhancements, and the Ethics of Self-Respect.”  Before coming to MIT, I completed two postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard University: one in the Department of the History of Science (studying the role of neuroscientific findings in popular self-help literature), and the other in the Mind Brain Behavior Initiative (studying the placebo effect).  And, before that, I received a Ph.D. in neuroscience at Yale University, where my dissertation focused on G Protein regulation (and the basic biology underlying antidepressant and antipsychotic mechanisms).  My current work is in the philosophy of psychiatry, ethics, Mad studies, feminist theory, philosophy of Disability, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science.  More specifically, I employ advances in these areas of philosophy to endeavor to improve psychiatric and neuroscientific practices.  I explore, among other things, how we might defend the reconceptualization of “mental illness” as neurodiversity, the impact of relational models of the mind and self on psychiatric diagnosis and treatment, whether “mental illness” is a property only of individuals or also of families and groups, the ethics of antidepressant and other psychopharmaceutical use, and the feminist or anti-feminist effects of neuroscientific research.  I can be reached at:  gingerAhoffman [at] gmail [dot] com.