One of my philosophical interests is establishing if psychiatric classifications are real. This question has many, many dimensions and I feel it is often portrayed in untenable terms. A useful starting point is: what does it mean for a scientific thing (an electron, Newtons laws) to be real? (Note some interesting subquestions: are scientific things real in different ways to non-scientific things? Is there one overarching notion of real for all sciences or would psychiatry need a different notion of reality to physics). Here is an interesting and potentially useful diagram:

[Note that I found this on Twitter [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CJlcwSXUAAAc9Wq.jpg:large], I do not know who the author is but I did not create it].

It gives an interesting perspective on how various elements interrelate. I do not fully agree with it. Should correspondence and coherence be put at opposite ends of a scale? I wonder if coherence might be better put somewhere closer to the center, replacing the end of that arrow with relativism. Perhaps Psillos is correctly placed for his earlier works but I think his later writings place much greater emphasis on theoretical virtues, hence needs to go closer to coherence (but without moving too far from correspondence). Also, where would a neo-Kantian position in the style of Massimi and Kitcher go? The middle ground might seem the obvious place but I would not like to associate them with Constructive Empiricism or Instrumentalism. Anyway, the table has got me thinking and it certainly makes some interesting claims in a convenient visual form.