{"id":68,"date":"2015-07-27T18:44:57","date_gmt":"2015-07-27T18:44:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/samfellowes.com\/philosophyofpsychiatryblog\/?p=68"},"modified":"2015-07-27T19:22:39","modified_gmt":"2015-07-27T19:22:39","slug":"reality-and-psychiatric-classifications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/samfellowes.com\/philosophyofpsychiatryblog\/index.php\/2015\/07\/27\/reality-and-psychiatric-classifications\/","title":{"rendered":"Realism vs… coherence? Relativism?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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: <\/p>\n

\"Realism<\/a>
\n[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].<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading Realism vs… coherence? Relativism?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[18],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/samfellowes.com\/philosophyofpsychiatryblog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/samfellowes.com\/philosophyofpsychiatryblog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/samfellowes.com\/philosophyofpsychiatryblog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/samfellowes.com\/philosophyofpsychiatryblog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/samfellowes.com\/philosophyofpsychiatryblog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/samfellowes.com\/philosophyofpsychiatryblog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75,"href":"http:\/\/samfellowes.com\/philosophyofpsychiatryblog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions\/75"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/samfellowes.com\/philosophyofpsychiatryblog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/samfellowes.com\/philosophyofpsychiatryblog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/samfellowes.com\/philosophyofpsychiatryblog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}