Cause and Explanation in Psychiatry: An Interventionist Perspective

Woodward, James (2008) Cause and Explanation in Psychiatry: An Interventionist Perspective.

Abstract

This paper explores some issues concerning the nature and structure of causal explanation in psychiatry and psychology from the point of view of the “interventionist” theory defended in my book, Making Things Happen. Among the issues is explored is the extent to which candidate causal explanations involving “upper level” or relatively coarse-grained or macroscopic variables such as mental/psychological states (e.g. highly self critical beliefs or low self esteem) or environmental factors (e.g. parental abuse) compete with explanations that instead appeal to underlying, “lower level” or more fine gained neural, genetic, or biochemical mechanisms.