Schwarz, Sera (2025) Problems and Prescriptions in Psychiatric Explanation. [Preprint]
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Abstract
A growing body of research suggests that different kinds of explanations of mental illness can have striking effects on their audiences’ downstream attitudes and inferences. But it is surprisingly difficult to account for why this is. In this paper, I present a 'normative model' of explanatory framing effects, which I claim does a better job of capturing the empirical data than do models that focus exclusively on changing causal or metaphysical judgments. On the normative model, different explanations will tend to differently affect their audience’s reasoning because each encodes a different picture of the kind of problem represented by the explanandum, and therefore the kinds of responses to it that are normatively apt to pursue. For example, a biological explanation of depression will convey to its audience that depression is a specifically biological problem, and therefore that appropriate responses to it should be directed at biological facts and norms. The communication of this normative information is, I argue, importantly different from communicating that depression has biological causes. For example, we can often combine different causal explanations, but it’s not clear that we can as happily combine different characterisations of a problem. This might explain why philosophers and clinical experts sometimes seem to regard different explanations of mental illness as 'competitive', despite their appreciation for the causal complexity of psychiatric conditions.
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| Item Type: | Preprint | ||||||
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| Additional Information: | Forthcoming in British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. | ||||||
| Keywords: | psychiatry, explanation, causation, norms | ||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Causation General Issues > Ethical Issues General Issues > Explanation Specific Sciences > Psychology > Judgment and Decision Making Specific Sciences > Medicine Specific Sciences > Medicine > Psychiatry Specific Sciences > Psychology General Issues > Values In Science |
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| Depositing User: | Sera Schwarz | ||||||
| Date Deposited: | 10 Aug 2025 13:41 | ||||||
| Last Modified: | 10 Aug 2025 13:41 | ||||||
| Item ID: | 26167 | ||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Causation General Issues > Ethical Issues General Issues > Explanation Specific Sciences > Psychology > Judgment and Decision Making Specific Sciences > Medicine Specific Sciences > Medicine > Psychiatry Specific Sciences > Psychology General Issues > Values In Science |
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| Date: | July 2025 | ||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/26167 |
Available Versions of this Item
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Problems and Prescriptions in Psychiatric Explanation. (deposited 14 Jan 2025 13:51)
- Problems and Prescriptions in Psychiatric Explanation. (deposited 10 Aug 2025 13:41) [Currently Displayed]
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