Schwarz, Sera (2024) Problems and Prescriptions in Psychiatric Explanation. [Preprint]
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Abstract
A growing body of psychological research suggests that different kinds of explanations of mental illness can have striking and distinctive effects on their audiences’ 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 intuitive alternatives. On this 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, although it seems plausible that most causal explanations can be viewed additively, different characterizations of a problem cannot be so easily combined. This might explain why philosophers and mental health experts sometimes seem to regard different explanations of mental illness as competing or mutually incompatible, despite their appreciation for the causal complexity of these conditions.
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| Item Type: | Preprint | ||||||
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| 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: | 13 Nov 2024 13:33 | ||||||
| Last Modified: | 13 Nov 2024 13:33 | ||||||
| Item ID: | 24212 | ||||||
| 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: | November 2024 | ||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/24212 |
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