Scientific Perspectivism and psychiatric diagnoses: respecting history and constraining relativism
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(2021) 11:8
PAPER IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SCIENCES OF MIND AND BRAIN
Scientific Perspectivism and psychiatric diagnoses: respecting history and constraining relativism Sam Fellowes 1 Received: 30 August 2019 / Accepted: 28 August 2020/ # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Historians and sociologists of psychiatry often claim that psychiatric diagnoses are discontinuous. That is, a particular diagnoses will be described in one way in one era and described quite differently in a different era. Historians and sociologists often draw epistemic consequences from such discontinuities, claiming that truth is pluralistic, provisional and historicised. These arguments do not readily fit in with how analytical philosophers of science approach scientific realism. I show how the pessimistic meta induction does not capture the point which historians and sociologists are making but scientific perspectivism seems to capture their point much better. I then highlight conceptual innovations which scientific perspectivists add. They demarcate between truth and objective reality, they specify which type of truth they endorse and they put down constraints on possible truths. This blocks an anything goes relativism which historians and sociologists can be in danger of falling into. I highlight my argument by discussing a discontinuous episode in the history of autism. I discuss three aspects of this discontinuity and show how scientific perspectivism can portray each aspect as non-trivially true. My argument shows that we can be scientific realists about autism even if we can formulate notions of autism in quite different ways. Keywords Philosophy of psychiatry . Scientific realism . Perspectivism . Models . History
of autism
This article belongs to the Topical Collection: Perspectivism in science: metaphysical and epistemological reflections Guest Editor: Michela Massimi
* Sam Fellowes [email protected]
1
Politics, Philosophy and Religion, County South, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YL, UK
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European Journal for Philosophy of Science
(2021) 11:8
1 Introduction This paper argues that scientific perspectivism offers a useful way to think about psychiatric diagnoses. Scientific perspectivism offers a view of scientific knowledge whereby we can both (i) take knowledge claims seriously, and (ii) accommodate scientific theories being historically situated and replaced over time. Applying scientific perspectivism to psychiatric diagnoses provides a framework which respects historical and sociological studies of psychiatry whilst simultaneously retaining a non-trivial notion of truth. Historians and sociologists of psychiatry often claim that psychiatric diagnoses are constrained or constituted by the historical era in which they are formulated (Danziger 1997, p.181; Evans 2017, p.8; Hollin 2014, p.2; Rose 1999, p.xiv; Verhoeff 2013, p.443). As history changes, so too the diagnoses which psychiatrists postulate have changed. Additionally, this process will likely continue into the future. Historians and so
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