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ABSTRACT Theoretical neuroscience, which characterizes neural mechanisms using mathematical and computational models, is highly relevant to central problems in the philosophy of psychiatry. These models can help to solve the explanation problem of causally connecting neural processes with the behaviors and experiences found in mental illnesses. Such explanations will also be useful for generating better classifications and treatments of psychiatric disorders. The result should help to eliminate concerns that mental illnesses such as depression and schizophrenia are not objectively real. A philosophical approach to mental illness based on neuroscience need not neglect the inherently social and historical nature of mental phenomena.
THIS ARTICLE ADDRESSES four major problems in the philosophy of psychiatry: objectivity, classification, treatment, and explanation. The objectivity problem revolves around whether mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and depression are real physical disorders or merely social constructions. The classification problem concerns the validity of taxonomies of mental illnesses, such as those provided by the widely used Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The treatment problem centers on whether it is possible to improve upon current practices that are often haphazard in prescribing drugs and other remedies for mental illnesses. Finally, the explanation problem concerns the gap between neuroscientific accounts of how the brain works and the mental experiences that are part of psychiatric illnesses.
I argue that a solution to the explanation problem has the potential to solve the other three problems as well. Improved theories about the neural mechanisms that produce mental experience should help to establish the biological objectivity of psychiatry, provide a more reliable basis for classifying psychiatric disorders, and generate more reliable treatment regimens. As the most likely source for the needed theories, I look to the emerging field of theoretical neuroscience, which uses mathematical analysis and computational modeling to characterize neural mechanisms that can explain a broad range of mental phenomena.
Because this essay was prepared for the conference "Future Horizons for the Philosophy of Medicine?" I begin with a brief discussion of the nature of philosophy and its application to medicine. I argue against conceptions of the nature of philosophy that take its intellectual role to the pursuit of necessary truths or conceptual clarifications. These conceptions see philosophy as standing above or below the sciences,...