Abstract
The idea that psychiatry contains, in principle, a series of levels of explanation has been criticized not only as empirically false but also, by Campbell, as unintelligible because it presupposes a discredited pre-Humean view of causation. Campbell’s criticism is based on an interventionist-inspired denial that mechanisms and rational connections underpin physical and mental causation, respectively, and hence underpin levels of explanation. These claims echo some superficially similar remarks in Wittgenstein’s Zettel. But attention to the context of Wittgenstein’s remarks suggests a reason to reject explanatory minimalism in psychiatry and reinstate a Wittgensteinian notion of levels of explanation. Only in a context broader than the one provided by interventionism is that the ascription of propositional attitudes, even in the puzzling case of delusions, justified. Such a view, informed by Wittgenstein, can reconcile the idea that the ascription mental phenomena presupposes a particular level of explanation with the rejection of an a priori claim about its connection to a neurological level of explanation.
Highlights
Psychiatry deals with phenomena that range between large-scale higher order social phenomena, person level phenomena, and the sub-personal level phenomena
Sciences of the mind, such as psychiatry and psychology, can in principle be reduced to biology, biology to chemistry, and chemistry to physics
It is not absurd to suppose that psychological laws may eventually be explained in terms of the behaviour of individual neurons in the brain; that the behaviour of individual cells – including neurons – may eventually be explained in terms of their biochemical constitution; and that the behaviour of molecules – including the macromolecules that make up living cells – may eventually be explained in terms of atomic physics
Summary
Psychiatry deals with phenomena that range between large-scale higher order social phenomena (e.g., poverty, cultural norms), person level phenomena (e.g., trauma, symptoms such as delusions and syndromes such as depression), and the sub-personal level phenomena (e.g., genes, neurones). This paper, describes a principled attack on the very idea of levels of explanation in favor of a form of explanatory minimalism. Having set out Campbell’s argument for explanatory minimalism for psychiatry, I compare it to some similar sounding remarks from Wittgenstein’s collection Zettel [5]. Like Campbell, Wittgenstein denies the necessity for mechanisms to mediate (apparently) causal connections and denies the assumption that rational connections between mental phenomena need be mediated by underlying neurological mechanisms. Against Explanatory Minimalism in Psychiatry is a characteristic level of explanation for mental phenomena. The final section builds on Wittgenstein’s account of the normative connections between mental phenomena and argues that Campbell’s explanatory minimalism is insufficient for psychiatry because it provides no account of what constitutes states as mental states, which plays an important role in psychiatric explanation
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