Philosophical questions raised by psychopharmacology

Abstract

In addition to the many empirical questions that remain for psychopharmacology, the field has raised important philosophical issues for the cognitive and clinical sciences. Philosophy of medicine, philosophy of psychology, and philosophy of cognitive science have only recently begun to address conceptual issues in neuroscience (Bechtel et al. , 2001; Bennett & Hacker, 2003; Bickle, 2003; Churchland, 2002; Mishara, 2007), and by and large have ignored the area of clinical psychopharmacology. This volume attempts to begin to address this notable gap in the literature. A host of philosophical questions are raised by modern psychopharmacology. For the purposes of this volume, these can be divided into (1) conceptual or metaphysical questions about categories relevant to psychopharmacology, (2) explanatory or epistemological questions addressing our knowledge of how psychotropics work, and (3) moral or ethical questions about when psychotropics should be used. In the rest of this chapter I will very briefly outline each of these categories of questions; the rest of the volume will then consider each of these categories and questions in turn, exploring them in more detail. Conceptual questions raised by the effects of psychotropics Psychopharmacology raises questions about a number of categories employed in psychiatry. Most importantly, it raises the question of how optimally to define medical and psychiatric disorders. The definition of disorder lies at the heart of philosophy of medicine, and how we think about disorder may well impact on how we think about interventions, including treatment with pharmaceuticals or psychotropics.