Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T19:13:49.628Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Why not be pluralists about explanatory reduction?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Kathryn Tabb*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027. [email protected]

Abstract

Borsboom et al. convincingly argue that, from their symptom network perspective, mental disorders cannot be reduced to brain disorders. While granting that network structures exist, I respond that there is no reason to think they are the only psychiatric phenomena worth explaining. From a pluralist perspective, what is required is not a full-scale rejection of explanatory reductionism but a critical attention to the circumstances of its application.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Kaiser, M. I. (2015) Reductive explanation in the biological sciences. Springer.Google Scholar
Kapur, S., Phillips, A. G. & Insel, T. R. (2012) Why has it taken so long for biological psychiatry to develop clinical tests and what to do about it?” Molecular Psychiatry 17(12):1174–79.Google Scholar
Kauffman, S. A. (1971) Articulation of parts explanations in biology and the rational search for them. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 8:257–72.Google Scholar
Kendler, K. S. (2013) What psychiatric genetics has taught us about the nature of psychiatric illness and what is left to learn. Molecular Psychiatry 18(10):1058–66.Google Scholar
Sarkar, S. (1992) Models of reduction and categories of reductionism. Synthese, 91:167–94.Google Scholar
Schaffner, K. (2006) Reduction: The Cheshire cat problem and a return to roots. Synthese 151:377402.Google Scholar
Schaffner, K. F. (2016) Behaving: What's genetic, what's not, and why should we care? Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tabb, K. (2015) Psychiatric progress and the assumption of diagnostic discrimination. Philosophy of Science 82(5):1047–58.Google Scholar