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Philosophy, psychiatry & psychology

I critique the essentialistic notion that psychiatricdisorders should be conceptualized as natural kinds, that is, exhaustivelydefined with reference to inherent properties. Biomedical model thinkersbelieve that psychiatric natural kinds can best be isolated by studyingunderlying biopathological processes, while research-oriented clinicalpsychologists think they can be identified statistically. Both groupsassume that if a category can't be conceptualized as a natural kind, it isan arbitrary category. I argue that conceptualizing psychiatric disordersas bounded entities in nature is inconsistent both with medicine'sunderstanding of disease and evolutionary biology's understandingof species. In contrast to natural kinds, I introduce the conceptof practical kinds, which are stable patterns that can be identifiedwith varying levels of reliability and validity. I claim that thinkinganti-essentialistically and conceptualizing psychiatric disordersas practical kinds is more consistent with a scientific view of the world.

Psychiatric Disorders Are Not Natural Kinds