Beyond Classificatory Realism: A Deflationary Perspective on Psychiatric Nosology
Dissertation, University of Sydney (
2017)
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Abstract
Classificatory realism is the view that nature divides herself up into classes, or “natural
kinds”, and claims that it is the goal of scientific classification systems to correctly identify,
name, and describe these classes. On this view, the legitimacy of a classification is
independent of us and our needs, and instead depends entirely on how well the structure of
the classification “matches” the natural kind structure of reality. Progress with respect to
classification consists in finding classifications that better match reality. Ultimately,
classifications are seen as representations of reality, and it is the world itself that dictates
what is to count as a good or correct classification of a given domain.
In this thesis I argue against classificatory realism. In the course of this argument, I
develop and defend an alternative view of our diagnostic and classificatory practices in
psychiatry. This alternative view takes seriously the fact that psychiatric classifications and
diagnostic concepts are technical extensions of natural language — tools that are introduced
by particular humans, at a particular point in time, for particular human purposes. Viewed
from this alternative perspective, some of the most vexing problems in the philosophy of
psychopathology suddenly become tractable.