Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry
28th ANNUAL MEETING May 14-15, 2016 Atlanta, GA
Call for Abstracts
PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES IN SCIENTIFIC PSYCHIATRY: RDOC, DSM, MECHANISMS, AND MORE
Conference co-chairs: Şerife Tekin & Peter Zachar
Keynote speakers:
Scott O. Lilienfeld, Ph.D. Emory University
Uma Vaidyanathan, Ph.D. National Institute of Mental Health
The science of psychiatry advances by means of empirical research. Scientific cultures, however, rely upon on non-empirical commitments such as methodological preferences, criteria for good constructs, and decisions about how to allocate limited resources to a superfluity of scientific goals. For instance shortly before the publication of the DSM-5 ̧the National Institute of Mental Health announced the goal of ultimately replacing the DSM as a guide for scientific research in psychiatry. Their preferred alternative is called the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC), a classification matrix of basic psychological capacities that lend themselves for explanation by relevant biological mechanisms. In some respects RDoC is as much a philosophical revolution as a scientific one.
Accompanying this transition is the burgeoning body of first person accounts of patients, narrating the experience of mental disorder and psychiatric treatment, adding to the sources of knowledge in psychiatry.
Both these transitions in the psychiatric landscape create further impetus to revisit important topics pertaining to scientific research in psychopathology, not only among psychiatrists and psychologists, but also among philosophers and historians of science who specialize in thinking about the nature of scientific research and progress.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
What are the advantages and disadvantages of the RDoC framework for psychiatric research ? How could recent philosophical work on mechanisms contribute to RDoC’s promise to develop a causal understanding of psychopathology? Should latent variables be considered causes of behavior? To what does construct validity refer in a psychiatric context? Categories of mental disorder may not carve nature at the joints. Do competing dimensional models? Can research in the history and theory of psychopathology contribute to the progress of scientific psychiatry? How can the work on values in feminist philosophy of science address the various tensions that exist between scientist versus practitioner perspectives? What are the implications of the differences between folk psychological and scientific psychological concepts on scientific research on mental disorders? Can patients’ experiences with mental illness contribute to scientific progress, or are they incommensurable?
Presentations will be strictly limited to 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for discussion.
Abstracts will be blind reviewed, so the author’s identifying information should be attached separately.
Abstracts should be 500-600 words and sent via email by November 15, 2015 to Serife Tekin (stekin@daemen.edu) and Peter Zachar (pzachar@aum.edu). Notices of acceptance or rejection will be distributed in January.
