Peter Zachar

When i was in graduate school, I inadvertently walked in on a fellow student taking his comprehensive exams. He was extremely frustrated because two of the questions asked about conceptual issues in personality and personality disorders. This student was not expecting such questions and considered them to be unfair. I knew other students in that same program who would have considered it a gift to get such “interesting” questions. Those clinical and counseling psychologists with theoretical–philosophical interests are often attracted to the topics of personality and personality disorders. It has, therefore, puzzled me why these same topics are largely ignored by those philosophers who study the conceptual issues of ..

This article critically examines Louis Charland’s claim that personality disorders are moral rather than medical kinds by exploring the relationship between personality disorders and virtue ethics. We propose that the conceptual resources of virtue theory can inform psychiatry’s thinking about personality disorders, but also that virtue theory as understood by Aristotle cannot be reduced to the narrow domain of ‘the moral’ in the modern sense of the term. Some overlap between the moral domain’s notion of character-based ethics and the medical domain’s notion of character-based disorders is unavoidable. We also apply a modified version of John Sadler’s “moral wrongfulness test” to borderline and narcissistic personality disorders. With respect to both diagnoses, we argue that they involve negative moral evaluations, but may also have indispensable nonmoral features and, therefore, classify legitimate psychiatric disorders.

In this brief commentary, I would like to discuss two reservations I have about the article by Bergner and Bunford. Before doing so let me make some preliminary remarks.Their hypothesis that the concept of disability unites the various mental disorder constructs that have been proposed over the centuries and across cultures is reasonable and accords well with common sense. The concept of disability does a lot of good work in helping us to understand mental disorders.With respect to the authors’ contrast between the disability conception versus the behavioral conception of mental disorder, the notion that counting behaviors alone justifies diagnosing a psychiatric disorder is worth critiquing. Claiming that everyone...

This interdisciplinary work addresses the question, "What role should psychological conceptualization play for thinkers who believe that the brain is the organ of the mind?" It offers readers something unique both by systematically comparing the writings of eliminativist philosophers of mind with the writings of the most committed proponents of biological psychiatry, and by critically scrutinizing their shared anti-anthropomorphism from the standpoint of a diagnostician and therapist. Contradicting the contemporary assumption that common sense psychology has already been proven futile, and we are just waiting for an adequate scientifically-based replacement, this book provides explicit philosophical and psychological arguments showing why, if they did not already have both cognitive and psychodynamic psychologies, philosophers and scientists would have to invent them to better understand brains. (Series A)

Cet article explore la classification des troubles psychiatriques dans la perspective du modèle des espèces pratiques. En nous basant sur certains travaux en philosophie des sciences qui soutiennent que les éléments chimiques et les espèces biologiques ne possèdent pas de véritables essences, nous affirmons que les troubles psychiatriques ne devraient pas être compris, eux non plus, de façon essentialiste. Les troubles psychiatriques sont des « espèces pratiques », non des « espèces naturelles ». Ce modèle représente une approche pragmatiste de la classification qui pose, compte tenu de l’infinie complexité du monde, qu’une multitude de décisions peuvent jouer un rôle légitime dans la définition des limites des catégories. Il s’agit d’une approche nominaliste contemporaine qui considère les concepts et les catégories comme provisoires et partiels, sans toutefois rejeter l’idée qu’ils sont des espèces légitimes. Ce modèle rejette ce que Ian Hacking a nommé le structurisme inhérent, sans pour autant rejeter les espèces. Le modèle des espèces pratiques rejette aussi l’éliminativisme. Il est en accord avec les arguments non essentialistes offerts par les éliminativistes, mais il n’accepte pas leurs conclusions austères. Je discute finalement les complications et les imperfections du modèle.This article explores the classification of psychiatric disorders from the perspective of the practical kinds model. Based on work in the philosophy of science which argues that chemical elements and biological species do not have real essences, it is argued that psychiatric disorders should not be understood essentialistically either. Psychiatric disorders are practical, not natural kinds. This model represents a pragmatist approach to classification which holds that, because the world is so complex, a multitude of decisions can play legitimate roles in defining category boundaries. It is a contemporary nominalistic approach that views concepts and categories as provisional and partial, but does not reject the notion that there are legitimate kinds. It rejects what Ian Hacking has called inherent structurism, but not kinds. The practical kinds model is also anti-eliminativist. It agrees with the non-essentialistic arguments offered by eliminativists, but does not accept their austere conclusions. Complications and shortcomings of the model are discussed

I critically analyze Kagan’s claim that in order to advance the science of emotion we should abandon the practice of referring to emotions with common folk psychological names, such as fear and anger. Kagan recommends discovering more homogenous constructs that are segregated by the type of evidence used to infer those constructs. He also argues that variable origins, biological implementations, and psychological and sociocultural contexts may combine to create distinct kinds of emotional states that require distinct names. I acknowledge that such a splitting strategy will provide increased validity, but also claim that atomizing alone may not give us everything we want from a scientific classification

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.3 (2002) 219-227 [Access article in PDF] The Practical Kinds Model as a Pragmatist Theory of Classification Peter Zachar Pragmatist theories of scientific classification are intended to be pluralistic models that recognize different ways of cutting up the world as valuable, but do not require us to adopt whatever-goes relativism or metaphysical antirealism. How ironic that my application of pragmatism to psychopathology has been charged with not being sufficiently pluralistic because it tries to fit all psychiatric disorders into the Procrustean bed of practical kinds. The Practical Kinds Model in General As a point of clarification, the practical kinds model is not a description of a type of category combined with an argument that all psychiatric disorders should be seen as belonging to that type. If it were that kind of model, I would fully agree with Haslam that practical kinds, fuzzy kinds, and discrete kinds are all potential types of psychiatric disorders. Like Nick Haslam, I believe that there are many different things in the DSM-IV and the ICD-10, and they cannot neatly be classified as the same type of thing.Rather than identifying a type of category, the practical kinds model is a general theory of scientific classification. It is a nonessentialistic theory. Essentialism is the view that things have real essences. In the Aristotelian version of essentialism, an essence is an internal structure, and it is the internal structure that makes anything be the kind of thing it really is. In this classical category model, category members either have the essence or they do not, and everything that has the appropriate essence is a member of that category. The world is supposed to therefore have a well-defined structure, and the job of the scientist is to discover that structure. Ian Hacking (1999) has termed this view of categorization inherent structurism.The practical kinds model does not deny that things have internal structures; it only denies that internal structure by itself determines category membership. Internal structure is an important consideration in identifying categories, but external criteria can always play a role. External or relational criteria play more important roles in some cases than they do in others, but they cannot be eliminated once and for all. Essentialistic theories, which favor an almost exclusive focus on inherent structures, have the advantage of being more parsimonious, but they do so by ignoring real complexity.The best way to illustrate this point is to examine a category whose identification is heavily weighted in terms of internal criteria, or an inherent structure, such as a chemical element. [End Page 219] For example, hydrogen is defined as the element that has an atomic number of 1. This means that it has one proton in its nucleus and normally one electron orbiting its nucleus. The atomic number reflects an internal property, and anything that has an atomic number of 1 is hydrogen. The same is true for the other elements. Anything that has an atomic number of 79 is gold; anything that has an atomic number of 19 is potassium, and so on. Also part of the essentialistic view is the notion that all the important properties of an element are systematically (or lawfully) related to its internal structure.It would be foolish to deny the practical utility of the atomic theory of chemistry. But even in this strongest of cases, external criteria can potentially play a role in how we decide to carve up the world and what we identify as the relevant categories. The point can be clearly illustrated with a Gedanken experiment based on the ideas of Donnellan (1983). Assume that we were to make contact with extraterrestrial life, and the result of that contact was our initiation into a larger galactic community like those portrayed on Star Trek or Babylon 5. Fortunately for us, it turns out that all planets in the community use a gold-based currency, just like we do on Earth. What we call gold, however, is too common to be the galactic basis of a currency, but a particular isotope...

Commentary on four articles in a special issue on “theories of emotion,” comparing the theories with respect to five conceptual contrasts. The first four contrasts are essentialism versus nonessentialism, discriminative versus integrative theories, individual versus social focus, and instrumentalism versus scientific realism. Although scientific psychologists appear to have reached consensus in favor of nonessentialism and they freely use both realist and instrumentalist interpretations, there is no consensus on the other two contrasts. The final contrast explored addresses attitudes toward the use of philosophy in scientific theorizing, and whether philosophy is best kept in the background or brought into the foreground.

Reply by the current authors to the comments made by Jaak Panksepps , James.A. Russell and Louise Sundararajan on the original article by Peter Zachar . I consider the utility of the concept of natural kind, and explore difficulties in applying it reliably. I examine categorical and dimensional approaches to affect with respect to both scientific realism and nominalist approaches to classification. I agree that eliminativist analogies are beneficial but argue that they cannot fully account for the relationship between folk and scientific psychology. I also claim that neither Panksepp's nor Russell's models are incommensurable with Sundararajn's deeper approach to affective science. I suggest that Panksepp's conclusions about the structure of primary affect may be incompatible with the dimensional model, which illustrates the limits of translational work. 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Psychiatric Comorbidity:More Than a Kuhnian AnomalyPeter Zachar (bio)Keywordscomorbidity, classification, epidemiology, differential diagnosis, personality disorderDr. Aragona's article in this issue of Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology makes some important points regarding the relationship between comorbidity rates and the classification system currently used in psychiatry. Particularly persuasive is his claim that observed patterns of comorbidity are, in important respects, consequences of the structure of the classification system. I am not convinced, however, that comorbidity is best conceptualized as an artifact of the taxonic structure of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). Instead, I suggest that the use of dichotomies such as true versus artifactual should be used with caution when psychiatric classification is being discussed.In contrast with the artifact hypothesis, I argue that the phenomena covered by the term "comorbidity" are real, expectable features of the psychiatric domain. They are not the phlogiston and luminiferous ether of psychiatry. I am skeptical of the notion that high comorbidity rates as a whole can be understood as Kuhnian anomalies, or that there is a crisis, or that after a period of revolutionary science a new paradigm would eliminate these 'anomalies.' In short, high rates of comorbidity in psychiatry will not simply disappear once scientists develop a better nosological paradigm. High levels of comorbidity can, however, be both lowered and provided a better, evidence-based conceptual framework.Many Conditions, One OrganIn general medicine, comorbidity conventionally refers to the simultaneous occurrence of two independent disease processes or distinct clinical entities, such as heart disease and liver cancer (Feinstein, 1970; Jablensky 2004). The presence of one disease is supposed to affect the other in such a way that the co-occurrence of the two has implications for prognosis and treatment.Comorbidity in psychiatry is a broader concept, referring to a variety of conditions that overlap in multiple ways. The different kinds of overlap are amenable to detailed empirical analysis (e. g., Klein and Riso 1993; Neale and Kendler 1995). Depressive reactions to primary disorders, attention deficit symptoms associated with mania, panic attacks in the context of severe borderline personality disorder, substance abuse disorders among psychopaths, histrionic dynamics combined [End Page 13] with narcissistic personality traits, and emergent conditions such as schizoaffective disorder are all distinct types of comorbidity. The kinds of overlapping conditions just listed are sometimes termed psychiatric comorbidity. Also important is comorbidity between psychiatric disorders and general medical conditions as is studied in behavioral medicine and health psychology. The crisis, if there is one, is a crisis of comorbidities.The heart disease and liver cancer type of comorbidity as independent organ systems being affected is ruled out a priori in psychiatric comorbidity proper. In psychiatry, "psychopathological disease processes" can all be expected to affect a single organ, namely the brain or, more likely, affect the different systems that are tightly integrated in the brain. The tight integration can make putative comorbid psychiatric disorders difficult to disentangle.It is a widely held consensus that causes, not organ systems, are what matter in comorbidity. In this tradition, Dr. Aragona claims that in general medicine shared symptoms between two diseases (such as fever and fatigue) are not a problem because the diseases are differentiated with respect to etiology; in psychiatry, however, where syndromes are differentiated by a description of symptoms only, symptomatic overlap is a problem.Is descriptive psychopathology, therefore, a root cause of the "crisis of comorbidity" and should it be abandoned in favor of etiological classification? Unfortunately, forcing psychiatric nosology to conform to an etiological paradigm is unlikely to resolve the problem of psychiatric comorbidity. As noted, the problem is one of distinguishing between the different etiological disease processes that are affecting tightly integrated systems in the brain. The brain as a whole is a multilevel, dynamic, and open system, which has an ecology (Zachar 2000). As argued by Kendler (2005) and Schaffner (2002, 2008), it has not thus far, and may never be fully possible to segregate causes and their associated psychiatric disorders into parsimonious etiological packages. In the ecology of neuroscience, causes and effects tend to merge in a continuous series of common pathways.It would be foolish...

The thesis of this article is that an attitude akin to pragmatism is internal to the scientific enterprise itself, and as a result many scientists will make the same types of non-essentialistic interpretations of their subject matter that are made by pragmatists. This is demonstrably true with respect to those scientists who study the biological basis of emotion such as Panksepp, LeDoux, and Damasio. Even though these scientists are also influenced by what cognitive psychologists call the essentialist bias, their research programs are coherent with Peter Zachar?s rejection of natural kinds in favor of practical kinds. When the confrontation with complexity leads a scientist to offer non-essentialist interpretations, two popular options are to go eliminativist or go nominalist. Pragmatists prefer the nominalistic option, and we provide reasons for suggesting that scientists should as well

The scientific study of emotion has been characterized by classification schemes that propose to 'carve nature at the joints.' This article examines several of these classifications, drawn from both the categorical and dimensional perspectives. Each classification is given credit for what it contributes to our understanding, but the dream of a single, all purpose taxonomy of emotional phenomena is called into question. Such hopes are often associated with the carving at the joints metaphor, which is here argued to be harmful to scientific realism, and better rejected in favor of a pragmatic approach. Questioning the mere discovery theory of scientific progress, I argue that psychologists discover facts about their domain of study, but have to decide how to classify them. 2012 APA, all rights reserved).