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    The mechanistic objection to interlevel causation does no... — Carmelics
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    Home/Bioethics
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    The mechanistic objection to interlevel causation does not apply straightforwardly in psychiatry.

    Bioethics
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    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

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    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Woodward's interventionist account of causation permits cross-level causal relations wherever interventions on one variable systematically change another.
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    • 2.In psychiatry, intervening on neural mechanisms (e.g., via SSRIs) reliably changes psychological states, satisfying interventionist criteria for genuine interlevel causation.
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    • 3.The mechanistic objection presupposes a constitutive-causal conflation that interventionism explicitly dissolves by focusing on counterfactual dependence, not compositional identity.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Craver and Bechtel's own mechanistic framework distinguishes 'same-level' causal relations from 'interlevel constitutive' relations, but psychiatric phenomena span genuinely distinct ontological domains.
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    • 2.Social stressors like bereavement are not compositional parts of neural mechanisms but independent causal inputs, placing them outside the scope of Craver's interlevel constitution objection entirely.
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    Reasons Against

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    • 1.The mechanistic argument against interlevel causation assumes different levels are merely different descriptions of the same process.
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    • 2.In psychiatry, talk of levels often involves relating different parts of the world, not different descriptions of the same process.
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    • 3.In Meehl's example, genetics and bereavement require different levels but are not different ways of describing the same process.
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    Topics

    BioethicsCausation

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    Consciousness & Mind1 linked

    Related

    Causal models in psychiatry must interrelate phenomena of very different types.Craver and Bechtel's own mechanistic framework distinguishes 'same-level' causal...In Meehl's example, genetics and bereavement require different levels but are no...In psychiatry, intervening on neural mechanisms (e.g., via SSRIs) reliably chang...
    +5 moreShow less
    In psychiatry, talk of levels often involves relating different parts of the wor...Social stressors like bereavement are not compositional parts of neural mechanis...The mechanistic argument against interlevel causation assumes different levels a...The mechanistic objection presupposes a constitutive-causal conflation that inte...Woodward's interventionist account of causation permits cross-level causal relat...

    Similar

    The mechanistic argument against interlevel causation assumes differen...87%Accepting interlevel relationships as causal violates many of the cent...83%Causal relations in psychiatry must be taken as found, including inter...80%Interlevel causation amounts to something causing itself, because diff...79%

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    The debate here quickly gets into technical arguments about the concept of causation. Campbell argues against Frith in favour of the Humean idea that we simply cannot tell in advance of inquiry what causal relations obtain in nature. Anything can cause anything and it is just as unwarranted to suppose that the relevant explanatory variables for psychotic or affective phenomena must be cognitive as it is to adopt a simple reductionism and insist on their being biological. Decades of research have
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    Details

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    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit