Sunday, April 24, 2022

The mereological fallacy in psychiatry

The category mistake of identifying the part with the whole was called the mereological fallacy by Bennett & Hacker (2003). The second edition of their book Philosophical foundations of neuroscience (2021) has created a separate chapter (3) dealing with this conceptual problem. For psychiatry this is about identifying the brain with the person (see eg. last post). Peter Hacker refutes the rationale of the mereological fallacy in neuroscience in a YouTube video

Psychiatric critique needs to challenge the common mistake in psychiatry that it is the brain that perceives, thinks, feels and intends to do things. Such reasoning doesn’t make sense. Psychiatry treats people living in relationships, not their brains.

No comments: