University of Helsinki
At the Perspectives on Science seminar on Monday 20.4., Alessandra Basso (TINT) will present her paper “Integrative Approaches to Psychiatric Nosology: a measurement perspective”. The seminar will be organized as an online meeting in Zoom, an online conference tool supported by University of Helsinki.
Perspectives on Science is a weekly research seminar which brings together experts from science studies and philosophy of science. It is organized by TINT, the Centre for Philosophy of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. More information about the seminar here.
Join the Zoom Meeting with this link: https://helsinki.zoom.us/j/69891944360
Or with the Meeting ID: 698 9194 4360
Information about using Zoom can be found here. If you experience problems with Zoom, please contact jannika.lalu(a)helsinki.fi or kaisla.kareoja(a)helsinki.fi.
Author bio:
Alessandra Basso is a PhD student at TINT. Her thesis focuses on measurement in and across the social sciences. Besides philosophy of measurement, she is interested in philosophy of economics and general philosophy of science.
Abstract:
In this paper, I provide a measurement perspective on integrative proposals to improve the classification of mental disorders. Integrative proposals aim to develop a unified and comprehensive framework for representing and classifying mental disorders in terms of their complex aetiology. From a measurement perspective, these proposals face practical and conceptual challenges in the identification of mental disorders. Moreover, their value as knowledge producing activities is only as strong as the epistemic justification of making inferences from clusters of similar causal processes to mental phenomena. The paper argues that the problems faced by integrative proposals emerge partially from an overlap of explanatory and classificatory desiderata. Moreover, a measurement interpretation suggests that the comparison of findings from different domains can lead to successful improvement of accuracy without relying on a unified, comprehensive representation of mental phenomena.