De Block Andreas
Institute of Philosophy, Catholic University Leuven, Kardinaal Mercierplein, 2, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium.
Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci. 2008 Sep;39(3):338-46. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsc.2008.06.007. Epub 2008 Aug 15.
Mental disorders are often thought to be harmful dysfunctions. Jerome Wakefield has argued that such dysfunctions should be understood as failures of naturally selected functions. This suggests, implicitly, that evolutionary biology and other Darwinian disciplines hold important information for anyone working on answering the philosophical question, 'what is a mental disorder?'. In this article, the author argues that Darwinian theory is not only relevant to the understanding of the disrupted functions, but it also sheds light on the disruption itself, as well as on the harm that attends the disruption. The arguments advanced here are partially based on the view that a core feature of Darwinism is that it stresses the environmental relativity of functions and dysfunctions. These arguments show a very close empirical connection between social judgments (values) and dysfunctions (psychopathology), which is of interest for psychiatric theory. Philosophically, they lead to the conclusion that the concept of mental disorder is identical to the concept of mental dysfunction. Consequently, it is both misleading and redundant to conceptualize mental disorders as 'harmful dysfunctions', and not simply as 'mental dysfunctions'.
精神障碍通常被认为是有害的功能失调。杰尔姆·韦克菲尔德认为，这种功能失调应被理解为自然选择功能的失败。这暗示着，进化生物学和其他达尔文主义学科对于任何致力于回答“什么是精神障碍？”这一哲学问题的人来说，都蕴含着重要信息。在本文中，作者认为达尔文主义理论不仅与理解被扰乱的功能相关，还能阐明功能失调本身以及伴随功能失调而来的危害。这里提出的论点部分基于这样一种观点，即达尔文主义的一个核心特征是它强调功能和功能失调的环境相对性。这些论点显示了社会判断（价值观）与功能失调（精神病理学）之间非常紧密的实证联系，这对精神病学理论来说是很有意义的。从哲学角度来看，它们得出的结论是，精神障碍的概念与精神功能失调的概念是相同的。因此，将精神障碍概念化为“有害的功能失调”，而不仅仅是“精神功能失调”，既是误导性的，也是多余的。
