Thornton Tim
College of Health and Wellbeing, University of Central Lancashire , Preston , UK.
Front Psychiatry. 2015 Dec 7;6:171. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2015.00171. eCollection 2015.
The idea that psychiatry contains, in principle, a series of levels of explanation has been criticized not only as empirically false but also, by Campbell, as unintelligible because it presupposes a discredited pre-Humean view of causation. Campbell's criticism is based on an interventionist-inspired denial that mechanisms and rational connections underpin physical and mental causation, respectively, and hence underpin levels of explanation. These claims echo some superficially similar remarks in Wittgenstein's Zettel. But attention to the context of Wittgenstein's remarks suggests a reason to reject explanatory minimalism in psychiatry and reinstate a Wittgensteinian notion of levels of explanation. Only in a context broader than the one provided by interventionism is that the ascription of propositional attitudes, even in the puzzling case of delusions, justified. Such a view, informed by Wittgenstein, can reconcile the idea that the ascription mental phenomena presupposes a particular level of explanation with the rejection of an a priori claim about its connection to a neurological level of explanation.
精神病学原则上包含一系列解释层次的观点，不仅被批评为在经验上是错误的，而且被坎贝尔批评为难以理解，因为它预设了一种已被摒弃的前休谟式因果观。坎贝尔的批评基于一种受干预主义启发的观点，即分别否认机制和理性联系是物理因果和心理因果的基础，因此也是解释层次的基础。这些观点呼应了维特根斯坦《字条集》中一些表面上类似的言论。但是，关注维特根斯坦言论的背景表明，有理由拒绝精神病学中的解释极简主义，并恢复维特根斯坦式的解释层次概念。只有在比干预主义所提供的更广泛的背景下，即使在妄想这种令人困惑的情况下，对命题态度的归因才是合理的。这种受维特根斯坦启发的观点，可以调和这样一种观点，即心理现象的归因预设了一个特定的解释层次，同时又拒绝关于其与神经学解释层次联系的先验主张。
