Philosophy of Psychiatry Meets Experimental Philosophy: Expertise Naturalized

Recent methodological debates on the value of traditional conceptual analysis in philosophy (Strevens 2019; Machery 2017) have implications for both philosophy of psychiatry and scientific psychiatry. For example, the idea that concepts are universal in nature has been criticized, with experimental philosophers showing how different social groups have differing intuitions about the application of certain concepts. This has led to the development of new approaches in philosophical inquiry, such as naturalized conceptual analysis and conceptual engineering (Machery 2017). Taking cues from this debate, this chapter calls for a naturalized conceptual analysis of the concept of ‘expertise’ in psychiatry. I propose using the methods of both empirically informed research and experimental philosophy to clarify and perhaps modify the defi nition of ‘expertise’ operative in psychiatry. A definition of expertise modifi ed in this fashion could include not only those who are formally trained in psychopathology and hold academic degrees, e.g., MD, PhD, but also those with direct experience of mental disorders. In fact, interdiciplinary fields as critical disability studies and mad studies have already articulated such ideas about expertise, generating important body of work authored by experts by experience, yet traditional scientific psychiatry has not directly engaged with this literature nor critically examined their own assumptions about expertise (see, for example, Carlson 2010). A modified notion of expertise, I believe, through naturalized conceptual analysis and experimental philosophy would help psychiatry better align with its fundamental goals as a branch of medicine, enhancing the understanding of mental disorders and facilitating eff ective and ethical treatments and care. I start with an overview of the main tenets of naturalized conceptual analysis and illustrate how its insights might be helpful for scientifi c psychiatry and philosophy of psychiatry. I then turn to the existing notions of ‘expertise’ in scientifi c psychiatry and philosophy of psychiatry, with a focus on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC), conceptions of expertise in some patient/consumer/survivor/ex-patient groups, and the understanding of some clinicians and philosophers. Th is examination will illustrate that first, there is no consistent and unified notion of expertise in psychiatry, and second, naturalized conceptual analysis could benefi t psychiatric epistemology. Using insights from the DSM, RDoC, and patient movement frameworks, I conclude the chapter with a sketch of what experimental studies about the concept of expertise might demonstrate. My hope is to suggest to philosophers of psychiatry and clinicians (if not to convince them) that experimental philosophy has the potential to expand our knowledge of what it means to be an expert on mental disorders.