Research

My Research Program

My research centers on the role that values play in psychiatry and related fields, in keeping with the broader research program of "values in science" within philosophy of science. I have published on such subjects as the inclusion of psychiatrized people in the process of revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the proper role of values and concepts of well-being in delineating the boundaries of psychiatry, and issues of justice and responsibility in the use of AI chatbots for psychotherapy.

Published Work

*Commentary on: Sedlakova, Jana, and Manuel Trachsel. (2023). “Conversational Artificial Intelligence in Psychotherapy: A New Therapeutic Tool or Agent?” The American Journal of Bioethics 23 (5): 4–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2022.2048739.*

Abstract:  Sedlakova and Trachsel (2023) identify a major benefit of conversational artificial intelligence (CAI) in psychotherapy as its ability to expand access to mental healthcare for vulnerable populations and provide helpful guidance on some ethical issues that arise from the status of CAI as neither a simple tool nor a full agent. However, considerations related to cross-cultural diversity, potential sources of biases against the vulnerable populations that CAI is meant to provide access to, and questions of how to handle responsibility for harms unintentionally inflicted by CAI complicate this picture. In this commentary we discuss some of these complicating factors and provide recommendations about how to proceed with greater attention to issues of justice and accountability in the use of CAI for psychotherapy.

Abstract: This article draws on Kukla’s “Institutional Definition of Health” to provide a definition of “psychiatric condition” that delineates the proper bounds of psychiatry. I argue that this definition must include requirements that psychiatrization of a condition benefit the well-being of (1) the society as a collective and (2) the individual whose condition is in question. I then suggest that psychiatry understand individual well-being in terms of the subjective values of individuals. Finally, I propose that psychiatry’s understanding of collective well-being should be the result of a “socially objective” process and give certain desiderata for this understanding.

*Winner of the 2022 Karl Jaspers Award from the Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry (AAPP)*

Abstract: This article brings together considerations from philosophical work on standpoint epistemology, feminist philosophy of science, and epistemic injustice to examine a particular problem facing contemporary psychiatry: the conflict between the conceptual resources of psychiatric medicine and alternative conceptualizations like those of the neurodiversity movement and psychiatric abolitionism. I argue that resistance to fully considering such alternative conceptualizations in processes such as the revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders emerges in part from a particular form of epistemic injustice (hermeneutical ignorance) leveled against a particular social group (which I call the "psychopathologized"). Further, insofar as the objectivity which psychiatry should aspire to is a kind of "social objectivity" which requires incorporation of various normative perspectives, this particular form of epistemic injustice threatens to undermine its scientific objectivity. Although many questions regarding implementation remain, this implies that psychiatry must grapple substantively with radical reconceptualizations of its domain if it is to achieve legitimate scientific objectivity.

*Response to Commentaries on the Above Jaspers Award Paper*

Forthcoming Work