Annual Lecture Series – Serife Tekin - Stability and Intervention in Psychiatry

The Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh invites you to join us for our 67th Annual Lecture Series Talk. Attend in person in room 1008 in the Cathedral of Learning (10th Floor) or visit our live stream on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg. The Annual Lecture Series, the Center’s oldest program, was established in 1960, the year when Adolf Grünbaum founded the Center. Each year the series consists of six to eight lectures, about three quarters of which are given by philosophers, historians, and scientists from other universities. Annual Leture Series – Serife Tekin Friday, October 9th @ 3:30 pm - 5:30pm EDT 1008 Cathedral of Learning Title: Stability and Intervention in Psychiatry Abstract: Psychiatry is often described as a methodologically unstable or fragmented science, given its reliance on heterogeneous explanatory frameworks ranging from neuroscience and psychopharmacology to narrative, phenomenological, and patient-centered approaches. Philosophical critiques of psychiatry’s scientific standing frequently treat this heterogeneity as a liability, suggesting that without stable objects of inquiry or unified classificatory kinds, psychiatry cannot meet the explanatory and interventionist standards typically associated with mature science. This talk challenges that assumption by reconsidering what stability should mean in the context of psychiatric inquiry. Rather than treating stability as a property of diagnostic kinds or underlying mechanisms, I suggest that it is more productively understood as something achieved through scientific and clinical practice. Drawing on work on scientific intervention, disunity, and the interactive nature of human kinds, I argue that psychiatry’s epistemic success does not depend on discovering fixed natural kinds, but on its capacity to generate locally reliable forms of explanation, prediction, and intervention. More broadly, this perspective