From my homemade artificial intelligence essay writer? A response to the 2010 paper "Are Psychiatric Kinds Real?"


Author's name (parents' draft): Terence Rajivan Edward (now Doctor)
Dialogue on names (fictional): "Now why do you want a name?" So that my works can be identified - that is one reason. "You need a number really."
Author's name (my first draft): 0161__Rajivan
Abstract. Helen Beebee and Nigel Sabbarton-Leary clarify the question "Are Psychiatric Kinds Real?" as "Do psychiatric concepts refer to natural kinds?" our preliminary understanding of a natural kind being a set of things which form a kind regardless of human belief or interest.  I propose that they need to distinguish between these two questions: "Are psychiatric kinds real?" and "Could psychiatric kinds be real? Is it possible for them to be real?"  They start with the former question but sometimes sound as if they are addressing the latter question. Also I think they need to distinguish between a person who addresses the question while accepting that physics, chemistry, and biology identify natural kinds and a person who does not: one of their arguments against what I call "a natural account of natural kinds" is that it is incompatible with recent accounts of what a species is, but categories like schizophrenia show a long-term robustness and seem to merit a less fashionable defence (put crudely). They use an account which emphasizes explanatory value and predictive success as indicators of a concept which picks out a natural kind but they ignore the existence of multiple psychiatric diagnostic systems, even within Western culture. They want to support the DSM system, it seems. But an explanation for why the National Health Service does not use psychoanalysis, say, is that it is simply too expensive, not that something epistemically-compelling favours the current DSM. The diagnostic system recommended by the UK government is probably the outcome of considerations which do not guarantee its being better than other systems as "pure science." Put snobbishly, it is for the poor.
Draft version: version 2 (30 May 2026, minor edits; version 1 6th October 2025)
Software used (freeware): Google docs
PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/396237141_From_my_homemade_artificial_intelligence_essay_writer_A_response_to_the_2010_paper_Are_Psychiatric_Kinds_Real 


        I shall respond to Helen Beebee and Nigel Sabbarton-Leary's paper "Are Psychiatric Kinds Real?" Do psychiatric concepts carve reality at the joints, to use an ancient metaphor? On the one hand, the paper provides me with useful information and therefore I am glad that it was published. When one approaches the question as a reasonably talented amateur - not an expert in philosophy of psychiatry or natural kinds - one fails to realize the mountain that professionals have climbed up. (I suppose the more one has this experience, the more one concludes: always turn to the professionals. But I feel amateur input is important.) On the other hand, I find its position strange in the confidence it has in  the contemporary diagnostic system and more. Does any psychiatrist have this level of confidence or does the working psychiatrist regard it as a changeable thing and the outcome of various considerations? I seem to be encountering numerous people who have, or pose as having, utmost faith in authority: irresponsible levels even.
        There are four points I wish to make, but the first one is a preliminary point, I suppose. Preliminary point: strange assumption. This will take some paragraphs to introduce. Beebee and Sabbarton-Leary start with the question "Are Psychiatric Kinds Real?" They clarify this question using the concept of a natural kind: are psychiatric kinds natural kinds? What is a natural kind? Let us start with an example they give of something which is not a natural kind: a ravcat. Something is a ravcat if it is either a cat or a raven. "Why would anyone have this term and associated concept," you probably wonder, "if it even is a concept?" No explanation is given, but I can imagine its having some practical use. Ravens and cats are both regarded as pests in a certain neighbourhood and so are racoons, but one person is good at getting rid of ravens and cats and the other at getting rid of racoons, so one shouts, "Ravcat" when a raven or cat is spotted to call the first person. If our words for raven or cat were much longer, this would be even more practical. "So what are natural kinds?" Here is a natural starting point: a natural kind consists of a set of things which form a kind regardless of whether we believe they form a kind and regardless of our aims.
We are not yet at my first point though. Here is their question:
Are psychiatric kinds real, i.e. are psychiatric kinds natural kinds?
We are familiar with psychiatric terms, such as "schizophrenia" and "autism." These terms are associated with the psychiatric concepts. The term "schizophrenia" is associated with the concept of schizophrenia. Another term could be associated with this concept, it seems and let us assume this is possible here. For example, the term "splithead" could be slang for schizophrenia. If so, both this term and the term "schizophrenia" are associated with the same concept. Now apart from the concept associated with a term, there is what the term refers to. The simple way of thinking about this distinction, for people in our society, is that when an individual uses a term, the concept they associate with it is within their mind, whereas the thing the term refers to is (usually) not. For example, when I use the term "cat" in the sentence "Take your cat away from me," the term is associated with a concept in my mind, the concept of a cat, but what I refer to with it is beyond my mind and myself: it is your cat. (This is the sensible philosophical starting point in our society, even if one wants to erode it in many ways.) Similarly, when a psychiatrist uses the term "schizophrenic," it is associated in his mind with a concept, but it serves to refer to something beyond his mind.
        The authors of this paper seem to assume this:
(Psychiatric kind assumption) A psychiatric term such as "schizophrenia" refers to a psychiatric kind, either a natural kind or some other kind.
Thus their question: does it refer to a natural kind? But won't various people, including various philosophers, think that if it does not refer to a natural kind, then it simply does not refer? Anyway, I am going to grant this assumption and suppose, with the authors, that there is such a thing as a conventional kind. Psychiatric terms are associated with psychiatric concepts and refer to psychiatric kinds, but these may be conventional kinds rather than "real." (I suspect the authors are attempting to somehow start with metaphysics rather than philosophy of language in this paper, but is it doable?)
        Two questions.  Beebee and Sabbarton-Leary need to distinguish between these two questions:
1. Are psychiatric kinds real, i.e. are psychiatric kinds natural kinds?
2. Could psychiatric kinds be real, i.e. is it possible for psychiatric terms to refer to natural kinds? (Is there a possible world in which psychiatric terms refer to natural kinds, even if it is not our actual world? If reality were different, could psychiatric terms refer?)
They slide between these at various points. Consider these quotations:
"...whether certain mental categories (Tourette's, schizophrenia, and so on) are natural kinds is distinct from the question..." (2010: 13)
"...our main aim in this paper is to argue that at least some psychiatric categories can in principle be natural kinds." (2010: 13)
The first quotation is about question (a) whereas the second quotation says that they are addressing question (b), contrary to their title.
        Consider an argument for moral error theory, which I don't want to endorse. "The best explanation for differences in moral norms across societies is that moral discourse - sentences attributing moral properties to things, such as "What you did is morally wrong" - is simply false. People who make this argument are not usually interested in whether it could be true, whether moral properties are even possible: whether there could be things with the properties, qualities, features of being morally wrong or being right, etc. Some would reply, "If there were God, there could be actual moral qualities, but there is not. And I am interested in our reality." I think most people who doubt there are psychiatric kinds, or doubt that they are natural kinds , are interested in (a) not (b). They are often moved by similar considerations to the moral error theorist, e.g. "Before we took homosexuality to be a disorder and now we do not and the best explanation for such cultural changes is that psychiatric terms do not refer to natural kinds." This is a consideration which the authors themselves refer to (2010: 24).
        Second point: anti-intellectualism? Beebee and Sabbarton-Leary argue against an account of what a natural kind is which I find a sensible elaboration given our starting point, that a natural kind consists of a set of things which form a kind regardless of whether we believe they form a kind and regardless of our aims:
"Thus we might stipulate that natural kinds are kinds that (i) are not relative to human interests, (ii) are not vague, (iii) are not stipulatively defined, and (iv) share an underlying 'real essence'."
(Why is this confusingly called "the stipulative account"? I would have called it our natural account. Nevermind.) Beebee and Sabbarton-Leary argue that this account is unacceptable because it prevents biological kinds from counting as natural kinds:
"The stipulative account rules out species as natural kinds on either view of species essences... That a given animal is descended from animals that occupy a particular position on the evolutionary tree is not an intrinsic feature of it, and so cannot constitute the essence of any natural kind to which the animal might belong." (2010: 17)
There are lots of readers who will be interested in the question of whether psychiatric terms refer to natural kinds, readers who do not assume the correctness of contemporary biology and its accounts of what a species is. These include readers coming from the direction of social science thought according to which psychiatry is about producing docile subjects, which I suspect is what most psychiatrists believe anyway. But they probably also include some less suspicious anthropologists and historians, who wonder whether all peoples identify what we call schizophrenia as a distinct disease, even if these people have other accounts of what causes it. After all, schizophrenia is a term that long pre-dates contemporary evolutionary biology.  Crucial question: should an argument for the term's picking out a natural kind turn on such recent considerations, because we are probably going to use the concept whether these considerations turn out to be false or not? (Beebee and Sabarton-Leary want to argue that these concepts pick out natural kinds, given the defensible account of what a natural kind is, defensible being where they appeal to recent considerations.) "Each generation will have its own defence"?
    Third point: NHS authority? Beebee and Sabarton-Leary rely on an account of natural kinds which emphasizes explanatory value and predictive success: it seems a development of the thought that a concept which has lots of explanatory value and can figure in lots of successful predictions probably refers to a natural kind. I have some trouble understanding it in detail. An obvious problem with arguing that psychiatric kinds are natural kinds in our reality is "There are multiple diagnostic systems, even within Western society, and furthermore multiple systems regarded as respectable by people who cannot be described as amateurs." I suspect the authors, as philosophers, would end up having to accept the philosophically-minded Jacques Lacan. In Lacan's system, there are three types of people: psychotics, the perverse, and neurotics. Diagnosis of type is based on language use. One can be a type without the stereotypical symptoms: one can be neurotic without a Woody Allen persona, say. Diagnosis is based on language use. The system is simple and elegant and seems a natural successor to a Victorian or Victorianish system which distinguishes between insanity, moral insanity (heinous crimes, no delusional metaphysical beliefs), and neurosis. (By the way, the continental philosophy of language foundation for Lacan looks as if it can be replaced. Also, by the way, regarding multiple frameworks of diagnosis, I asked a psychiatrist of mine, a fourth psychiatrist in such short time, what school she belongs to and she said, "We don't have schools like in the old days. The Freudian school, the Jungian school..." then a long pause, then "I am BIOSOCIAL!")
    Beebee and Sabbarton-Leary refer to the DSM: the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder. They sound as if they want to defend the NHS system. But why do the National Health Service use the DSM rather than psychoanalysis, say? Do Beebee and Sabbarton-Leary think the best explanation for its use is that it is the most scientifically-grounded? I asked a psychiatrist about Kierkegaard's case of a man who shouts facts with little attention to social norms, having been released from a mental asylum, whom the great Dane regards as failing to convince anyone that he is not mad. He asked me, "Is he a threat to other people? Is he likely to break the law?" The NHS system reflects a number of considerations, including money (if you are wealthy enough, then use something else?), what system of diagnostic classification the average psychiatrist can use (the average being nowhere near the level of Doctor Biosocial, I believe - "I know this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this… about Winnicott"), and what is a problem for society, especially the ruling class. "Considerations": one might well speak of forces here, a set of forces the outcome of which is the NHS system. I suspect there are conditions I would count as disorders, but are unlikely to ever be officially counted as this, such as what I call "enemitis": when one regards with little evidence a certain person as an enemy to the community and seeks to protect the community from their supposed threat.
    In 2023 I spent 2 months in an NHS psychiatry ward and a message I would take is: "If you are wealthy enough, then go elsewhere; and if you are not wealthy but have clever people in your social network, which you should do, then get one of them to read up and sort you out." It is worth contemplating that Lacan, with his no-medication approach, was the doctor of choice for legendary modernists, such as Salvador Dali and Picasso. Even if one detests continental philosophy, what really is the best explanation for that? Crude answer which will do under pressure: the NHS for the poor, not for these types.
        
References
Baron-Cohen, Simon. 2017. Neurodiversity – a revolutionary concept for autism and psychiatry. The Journal of Psychology and Child Psychiatry 58(6): 744-747. Available at:
https://acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jcpp.12703
(I didn't refer to this in the main body, but this psychologist proposes they are not real.)
Beebee, Helen. and Sabarton-Leary, Nigel. 2010. Are psychiatric kinds 'real'? European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 6(1): 11-27. Available at:
https://philpapers.org/archive/BEEAPK.pdf
Roudinesco, Elizabeth. 1999. Jacques Lacan. New York: Columbia University Press.