کد مقاله | کد نشریه | سال انتشار | مقاله انگلیسی | نسخه تمام متن |
---|---|---|---|---|
1161849 | 1490530 | 2012 | 10 صفحه PDF | دانلود رایگان |
In psychiatry, pharmacological drugs play an important experimental role in attempts to identify the neurobiological causes of mental disorders. Besides being developed in applied contexts as potential treatments for patients with mental disorders, pharmacological drugs play a crucial role in research contexts as experimental instruments that facilitate the formulation and revision of neurobiological theories of psychopathology. This paper examines the various epistemic functions that pharmacological drugs serve in the discovery, refinement, testing, and elaboration of neurobiological theories of mental disorders. I articulate this thesis with reference to the history of antipsychotic drugs and the evolution of the dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia in the second half of the twentieth century. I argue that interventions with psychiatric patients through the medium of antipsychotic drugs provide researchers with information and evidence about the neurobiological causes of schizophrenia. This analysis highlights the importance of pharmacological drugs as research tools in the generation of psychiatric knowledge and the dynamic relationship between practical and theoretical contexts in psychiatry.
► Drugs serve various functions in neurobiological research on mental disorders.
► They detect neurobiological kinds, generate causal hypotheses, and test theories.
► Antipsychotic drugs and the dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia are discussed.
► Intervention and causal reasoning are important in research on psychopathology.
Journal: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences - Volume 43, Issue 2, June 2012, Pages 542–551