>There is a reason why memes like sanguine vs melancholic or The Political Spectrum are popular -- but I don't see why it should be likely to cleave reality at its joints.
The point of models such at this isn't to 'cleave reality at its joints', it's to provide useful frameworks to reason about disease (or politics).
High level concepts such as schizophrenia attempt to given a human understandable account of what Schizophrenia is, why it emerges, and what treatments we may form.
Reductionism of the sort of, "we've looked at every neuron and figured out that 12301231723 of your 3782328372832 brain cells are out of whack" has no explanatory power. The goal of inquiry into mental illness is not to give some physical account of what is wrong with the brain, it is to give an account of what is wrong with the mind.
These brain chemistry accounts of psychological illness really have glaring problems. By definition they exclude all ecological or cultural factors by focussing on some individual's brain. But this is almost tautological, all psychological illness manifests in some sense in the brain.
When some local company pours lead into the river and everyone loses 20 IQ points then that manifests in the brain, like anything else does. However the right framework in that case is ecological.
The point of models such at this isn't to 'cleave reality at its joints', it's to provide useful frameworks to reason about disease (or politics).
High level concepts such as schizophrenia attempt to given a human understandable account of what Schizophrenia is, why it emerges, and what treatments we may form.
Reductionism of the sort of, "we've looked at every neuron and figured out that 12301231723 of your 3782328372832 brain cells are out of whack" has no explanatory power. The goal of inquiry into mental illness is not to give some physical account of what is wrong with the brain, it is to give an account of what is wrong with the mind.
These brain chemistry accounts of psychological illness really have glaring problems. By definition they exclude all ecological or cultural factors by focussing on some individual's brain. But this is almost tautological, all psychological illness manifests in some sense in the brain.
When some local company pours lead into the river and everyone loses 20 IQ points then that manifests in the brain, like anything else does. However the right framework in that case is ecological.