Name: Explanatory Pluralism and the Epistemic Status of Spiritual Frameworks in Psychiatric Knowledge
Start: 2026-07-07T16:30:00+1200
End: 2026-07-07T17:25:00+1200

Explanatory Pluralism and the Epistemic Status of Spiritual Frameworks in Psychiatric Knowledge

Tuesday July 7, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST

MSB1.02

This paper argues that explanatory pluralism provides the most defensible framework for governing psychiatric knowledge, and that the continued privileging of biomedical monism requires philosophical justification it has not adequately received. I contend that psychiatric phenomena are ontologically complex in ways that resist reduction to any single explanatory scheme, and that the systematic marginalisation of non-biomedical frameworks reflects the politics of knowledge production rather than their epistemic inadequacy. To ground this argument, I draw on Australian mental health consumer activism as a case study in which spiritual frameworks functioned as genuine competing explanatory systems. These were not pre-scientific residues but coherent accounts of psychological distress with their own internal logic, evidential basis in lived experience, and practical explanatory success. Drawing on Ian Hacking's concepts of interactive kinds and classificatory looping, I examine how the medicalisation of spiritual experience creates self-reinforcing cycles that delegitimise alternative frameworks structurally rather than on epistemic grounds. The paper concludes that recognising spiritual and experiential frameworks as legitimate contributors to psychiatric explanation is not a concession to relativism but a consequence of taking ontological complexity seriously. This has direct implications for how epistemic authority is distributed in clinical practice and mental health care design.

Speakers

Gemma Lucy Smart

PhD Candidate, University of Sydney

Gemma Lucy Smart is a PhD candidate in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney, where she researches the history of mental health self-help, consumer activism, and Mad Pride's relationship to the disability and neurodiversity movements. She is a senior lived... Read More →

Tuesday July 7, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.02

Social Epistemology, In Person

AAP 2026 CONFERENCE

Gemma Lucy Smart

Attendees (13)

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AAP 2026 CONFERENCE

Gemma Lucy Smart

Attendees (13)

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