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Psychopharmacological enhancement: a conceptual framework

The availability of a range of new psychotropic agents raises the possibility that these will be used for enhancement purposes (smart pills, happy pills, and pep pills). The enhancement debate soon raises questions in philosophy of medicine and psychiatry (eg, what is a disorder?), and this debate i...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Stein, Dan J
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3292958/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22244084
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1747-5341-7-5
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author Stein, Dan J
author_facet Stein, Dan J
author_sort Stein, Dan J
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description The availability of a range of new psychotropic agents raises the possibility that these will be used for enhancement purposes (smart pills, happy pills, and pep pills). The enhancement debate soon raises questions in philosophy of medicine and psychiatry (eg, what is a disorder?), and this debate in turn raises fundament questions in philosophy of language, science, and ethics. In this paper, a naturalistic conceptual framework is proposed for addressing these issues. This framework begins by contrasting classical and critical concepts of categories, and then puts forward an integrative position that is based on cognitive-affective research. This position can in turn be used to consider the debate between pharmacological Calvinism (which may adopt a moral metaphor of disorder) and psychotropic utopianism (which may emphasize a medical metaphor of disorder). I argue that psychiatric treatment of serious psychiatric disorders is justified, and that psychotropics are an acceptable kind of intervention. The use of psychotropics for sub-threshold phenomena requires a judicious weighing of the relevant facts (which are often sparse) and values.
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spelling pubmed-32929582012-03-05 Psychopharmacological enhancement: a conceptual framework Stein, Dan J Philos Ethics Humanit Med Research The availability of a range of new psychotropic agents raises the possibility that these will be used for enhancement purposes (smart pills, happy pills, and pep pills). The enhancement debate soon raises questions in philosophy of medicine and psychiatry (eg, what is a disorder?), and this debate in turn raises fundament questions in philosophy of language, science, and ethics. In this paper, a naturalistic conceptual framework is proposed for addressing these issues. This framework begins by contrasting classical and critical concepts of categories, and then puts forward an integrative position that is based on cognitive-affective research. This position can in turn be used to consider the debate between pharmacological Calvinism (which may adopt a moral metaphor of disorder) and psychotropic utopianism (which may emphasize a medical metaphor of disorder). I argue that psychiatric treatment of serious psychiatric disorders is justified, and that psychotropics are an acceptable kind of intervention. The use of psychotropics for sub-threshold phenomena requires a judicious weighing of the relevant facts (which are often sparse) and values. BioMed Central 2012-01-13 /pmc/articles/PMC3292958/ /pubmed/22244084 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1747-5341-7-5 Text en Copyright ©2012 Stein; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research
Stein, Dan J
Psychopharmacological enhancement: a conceptual framework
title Psychopharmacological enhancement: a conceptual framework
title_full Psychopharmacological enhancement: a conceptual framework
title_fullStr Psychopharmacological enhancement: a conceptual framework
title_full_unstemmed Psychopharmacological enhancement: a conceptual framework
title_short Psychopharmacological enhancement: a conceptual framework
title_sort psychopharmacological enhancement: a conceptual framework
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3292958/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22244084
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1747-5341-7-5
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