This dissertation seeks to vindicate the place that narrative has in historiography and recognize the rational components that are involved in narrative construction. The first chapter of this dissertation develops a novel account of some of the cognitive principles that are involved in narrative construction. One of the central aims of this chapter is to challenge the long-standing idea that narratives do not entail any rational or logical structure. I argue that the principles of organization brought to light by the Gestalt school of experimental psychology illuminate the principles underlying an organizational logic that historians engage in when constructing a narrative. Having developed an account of the “principles of narrative reason” in Chapter 1, I turn in Chapter 2 to the challenge presented by the multiplicity of interpretations in history. An answer to this challenge needs to explain the persistence of the diversity in historiography while maintaining epistemic standards. Chapter 2 first examines two attempted answers to this phenomenon. I argue that neither offers a satisfactory resolution. By developing a Wittgenstenien notion of aspect perception I provide a novel account of aspects as applied to the case of historical explanation, one that yields a more philosophically satisfactory answer to the “diversity problem.” Finally, the last chapter of this dissertation sketches a normative epistemic account of historiography. For although there exist multiple ways of understanding a particular event, we can nonetheless identify criteria that can guide us in deciding which narrative is better than another. I argue that three prevailing normative accounts of historiography (realist, antirealist and the tripartite theory of justification account) all prove unsuccessful in providing a good normative framework. My positive account is inspired by the works of Catherine Elgin and Alva Noë. Particularly, by Elgin’s notion of understanding–in opposition to knowledge– and Noë’s conception of reorganization in artistic creation. I conclude this dissertation by suggesting an important link between aesthetics and historiography. One that recognizes the value of reorganization and understanding as central to the epistemic significance of these disciplines.

This dissertation explores the entanglement of ethics and epistemology in the domain of psychiatric research, considering the ways that measurement practices and ethical values interrelate. If psychiatric clinicians, researchers, and patients are not acutely aware of the relationship between experimental configurations and the meaning of scientific data, unhealthy realities that take psychiatric constructs as fixed parts of nature will persist.

The core of this work consists of case studies on the emergence and stabilization of two psychiatric diagnostic categories, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Depersonalization Disorder (DPD). Carefully examining the experimental configurations employed in the measurement of psychiatric disorders, this study shows how the neurobiological description of a psychiatric disorder is produced by employing a broad array of measurement techniques including psychopharmacological interventions, neuropsychological assessments, self-rating scales, historical studies, behavioral observations, psychophysical apparatuses, brain scanning devices, guided interviews etc. The dependence of each of these techniques upon others demonstrates the highly contingent status of diagnostic categories.

The findings of this study include the claim that the current best-confirmed neurobiological description of ADHD, the catecholamine hypothesis, could not have been developed without the treatment and measurement of the disorder with psychostimulant medications. This observation and others suggest that the knowledge produced regarding psychiatric diagnostic categories needs to be carefully examined to avoid treatment plans that implement research data that is not well understood. I conclude that researchers, clinicians and patients are responsible for the data produced in scientific studies, and should therefore take a critical stance to conclusions drawn from scientific data when making decisions about treatment.

This work offers a comprehensive reading of Hacking's project on making up people. Making up people refers to practices involved in the scientific classification of people, which may implicitly assume or foster the existence of human types. Hacking's works on human kinds have been presented in a fragmentary manner for over the last 30 years. Some of its central notions, such as "human kind" and "looping effects", have been critically received as stand alone notions within the debate between social constructivism and scientific realism concerning psychiatric categories. Despite his critical stance on social constructivism and his proposed reconciliation between social constructivism and scientific realism, Hacking's work has been read as a challenge to scientific realism. Hacking's account of human kinds in terms of the presence of looping effects, alongside his analyses of various classifications that have been revised and ultimately abandoned in the history of psychiatry, have contributed to that interpretation. Hacking's MUP, however, addresses the way in which the scientific classification of people works, rather than whether mental illness classifications are founded in nature or not. By focusing on classification from a historicist stance, Hacking is able to reconfigure the philosophy of the sciences in a distinct and unprecedented manner, presenting an original account on historical epistemology and ontology. It is not one argument, but a comprehensive reconfiguration of the philosophy of the sciences, which allows Hacking to go beyond the divide between scientific realism and social constructivism. This work brings together a larger set of notions to characterize Hacking's account of MUP, makes explicit the philosophical background on classification that supports it, and explores relevant connections to other aspects of Hacking's work, remarkably, his alternative project on the Styles of Scientific Reasoning. On the basis of such a comprehensive reading, it responds to four representative criticisms. By assembling the elements of Hacking's MUP in a comprehensive and consistent picture, this work shows the extent to which it represents a major contribution to the philosophy of the sciences, introducing a distinct approach to the analysis of scientific concepts and a novel vision of the human sciences.