A New Nosology: Mental Illness as Maladaptive Misinformation Processing
A New Nosology: Mental Illness as Maladaptive Misinformation Processing This research proposes a novel conceptualization of mental illness, moving beyond the prevailing "harmful dysfunction" model to redefine psychopathology as "maladaptive misinformation processing." This framework posits that the core of mental disorder is a persistent inability to distinguish, categorize, and respond appropriately to veridical information versus misinformation. Drawing on philosophical information theory, which rigorously separates truth-bearing information from "pseudo-information," this approach aims to provide a more precise, scientifically grounded, and less value-laden foundation for psychiatric nosology. The proposal outlines a theoretical analysis to demonstrate how this definition avoids the cultural relativism and teleological ambiguities inherent in current models. It will explore how this epistemic failure can manifest at two distinct levels: the processing o...