Doesn’t stating that explain anything about his behavior?
That’s a summary description of his behaviour, not an explanation. An explanation would be a description of the causal mechanisms that produced the behaviour—a description of things that are not themselves the phenomenon that is being explained.
The longer description is a specific type of psychosis. If I was told someone was psychotic I would expect them to behave erratically in some way. In the case of the longer description I would expect them to behave erratically in a more specific way. Different kinds of psychoses are prone to continue and develop in certain ways and have certain affective and somatic components which makes even the descriptions valuable even if the causal mechanisms are not properly understood.
In the example the patient has a Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, a rare case of psychosis where brain imaging is part of the diagnosis. Because we have identified this specific kind of a pattern of behavior and imaging findings, we know the person is unlikely to recover, will continue to wildly confabulate, and medications are of no help.
That’s a summary description of his behaviour, not an explanation. An explanation would be a description of the causal mechanisms that produced the behaviour—a description of things that are not themselves the phenomenon that is being explained.
Ok, poor choice of words. Change it to “doesn’t stating that predict anything about his behavior?”
What would you predict that you would not already predict from the longer description?
The longer description is a specific type of psychosis. If I was told someone was psychotic I would expect them to behave erratically in some way. In the case of the longer description I would expect them to behave erratically in a more specific way. Different kinds of psychoses are prone to continue and develop in certain ways and have certain affective and somatic components which makes even the descriptions valuable even if the causal mechanisms are not properly understood.
In the example the patient has a Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, a rare case of psychosis where brain imaging is part of the diagnosis. Because we have identified this specific kind of a pattern of behavior and imaging findings, we know the person is unlikely to recover, will continue to wildly confabulate, and medications are of no help.
That he’s likely to behave nonsensically other ways as well.