The Center for Philosophy, Psychology and Psychiatry & CP3 Lab

Toward rigorous theory for psychiatry and psychology.

New psychiatric taxonomies like HiTOP and RDoC are being endorsed as ethical improvements; clinical research and its funding guidelines now routinely consider lived experience and epistemic justice; changes in science and practice are being built around theories of existential recognition and identity; and artificial intelligence has already begun to change psychotherapy and requires training in ethics, empathy, and agency.

CP3 Lab collaborates with leaders in psychiatry, psychology, and neuroscience to develop clear and rigorous understanding of theory and philosophy. Our mission:

1. Provide translational and interdisciplinary research on the scientific use of philosophical concepts

2. Improve the theoretical validity of psychological and psychiatric constructs

3. Clarify ethical questions and find tacit assumptions in psychiatry and psychology research and practice

4. Provide educational opportunities for psychology and psychiatry residents and faculty.

Active Research Programs

1. Psychiatric Taxonomy

This ongoing collaboration with Dr. Stephen Faraone analyzes the theoretical foundations of the current debate over psychiatric taxonomy (e.g. competing systems like RDoC, HiTOP, and DSM5). Our recent publication in Lancet Psychiatry calls for increased theoretical and empirical rigor when revising scientific language, arguing that without this, revision undermines science’s ability to make ethically good contributions. A major paper under review explains how psychological and psychiatric science integrate the ideas of the Neurodiversity movement, without considering its how its epistemological standards differ from those of psychological science, and how this affects subsequent research. In a third paper in progress, we are analyzing how taxonomy can and cannot make direct ethical and ontological interventions.

2. Ethics in Psychology and Pscyhiatry

This ongoing project identifies implicit assumptions across psychiatry, neuroscience, and psychology about what is ethical. “Ethics in Service of the Ego” (Miller, 2025, Philosophy, Psychiatry, Psychology) argues that recent professional trends have conflated identification with ethical standing and intervention. The in-press article “Is Competence Moral?” (Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 2026) examines the APA’s 2025 decision to suspend diversity and inclusion training standards. Taking that decision as a case study, the paper shows that professional psychology assumes a tautological relationship between competence and ethics, which compromises its capacity for ethical decision making.

3. Artificial Intelligence in Psychiatry, Culture, and Neuroscience

This project examines how psychiatry, psychology, and neuroscience understand AI, what they want from it, and what it means to pursue that. An article by Dr. Miller (under review) argues that AI does not threaten to replace psychotherapists so much as it embodies the metaphysical assumptions that have driven psychotherapy training since the 1970s. a new project examines the problem of empathy training for AI. Through lenses of psychiatry, neuroscience, and culture, we are analyzing the ethical, scientific, and ontological implications of LLM empathy.