Abstract
Depression is a common and devastating instance of ill-being which deserves an account. Moreover, the ill-being of depression is impacted by digital technology: some uses of digital technology increase such ill-being while other uses of digital technology increase well-being. So a good account of ill-being would explicate the antecedents of depressive symptoms and their relief, digitally and otherwise. This paper borrows a causal network account of well-being and applies it to ill-being, particularly depression. Causal networks are found to provide a principled, coherent, intuitively plausible, and empirically adequate account of cases of depression in everyday and digital contexts. Causal network accounts of ill-being also offer philosophical, scientific, and practical utility. Insofar as other accounts of ill-being cannot offer these advantages, we should prefer causal network accounts of ill-being.
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This paper was improved by Rachel Amoroso, Aaron Brooks, Chris Burr, Mike Bishop, Frances Fairbairn, Mary Marcous, Al Mele, Sam Sims, and anonymous reviewers.
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Byrd, N. (2020). Causal Network Accounts of Ill-Being: Depression & Digital Well-Being. In: Burr, C., Floridi, L. (eds) Ethics of Digital Well-Being. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 140. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50585-1_11
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