Meehl argued in 1978 that theories in psychology come and go, with little cumulative progress. We believe that this assessment still holds, as also evidenced by increasingly common claims that psychology is facing a “theory crisis” and that psychologists should invest more in theory building. In this article, we argue that the root cause of the theory crisis is that developing good psychological theories is extremely difficult and that understanding the reasons why it is so difficult is crucial for moving forward in the theory crisis. We discuss three key reasons based on philosophy of science for why developing good psychological theories is so hard: the relative lack of robust phenomena that impose constraints on possible theories, problems of validity of psychological constructs, and obstacles to discovering causal relationships between psychological variables. We conclude with recommendations on how to move past the theory crisis.

Citation for published version (APA): Bringmann, L. F., & Eronen, M. I. (2018). Don't blame the model: Reconsidering the network approach to psychopathology. Psychological Review, 125(4), 606-615. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000108 Copyright Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons).Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. The network approach to psychopathology is becoming increasingly popular. The motivation for this approach is to provide a replacement for the problematic common cause perspective and the associated latent variable model, where symptoms are taken to be mere effects of a common cause (the disorder itself). The idea is that the latent variable model is plausible for medical diseases, but unrealistic for mental disorders, which should rather be conceptualized as networks of directly interacting symptoms. We argue that this rationale for the network approach is misguided. Latent variable (or common cause) models are not inherently problematic, and there is not even a clear boundary where network models end and latent variable (or common cause) models begin. We also argue that focusing on this contrast has led to an unrealistic view of testing and finding support for the network approach, as well as an oversimplified picture of the relationship between medical diseases and mental disorders.As an alternative, we point out more essential contrasts, such as the contrast between dynamic and static modeling approaches, that can provide a better framework for conceptualizing mental disorders.Finally, we discuss several topics and open problems that need to be addressed in order to make the network approach more concrete and to move the field of psychological network research forward.

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I show that the recent account of levels in neuroscience proposed by Bechtel and Craver is unsatisfactory, since it fails to provide a plausible criterion for being at the same level and is incompatible with Bechtel and Craver's account of downward causation. Furthermore, I argue that no distinct notion of levels is needed for analyzing explanations and causal issues in neuroscience: it is better to rely on more well--defined notions such as composition and scale. One outcome of this is that there is no distinct problem of downward causation.