Depression, Intelligibility, and Non-Rational Causation

Abstract What I call “exogenous” depression differs from “endogenous” depression by being intelligibly related to adverse conditions in the world. Because exogenous depression is caused in this way, any purely intrinsic characterization of it is incomplete. Endogenous depression, by contrast, does not resist intrinsic characterization. Further, in exogenous depression, what we are able to understand by empathetic imagination goes together with well-established causes, so there is no tension between intelligibility and objectivity. This distinction can be drawn in a way which is consistent with much of the science of depression.