Ian Hacking and science policy: styles of reasoning and looping effects in psychotherapy

The purpose of this paper is to explore prominent themes in Ian Hacking’s corpus through a case study on the science, policy, and practice of psychotherapy. It is shown that the translation of science to policy and clinical practices reveals interesting features of Hacking’s account of styles of reasoning and looping effects. In particular, I show that styles of reasoning disguise disunities that appear in experimental and practical contexts. I further show how institutional structures can mediate looping effects, impacting which styles of reasoning are employed, and reduce blind-spots arising from disunities. I then suggest that this case study reveals tensions in Hacking’s account of styles of reasoning and its relationship to his broader account of rationality.