"EPISTEMOLOGY" AS A SEMANTIC POLLUTANT

Some family therapists, following Bateson, use "epistemology" in a peculiar, non-traditional way. Nothing is gained, and much appears to be lost, by this practice. Its main effect is to promote the idea that systemic and psychological modes of explanation are incompatible. In fact, a kind of cognitive psychology is implicit in what family therapists say about reframing. By appropriating the territory of psychology and calling it epistemology instead, family therapists merely pollute the semantic environment,¹ muddying the very things that theoretical terms are supposed to clear up.