Maximiliano Zeller

About

I am a philosopher based at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. I study how psychiatric diagnoses are made and justified. My questions are what makes a diagnostic category a good one, when and why patients are disbelieved as they describe their own experience, and what happens, ethically and cognitively, when psychedelic-assisted therapy changes someone's beliefs about themselves and the world. I also work on algorithms that predict psychiatric diagnoses, and on how much weight such predictions should carry in the consulting room.

These questions share a structure. In each case, institutional arrangements and evidential standards settle what can count as clinically relevant knowledge before any particular clinical judgement is made. My recent work develops this institutional epistemology of psychiatry across diagnostic classification, the design of psychiatric research, and the use of statistical evidence in individual cases. A second strand applies the same approach to psychedelic-assisted therapy, where the treatments themselves reshape patients' beliefs and existential orientations, and the question becomes what safeguards that calls for.

I received my PhD from the Universidad de Buenos Aires in 2024, with a dissertation on psychedelic therapies between the biomedical model and the horizons of a new psychiatry, supervised by Diana Pérez. I coordinate the MIND Foundation reading group on philosophy of psychedelics in Buenos Aires and direct the philosophy of psychedelics research group at SADAF.

Selected Publications

1. Zeller, M. (2026). Do psychiatric disorders need types? Case identity, naturalism, and the limits of biological grounding. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1353/ppp.0.a988777  PDF
2. Zeller, M. (2026) Promissory Essentialism as Inferential Structure. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1353/ppp.0.a994345  PDF
3. Zeller, M. (2026). Transient Epistemic Vulnerability and Normative Capture: Toward an Ethics of Contextual Conditions in Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy. Philosophical Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2026.2678957  PDF
4. Zeller, M. (2026). Bounded reform in psychiatric classification: a textual analysis of the APA’s Future DSM Strategy. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1353/ppp.0.a997154  PDF
5. Zeller, M. (in press). Between liberation and legitimation: why neurodiversity needs diagnosis while resisting disorder. Azimuth. Philosophical Coordinates in Modern and Contemporary Age.
6. Zeller, M. (2025). Psychedelic therapies and belief change: are there risks of epistemic harm or epistemic injustice? Philosophical Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2024.2362284  PDF

Exchange with Steven Hyman and Peter Zachar

Selected Conference Presentations

1. Accepted, “Inherited Assumptions: A Philosophical Audit of the Psychiatric Presuppositions Embedded in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy Research” 18th International Conference on Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology (INPP), Netherlands, October 2026.
2. “Transient epistemic vulnerability and normative capture: toward an ethics of contextual conditions in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy” International Interdisciplinary Conference of Psychedelic Studies (IICPS), University of Bucharest, Romania, May 2026.
3. “Psychedelic Therapies and Belief Change: Epistemic Harm, Epistemic Injustice, and the Case for Epistemic Pluralism” UniMIND Central Sessions, MIND Foundation, March 2025.

Public Engagement