Philosophy of Medicine

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Broadbent
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Medicine ◽  
The Core ◽  
Epistemic Attitude ◽  
Novel Theory ◽  
Causes Of Disease ◽  
Contemporary Work ◽  
Medical Traditions ◽  
Based Medicine ◽  
Admissible Evidence ◽  
Medical Competence

Philosophy of Medicine seeks to answer two questions: (1) what is medicine? and (2) what should we think of it? The first question is motivated by the observation that medicine has existed and continues to exist in many different forms in different times and places. There is no activity or belief that is common to all medical traditions in all times and places. What, if anything, makes us count these activities as varieties of the same thing—namely, medicine? The book distinguishes the goal and business of medicine, arguing that the goal is cure, while the business of medicine cannot be, because medical traditions have been too hit-and-miss at achieving cure. The core medical competence is identified as engaging with the project of understanding the nature and causes of disease. A model of health is also required to say what medicine is, since health is part of its subject matter, and a novel theory of health as a secondary property is offered. In the second part of the book, the proper epistemic attitude to medicine is considered. Contrary to much contemporary work, the book argues against positions setting very rigid constraints on what counts as admissible evidence in forming beliefs either about whole traditions or about specific interventions. Thus both Evidence-Based Medicine and Medical Nihilism are rejected. Instead a view called Medical Cosmopolitanism is developed from Appiah’s corresponding work in ethics. The view is applied to alternative and non-Mainstream traditions, as well as to the project of decolonizing medicine.

The Business of Medicine

2019 ◽  
pp. 63-92
Author(s):  
Alex Broadbent
Keyword(s):  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Epistemic Position ◽  
Core Business ◽  
The Core ◽  
Causes Of Disease ◽  
Medical Competence

This chapter identifies a competence whose exercise might constitute the core business of medicine in the absence of curative competence. On the basis of an inference to the best explanation, the Inquiry Thesis is introduced: medicine is an inquiry into the nature and causes of disease, for purpose of cure. (The Inquiry and Curative Theses thus agree on the goal of medicine, but differ on its business.) The Bullshit Objection says that the core medical competence is bullshit—that is, duping patients into believing that medicine has cures when it does not. This is rejected on the basis of strong historical evidence that the ineffectiveness of medicine was widely known. The Whig’s Objection says that old medicine was just a mistake, and is rejected on the basis that it fails to acknowledge either the similarities between our epistemic position and that of our forebears, or the contribution their activities made to contemporary cures.

Some trends in 50 years of Italian Psychiatry (in Italian)

2007 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni Jervis
Keyword(s):  
Mental Disorder ◽  
Evidence Based Medicine ◽  
General Public ◽  
The Other ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
The Core ◽  
The One ◽  
Based Medicine ◽  
Popular Psychology

SUMMARYSeveral discernible trends have changed the outlook of psychiatric resources available to the general public during the last 50 years in Western countries and particularly in Italy. Among these trends, two conflicting issues are here outlined. On the one side, evidence based medicine is the core of a methodological revolution, which asks for a deeper criticism of subjective judgements in clinical matters; on the other side, the study of emotions and attitudes has stressed the outstanding importance of conscious and unconscious expectations both in patients and in caregivers. Moreover, popular psychology has altered the way mental disorder is commonly perceived and treated. A comprehensive way of taking into account these three diverse trends seems to be still lacking.

scholarly journals Absurdity in Medicine. Stanisław Trzebiński’s Philosophy of Medicine

2021 ◽  
pp. 9-23
Author(s):  
Jarosław Barański ◽  
Wojciech Mackiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Evidence Based Medicine ◽  
Philosophy Of Medicine ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
World War ◽  
Medicine And Literature ◽  
Knowledge And Practice ◽  
Based Medicine ◽  
Second World

Stanisław Trzebiński (1861–1930), professor at Stefan Batory University in Vilnius, was one of the most distinguished representatives of the Polish School of Philosophy of Medicine before the Second World War. He undertook studies in neurology, philosophy of medicine, and literature. The article explores Trzebiński’s philosophical ideas, especially his call for rationality in medicine and the concept of absurdity in medicine as a precondition for the development of medical knowledge and practice. Today this method is an essential background in Evidence-Based Medicine and confirms cultural and scientific forms of cognition.

Spinozistic Selves

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-35
Author(s):  
SAMUEL NEWLANDS
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Action Theory ◽  
The Core ◽  
Personal Transformations ◽  
Contemporary Work

AbstractSpinoza's Ethics promises a path for sweeping personal transformations, but his accounts face two sets of overarching problems. The first concerns his peculiar metaphysics of action and agents; the second his apparent neglect of the very category of persons. Although these are somewhat distinct concerns, they have a common, unified solution in Spinoza's system that is philosophically rich and interesting, both in its own right and in relation to contemporary work in moral philosophy. After presenting the core of the problem facing Spinoza's action theory, I turn to his overlooked account of selves, one that can be illuminated by contemporary work on so-called deep-self theories. I then show how Spinoza's distinctive account of selves prevents his action theory from collapsing into metaphysical incoherence, and conclude with an implication for Spinoza's broader account of transformation.

Emotions, Embodiment and the Sensation of Society

1997 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Shilling
Keyword(s):  
Social Conflict ◽  
The Other ◽  
Gender Inequalities ◽  
Emile Durkheim ◽  
Important Resource ◽  
The Core ◽  
Contemporary Work ◽  
Core Questions ◽  
The One ◽  
Ongoing Project

The study of emotions has attracted an increased amount of attention from mainstream sociologists in recent years, both because of its potential to provide an added dimension to the analysis of such subjects as social conflict, gender inequalities and the organisation of the workplace, and as a result of its relevance to theoretical and methodological debates which have long characterised the discipline. This paper suggests that some of the core questions facing this subject can be interrogated productively by engaging critically with the work of one of the most important ‘founding figures’ of the discipline, Emile Durkheim. What Collins (1988) refers to as the ‘underground wing’ of Durkheim's work has yet to be fully utilised or developed by sociologists concerned with emotions, yet it provides us with a suggestive and provocative means of reconceptualising the gulf that often exists within contemporary work on emotions as malleable and controllable, on the one hand, and that concerned with emotions as intransigent ‘somatic states of being’, on the other. As such, Durkheim's writings constitute an important resource for sociologists concerned with the ongoing project of ‘embodying’ the discipline.

Philosophy of Medicine

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Élodie Giroux
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Medicine ◽  
Causal Analysis ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Biomedical Science ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
The Status ◽  
Based Medicine ◽  
Illness Concepts ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Nature Of Medicine

This chapter views philosophy of medicine as a domain within philosophy of science as opposed to a province of bioethics. Thus, it first deals with the philosophical analysis of health, disease, and illness concepts and with the scientific nature of medicine. Relative to the second theme, it addresses questions relative to the causes and explanations of disease and the status of theories in biomedical science. A central concern here is the status and nature of proof in medicine and the relationship between theory and practice at the heart of evidence-based medicine. Finally, the chapter focuses on the specific problems raised by causal analysis and experimentation in medicine and on the nature of clinical reasoning.

scholarly journals Emergence and Evidence: A Close Look at Bunge’s Philosophy of Medicine

Philosophies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rainer J. Klement ◽  
Prasanta S. Bandyopadhyay
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Medicine ◽  
Open Systems ◽  
Emergent Properties ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Medical Philosophy ◽  
Randomized Controlled ◽  
Book Medical ◽  
Medical Hypothesis ◽  
Based Medicine ◽  
Realist Ontology

In his book “Medical Philosophy: Conceptual issues in Medicine”, Mario Bunge provides a unique account of medical philosophy that is deeply rooted in a realist ontology he calls “systemism”. According to systemism, the world consists of systems and their parts, and systems possess emergent properties that their parts lack. Events within systems may form causes and effects that are constantly conjoined via particular mechanisms. Bunge supports the views of the evidence-based medicine movement that randomized controlled trials (RCTs) provide the best evidence to establish the truth of causal hypothesis; in fact, he argues that only RCTs have this ability. Here, we argue that Bunge neglects the important feature of patients being open systems which are in steady interaction with their environment. We show that accepting this feature leads to counter-intuitive consequences for his account of medical hypothesis testing. In particular, we point out that (i) the confirmation of hypotheses is inherently stochastic and affords a probabilistic account of both confirmation and evidence which we provide here; (ii) RCTs are neither necessary nor sufficient to establish the truth of a causal claim; (iii) testing of causal hypotheses requires taking into account background knowledge and the context within which an intervention is applied. We conclude that there is no “best” research methodology in medicine, but that different methodologies should coexist in a complementary fashion.

Principles and methods of intervention research

ESC CardioMed ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 3080-3088
Author(s):  
Jan G. P. Tijssen
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Research ◽  
Quantitative Data ◽  
Medical Practitioner ◽  
Therapeutic Interventions ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Medicine Information ◽  
Clinical Literature ◽  
Causes Of Disease ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Based Medicine

The medical practitioner is expected to have reliable information about the causes of disease, the value of diagnostic findings, the patient’s prognosis, and the expected outcomes of therapeutic options. Knowledge about the consequences of clinical decisions is derived from the clinical literature. In the model of ‘evidence-based medicine’, information about the individual patient—obtained through careful history taking, physical examination, and other investigations—is combined with quantitative data derived from clinical research, pertaining to the causes of disease, the value of diagnostic findings, the patient’s prognosis, and the effects of therapeutic interventions. This development has retained pathophysiology as its theoretical foundation. Clinical research is planned on the basis of pathophysiological and biomedical insights. Likewise, in applying the results of clinical research to the individual patient, the physician cannot do without pathophysiological reasoning.

scholarly journals New insights into non-transcriptional regulation of mammalian core clock proteins

2020 ◽  
Vol 133 (18) ◽  
pp. jcs241174
Author(s):  
Priya Crosby ◽  
Carrie L. Partch
Keyword(s):  
Feedback Loop ◽  
Molecular Mechanisms ◽  
Negative Feedback Loop ◽  
Cellular Processes ◽  
The Core ◽  
Clock Proteins ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Contemporary Work ◽  
Cryptochrome 1 ◽  
Activator Complex

ABSTRACTMammalian circadian rhythms drive ∼24 h periodicity in a wide range of cellular processes, temporally coordinating physiology and behaviour within an organism, and synchronising this with the external day–night cycle. The canonical model for this timekeeping consists of a delayed negative-feedback loop, containing transcriptional activator complex CLOCK–BMAL1 (BMAL1 is also known as ARNTL) and repressors period 1, 2 and 3 (PER1, PER2 and PER3) and cryptochrome 1 and 2 (CRY1 and CRY2), along with a number of accessory factors. Although the broad strokes of this system are defined, the exact molecular mechanisms by which these proteins generate a self-sustained rhythm with such periodicity and fidelity remains a topic of much research. Recent studies have identified prominent roles for a number of crucial post-transcriptional, translational and, particularly, post-translational events within the mammalian circadian oscillator, providing an increasingly complex understanding of the activities and interactions of the core clock proteins. In this Review, we highlight such contemporary work on non-transcriptional events and set it within our current understanding of cellular circadian timekeeping.

scholarly journals Evidence-based medicine and prejudice-based medicine: the case of homeopathy

2014 ◽  
Vol 30 (11) ◽  
pp. 2368-2376 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nelson Filice de Barros ◽  
Alessandra Rodrigues Fiuza
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Practice ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Medical Curriculum ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Allopathic Medicine ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
The Core ◽  
Personal Opinion ◽  
The University ◽  
Based Medicine

In recent decades an important social movement related to Complementary and Alternative Medicine has been identified worldwide. In Brazil, although homeopathy was recognized as a specialist medical area in 1980, few medical schools offer courses related to it. In a previous study, 176 resident doctors at the University of Campinas Medical School were interviewed and 86 (49%) rejected homeopathy as a subject in the core medical curriculum. Thus, this qualitative study was conducted to understand their reasons for refusing. 20 residents from 15 different specialist areas were interviewed. Very few of them admitted to a lack of knowledge for making a judgment about homeopathy; none of them made a conscientious objection to it; and the majority demonstrated prejudice, affirming that there is not enough scientific evidence to support homeopathy, defending their position based on personal opinion, limited clinical practice and on information circulated in the mass media. Finally, resident doctors’ prejudices against homeopathy can be extended to practices other than allopathic medicine.

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