Wilkinson D. What has philosophy got to do with it? ….

The Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks: Philosophy series serves undergraduate college students who have had little or no exposure to philosophy, as well as the curious lay reader. Following this first primer volume, which introduces both the discipline and the topics of the remaining nine volumes, each handbook will usher the reader into a subfield of philosophy (see list of titles below), and explore fifteen to thirty topics in that subfield. Every chapter in each volume will use vehicles such as film to (...) facilitate understanding of philosophical issues; for example, the film Dead Man Walking may be used as an introduction to issues related to the death penalty. (shrink)

Exploring Renaissance humanists’ debates on matter, life and the soul, this volume addresses the contribution of humanist culture to the evolution of early modern natural philosophy so as to shed light on the medical context of the ...

A physician and spokesman for the French Ideologues, Pierre-JeanGeorges Cabanis (1757-1808) stands at the crossroads of several influential developments in modern culture--Enlightenment optimism about human perfectibility, the clinical method in medicine, and the formation and adaptation of liberal social ideals in the French Revolution. This first major study of Cabanis in English traces the influences of these developments on his thought and career. Originally published in 1980. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously (...) out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Traditional medicines -- Modern medicine -- Disease -- Diagnosis -- Drug -- Trial -- Treatment -- Prevention -- Iatroethics -- Science or technology, craft or service?

Ethical issues are inherent in medicine. Morally appropriate forms of medical behaviour, the thorough communication of diagnosis and prognosis, and carefully evaluated treatment promising recovery have been among the standards of medical ethics down to the present day. The testimonies of a lively tradition, which since antiquity has contributed to the permanent critical reflection of medicine, constitute the cultural background of contemporary bioethics. They demonstrate how fertile the dialogue between medicine and philosophy on ethical questions can be. This (...) also includes the critical examination of the objects, aims, methods and boundaries of the physicians profession and of medical research. These boundaries have had throughout history to be constantly renegotiated and defined, and not only in the 21st century. --- Eine Reflexion uber die moralischen Fragen und Probleme, die die arztliche Praxis begleiten, ist der Medizin immanent. Die sittlich angemessene arztliche Haltung, die "gute" und hilfreiche Behandlung und das arztliche Ethos stehen im Zentrum zahlreicher Schriften, die zwischen Humanismus und fruher Neuzeit verfasst wurden. Es sind Zeugnisse einer lebhaften Tradition, die ununterbrochen seit der Antike zur Selbstvergewisserung der Medizin beigetragen hat. Zwischen Mittelalter und Humanismus sahen sich Mediziner den Herausforderungen des mannigfaltigen und lebhaften Heilkunde-Marktes ausgesetzt und dementsprechend verpflichtet, sich umso starker zu behaupten. Die hier prasentierten Beitrage befassen sich mit der uber sich selbst reflektierenden Medizin. Dazu gehoren die kritische Auseinandersetzung mit Gegenstand, Ziel, Methoden und Grenzen des arztlichen Berufes und der medizinischen Forschung. Diese mussten - nicht anders als heute - immer wieder neu definiert und verhandelt werden. (shrink)

This is the first book to explore the epistemology and ethics of advanced imaging tests, in order to improve the critical understanding of the nature of knowledge they provide and the practical consequences of their utilization in healthcare. Advanced medical imaging tests, such as PET and MRI, have gained center stage in medical research and in patients’ care. They also increasingly raise questions that pertain to philosophy: What is required to be an expert in reading images? How are (...) standards for interpretation to be fixed? Is there a problem of overutilization of such tests? How should uncertainty be communicated to patients? How to cope with incidental findings? This book is of interest and importance to scholars of philosophy of medicine at all levels, from undergraduates to researchers, to medical researchers and practitioners (radiologists and nuclear physicians) interested in a critical appraisal of the methodology of their discipline and in the ethical principles and consequences of their work. -/- . (shrink)

The presence of philosophy, amidst other humanities,within the body of medical education seems to raise no doubt nowadays. There are, however, some questions of a general nature to be discussed regarding the aforementioned fact. Three of them are of the greatest importance: (1) What image of medicine prevails in modern Western societies? (2)What ideals of medical professionals are commonly shared in these societies? (3) What is the intellectual background of the students of medico-related faculties? The real purposes and (...) goals ascribed to philosophy as a part of medical curricula, as well as methods of teaching philosophy depend on the answers given to these questions. An option to be presented here is influenced by the experience of teaching philosophy to students of medical faculties at the Jagiellonian University in Krakw. This approach is deliberately posed against mainstream medical education that is usually based on an unquestioned belief in the power of biomedical sciences. Such a model cannot, however,pretend to be a universal one to be implemented allover the world. In any case, it is the only thing a philosopher can do to improve the quality of a physician-patient encounter in facing a disease. (shrink)

Philosophy textbooks typically treat bioethics as a form of "applied ethics"-i.e., an attempt to apply a moral theory, like utilitarianism, to controversial ethical issues in biology and medicine. Historians, however, can find virtually no cases in which applied philosophical moral theory influenced ethical practice in biology or medicine. In light of the absence of historical evidence, the authors of this paper advance an alternative model of the historical relationship between philosophical ethics and medical ethics, the appropriation model. They offer (...) two historical case studies to illustrate the ways in which physicians have "appropriated" concepts and theory fragments from philosophers, and demonstrate how appropriated moral philosophy profoundly influenced the way medical morality was conceived and practiced. (shrink)

Some problems that arise in the account given by Thomasma and Pellegrino [6] of the foundations of medical ethics in a philosophy of medicine are addressed, in particular questions of a conceptual character about treating therelatum of medicine as health. Which concept of health is appropriate and which will bear the burden of the position thomasma and Pellegrino advance? It is argued that the proper relationship of medicine is one between a healer and developing embodied minds. As a consequence, (...) the project of providing a univocal account of the nature of medicine fails. Instead, pluralism infects philosophy and medicine, resulting in different philosophies of medicine. From these philosophies of medicine will follow not a single medical ethics but a variety. (shrink)

Contemporary medical education must train skilled and compassionate health care professionals who are rigorous in their approach to patient care and their pursuit of knowledge and solutions. Problem-based learning has been widely introduced, but there is no evidence that it leads to better outcomes than more traditional programs, and fundamental gaps in conceptual knowledge may result. Recently, emphasis has been placed on a solid grounding in underlying concepts combined with a systems-based approach, and ability to transfer information and solve (...) problems. Integrating traditional scientific and clinical disciplines with progressive and continuous assessment, may be a better means of achieving the combined aims of clinically relevant curriculum design, vertical integration of medical knowledge, and facilitation of the continuum of training. Being adaptable and flexible, cognisant of costs, and driven by evidence are key features of delivering medical education and contemporary medical practice. Educational research should lead to continuous improvement, but innovation without evaluation and attention to costs may create as many, or more, problems as are solved. (shrink)

The celebration of thirty years of publication of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy provides an opportunity to reflect on how medical ethics has evolved over that period. The reshaping of the field has occurred in no small part because of the impact of branches of philosophy other than ethics. These have included influences from Kantian theory of respect for persons, personal identity theory, philosophy of biology, linguistic analysis of the concepts of health and disease, personhood theory, epistemology, and (...) political philosophy. More critically, medicine itself has begun to be reshaped. The most fundamental restructuring of medicine is currently occurring - stemming, in part, from the application of contemporary philosophy of science to the medical field. There is no journal more central to these critical events of the past three decades than The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy. (shrink)

Empiricism has many different faces. As the contributions to this volume demonstrate, in the 17th and 18th century demonstrate medical and philosophical empiricism is less about an "essence" and more a series of specifically modern "acts" or "gestures.".

Medicine, as Byron Good argues, reconstitutes thehuman body of our daily experience as a medical body,unfamiliar outside medicine. This reconstitution can be seen intwo ways: as a salutary reminder of the extent to which thereality even of the human body is constructed; and as anarena for what Stephen Toulmin distinguishes as theintersection of natural science and history, in which many ofphilosophy''s traditional questionsare given concrete and urgent form.This paper begins by examining a number of dualities between themedical body and (...) the body familiar in daily experience. Toulmin''s epistemological analysis of clinical medicine ascombining both universal and existential knowledge is thenconsidered. Their expression, in terms of attention,respectively, to natural science and to personal history, isexplored through the epistemological contrasts between themedical body and the familiar body, noting the traditionalphilosophical questions which they in turn illustrate. (shrink)

John White; The Medical Condition of Philosophy of Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 21, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 155–162, https://doi.or.

In spite of the seminal work A Philosophical Basis of Medical Practice, the debate on the task and goals of philosophy of medicine still continues. From an European perspective it is argued that the main topics dealt with by Pellegrino and Thomasma are still particularly relevant to medical practice as a healing practice, while expressing the need for a philosophy of medicine. Medical practice is a discursive practice which is highly influenced by other discursive practices like science, (...) law and economics. Philosophical analysis of those influences is needed to discern their effect on the goals of medicine and on the ways in which the self-image of man may be changed. The nature of medical practice and discourse itself makes it necessary to include different philosophical disciplines, like philosophy of science, of law, ethics, and epistemology. Possible scenario's of euthanasia and the human genome project in the USA and Europe are used to exemplify how philosopy of medicine can contribute to a realistic understanding of the problems which are related to the goals of medicine and health care. (shrink)

The article offers an approach to inquiry about, the foundation of medical ethics by addressing three areas of conceptual presupposition basic to medical ethical theory. First, medical ethics must presuppose a view about the nature of medicine. it is argued that the view required by a cogent medical morality entails that medicine be seen both as a healing relationship and as a practical art. Three ways in which medicine inherently involves values and valuation are presented as (...) important, i.e., in being aimed at the good of health, in being a cognitive art evaluating towards that good, and as a manifestation of a virtuous disposition concerning that good. Finally, a value ontology drawn from these considerations is seen as necessarily underlying medical ethics. A set of three such basic values are promoted as crucial: the value of health; the value of the individual patient; and the value of altruism that mediates the class of potential patients. (shrink)

This is a fundamental re-assessment of the world-view of the alchemists, natural philosophers and intelligencers of the mid 17th century. Based almost entirely upon the extensive and hitherto little-researched manuscript archive of Samuel Hartlib, it charts and contextualises the personal and intellectual history of Johann Moriaen (c.1592-1668), a Dutch-German alchemist and natural philosopher. Moriaen was closely acquainted with many of the leading thinkers and experimenters of his time, including René Descartes, J.A. Comenius, J.R. Glauber and J.S. KÃ1⁄4ffler. His detailed reports (...) of relations with these figures and his response to their work provide a uniquely informed insight into the world of alchemy and natural philosophy. This study also illuminates the nature and mechanisms of intellectual and technological exchanges between Germany, The Netherlands and England. (shrink)

After considering two of Pellegrino’s papers that address the relation between philosophy of medicine and medical ethics, I identify several overarching problems in his account that revolve around his self-described essentialism and the lack of a systematic attempt to relate clinical medicine to biomedicine and public health. I address these from the critical realist position of Bernard Lonergan, who grounds both metaphysics and ethics on the normative structure of human inquiry and seeks to understand historical development, such as we (...) are witnessing in health science and health care, in terms of the dynamic structure of the human good. I conclude that Lonergan’s generalized empirical method and hierarchical account of world order provide a potentially dynamic framework on which to build a more comprehensive philosophy of medicine than one whose foundations rest primarily on a phenomenology of the clinical encounter and the telos of medicine. (shrink)

A reply to David Hamlyn's critique of current philosophy of education.

Medicalisation is a social phenomenon in which conditions that were once under legal, religious, personal or other jurisdictions are brought into the domain of medical authority. Low sexual desire in females has been medicalised, pathologised as a disease, and intervened upon with a range of pharmaceuticals. There are two polarised positions on the medicalisation of low female sexual desire: I call these the mainstream view and the critical view. I assess the central arguments for both positions. Dividing the two (...) positions are opposing models of the aetiology of low female sexual desire. I conclude by suggesting that the balance of arguments supports a modest defence of the critical view regarding the medicalisation of low female sexual desire. (shrink)

In this commentary on the article by Arthur L. Caplan [1] the philosophy of medicine is viewed from a medical perspective. Philosophical studies have a long tradition in medicine, especially during periods of paradigmatic unrest, and they serve the same goal as other medical activities: the prevention and treatment of disease. The medical profession needs the help of professional philosophers in much the same way as it needs the cooperation of basic scientists. Philosophy of medicine may not (...) deserve the status of a philosophical subspecialty or field, but it so closely linked to the main trends of contemporary medical thinking that it must be regarded as an emerging (or reemerging) medical subdiscipline. (shrink)

Philosophy and ethics in medicine is an interesting and often fascinating topic of enquiry, however uptake amongst medical students is highly variable and it is often regarded as a nonessential component of the medical curriculum. Medical students themselves are often overwhelmed by the demands of medical study, and cite high rates of burnout. This paper describes a novel intervention provided at Western Sydney University as part of the Professional Development curriculum, which provided three broad tutorial interventions (...) in their first clinical year. The tutorials gave an overview regarding philosophy theory, but are specifically designed to encourage resilience amongst students. The tutorials were highly regarded and represent a novel way of engaging young doctors. It is suggested that orienting philosophy teaching towards issues immediately relevant to training doctors can greatly improve student acceptability. (shrink)

The unprecedented development of medical informatics is constantly transforming the concept of expertise in medical sciences in a way that has far-reaching consequences for both the theory of knowledge and the philosophy of informatics. Deep medicine is based on the assumption that medical diagnosis should take into account the wide array of possible health factors involved in the diagnostic process, such as not only genome analysis alone, but also the metabolome (analysis of all body metabolites important for (...) e.g. drug-drug interactions), microbiome (i.e. analysis of all bodily microorganisms interacting with host cells) or exposome (analysis of all environmental factors triggering potentially harmful cell mutations, such as UV radiation, heavy metals, various carcinogens, etc.). Deep data analysis is of tantamount importance for personalized diagnosis but, at the same time, hardly achievable by a regular human being. However, adequately designed artificial intelligence (e.g. a deep neural network) can undeniably be of great help for finding correlations between symptoms and underlying diseases. Nowadays AI applies to nearly every aspect of medicine, starting from the data analysis of scientific literature, through the diagnostic process, to the act of communication between physicians and their patients. Medical image processing algorithms greatly enhance the chances of successful recognition of melanoma or intestinal polyps. Communication tools designed for physicians use techniques known from social media to provide users with an opportunity to consult the case with colleagues from the same discipline. Natural language processing tools significantly improve doctor-patient communication by the automation of note-taking. Is this enough to support the claim that the non-epistemic competences in medicine are becoming more and more important? Can we attribute expertise only to a person? How is medical informatics changing the way most people usually understand human-computer interactions? (shrink)

Pellegrino and Siegler have argued that medical ethics must be taught 'at the bedside', or clinically. This paper is an attempt to establish the need for clinical teaching of medical ethics both to medical students and to medical ethicists who are not physicians. Through a critique of six positions regarding the aims of medical ethics, four principles are established which are the basis of a philosophy of education for medical ethics. The need for a (...) clinically-based educational programme in medical ethics is thereby established, not on practical grounds, but on solid philosophical ones. The paper concludes with practical examples of a clinically-based medical ethics programme following from the four principles. (shrink)

Medico-philosophical reflections were developed in the 19th and the 20th centuries by three consecutive generations of Polish physicians, active in what was later named the Polish School of Philosophy of Medicine. The second generation of this school published its own journal, Medical Critique [Krytika Lekarska], from 1897 to 1907. Medical Critique included numerous articles on the nature of medical knowledge, the reductionism versus holism debate in biology and medicine, the importance of teleologically-oriented approaches in medicine, the influence (...) of theories and of a priori ideas on clinical observations and on ‘clinical facts’, the problem of classification of diseases, the normative and ethical dimension of medicine, and the ion relationships between philosophy, history and medicine. The existence of a journal dealing specifically with theoretical reflections on medicine undoubtedly contributed to the propagation of original work in the philosophy of medicine in Poland. (shrink)

This is a reply to Dan Clouser's philosophical commentary on the essays in this issue. Important assumptions that condition his perspective on the essays are identified and analyzed. Attention is drawn to his unhistorical emphasis on the exclusive importance of philosophy in ethical thought, and his resulting insistence that any discipline wishing to contribute to biomedical discourse must adopt the assumptions and methodologies of philosophy. Clouser's “three tenets” are examined, and then the question of what literature, considered in terms of (...) its own aims and methodologies, has to offer to medical ethics. Genuine dialogue about medical ethics between philosophers and literary scholars is both desirable and important, but becomes possible only if the methods and insights of each discipline are honored in the pursuit of the overall goals they hold in common. (shrink)

This volume of papers, arising from a Royal Institute of Philosophy Conference, includes contributions from doctors, nurses, and administrators in the field of health care.

This volume approaches the philosophy of medicine from the broad naturalist perspective that holds that philosophy must be continuous with, constrained by, and ...

The question of whether the universe is expanding or contracting serves as a model for current questions facing the medical humanities. The medical humanities might aptly be described as a metamedical multiverse encompassing many separate universes of discourse, the most prominent of which is probably bioethics. Bioethics, however, is increasingly developing into a new interdisciplinary discipline, and threatens to engulf the other medical humanities, robbing them of their own distinctive contributions to metamedicine. The philosophy of medicine considered (...) as a distinct field of study has suffered as a result. Indeed, consensus on whether the philosophy of medicine even constitutes a legitimate field of study is lacking. This paper presents an argument for the importance of a broad conception of the philosophy of medicine and the central role it should play in organizing and interpreting the various fields of study that make up the metamedical multiverse. (shrink)

In this paper, my goal is to use an epistemic injustice framework to extend an existing normative analysis of over-medicalization to psychiatry and thus draw attention to overlooked injustices. Kaczmarek has developed a promising bioethical and pragmatic approach to over-medicalization, which consists of four guiding questions covering issues related to the harms and benefits of medicalization. In a nutshell, if we answer “yes” to all proposed questions, then it is a case of over-medicalization. Building on an epistemic injustice framework, I (...) will argue that Kaczmarek’s proposal lacks guidance concerning the procedures through which we are to answer the four questions, and I will import the conceptual resources of epistemic injustice to guide our thinking on these issues. This will lead me to defend more inclusive decision-making procedures regarding medicalization in the DSM. Kaczmarek’s account complemented with an epistemic injustice framework can help us achieve better forms of medicalization. I will then use a contested case of medicalization, the creation of Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder in the DSM-5 to illustrate how the epistemic injustice framework can help to shed light on these issues and to show its relevance to distinguish good and bad forms of medicalization. (shrink)

A unique relationship exists between physicians and philosophers — one that expands on the constructive potential of the liaison between physicians and, for example, theologians, on the one hand, or, social workers on the other. This liaison should focus in the scientific aspects of medicine, not just the ethical aspects. Philosophers can provide physicians with a perspective on both the philosophy and the history of medicine through the ages — a sense of how medicine has adapted to the social cultural (...) and ethical needs of each period. This perspective, while emphasizing medicine asscience, should not be limited to matters of methodology, or to criteria for distinguishing science from other intellectual pursuits, but should be concerned also with the history, sociology and politics of science. Both physicians and philosophers stand to gain from a strengthening of their active liaison now as never before; but most of all, the public will be the beneficiary. (shrink)