Philosophy of Medicine

Dov M. Gabbay, Paul Thagard, John Woods

• Publisher: North Holland
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9780444517876
• eBook ISBN:
  9780080930916
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Biology
• Index: Biological Sciences

This volume covers a wide range of conceptual, epistemological and methodological issues in the philosophy of science raised by reflection upon medical science and practice. Several chapters examine such general meta-scientific concepts as discovery, reduction, theories and models, causal inference and scientific realism as they apply to medicine or medical science in particular. Some discuss important concepts specific to medicine (diagnosis, health, disease, brain death). A topic such as evidence, for instance, is examined at a variety of levels, from social mechanisms for guiding evidence-based reasoning such as evidence-based medicine, consensus conferences, and clinical trials, to the more abstract analysis of experimentation, inference and uncertainty. Some chapters reflect on particular domains of medicine, including psychiatry, public health, and nursing. The contributions span a broad range of detailed cases from the science and practice of medicine, as well as a broad range of intellectual approaches, from conceptual analysis to detailed examinations of particular scientific papers or historical episodes. - Chapters view philosophy of medicine from quite different angles - Considers substantive cases from both medical science and practice - Chapters from a distinguished array of contributors

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Table of Contents
• Front matter
• Copyright
• General Preface
• Contributors
• Philosophy of Medicine
• Concepts of Health and Disease
• Medical Ontology
• Theories and Models in Medicine
• Reduction in Biology and Medicine
• Causal Inference and Medical Experiments
• Patterns of Medical Discovery
• Evidence-Based Medicine
• Group Judgment and the Medical Consensus Conference
• Frequentist versus Bayesian Clinical Trials
• Uncertainty in Clinical Medicine
• The Logic of Diagnosis*
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The Syntax and Semantics of Diagnosis
• 3. Methods of Diagnostics
• 4. The Diagnostic Knowledge
• 5. Indication Structures and Diagnosis
• 6. A Theory of the Relativity of Diagnosis
• 7. On the Pragmatics of Diagnosis
• 8. On the Logic of Diagnostics
• 9. Summary
• Conceptual Foundations of Biological Psychiatry
• Brain Death
• Nursing Science
• Public Health
• Index