Philosophy of medicine
By: edited by Fred Gifford
Contributors: ScienceDirect (Online service)
Edition: 1st ed.
Series: Handbook of the philosophy of science -- v. 16; Handbook of the philosophy of science -- v. 16.
Publisher: Elsevier/North Holland
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Amsterdam
Language: eng
Format: [electronic resource] /
Number of pages: 590
ISBN-13: 9780444517876
Subjects: Medical Philosophy
Description: 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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction / Fred Gifford; title: Concepts of health and disease / Chirstopher Boorse; title: Medical ontology / Jeremy R. Simon; title: Theories and models in medicine / R. Paul Thompson; title: Causal inference and medical experiments / Daniel Steel; title: Patterns of medical discovery / Paul Thagard; title: Evidence-based medicine / Robyn Bluhm and Kirstin Borgerson; title: Group judgment and the medical consensus conference / Miriam Solomon; title: Frequentist versus Bayesian clinical trials / David Teira; title: Uncertainty in clinical medicine / Benjamin Djulbegovic, Iztok Hozo, Sander Greenland; title: The logic of diagnosis / Kazem Sadegh-Zadeh; title: Conceptual foundations of biological psychiatry / Dominic Murphy; title: Brain death / Joh Lizza; title: Nursing science / Mark Risjord; title: Public health / Dean Rickles.