Philosophy of Medicine provides a fresh and comprehensive treatment of the topic. It offers a novel theory of the nature of medicine, and proposes a new attitude to medicine, aimed at improving the quality of debates between medical traditions and facilitating medicine's decolonization.

Two challenges face European philosophy of medicine. The first is to counterbalance what is seen as an overemphasis on social analysis of medicine with greater attention to its personal and individual dimensions. The second, related challenge, is to more fully understand the clinical realities of modern medicine, which in turn, give rise to the scope and limits of physician duties, patient obligations, and social concerns.

The Covid-19 pandemic was a world event on our intellectual doorstep. What were our duties to respond, and how well did we respond? We published papers, but we did not engage extensively or influentially in public debate. Perhaps we felt we were not experts. Yet in a health crisis, philosophers of medicine can offer not only “conceptual clarification,” but also domain-specific knowledge concerning structural properties of relevant sciences and their social-political uses. I set out three conditions for the kind (...) of contribution I felt was lacking: public, critical, and timely. And I call for us to do more of it. (shrink)

The development of the philosophy of medicine in the Federal Republic of Germany since 1945 is presented in a thematic form. The first two decades were characterized by the evolution of an anthropological school of thought that aimed at relating physician and patient in a more personal and existential form than had hitherto been the case. In the last years, this tendency to demand deeper psychic and broader social involvement with medical problems had increased. Somatic disorders were considered (...) to be fundamentally caused by socially induced mental stress. After a brief period during which the theme of organisms in general and phenomenologically grasped living-body of human beings in particular were discussed, there followed since the mid-seventies an essential preoccupation with the methodology and epistemology of medicine. According to this trend, medicine is to be analyzed in terms of the theory of action, with its conceptual and strategic orientation towards practice and not, as generally believed, towards the standards of scientific truth. The concepts of disease, diagnosis and therapy are therefore relative and their validity is dependent on time, persons and circumstances involved. Thus, the highest criteria of utility for medical actions cannot but be the affected patient and society. (shrink)

This chapter describes the field of philosophy of medicine and its methods. We discuss the history and potential of experimental approaches in philosophy of medicine. We give an overview of the chapters in the book.

If one had to identify the biggest change within the philosophical tradition in the twenty-first century, it would certainly be the rapid rise of experimental philosophy to address differences in intuitions about concepts. It is, therefore, surprising that the philosophy of medicine has so far not drawn on the tools of experimental philosophy in the context of a particular conceptual debate that has overshadowed all others in the field: the long-standing dispute between so-called naturalists and normativists (...) about the concepts of health and disease. In this paper, I defend and advocate the use of empirical methods to inform and advance this and other debates within the philosophy of medicine. (shrink)

It seems impossible to completely cover the field indicated by the title of this report because of the many contributions of individual physicians and non-physicians to problems of the philosophy of medicine in Austria, and to their solution. The main trends are rooted in historic developments and in the current problems of medicine and health care, which are similar world-wide. In Austria famous names like empress Maria Theresia or the physician Ignaz Semmelweis have to be mentioned in (...) connection with the development of the ideas of a philosophy of medicine. In recent times again influential and well-known persons in related fields of medicine and health care are Austrians. However, the main line of new developments goes mostly unseen by the public: activities in medical ethics with the goal to humanize health care, carried on by groups of young physicians, biomedical engineers and students. (shrink)

This report explores the relationship between philosophy and medicine in the U.K. We note that medical training involves very little formal instruction in philosophy and ethics, and that, with few exceptions, philosophers in the U.K. do not contribute to the instruction of physicians or the philosophy of medicine. However, reviewing the problems arising out of recent developments within scientific medicine we find a pressing need for future philosophical analysis in the following areas: psychiatry, organ (...) transplantation, abortion, euthanasia, experiments on living subjects, consent, confidentiality, the relationship between medicine and political authority, and the provisions for social justice in medicine. (shrink)

What the philosophy of medicine is -- Philosophy of medicine: should it be teleologically or socially construed? -- The internal morality of clinical medicine: a paradigm for the ethics of the helping and healing professions -- Humanistic basis of professional ethics -- The commodification of medical and health care: the moral consequences of a paradigm shift from a professional to a market ethic -- Medicine today: its identity, its role, and the role of physicians (...) -- From medical ethics to a moral philosophy of the professions -- Moral choice, the good of the patient, and the patient's good -- The four principles and the doctor-patient relationship: the need for a better linkage -- Patient and physician autonomy: conflicting rights and obligations in the physician-patient relationship -- Character, virtue, and self-interest in the ethics of the professions -- Toward a virtue-based normative ethics for the health professions -- The physician's conscience, conscience clauses, and religious belief: a Catholic perspective -- The most humane of the sciences, the most scientific of the humanities -- The humanities in medical education: entering the post-evangelical era -- Agape and ethics: some reflections on medical morals from a catholic christian perspective -- Bioethics at century's turn: can normative ethics be retrieved? -- Hippocratic tradition -- Toward an expanded medical ethics: the Hippocratic ethic revisited -- Medical ethics: entering the post-Hippocratic era. (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)

In this introduction to a special subsection of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics comprising separate reviews of the Springer Handbook of the Philosophy of Medicine, The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Medicine, and The Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Philosophy of Medicine, I compare the three texts with respect to their overall organization and their approach to the relation between the science and the art of medicine. I then indicate two areas that merit more (...) explicit attention in developing a comprehensive philosophy of medicine going forward: health economics and systematic relations within the field as a whole. The reviews that follow speak for themselves. (shrink)

A less analytic and more wholistic approach to philosophy, described as best overall fit or seeing how things all hang together, is defended in recent works by John Rawls and Richard Rorty and can usefully be applied to problems in philosophy of medicine. Looking at sickness and its impact upon the person as a central problem for philosophy of medicine, this approach discourages a search for necessary and sufficient conditions for being sick, and instead encourages (...) a listing of true and interesting observations about sickness which reflect the convergence of a number of different viewpoints. Among the relevant viewpoints are other humanities disciplines besides philosophy and the social sciences. Literature, in particular, provides insights into the meaning and the uniqueness of episodes of sickness in a way that philosophers may otherwise fail to grasp. (shrink)

Papers presented at a symposium on philosophy and medicine at the Institute for the Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch in 1974 were published in the inaugural volume of this series.

What kind of knowledge is medical knowledge? Can medicine be explained scientifically? Is disease a scientific concept, or do explanations of disease depend on values? What is ‘evidence-based’ medicine? Are advances in neuroscience bringing us closer to a scientific understanding of the mind? The nature of medicine raises fundamental questions about explanation, causation, knowledge and ontology – questions that are central to philosophy as well as medicine. In this book Paul R. Thompson and Ross E. (...) G. Upshur introduce the fundamental issues in philosophy of medicine for those coming to the subject for the first time. They introduce and explain the following key topics: Understanding the physician-patient relationship: the phenomenology of the medical encounter. Models and theories in biology and medicine: what role do theories play in medicine? Are they similar to scientific theories? Randomised controlled trials: can scientific experiments be replicated in clinical medicine? What are the philosophical criticisms levelled at RCTs? The concept of evidence in medical research: what do we mean by ‘Evidence-based medicine?’ Should all medicine be based on evidence? Causation in medicine What do advances in neuroscience reveal about the relationship between mind and body? Defining health and disease: are explanations of disease objective or do they depend on values? Evolutionary medicine: what is the role of evolutionary biology in understanding medicine? Is it relevant? Extensive use of empirical examples and case studies is made throughout the book. These include debates about smoking and cancer, the use of placebos in randomised controlled trials and controversies about research into the causes of HIV and autism. This is an indispendable introduction to those teaching philosophy of medicine and philosophy of science. (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)

This article presents a brief general view of the recent literature and the scholarly activity in the field of philosophy of medicine in Scandinavia. The focus of attention is not on medical ethics, but on studies on topics like decision theory, medical classification, causality, causal explanations, concept formation, and on analyses of different ideals of medical science and clinical practice. A few principal works on medical ethics are mentioned by way of introduction and a brief account of a (...) highly topical debate on the legislation on artificial insemination in Sweden is given at the end. (shrink)

This is a review of the literature in the philosophy of medicine published in China from 1930 to 1980. The topics dealt with include the relationship between medicine and philosophy, the basic concepts of medicine, etiology and causality, the bearing of psychology on physiology and pathology, epistemology in diagnostics, methodology of medical sciences, philosophical and methological problems in traditional Chinese medicine, philosophical problems in health policy, and medical ethics.

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.

This paper consists of two parts. In the first part, I will introduce a philosophical toolbox that I call ‘conceptual scaffolding,’ which helps to reflect holistically on phenomena and concepts. I situate this framework within the landscape of conceptual analysis and conceptual engineering, exemplified by the debate about the concept of disease. Within the framework of conceptual scaffolding, I develop the main idea of the paper, which is ‘the binocular model of plural medicine’, a holistic framework for analyzing medical (...) concepts and phenomena. In the second part, I demonstrate the use and value of the binocular model by analyzing, through the lenses of the model, the phenomenon of health wearable devices and their effects on the concept of diagnosis. (shrink)

In 2012, the symposium "Christopher Boorse and the Philosophy of Medicine" was held at the University of Hamburg. The initial ideas presented at this event, which celebrated Chris's contribution to the development of what is now a vibrant area of research, especially to the theory of disease, form the core of the papers published in this issue. Similarly to what Robert Nozick once said about John Rawls's work, it can be demanded that philosophers of medicine must now (...) either work within Boorse's theory or explain why not. It is simply the main contender in the so-called naturalist camp of contributions to the theory of disease. All of the papers in this issue address his approach in some respect, and all of them are friendly toward his theory up to a point. In this brief introduction, I try to extract common threads. In doing so, I focus on three issues that have the capacity to determine future debates. The first is the methodology of developing a theory of disease, especially what conceptual analysis amounts to and what it may achieve. The second is the issue of value-ladenness of the concepts of health and disease, a topic that has been at the forefront of the philosophical debate, but which -- to my mind -- has often been misunderstood. The third issue is the problem of the unity of medical terminology. We can ask whether there is only one core medical concept, be it "disease," "pathology," "disorder," "malady," or something else. Alternatively, we might propose different concepts for different purposes. (shrink)

Edmund D. Pellegrino has played a central role in shaping the fields of bioethics and the philosophy of medicine. His writings encompass original explorations of the healing relationship, the need to place humanism in the medical curriculum, the nature of the patient’s good, and the importance of a virtue-based normative ethics for health care. In this anthology, H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., and Fabrice Jotterand have created a rich presentation of Pellegrino’s thought and its development. Pellegrino’s work has been (...) dedicated to showing that bioethics must be understood in the context of medical humanities, and that medical humanities, in turn, must be understood in the context of the philosophy of medicine. Arguing that bioethics should not be restricted to topics such as abortion, third-party-assisted reproduction, physician-assisted suicide, or cloning, Pellegrino has instead stressed that such issues are shaped by foundational views regarding the nature of the physician-patient relationship and the goals of medicine, which are the proper focus of the philosophy of medicine. This volume includes a preface by Dr. Pellegrino and a comprehensive Introduction by the editors. Of interest to medical ethicists as well as students, scholars, and physicians, _The Philosophy of Medicine Reborn_ offers fascinating insights into the emergence of a field and the work of one of its pioneers. “After a long period of dormancy, philosophy of medicine has blossomed with new life. The single most important physician-philosopher in that rebirth has been Edmund Pellegrino. His contributions to virtue theory, the concept of beneficence, the dispute over the internal and external sources of a morality for medicine, and the role of the Hippocratic tradition are all critical. The essays collected in this volume have changed the history of the philosophy of medicine. He shows that philosophy of medicine can be done with both passion and compassion.” —_Robert M. Veatch, Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University_ “Edmund Pellegrino's words have helped medical students, faculty, scholars and patients address the challenges they encounter in medicine and medical practice. His personal support has also been critical for many of us in developing programs in medical ethics and philosophy of medicine in our universities. Dr. Pellegrino combines the wisdom of a great physician with those of a great philosopher to produce a body of writing that will continue to inspire us all. This volume contains some of his best and most influential work.” —_Loretta Kopelman, The Brody School of Medicine, East Carolina University_ _ _ “Edmund Pellegrino has been a leading light in the philosophy of medicine for a generation. He was instrumental in the birth of bioethics, founded one of the leading journals, and provided able leadership in organizing early activities of the profession. He has served as department chairman, dean, and university president. Most recently, he chairs the President’s Council on Bioethics. In all this, first and foremost, he has been a physician. Those who are ill and suffering make a claim upon him. To respond to this claim, Pellegrino creatively brings together the worlds of science and of the humanities. For him, that is what medicine is about, making it the most scientific of the humanities and the most humane of the sciences. Fortunately for us, Pellegrino brings these worlds together in thought, as well as in practice. In this selection from his writings, Engelhardt and Jotterand have captured the heart of Pellegrino’s project, both in depth and breadth, so we can also hear that claim of the ill and so we can see what worlds must come together if we are to respond in the appropriate way.” —_George Khushf, University of South Carolina_ “Pellegrino’s work is both a treasure and important for understanding bioethics. His work in philosophy of medicine addresses the crucial questions that are so important to understanding the practice of medicine and the ethics of health care.” —_Kevin Wildes, President, Loyola University_ _ _. (shrink)

Can Pellegrino and Thomasma's book, A Philosophical Basis of Medical Practice (1981), rightfully claim to be a step forward towards a systematic philosophy of medicine? We try to answer this question by focusing our comment upon three related aspects of the book, namely (1) the problem of philosophical method(s), (2) the alleged Aristotelian-Thomistic orientation, (3) the view of philosophical anthropology of the authors. It is first argued that it is doubtful whether there is as much philosophical method in (...) the authors' book as their reflections on philosophical method suggest. Second, we argue that if Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy is important to the authors, it is not so much because of its methods and content, as because it supplies them with a very convenient framework for didactically ordering and transmitting their views about what they consider to be — philosophically speaking — basic about medicine. Third we argue that the authors' conception of philosophical anthropology bears (in point of method and ontology) more resemblance to the humanistic naturalism of John Dewey, than to any of the European philosophical traditions (Aristotelism, (Neo)Thomism, Merleau-Pontyian phenomenology) listed in support of their philosophical enterprise. (shrink)

Up to now neither the question, whether all theoretical medical knowledge can at least be described as scientific, nor the one how exactly access to the existing scientific and theoretical medical knowledge during clinical problem-solving is made, has been sufficiently answered. Scientific theories play an important role in controlling clinical practice and improving the quality of clinical care in modern medicine on the one hand, and making it vindicable on the other. Therefore, the vagueness of unexplicit interrelations between (...) class='Hi'>medicine''s stock of knowledge and medical practice appears as a gap in the theoretical concept of modern medicine which can be described as Hiatus theoreticus in the anatomy of medicine. A central intention of the paper is to analyze the role of philosophy of medicine for the clarification of the theoretical basis of medical practice. Clinical relevance and normativity in the sense of modern theory of science are suggested as criteria to establish a differentiation between philosophy of medicine as a primary medical discipline and the application of general philosophy in medicine. (shrink)

Germund Hesslow has argued that concepts of health and disease serve no important scientific, clinical, or ethical function. However, this conclusion depends upon the particular concept of disease he espouses; namely, on Boorse's functional notion. The fact/value split embodied in the functional notion of disease leads to a sharp split between the science of medicine and bioethics, making the philosophy of medicine irrelevant for both. By placing this disease concept in the broader context of medical history, I (...) shall show that it does capture an essential part of modern medical ideology. However, it is also a self-contradictory notion. By making explicit the value desiderata of medical nosologies, a reconfiguration of the relation between medicine, bioethics, and the philosophy of medicine is initiated. This, in turn, will involve a recovery of the caring dimensions of medicine, and thus a more humane practice. (shrink)

This response to Kevin WildesÕs article in the previous issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal addresses several major points of disagreement between Pellegrino and Wildes regarding the nature and scope of a philosophy of medicine, in particular how it is derived and by what method of philosophical enquiry it is best pursued.

This article is an introduction to the special issue on philosophy of medicine. Philosophy of medicine is a field that has flourished in the last couple of decades and has become increasingly institutionalized. The introduction begins with a brief overview of some of the most central recent developments in the field. It then describes the six articles that comprise this issue.

The term `bioethics' was coined in 1971, just as interest in the medical humanities claimed a prominent place in medical education. Out of this interest, a substantial area of research and scholarship took shape: the philosophy of medicine. This field has been directed to the epistemological, ontological, and value-theoretical issues occasioned by medicine and the biomedical sciences. Bioethics is nested in this field and can only be fully understood in terms of the foundational issues it addresses. This (...) collection of essays in honor of Stuart F. Spicker, one of the individuals who gave shape to the philosophy of medicine, lays out the broad scope of concerns from the philosophy of embodiment, to issues of the role of ethics consultants, to concepts of disease, equity and the meaning of history. (shrink)

A definitive and authoritative guide to a vibrant and growing discipline in current philosophy, The Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Philosophy of Medicine presents an overview of the issues facing contemporary philosophy of medicine, the research methods required to understand them and a trajectory for the discipline's future. -/- Written by world leaders in the discipline, this companion addresses the ontological, epistemic, and methodological challenges facing philosophers of medicine today, from the debate between evidence-based and (...) person-centered medicine, medical humanism, and gender medicine, to traditional issues such as disease, health, and clinical reasoning and decision-making. Practical and forward-looking, it also includes a detailed guide to research sources, a glossary of key terms, and an annotated bibliography, as well as an introductory survey of research methods and discussion of new research directions emerging in response to the rapid changes in modern medicine. -/- “Philosophy needs medicine', Hillel Braude argues, 'to become more relevant'. By showing how modern medicine provides philosophers with a rich source of material for investigating issues facing contemporary society, The Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Philosophy of Medicine introduces the opportunities medicine offers philosophers together with the resources and skills required to contribute to contemporary debates and discussions. (shrink)

The purpose of this chapter is to describe what we see as several important new directions for philosophy of medicine. This recent work (i) takes existing discussions in important and promising new directions, (ii) identifies areas that have not received sufficient and deserved attention to date, and/or (iii) brings together philosophy of medicine with other areas of philosophy (including bioethics, philosophy of psychiatry, and social epistemology). To this end, the next part focuses on what (...) we call the “epistemological turn” in recent work in the philosophy of medicine; the third part addresses new developments in medical research that raise interesting questions for philosophy of medicine; the fourth part is a discussion of philosophical issues within the practice of diagnosis; the fifth part focuses on the recent developments in psychiatric classification and scientific and ethical issues therein, and the final part focuses on the objectivity of medical research. (shrink)

SummaryThe congruence between medicine and philosophy which we find in the Protagoras and the Treatise on Ancient Medicine as well as the tensions symbolized in the dialectic between Eryximachus and Diotima will always be with us. The congruence and the divergence of these ancient disciplines are both important to human well-being. By opposing one another, medicine and philosophy can each balance the other's pretension to universality. By converging, they illumine some of the most important questions (...) of human existence. This essay has examined ways in which medicine and philosophy can converge in our times as philosophy and medicine, philosophy in medicine, and philosophy of medicine. The present moment in our intellectual history is particularly propitious for the nurture of the engagement of medicine and philosophy. The most fruitful form of that interaction may be in the philosophy of medicine, which is a definable discipline with a set of issues specific to it. If the obvious intellectual dangers can be avoided, those who practice medicine, those who think about it, and those who are served by it can gain deeper insight into the nature and the purpose of medicine as well as the nature of the profession and of man himself. Perhaps—positioned as it is, at the intersection of the sciences, the humanities, and technology—medicine can become “… a medium and the focus in which the problems of wisdom and science meet” (Buchanan 1938, p. 194). (shrink)

Caplan has argued that the philosophy of medicine does not exist. Although I will not deny the points he makes, I will argue that the philosophy of medicine has characteristics of a developing field with the potential to meet all of Caplan's criteria. The argument is based on Dewey's established views on logical development for a field of inquiry, as well as pointing out how other criteria Caplan imposes can be fulfilled.

Philosophy of medicine encompasses a broad range of methodological approaches and theoretical perspectives—from the uses of statistical reasoning and probability theory in epidemiology and evidence-based medicine to questions about how to recognize the uniqueness of individual patients in medical humanities, person-centered care, and values-based practice; and from debates about causal ontology to questions of how to cultivate epistemic and moral virtue in practice. Apart from being different ways of thinking about medical practices, do these different philosophical approaches (...) have anything in common? Are they committed to incompatible assumptions about the nature of science and its relationship to experience, value, and the art of medicine, or are different approaches nonetheless complementary? The chapter examines the questions these different approaches and perspectives raise and considers why so many theorists of medicine seek to find a “base” or “center” for medicine—as though there is, or should be, some general conceptual thread linking the things we call “usual clinical practice” in the real world. It further considers whether there are alternative approaches to the philosophy of medicine, which do not embody this philosophical assumption; and it suggests that a key tool for evaluating approaches must be their ability to contribute something of genuine value to clinical medicine. (shrink)

The present volume is one of a type we should soon expect to be seeing more of in philosophy of medicine. Philosophy of medicine has now been around long enough that entire careers, or at least substantial portions of careers, can and have been devoted to it. This is an important milestone in the field.This is true, even though, as the author indicates in the introduction, this is not solely a book of philosophy of (...) class='Hi'>medicine. Investigations in philosophy of medicine, and the essays included in this volume in particular, can not only contribute to “the development of philosophy of medicine as a discipline” but can also “test and help revise some of [philosophy of science’s] views” . Thus, this book is intended as a contribution both to philosophy of medicine as a specific discipline and to philosophy of science generally. Both of these aspects of the book could attract the attention of the current audience.The book focuses .. (shrink)

Griffiths and Matthewson (2018) employ the selected effects theory to contend that disease involves the impairment of the normal functioning of biological items. Since the selected effects theory focuses on the past effects of those items, I refer to their proposal as “aetiological naturalism”. In this paper, I argue that aetiological naturalism cannot constitute an adequate theory of disease. This is due to the fact that the selected effects theory, which lies at the heart of aetiological naturalism, is flawed. One (...) promise of the selected effects theory is indeed that it is able to account for our normative intuitions about dysfunctional biological items by grounding them on the concept of natural selection incorporated in the selected effects theory itself, where this promise rests upon its claim that appealing to the fitness-enhancing effect of biological items can always explain why they persisted in a population. However, I contend that the naturalisation of normativity cannot be cashed out in terms of biological items’ past effects by discussing two biological phenomena: phenotypic plasticity and negative frequency-dependent selection. I illustrate that in both cases the selected effects theory cannot recognise adaptive items as having a selected effects function, therefore preventing the possibility to assign them any dysfunction. The normative force of the selected effects theory is consequently much diminished, leading in turn to a weakening of aetiological naturalism, given that such project actually relies on the assumed normative force of the selected effects theory itself. (shrink)

Major Polish authors writing on the philosophy of medicine in the period under discussion are briefly presented, namely Tytus Chaubiski Wadysaw Biegaski, and Edmund Biernacki. General background of their work and possible influences are described. The views of the above authors on the meaning, scope and importance of the philosophy of medicine are outlined.

This paper is a criticalexamination of the development of thephilosophy of medicine as a discipline. Ithighlights two major themes in the contemporarydebate about the philosophy of medicine: thescope of the discipline and the relation of thediscipline to its cognate disciplines. A broadview of the philosophy of medicine is defendedand the philosophy of medicine is seen as aphilosophical sub-discipline. These viewsdepend in important ways on three factors: ageneral metaphysical world view, particularunderstandings of the cognate (...) disciplines, andthe perspective from which one asks thequestions about the nature of the discipline. It is proposed that the future of thephilosophy of medicine may follow thephilosophy of science in that philosophical,sociological and historical studies may combinein a mutually enriching way to form ‘‘medicinestudies.’‘. (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)