Establishing Medical Reality

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-VII

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2. Introduction

   • Harold Kincaid, Jennifer McKitrick

   Pages 1-11

3. Normality, Disease and Enhancement

   • Theodore M. Benditt

   Pages 13-21

4. Holistic Theories of Health as Applicable to Non-Human Living Beings

   • Lennart Nordenfelt

   Pages 23-34

5. Disease and the Concept of Supervenience

   • Robert D’amico

   Pages 35-45

6. Decision and Discovery in Defining ‘Disease’

   • Peter H. Schwartz

   Pages 47-63

7. Race and Scientific Reduction

   • Mark Risjord

   Pages 65-82

8. Towards an Adequate Account of Genetic Disease

   • Kelly C. Smith

   Pages 83-110

9. Why Disease Persists: An Evolutionary Nosology

   • Robert L. Perlman

   Pages 111-121

10. Creating Mental Illness in Non-Disordered Community Populations

    • Allan V. Horwitz

    Pages 123-135

11. Gender Identity Disorder

    • Jennifer Mckitrick

    Pages 137-148

12. Clinical Trials as Nomological Machines: Implications for Evidence-Based Medicine

    • Robyn Bluhm

    Pages 149-166

13. The Social Epistemology of NIH Consensus Conferences

    • Miriam Solomon

    Pages 167-177

14. Maternal Agency and the Immunological Paradox of Pregnancy

    • Moira Howes

    Pages 179-198

15. Violence and Public Health: Exploring the Relationship Between Biological Perspectives on Violent Behavior and Public Health Approaches to Violence Prevention

    • Jonathan Kaplan

    Pages 199-214

16. Taking Equipoise Seriously: The Failure of Clinical or Community Equipoise to Resolve the Ethical Dilemmas in Randomized Clinical Trials

    • Fred Gifford

    Pages 215-233

17. Back Matter

    Pages 235-236

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Medicine has been a very fruitful source of significant issues for philosophy over the last 30 years. The vast majority of the issues discussed have been normative – they have been problems in morality and political philosophy that now make up the field called bioethics. However, biomedical science presents many other philosophical questions that have gotten relatively little attention, particularly topics in metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of science. This volume focuses on problems in these areas as they surface in biomedical science. Important changes in philosophy make biomedical science an especially int- esting area of inquiry. Contemporary philosophy is largely naturalistic in approach – it takes philosophy to be constrained by the results of the natural sciences and able to contribute to the natural sciences as well. Exactly what those constraints and contributions should be is a matter of controversy. What is not controversial is that important questions in philosophy of science and metaphysics are raised by the practice of science. Physics, biology, and economics have all drawn extensive phi- sophical analysis, so much so that philosophical study of these areas have become specialized subdisciplines within philosophy of science. Philosophy of medicine approached from the perspective of philosophy of science – with important exc- tions (Schaffner, 1993; Thagard, 2000) – has been relatively undeveloped. Nonetheless, medicine should have a central place in epistemological and metaphysical debates over science.

• Ethical Dilemma
• Ethical Issues
• Philosophy of Science
• Public Health
• bioethics
• ethics
• evidence based medicine
• gender
• health
• medical ethics
• metaphysics
• politics
• reduction
• science

From the reviews:

"…An excellent collection of essays in the philosophy of medicine. Whereas most philosophical work about medicine has been concerned with medical ethics, this volume focuses more on key questions in epistemology and metaphysics, although many of these are also relevant to ethical issues. Some of the chapters are among the best I have read in the philosophy of medicine on their respective topics." (Professor Paul Thagard, Philosophy Department, University of Waterloo, ON, Canada)

“Establishing Medical Reality: Essays in the Metaphysics and Epistemology of Biomedical Science contains exactly what its sub-title promises: a collection of essays on topics in the philosophy of medicine. … In sum, this collection contains a number of clear and thoughtful essays on core issues in the philosophy of medicine, particularly issues related to health and disease. … Bioethicists with an interest in metaphysical and epistemological issues within medicine … would be well served by reading this collection … .” (Kirstin Borgerson, Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, January, 2010)

• University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham

  Harold Kincaid

• University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, USA

  Jennifer McKitrick

Policies and ethics