Evaluation and Explanation in the Biomedical Sciences

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-VI

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2. Introduction

   1. Introduction

      • H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr., Stuart F. Spicker

      Pages 1-7

3. Value and Explanation: Historical Roots

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 9-9

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   2. Some Basic Explanations of Disease: An Historian’s Viewpoint

      • Lester S. King

      Pages 11-27

   3. Diseases Versus Healths: Some Legacies in the Philosophies of Modern Medical Science

      • Chester R. Burns

      Pages 29-47

4. Philosophy of Science in Transition to a Philosophy of Medicine

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 49-49

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   2. Concepts of Function and Mechanism in Medicine and Medical Science

      • Stephen Toulmin

      Pages 51-66

   3. Organs, Organisms and Disease: Human Ontology and Medical Practice

      • Marx W. Wartofsky

      Pages 67-83

   4. Comments on “Concepts of Function and Mechanism in Medicine and Medical Science” and “Organs, Organisms and Disease”

      • Patrick A. Heelan

      Pages 85-93

5. Ethics and Medicine

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 95-95

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   2. How Virtues Become Vices: Values, Medicine and Social Context

      • Alasdair Macintyre

      Pages 97-111

   3. Moral Philosophy and Medical Perplexity: Comments on “How Virtues Become Vices”

      • Samuel Gorovitz

      Pages 113-121

6. Concepts in Medical Theory

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 123-123

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   2. The Concepts of Health and Disease

      • H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr.

      Pages 125-141

   3. On Disease: Theories of Disease and the Ascription of Disease: Comments on “The Concepts of Health and Disease”

      • Loretta Kopelman

      Pages 143-150

7. Body and Self: Phenomenological Perspectives

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 151-151

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   2. Context and Reflexivity: The Genealogy of Self

      • Richard M. Zaner

      Pages 153-174

   3. Comments on “Context and Reflexivity”

      • André Schuwer

      Pages 175-180

   4. The Lived-Body as Catalytic Agent: Reaction at the Interface of Medicine and Philosophy

      • Stuart F. Spicker

      Pages 181-204

   5. Comments on “The Lived-Body as Catalytic Agent”

      • André Schuwer

      Pages 205-208

This volume inaugurates a series concerning philosophy and medicine. There are few, if any, areas of social concern so pervasive as medicine and yet as underexamined by philosophy. But the claim to precedence of the Proceedings of the First Trans-Disciplinary Symposium on Philos­ ophy and Medicine must be qualified. Claims to be "first" are notorious in the history of scientific as well as humanistic investigation and the claim that the First Trans-Disciplinary Symposium on Philosophy and Medicine has no precedent is not meant to be put in bald form. The editors clearly do not maintain that philosophers and physicians have not heretofore discussed matters of mutual concern, nor that individual philosophers and physicians have never taken up problems and concepts in medicine which are themselves at the boundary or interface of these two disciplines - concepts like "matter," "disease," "psyche. " Surely there have been books published on the logic and philosophy of medi­ 1 cine. But the formalization of issues and concepts in medicine has not received, at least in this century, sustained interest by professional phi­ losophers. Groups of philosophers have not engaged medicine in order to explicate its philosophical presuppositions and to sort out the various concepts which appear in medicine. The scope of such an effort takes the philosopher beyond problems and issues which today are subsumed under the rubric "medical ethics.

• Medical Ethics
• ethics
• health
• morality
• philosophy of medicine

• University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, USA

  H. Tristram Engelhardt

• University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, USA

  Stuart F. Spicker

Policies and ethics