-
138The epistemically virtuous clinicianTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 30 (3): 249-265. 2009.Today, modern Western medicine is facing a quality-of-care crisis that is undermining the patient–physician relationship. In this paper, a notion of the epistemically virtuous clinician is proposed in terms of both the reliabilist and responsibilist versions of virtue epistemology, in order to help address this crisis. To that end, a clinical case study from the literature is first reconstructed. The reliabilist intellectual virtues, including the perceptual and conceptual virtues, are then disc…Read more
-
28The End of Modern Medicine: Biomedical Science Under a Microscope (review)Journal of Medical Humanities 26 (2-3): 191-193. 2005.
-
28Self-Generation: Biology, Philosophy, and Literature around 1800. Helmut Mueller-SieversIsis 89 (1): 136-137. 1998.
-
14Metaphysical Foundations and Complementarity of Science and TheologyJournal of Interdisciplinary Studies 17 (1-2): 45-64. 2005.This essay examines the metaphysical foundations of the natural sciences and Christian theology in order to complement the epistemic claims from both disciplines. These foundations include Robin Collingwood's notion of presuppositions and Ernan McMullin's epistemic and non-epistemic values. Specifically, the essay investigates the presuppositions and values of science and theology used for guiding and constraining the formation and evaluation of scientific theories and theological doctrines. Pra…Read more
-
38Medical Cure and Progress: The Case of Type-1 DiabetesPerspectives in Biology and Medicine 54 (2): 176-188. 2011.What is medical progress? The answer to this question is often associated with advances in diagnostic technology, with greater understanding of disease or pathological mechanisms particularly at the molecular level, or with the discovery of drugs and the developmental of surgical procedures to treat diseases. However, this facile answer can be problematic. In a New York Times Magazine article, for example, Lisa Sanders (2003) recounts a lecture delivered to her first-year class, at a "white-coat…Read more
-
39Kuhn’s Notion of Theory Choice and the Dual-Process Theory of CognitionPhilosophy Study 3 (5). 2013.In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn claimed that theory choice is a conversion experience and depends upon the personality or psychology of the individual scientist making the choice. Critics charged Kuhn with an irrational and a relativistic position concerning theory choice, arguing he advocated a subjective instead of an objective approach to how scientists choose one theory over another and thereby undercut epistemic accounts for the generation of scientific knowledge. In respon…Read more
-
54Instituting science: Discovery or construction of scientific knowledge?International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 22 (2). 2008.Is knowledge in the natural sciences discovered or constructed? For objectivists, scientific knowledge is discovered through investigations into a mind-independent, natural world. For constructivists, such knowledge is produced through negotiations among members of a professional guild. I examine the clash between the two positions and propose that scientific knowledge is the concurrent outcome from investigations into a natural world and from consensus reached through negotiations of a professi…Read more
-
89Horizon for Scientific Practice: Scientific Discovery and ProgressInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 24 (2): 187-215. 2010.In this article, I introduce the notion of horizon for scientific practice (HSP), representing limits or boundaries within which scientists ply their trade, to facilitate analysis of scientific discovery and progress. The notion includes not only constraints that delimit scientific practice, e.g. of bringing experimentation to a temporary conclusion, but also possibilities that open up scientific practice to additional scientific discovery and to further scientific progress. Importantly, it repr…Read more
-
39Hillel D. Braude: Intuition in medicine: a philosophical defense of clinical reasoning: University of Chicago Press, 2012, 256 pp, $45.00 , ISBN 978-0-226-07166-4Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 35 (5): 401-405. 2014.The book starts with a scandal, that is, Socrates’s mortality as entailed in the Aristotelian syllogism,All men are mortal,Socrates is a man,Therefore, Socrates is mortal. The scandal pertains to the deduction of Socrates’s death from the logical connections of premises, which, according to Braude, renders it “meaningless.” But, what does this scandal have to do with a philosophical defense of intuition in medicine? For Braude, the scandal is emblematic of a crisis in medicine and philosophy—a c…Read more
-
37Experimental Series and the Justification of Temin’s DNA Provirus HypothesisSynthese 154 (2): 259-292. 2007.A notion of experimental series is developed, in which experiments or experimental sets are connected through experimental suggestions arising from previous experimental outcomes. To that end, the justification of Howard Temin's DNA provirus hypothesis is examined. The hypothesis originated with evidence from two exploratory experimental sets on an oncogenic virus and was substantiated by including evidence from three additional experimental sets. Collectively these sets comprise an experimental…Read more
-
73Experimental Series and the Justification of Temin’s DNA Provirus HypothesisSynthese 154 (2). 2007.A notion of experimental series is developed, in which experiments or experimental sets are connected through experimental suggestions arising from previous experimental outcomes. To that end, the justification of Howard Temin’s DNA provirus hypothesis is examined. The hypothesis originated with evidence from two exploratory experimental sets on an oncogenic virus and was substantiated by including evidence from three additional experimental sets. Collectively these sets comprise an experimental…Read more
-
66Biomechanical and phenomenological models of the body, the meaning of illness and quality of careMedicine, Health Care and Philosophy 7 (3): 311-320. 2005.The predominant model of the body in modern western medicine is the machine. Practitioners of the biomechanical model reduce the patient to separate, individual body parts in order to diagnose and treat disease. Utilization of this model has led, in part, to a quality of care crisis in medicine, in which patients perceive physicians as not sufficiently compassionate or empathic towards their suffering. Alternative models of the body, such as the phenomenological model, have been proposed to addr…Read more
-
27From Evidence-Based Corona Medicine to Organismic Systems Corona MedicinePhilosophy of Medicine 4 (1). 2023.The Covid-19 pandemic has challenged both medicine and governments as they have strived to confront the pandemic and its consequences. One major challenge is that evidence-based medicine has struggled to provide timely and necessary evidence to guide medical practice and public policy formulation. We propose an extension of evidence-based corona medicine to an organismic systems corona medicine as a multilevel conceptual framework to develop a robust concept-oriented medical system. The proposed…Read more
-
66Clinical Decision-Making, Gender Bias, Virtue Epistemology, and Quality HealthcareTopoi 36 (3): 501-508. 2017.Robust clinical decision-making depends on valid reasoning and sound judgment and is essential for delivering quality healthcare. It is often susceptible, however, to a clinician’s biases such as towards a patient’s age, gender, race, or socioeconomic status. Gender bias in particular has a deleterious impact, which frequently results in cognitive myopia so that a clinician is unable to make an accurate diagnosis because of a patient’s gender—especially for female patients. Virtue epistemology p…Read more
-
27Evolutionary Philosophy of Science: A New Image of Science and Stance towards General Philosophy of SciencePhilosophies 2 (4): 25. 2017.An important question facing contemporary philosophy of science is whether the natural sciences in terms of their historical records exhibit distinguishing developmental patterns or structures. At least two philosophical stances are possible in answering this question. The first pertains to the plurality of the individual sciences. From this stance, the various sciences are analyzed individually and compared with one another in order to derive potential commonalities, if any, among them. The sec…Read more
-
35Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Philosophy of Medicine (edited book)Bloomsbury. 2016.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, …Read more
-
376The Quest for System-Theoretical Medicine in the COVID-19 EraFrontiers in Medicine 8 640974. 2021.Precision medicine and molecular systems medicine (MSM) are highly utilized and successful approaches to improve understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of many diseases from bench-to-bedside. Especially in the COVID-19 pandemic, molecular techniques and biotechnological innovation have proven to be of utmost importance for rapid developments in disease diagnostics and treatment, including DNA and RNA sequencing technology, treatment with drugs and natural products and vaccine development. The C…Read more
-
30William Henry Howell and Jay McLean: the experimental context for the discovery of heparinPerspectives in Biology and Medicine 33 (2): 214. 1990.
-
12Mary Ann G. Cutter: Thinking through breast cancer: a philosophical exploration of diagnosis, treatment, and survival: Oxford University Press, 2018, xxiv + 223 pp, $34.95 (cloth), ISBN: 978-0-19-063703-3 (review)Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 41 (2-3): 119-125. 2020.
-
25Mary Ann G. Cutter: Thinking through breast cancer: a philosophical exploration of diagnosis, treatment, and survivalTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 41 (2): 119-125. 2020.
-
38Fredrik Svenaeus: Phenomenological bioethics: medical technologies, human suffering, and the meaning of being alive: Routledge, New York, 2018, xiv + 161 pp, $42.95 , ISBN: 978-1-138-62996-7Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 39 (2): 165-169. 2018.
-
22Professing clinical medicine in an evolving health care networkTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 40 (3): 197-215. 2019.For at least the past several decades, medicine has been embroiled in a crisis concerning the nature of its professionalism. The fundamental questions that drive this ongoing crisis are primarily three. First, what is the nature of medical professionalism? Second, who are medical professionals? Third, what does medicine or these professionals profess or promise? In this paper, the professionalism crisis vis-à-vis these questions is examined and analyzed chiefly in terms of both Francis Peabody’s…Read more
-
32Great Feuds in Science: Ten of the Liveliest Disputes Ever. Hal HellmanIsis 92 (1): 143-144. 2001.
-
32Jacob Stegenga: Medical nihilism: Oxford University Press, 2018, 256 pp, $39.95 , ISBN: 978-0-19-874704-8Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 40 (1): 75-81. 2019.
-
39Exploring the Rational Boundaries Between the Natural Sciences and Christian Theology1Theology and Science 1 (2): 203-220. 2003.The reticulated model of scientific rationality includes the goal of the investigation, the method by which the goal is achieved, and the epistemic values needed to assess whether the goal was achieved by the applied method. I expand this model of rationality to include metaphysical assumptions and commitments that inform the origins of epistemic claims. I then explore the rational boundaries between the natural sciences and Christian theology in terms of goals, methods, and metaphysics. Finally…Read more
-
15Experimentation and theory choice: is thrombin an enzyme?Perspectives on Science 4 (4): 434-462. 1996.Approaches to the analysis of theory choice in science studies often focus either on objective criteria or subjective values for evaluating theories or on critical experiments for testing theories. In the present article a historical case study in the biomedical sciences is reconstructed, in which experimentation was performed to choose between two competing theories of blood coagulation. Analysis of this case study reveals that experimentation exhibits a particular structure, composed of design…Read more
-
22From Heresy to Dogma in Accounts of Opposition to Howard Temin's DNA Provirus HypothesisHistory and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 24 (2). 2002.In 1964 the Wisconsin virologist Howard Temin proposed the DNA provirus hypothesis to explain the mechanism by which a cancer-producing virus containing only RNA infects and transforms cells. His hypothesis reversed the flow of genetic information, as ordained by the central dogma of molecular biology. Although there was initial opposition to his hypothesis it was widely accepted, after the discovery of reverse transcriptase in 1970. Most accounts of Temin's hypothesis after the discovery portra…Read more
-
10Philosophy of Science: The Historical Background by Joseph J. Kockelmans (review)Isis 91 838-838. 2000.
-
8Great Feuds in Science: Ten of the Liveliest Disputes Ever by Hal Hellman (review)Isis 92 143-144. 2001.
Areas of Interest
9 more