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26Coming home to Hume: A sociobiological foundation for a concept of 'health' and moralityJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 24 (4). 1999.Assessing the normative status of concepts of health and disease involves one in questions regarding the relationship between fact and value. Some have argued that Christopher Boorse's conception of health and disease lacks such a valuational element because it cannot account for types of harms which, while disvalued, do not have evolutionarily dysfunctional consequences. I take Boorse's account and incorporate some Humean-like sociobiological assumptions in order to respond to this challenge. T…Read more
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31A philosophical overview of the problems of validity for psychiatric disordersIn Kenneth S. Kendler & Josef Parnas (eds.), Philosophical Issues in Psychiatry Ii: Nosology, Oxford University Press. pp. 169. 2012.
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1Medicine, philosophy ofIn Edward Craig (ed.), The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Routledge. pp. 264-269. 1998.
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1Interpretive practices in medicineIn Peter K. Machamer & Gereon Wolters (eds.), Interpretation: Ways of Thinking About the Sciences and the Arts, University of Pittsburgh Press. 2010.
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170The Watson-Crick model and reductionismBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 20 (4): 325-348. 1969.
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80Exemplar reasoning about biological models and diseases: A relation between the philosophy of medicine and philosophy of scienceJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 11 (1): 63-80. 1986.the structure of medical science with a special focus on the role of generalizations and universals in medicine, and (2) philosophy of medicine's relation with the philosophy of science. I argue that a usually overlooked aspect of Kuhnian paradigms, namely, their characteristic of being "exemplars", is of considerable significance in the biomedical sciences. This significance rests on certain important differences from the physical sciences in the nature of theories in the basic and the clinical…Read more
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48Reductionism in Biology: Prospects and ProblemsPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1974. 1974.
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33Biopsychosocial foundationsAmerican Journal of Bioethics 1 (2). 2001.This Article does not have an abstract
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50Further Thoughts on the Dopamine Hypothesis of SchizophreniaPhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 18 (1): 73-75. 2011.We are gratified at the largely positive comments on our essay on the dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia (DHS) by these two distinguished commentators from the fields of biological psychiatry (Dr. Tamminga) and the philosophy of psychiatry (Dr. Murphy). There is little that they have said with which we disagree. Rather, we want to expand briefly on their commentaries.We found Dr. Tamminga's reactions to be particularly fascinating because she has been an "insider" to the story of the DHS as it…Read more
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71Medical informatics and the concept of diseaseTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 21 (1): 85-100. 2000.This paper attempts to address the general questionwhether information technologies, as applied in thearea of medicine and health care, have or are likelyto change fundamental concepts regarding disease andhealth. After a short excursion into the domain ofmedical informatics I provide a brief overview of someof the current theories of what a disease is from amore philosophical perspective, i.e. the ``valuefree'' and ``value laden'' view of disease. Next, Iconsider at some length, whether health …Read more
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17The meta‐language of psychiatry as cross‐disciplinary effort: In response to Zachar (2012)Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 18 (3): 710-720. 2012.
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58The peripherality of reductionism in the development of molecular biologyJournal of the History of Biology 7 (1): 111-139. 1974.I have not attempted to provide here an analysis of the methodology of molecular biology or molecular genetics which would demonstrate at what specific points a more reductionist aim would make sense as a research strategy. This, I believe, would require a much deeper analysis of scientific growth than philosophy of science has been able to provide thus far. What I have tried to show is that a straightforward reductionist strategy cannot be said to be follwed in important cases of theory develop…Read more
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2Etiological models in psychiatry : reductive and nonreductive approachesIn Kenneth S. Kendler & Josef Parnas (eds.), Philosophical Issues in Psychiatry: Explanation, Phenomenology, and Nosology, Johns Hopkins University Press. 2008.
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21Theories and explanations in biologyJournal of the History of Biology 2 (1): 19-33. 1969.It seems that the above account of explanation-strategy in the area of temperature adaptation underscores many of the points made earlier. First, it discloses the fruitful interaction of classical, evolutionary, and molecular approaches. Secondly, it indicates that biological characterizations are not rival accounts to chemical ones. Thirdly, it stresses the importance of the DNA sequence order in chemical explanations of biological organisms.One feature which this area does not seem to reveal, …Read more
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21Computerized Implementation of Biomedical Theory Structures: An Artificial Intelligence ApproachPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1986. 1986.In this paper I discuss the nature of a broad class of biomedical theories which I have termed "middle-range theories." I define them and relate the nature of biomedical theorizing to other investigations, such as a recent inquiry by the National Academy of Sciences. I also suggest that some of the knowledge representation tools from artificial intelligence may give us a purchase on this type of biological theorizing, and try to show in a rather preliminary and exploratory manner by using the la…Read more
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412Approaches to reductionPhilosophy of Science 34 (2): 137-147. 1967.Four current accounts of theory reduction are presented, first informally and then formally: (1) an account of direct theory reduction that is based on the contributions of Nagel, Woodger, and Quine, (2) an indirect reduction paradigm due to Kemeny and Oppenheim, (3) an "isomorphic model" schema traceable to Suppes, and (4) a theory of reduction that is based on the work of Popper, Feyerabend, and Kuhn. Reference is made, in an attempt to choose between these schemas, to the explanation of physi…Read more
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Neuroethics: reductionism, emergence, and decision-making capacitiesNeuroethics: Mapping the Field. forthcoming.
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21A Fallacious Forced Choice: Cloninger and Stoyanov, Machamer, and Schaffner Are CompatiblePhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 20 (3): 281-284. 2013.
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131Einstein Versus Lorentz: Research Programmes and the Logic of Comparative Theory EvaluationBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 25 (1): 45-78. 1974.
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14The Historiography of Special Relativity: Comments on the Papers by John Earman, Clark Glymour, and Robert Rynasiewicz and by Arthur MillerPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1982. 1982.Two problems in the paper by EGR are considered. One is the lack of any direct confirmatory evidence for the elegant rational reconstruction. The second is a significant gap in the historical account, just at the critical point in Einstein's discovery process -- namely, the reanalysis of simultaneity. In addition, the EGR account appears in danger of being overly focused on the electrodynamical aspect of special relativity to the exclusion of optical null experiments, and in particular to the ex…Read more
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Discovery and Explanation in Biology and MedicineJournal of the History of Biology 28 (1): 172-174. 1995.
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29Reduction in Biology and MedicineIn Fred Gifford (ed.), Philosophy of Medicine, Elsevier. pp. 16--137. 2011.
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23Behaving: What's Genetic, What's Not, and Why Should We Care?Oxford University Press USA. 2016.Behaving presents an overview of the recent history and methodology of behavioral genetics and psychiatric genetics, informed by a philosophical perspective. Kenneth F. Schaffner addresses a wide range of issues, including genetic reductionism and determinism, "free will," and quantitative and molecular genetics. The latter covers newer genome-wide association studies that have produced a paradigm shift in the subject, and generated the problem of "missing heritability." Schaffner also presents …Read more
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180The Dopamine Hypothesis of Schizophrenia: An Historical and Philosophical AnalysisPhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 18 (1): 41-63. 2011.This essay selectively reviews, from an historical and philosophical perspective, the dopamine (DA) hypothesis of schizophrenia (DHS; Table 1 lists the abbreviations used in this essay). Our goal is not to adjudicate the validity of the theory—although we arrive at a generally skeptical conclusion—but to focus on the process whereby the DHS has evolved over time and been evaluated. Since its inception, the DHS has been the most prominent etiologic theory in psychiatry and is still referred to wi…Read more
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49Modeling medical diagnosis: Logical and computer approachesSynthese 47 (1). 1981.In the present article I have surveyed several approaches to modeling the clinical diagnostic process. I have argued that at this point of the field's development, logics which simulate the reasoning patterns and knowledge base of expert clinicians represent research programs that are most likely to succeed. No logic of diagnosis has yet attained the status of being definitive; in spite of striking progress much more research and testing is required. On the basis of various existing logics, I ha…Read more
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