Naturalism in the Philosophy of Health

Naturalism in the Philosophy of Health PDF Author: Élodie Giroux
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319290916
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
In a series of papers published in the 1970s, Christopher Boorse proposed a naturalist theory of health, mainly based on a value-free concept of ‘biological function’, a concept of ‘reference class’ and the notion of ‘statistical normality’. His theory has profoundly shaped the philosophical debates on the concepts of health and disease. It could even be said that the numerous criticisms of his 'biostatistical theory' are at the centre of what is usually referred to as the debate between ‘normativists’ and ‘naturalists’. Today, the predominant naturalist theory of health is still Boorse’s biostatistical theory. This volume offers the first comprehensive review and critical assessment of the nature and status of naturalism in the philosophy of health. It explores the notion of biological normativity and its relevance for the philosophy of health, and it analyses the implications of the philosophical theories of health for healthcare and the debate on health enhancement. In the first section, several contributions identify the kind of ‘naturalism’ the biostatistical theory belongs to and offer further criticisms or possible modifications, such as the concept of function that is required by this theory, and whether a comparativist approach to health is more relevant than a non-comparativist one. The second section explores natural or biological ‘normativity’ and some possible accounts of health that could be based on this concept. The third and final section focuses on the implications of naturalism in healthcare. 'Goals of Medicine’ is the first paper in which Christopher Boorse ventured toward analysing the implication of his biostatistical theory of health on the practice of medicine, the difficult issue of the goals of medicine and the boundary between treating and enhancing. Other papers in this section critically evaluate Boorse’s account and analyse the importance of a positive concept of health.

Naturalism in the Philosophy of Health

Naturalism in the Philosophy of Health PDF Author: Élodie Giroux
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319290916
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 227

Get Book Here

Book Description
In a series of papers published in the 1970s, Christopher Boorse proposed a naturalist theory of health, mainly based on a value-free concept of ‘biological function’, a concept of ‘reference class’ and the notion of ‘statistical normality’. His theory has profoundly shaped the philosophical debates on the concepts of health and disease. It could even be said that the numerous criticisms of his 'biostatistical theory' are at the centre of what is usually referred to as the debate between ‘normativists’ and ‘naturalists’. Today, the predominant naturalist theory of health is still Boorse’s biostatistical theory. This volume offers the first comprehensive review and critical assessment of the nature and status of naturalism in the philosophy of health. It explores the notion of biological normativity and its relevance for the philosophy of health, and it analyses the implications of the philosophical theories of health for healthcare and the debate on health enhancement. In the first section, several contributions identify the kind of ‘naturalism’ the biostatistical theory belongs to and offer further criticisms or possible modifications, such as the concept of function that is required by this theory, and whether a comparativist approach to health is more relevant than a non-comparativist one. The second section explores natural or biological ‘normativity’ and some possible accounts of health that could be based on this concept. The third and final section focuses on the implications of naturalism in healthcare. 'Goals of Medicine’ is the first paper in which Christopher Boorse ventured toward analysing the implication of his biostatistical theory of health on the practice of medicine, the difficult issue of the goals of medicine and the boundary between treating and enhancing. Other papers in this section critically evaluate Boorse’s account and analyse the importance of a positive concept of health.

Narrative Naturalism

Narrative Naturalism PDF Author: Jessica Wahman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0739187988
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Narrative Naturalism: An Alternative Framework for Philosophy of Mind provides an original framework for a non-reductive approach to mind and philosophical psychology. Jessica Wahman challenges the reductive (i.e., mechanistic and physicalist) assumptions that render the mind-body problem intractable, and claims that George Santayana’s naturalism provides a more beneficial epistemological method and ontological framework for thinking about the place of consciousness in the natural world. She uses Santayana’s thought as the primary inspiration for her own specific viewpoint, one that draws on a variety of sources, from analytic philosophy of mind to existentialism and psychoanalysis. This outlook, narrative naturalism, depicts sense-making as a kind of storytelling where different narratives serve different purposes, and Wahman offer a unique worldview to accommodate a variety of true expressions about the world, including truths about subjective existence. Motivated by a desire to challenge the reductionist approaches that explain human motivation and experience in terms of neuroscience and by the increasingly pharmacological interpretations of and solutions to psychological problems, Wahman’s overarching purpose is to reconstruct the issue so that neuroscience can be embraced as an indispensable story among others in our understanding of the human condition. When placed in this context, neurobiological discoveries better serve the values and practices associated with human self-knowledge and well-being. Narrative Naturalism will appeal to those interested in American philosophy, Santayana scholarship, pragmatist epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophical psychology, and metaphysics.

How Scientific Practices Matter

How Scientific Practices Matter PDF Author: Joseph Rouse
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226730080
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description
How can we understand the world as a whole instead of separate natural and human realms? Joseph T. Rouse proposes an approach to this classic problem based on radical new conceptions of both philosophical naturalism and scientific practice. Rouse begins with a detailed critique of modern thought on naturalism, from Neurath and Heidegger to Charles Taylor, Thomas Kuhn, and W. V. O. Quine. He identifies two constraints central to a philosophically robust naturalism: it must impose no arbitrarily philosophical restrictions on science, and it must shun even the most subtle appeals to mysterious or supernatural forces. Thus a naturalistic approach requires philosophers to show that their preferred conception of nature is what scientific inquiry discloses, and that their conception of scientific understanding is itself intelligible as part of the natural world. Finally, Rouse draws on feminist science studies and other recent work on causality and discourse to demonstrate the crucial role that closer attention to scientific practice can play in reclaiming naturalism. A bold and ambitious book, How Scientific Practices Matter seeks to provide a viable—yet nontraditional—defense of a naturalistic conception of philosophy and science. Its daring proposals will spark much discussion and debate among philosophers, historians, and sociologists of science.

The Philosophy and Practice of Medicine and Bioethics

The Philosophy and Practice of Medicine and Bioethics PDF Author: Barbara Maier
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9048188679
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 556

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Book Description
This book challenges the unchallenged methods in medicine, such as "evidence-based medicine," which claim to be, but often are not, scientific. It completes medical care by adding the comprehensive humanistic perspectives and philosophy of medicine. No specific or absolute recommendations are given regarding medical treatment, moral approaches, or legal advice. Given rather is discussion about each issue involved and the strongest arguments indicated. Each argument is subject to further critical analysis. This is the same position as with any philosophical, medical or scientific view. The argument that decision-making in medicine is inadequate unless grounded on a philosophy of medicine is not meant to include all of philosophy and every philosopher. On the contrary, it includes only sound, practical and humanistic philosophy and philosophers who are creative and critical thinkers and who have concerned themselves with the topics relevant to medicine. These would be those philosophers who engage in practical philosophy, such as the pragmatists, humanists, naturalists, and ordinary-language philosophers. A new definition of our own philosophy of life emerges and it is necessary to have one. Good lifestyle no longer means just abstaining from cigarettes, alcohol and getting exercise. It also means living a holistic life, which includes all of one's thinking, personality and actions. This book also includes new ways of thinking. In this regard the "Metaphorical Method" is explained, used, and exemplified in depth, for example in the chapters on care, egoism and altruism, letting die, etc.

Naturalism and the First-Person Perspective

Naturalism and the First-Person Perspective PDF Author: Lynne Rudder Baker
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199914737
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Science and its philosophical companion, Naturalism, represent reality in wholly nonpersonal terms. How, if at all, can a nonpersonal scheme accommodate the first-person perspective that we all enjoy? In this volume, Lynne Rudder Baker explores that question by considering both reductive and eliminative approaches to the first-person perspective. After finding both approaches wanting, she mounts an original constructive argument to show that a non-Cartesian first-person perspective belongs in the basic inventory of what exists. That is, the world that contains us persons is irreducibly personal. After arguing for the irreducibilty and ineliminability of the first-person perspective, Baker develops a theory of this perspective. The first-person perspective has two stages, rudimentary and robust. Human infants and nonhuman animals with consciousness and intentionality have rudimentary first-person perspectives. In learning a language, a person acquires a robust first-person perspective: the capacity to conceive of oneself as oneself, in the first person. By developing an account of personal identity, Baker argues that her theory is coherent, and she shows various ways in which first-person perspectives contribute to reality.

The Blackwell Companion to Naturalism

The Blackwell Companion to Naturalism PDF Author: Kelly James Clark
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118657608
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 548

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Book Description
The Blackwell Companion to Naturalism provides a systematic introduction to philosophical naturalism and its relation to other schools of thought. Features contributions from an international array of established and emerging scholars from across the humanities Explores the historical development of naturalism and its ascension to the dominant orthodoxy in the Western academy Juxtaposes theoretical criticisms with impassioned defenses, encapsulating contemporary debates on naturalism Includes discussions of metaphysics, realism, feminism, science, knowledge, truth, mathematics, free will, and ethics viewed through a naturalist lens

Phenomenology and Naturalism

Phenomenology and Naturalism PDF Author: Havi Carel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781107699052
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
What is the relationship between phenomenology and naturalism? Are they mutually exclusive or is a rapprochement possible between their approaches to consciousness and the natural world? Can phenomenology be naturalised and ought it to be? Or is naturalism fundamentally unable to accommodate phenomenological insights? How can phenomenological method be used within a naturalistic research programme? This cutting-edge collection of original essays contains brilliant contributions from leading phenomenologists across the world. The collection presents a wide range of fascinating and carefully argued answers to these questions.

Encountering Naturalism

Encountering Naturalism PDF Author: Thomas W. Clark
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780979111105
Category : Naturalism
Languages : en
Pages : 103

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Book Description


Second Philosophy

Second Philosophy PDF Author: Penelope Maddy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199273669
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
Many philosophers these days consider themselves naturalists, but it's doubtful any two of them intend the same position by the term. In this book, Penelope Maddy describes and practises a particularly austere form of naturalism called 'Second Philosophy'. Without a definitive criterion for what counts as 'science' and what doesn't, Second Philosophy can't be specified directly - 'trust only the methods of science!' or some such thing - so Maddy proceeds instead by illustratingthe behaviours of an idealized inquirer she calls the 'Second Philosopher'. This Second Philosopher begins from perceptual common sense and progresses from there to systematic observation, active experimentation, theory formation and testing, working all the while to assess, correct and improve hermethods as she goes. Second Philosophy is then the result of the Second Philosopher's investigations.Maddy delineates the Second Philosopher's approach by tracing her reactions to various familiar skeptical and transcendental views (Descartes, Kant, Carnap, late Putnam, van Fraassen), comparing her methods to those of other self-described naturalists (especially Quine), and examining a prominent contemporary debate (between disquotationalists and correspondence theorists in the theory of truth) to extract a properly second-philosophical line of thought. She then undertakes to practise SecondPhilosophy in her reflections on the ground of logical truth, the methodology, ontology and epistemology of mathematics, and the general prospects for metaphysics naturalized.

What Is Disease?

What Is Disease? PDF Author: James M. Humber
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1592594514
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
Renowned philosophers and medical ethicists debate and discuss the profoundly important concepts of disease and health. Christopher Boorse begins with an extensive reexamination of his seminal definition of disease as a value-free scientific concept. In responding to all those who criticized this view, which came to be called "naturalism" or "neutralism," Boorse clarifies and updates his landmark ideas on this crucial question. Other distinguished thinkers analyze, develop, and oftentimes defend competing, nonnaturalistic theories of disease. Their combined thoughts review and update an issue of central importance in bioethics today.