PHIL 3800

Is medicine a science? How should we define health and disease? Do definitions of disease help us to understand cognitive disabilities or disorders? Is a risk for a disease, for instance high cholesterol, itself a disease or is this a misuse of the concept? Should health care professionals provide care whenever a patient claims to be suffering or only when the patient has a recognized disease or disorder? What are the implications of classifying too much of normal human experience as disordered? Are screening tests, for instance mammography, typically a good idea because it is better to be safe than sorry? Should health care providers aim to practice evidence-based medicine? Should complementary and alternative medicine be held to the same epistemic standards as mainstream medicine? In this class, we consider these questions, among others. This course aims to explore perspectives on the most important philosophical issues in the emerging field of philosophy of medicine, with particular attention to medical epistemology and metaphysics.