Handbook of Analytic Philosophy of Medicine [Hardcover]

Medical practice is practiced morality, and clinical research belongs to normative ethics. The present book elucidates and advances this thesis by: 1. analyzing the structure of medical language, knowledge, and theories; 2. inquiring into the foundations of the clinical encounter; 3. introducing the logic and methodology of clinical decision-making, including artificial intelligence in medicine; 4. suggesting comprehensive theories of organism, life, and psyche; of health, illness, and disease; of etiology, diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, and therapy; and 5. investigating the moral and metaphysical issues central to medical practice and research. Many systems of (classical, modal, non-classical, probability, and fuzzy) logic are introduced and applied. Fuzzy medical deontics, fuzzy medical ontology, fuzzy medical concept formation, fuzzy medical decision-making and biomedicine and many other techniques of fuzzification in medicine are introduced for the first time.

Introduction.- Part I The Language of Medicine.- 1 The Epistemic Impact of Medical Language.- 2 The Syntax and Semantics of Medical Language.- 3 The Pragmatics of Medical Language.- 4 Medical Linguistics.- 5 Varieties of Medical Concepts.- 6 Fundamentals of Medical Concept Formation.- Part II Medical Praxiology.- 7 The Patient.- 8 The Physician.- 9 Clinical Practice.- Part III Medical Epistemology.- 10 The Architecture of Medical Knowledge.- 11 Types of Medical Knowledge.- 12 The Semantics and Pragmatics of Medical Knowledge.- 13 Technoconstructivism.- Part IV Medical Deontics.- 14 Morality, Ethics, and Deontics.- 15 Disease as a Deontic Construct.- 16 Medicine is a Deontic Discipline.- Part V Medical Logic.- 17 Logic in Medicine.- 18 The Logic of Medicine.- Part VI Medical Artificial Intelligence.- 19 Medical Decision-Making.- 20 Clinical Decision Support Systems.- 21 Artificial Intelligence in Medicine?.- Part VII Medical Metaphysics.- 22 On What There Are.- 23 Medical OntollSD