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in a scientific way, and takes the patient and his family into his
confidence. Thus he learns something from the sufferer, and at the
same time instructs the invalid to the best of his power. He does
not give his prescriptions until he has won the patient's support,
and when he has done so, he steadilY aims at producing complete
restoration to health by persuading the sufferer in to compliance
(Laws 4. 720 b-e, [28]). This passage shows the perennial nature of
the problems of treating the patient as a person. It shows as well
the historical'depth of philosophical interest in medicine. The
history of philosophy includes more reflections upon medical ethics
than the casual reader might suspect. Many of these reflections are
pertinent to contemporary issues such as abortion and population
control. Plato, for example, recommends abortion in cases of incest
(Republic 5. 461c); and Aristotle argues for letting seriously
deformed children die, while forbidding infanticide as a means of
popUlation control, suggesting instead the use of early abortions.
'As to the exposure in rearing of children, let there be a law that
no deformed child shall live, but that on the ground of an excess
in the number of children . . . let abortion be procured before
sense and life have begun; what mayor may not be lawfully done in
these cases depends on the question of life and sensation'
(Politics VII, 16,335 b20-26, [4]).
Although the investigation and regulation of the faculties of the
human mind appear to be the proper and sole concern of
philosophers, you see that they are in some part nevertheless so
little foreign to the medical forum that while someone may deny
that they are proper to the physician he cannot deny that
physicians have the obliga tion to philosophize. Jerome Gaub, De
regimine mentis, IV, 10 ( 10], p. 40) The Second Trans-Disciplinary
Symposium on Philosophy and Medicine, whose principal theme was
'Philosophical Dimensions of the Neuro-Medical Sciences, ' convened
at the University of Connecticut Health Center at the invitation of
Robert U. Massey, Dean of the School of Medicine, during May 15,
16, and 17, 1975. The Proceedings constitute this volume. At this
Symposium we intended to realize sentiments which Sir John Eccles
ex pressed as director of a Study Week of the Pontificia Academia
Scientiarum, CiWl del Vaticano, in the fall of 1964: "Certainly
when one comes to a study] . . . devoted to brain and mind it is
not possible to exclude relations with philosophy" ( 5], p. viii).
During that study week in 1964, a group of distinguished biomedical
and behavioral scientists met under the director ship of Sir John
C. Eccles to relate psychology to what Sir John called 'the
Neurosciences. ' The purpose of that study week was to treat issues
con cerning the functions of the brain and, in particular, to
concentrate upon the relations between brain functions and
consciousness."
Over a period of a year, the symposium on clinical judgment has
taken shape as a volume devoted to the analysis of how knowledge
claims are framed in medicine and how choices of treatment are
made. We hope it will afford the reader, whether layman, physician
or philosopher, a useful perspective on the process of knowing what
occurs in medicine; and that the results of the dis cussions at the
Fifth Symposium on Philosophy and Medicine will lead to a better
understanding of how philosophy and medicine can usefully challenge
each other. As the interchange between physicians, philosophers,
nurses and psychologists recorded in the major papers, the
commentaries and the round table discussion shows, these issues are
truly interdisciplinary. In particular, they have shown that
members of the health care professions have much to learn about
themselves from philosophers as well as much of interest to engage
philosophers. By making the structure of medical reasoning more
apparent to its users, philosophers can show health care
practitioners how better to master clinical judgment and how better
to focus it towards the goods and values medicine wishes to pursue.
Becoming clearer about the process of knowing can in short teach us
how to know better and how to learn more efficiently. The result
can be more than (though it surely would be enough ) a powerful
intellectual insight into a major cultural endeavor, medicine."
This volume, which has developed from the Fourteenth Trans
Disciplinary Symposium on Philosophy and Medicine, September 5-8,
1982, at Tel Aviv University, Israel, contains the contributions of
a group of distinguished scholars who together examine the ethical
issues raised by the advance of biomedical science and technology.
We are, of course, still at the beginning of a revolution in our
understanding of human biology; scientific medicine and clinical
research are scarcely one hundred years old. Both the sciences and
the technology of medicine until ten or fifteen years ago had the
feeling of the 19th century about them; we sense that they belonged
to an older time; that era is ending. The next twenty-five to fifty
years of investigative work belong to neurobiology, genetics, and
reproductive biology. The technologies of information processing
and imaging will make diagnosis and treatment almost
incomprehensible by my generation of physicians. Our science and
technology will become so powerful that we shall require all of the
art and wisdom we can muster to be sure that they remain dedicated,
as Francis Bacon hoped four centuries ago, "to the uses of life."
It is well that, as philosophers and physicians, we grapple with
the issues now when they are relatively simple, and while the pace
of change is relatively slow. We require a strategy for the future;
that strategy must be worked out by scientists, philosophers,
physicians, lawyers, theologians, and, I should like to add,
artists and poets."
The growth of knowledge and its effects on the practice of medicine
have been issues of philosophical and ethical interest for several
decades and will remain so for many years to come. The outline of
the present volume was conceived nearly three years ago. In 1987, a
conference on this theme was held in Maastricht, the Netherlands,
on the occasion of the founding of the European Society for
Philosophy of Medicine and Health Care (ESPMH). Most of the
chapters of this book are derived from papers presented at that
meeting, and for the purpose of editing the book Stuart Spicker,
Ph. D. , joined two founding members of ESPMH, Henk ten Have and
Gerrit Kimsma. The three of them successfully brought together a
number of interesting contribu tions to the theme, and ESPMH is
grateful and proud to have initiated the production of this volume.
The Society intends that annual meetings be held in different
European countries on a rotating basis and to publish volumes
related to these meetings whenever feasible. In 1988, the second
conference was held in Aarhus, Denmark on "Values in Medical
Decision Making and Resource Allocation in Health Care". In 1989, a
meeting was held in Czestochowa, Poland, on "European Traditions in
Philosophy of Medicine. From Brentano to Bieganski". It is hoped
that these conferences and the books to be derived from them, will
initiate a new European tradition, lasting well into the 21 st
century! P. J.
The concept 'health' is ambiguous [18,9, 11]. The concept 'mental
health' is even more so. 'Health' compasses senses of well-being,
wholeness, and sound ness that mean more than the simple freedom
from illness - a fact appreci ated in the World Health
Organization's definition of health as more than the absence of
disease or infirmity [7]. The wide range of viewpoints of the con
tributors to this volume attests to the scope of issues placed
under the rubric 'mental health. ' These papers, presented at the
Fourth Symposium on Philos ophy and Medicine, were written and
discussed within a broad context of interests concerning mental
health. Moreover, in their diversity these papers point to the many
descriptive, evaluative, and, in fact, performative functions of
statements concerning mental health. Before introducing the
substance of these papers in any detail, I want to indicate the
profound commerce between philosophical and psychological ideas in
theories of mental health and disease. This will be done in part by
a consideration of some conceptual developments in the history of
psychiatry, as well as through an analysis of some of the functions
of the notions of mental illness and health. 'Mental health' lays a
special stress on the wholeness of human intuition, emotion,
thought, and action.
The spectacular development of medical knowledge over the last two
centuries has brought intrusive advances in the capabilities of
medical technology. These advances have been remarkable over the
last century, but especially over the last few decades, culminating
in such high technology interventions as heart transplants and
renal dialysis. These increases in medical powers have attracted
societal interest in acquiring more such knowledge. They have also
spawned concerns regarding the use of human subjects in research
and regarding the byproducts of basic research as in the recent
recombinant DNA debate. As a consequence of the development of new
biomedical knowledge, physicians and biomedical scientists have
been placed in positions of new power and responsibility. The
emergence of this group of powerful and knowledgeable experts has
occasioned debates regarding the accountability of physicians and
biomedical scientists. But beyond that, the very investment of
resources in the acquisition of new knowledge has been questioned.
Societies must decide whether finite resources would not be better
invested at this juncture, or in general, in the alleviation of the
problems of hunger or in raising general health standards through
interventions which are less dependent on the intensive use of high
technology. To put issues in this fashion touches on philosophical
notions concerning the claims of distributive justice and the
ownership of biomedical knowledge.
This volume is a contribution to the continuing interaction between
law and medicine. Problems arising from this interaction have been
addressed, in part, by previous volumes in this series. In fact,
one such problem constitutes the central focus of Volume 5, Mental
Illness: Law and Public Policy 1]. The present volume joins other
volumes in this series in offering an exploration and critical
analysis of concepts and values underlying health care. In this
volume, however, we look as well at some of the general questions
occasioned by the law's relation with medicine. We do so out of a
conviction that medi cine and the law must be understood as the
human creations they are, reflect ing important, wide-ranging, but
often unaddressed aspects of the nature of the human condition. It
is only by such philosophical analysis of the nature of the
conceptual foundations of the health care professions and of the
legal profession that we will be able to judge whether these
professions do indeed serve our best interests. Such philosophical
explorations are required for the public policy decisions that will
be pressed upon us through the increasing complexity of health care
and of the law's response to new and changing circumstances. As a
consequence, this volume attends as much to issues in public policy
as in the law. The law is, after all, the creature of human deci
sions concerning prudent public policy and basic human rights and
goods."
This volume, which has developed from the Fourteenth Trans
Disciplinary Symposium on Philosophy and Medicine, September 5-8,
1982, at Tel Aviv University, Israel, contains the contributions of
a group of distinguished scholars who together examine the ethical
issues raised by the advance of biomedical science and technology.
We are, of course, still at the beginning of a revolution in our
understanding of human biology; scientific medicine and clinical
research are scarcely one hundred years old. Both the sciences and
the technology of medicine until ten or fifteen years ago had the
feeling of the 19th century about them; we sense that they belonged
to an older time; that era is ending. The next twenty-five to fifty
years of investigative work belong to neurobiology, genetics, and
reproductive biology. The technologies of information processing
and imaging will make diagnosis and treatment almost
incomprehensible by my generation of physicians. Our science and
technology will become so powerful that we shall require all of the
art and wisdom we can muster to be sure that they remain dedicated,
as Francis Bacon hoped four centuries ago, "to the uses of life."
It is well that, as philosophers and physicians, we grapple with
the issues now when they are relatively simple, and while the pace
of change is relatively slow. We require a strategy for the future;
that strategy must be worked out by scientists, philosophers,
physicians, lawyers, theologians, and, I should like to add,
artists and poets."
Although the investigation and regulation of the faculties of the
human mind appear to be the proper and sole concern of
philosophers, you see that they are in some part nevertheless so
little foreign to the medical forum that while someone may deny
that they are proper to the physician he cannot deny that
physicians have the obliga tion to philosophize. Jerome Gaub, De
regimine mentis, IV, 10 ( 10], p. 40) The Second Trans-Disciplinary
Symposium on Philosophy and Medicine, whose principal theme was
'Philosophical Dimensions of the Neuro-Medical Sciences, ' convened
at the University of Connecticut Health Center at the invitation of
Robert U. Massey, Dean of the School of Medicine, during May 15,
16, and 17, 1975. The Proceedings constitute this volume. At this
Symposium we intended to realize sentiments which Sir John Eccles
ex pressed as director of a Study Week of the Pontificia Academia
Scientiarum, CiWl del Vaticano, in the fall of 1964: "Certainly
when one comes to a study] . . . devoted to brain and mind it is
not possible to exclude relations with philosophy" ( 5], p. viii).
During that study week in 1964, a group of distinguished biomedical
and behavioral scientists met under the director ship of Sir John
C. Eccles to relate psychology to what Sir John called 'the
Neurosciences. ' The purpose of that study week was to treat issues
con cerning the functions of the brain and, in particular, to
concentrate upon the relations between brain functions and
consciousness."
The concept 'health' is ambiguous [18,9, 11]. The concept 'mental
health' is even more so. 'Health' compasses senses of well-being,
wholeness, and sound ness that mean more than the simple freedom
from illness - a fact appreci ated in the World Health
Organization's definition of health as more than the absence of
disease or infirmity [7]. The wide range of viewpoints of the con
tributors to this volume attests to the scope of issues placed
under the rubric 'mental health. ' These papers, presented at the
Fourth Symposium on Philos ophy and Medicine, were written and
discussed within a broad context of interests concerning mental
health. Moreover, in their diversity these papers point to the many
descriptive, evaluative, and, in fact, performative functions of
statements concerning mental health. Before introducing the
substance of these papers in any detail, I want to indicate the
profound commerce between philosophical and psychological ideas in
theories of mental health and disease. This will be done in part by
a consideration of some conceptual developments in the history of
psychiatry, as well as through an analysis of some of the functions
of the notions of mental illness and health. 'Mental health' lays a
special stress on the wholeness of human intuition, emotion,
thought, and action.
This volume is a contribution to the continuing interaction between
law and medicine. Problems arising from this interaction have been
addressed, in part, by previous volumes in this series. In fact,
one such problem constitutes the central focus of Volume 5, Mental
Illness: Law and Public Policy 1]. The present volume joins other
volumes in this series in offering an exploration and critical
analysis of concepts and values underlying health care. In this
volume, however, we look as well at some of the general questions
occasioned by the law's relation with medicine. We do so out of a
conviction that medi cine and the law must be understood as the
human creations they are, reflect ing important, wide-ranging, but
often unaddressed aspects of the nature of the human condition. It
is only by such philosophical analysis of the nature of the
conceptual foundations of the health care professions and of the
legal profession that we will be able to judge whether these
professions do indeed serve our best interests. Such philosophical
explorations are required for the public policy decisions that will
be pressed upon us through the increasing complexity of health care
and of the law's response to new and changing circumstances. As a
consequence, this volume attends as much to issues in public policy
as in the law. The law is, after all, the creature of human deci
sions concerning prudent public policy and basic human rights and
goods."
This volume inaugurates a series concerning philosophy and
medicine. There are few, if any, areas of social concern so
pervasive as medicine and yet as underexamined by philosophy. But
the claim to precedence of the Proceedings of the First
Trans-Disciplinary Symposium on Philos ophy and Medicine must be
qualified. Claims to be "first" are notorious in the history of
scientific as well as humanistic investigation and the claim that
the First Trans-Disciplinary Symposium on Philosophy and Medicine
has no precedent is not meant to be put in bald form. The editors
clearly do not maintain that philosophers and physicians have not
heretofore discussed matters of mutual concern, nor that individual
philosophers and physicians have never taken up problems and
concepts in medicine which are themselves at the boundary or
interface of these two disciplines - concepts like "matter,"
"disease," "psyche. " Surely there have been books published on the
logic and philosophy of medi 1 cine. But the formalization of
issues and concepts in medicine has not received, at least in this
century, sustained interest by professional phi losophers. Groups
of philosophers have not engaged medicine in order to explicate its
philosophical presuppositions and to sort out the various concepts
which appear in medicine. The scope of such an effort takes the
philosopher beyond problems and issues which today are subsumed
under the rubric "medical ethics."
in a scientific way, and takes the patient and his family into his
confidence. Thus he learns something from the sufferer, and at the
same time instructs the invalid to the best of his power. He does
not give his prescriptions until he has won the patient's support,
and when he has done so, he steadilY aims at producing complete
restoration to health by persuading the sufferer in to compliance
(Laws 4. 720 b-e, [28]). This passage shows the perennial nature of
the problems of treating the patient as a person. It shows as well
the historical'depth of philosophical interest in medicine. The
history of philosophy includes more reflections upon medical ethics
than the casual reader might suspect. Many of these reflections are
pertinent to contemporary issues such as abortion and population
control. Plato, for example, recommends abortion in cases of incest
(Republic 5. 461c); and Aristotle argues for letting seriously
deformed children die, while forbidding infanticide as a means of
popUlation control, suggesting instead the use of early abortions.
'As to the exposure in rearing of children, let there be a law that
no deformed child shall live, but that on the ground of an excess
in the number of children . . . let abortion be procured before
sense and life have begun; what mayor may not be lawfully done in
these cases depends on the question of life and sensation'
(Politics VII, 16,335 b20-26, [4]).
This Festschrift is presented to Professor Hans Jonas on the
occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday, as affirmation of the
contributors' respect and admiration. As a volume in the series
'Philosophy and Medicine' the contributions not only reflect
certain interests and pursuits of the scholar to whom it is dedi
cated, but also serve to bring to convergence the interests of the
contributors in the history of humanity and medicine, the theory of
organism, medicine in the service of the patient's autonomy, and
the metaphysical, i.e., phenome nological foundations of medicine.
Notwithstanding the nature of such personal gifts as the authors'
contributions (which, with the exception of the late Hannah
Arendt's, appear here for the first time), the essays also
transcend the personal and serve to elaborate specific themes and
theses disclosed in the numerous writings of Hans Jonas. The editor
owes a personal debt of gratitude to many, including Hannah Arendt,
who offered their assistance during the preparation of the volume."
The spectacular development of medical knowledge over the last two
centuries has brought intrusive advances in the capabilities of
medical technology. These advances have been remarkable over the
last century, but especially over the last few decades, culminating
in such high technology interventions as heart transplants and
renal dialysis. These increases in medical powers have attracted
societal interest in acquiring more such knowledge. They have also
spawned concerns regarding the use of human subjects in research
and regarding the byproducts of basic research as in the recent
recombinant DNA debate. As a consequence of the development of new
biomedical knowledge, physicians and biomedical scientists have
been placed in positions of new power and responsibility. The
emergence of this group of powerful and knowledgeable experts has
occasioned debates regarding the accountability of physicians and
biomedical scientists. But beyond that, the very investment of
resources in the acquisition of new knowledge has been questioned.
Societies must decide whether finite resources would not be better
invested at this juncture, or in general, in the alleviation of the
problems of hunger or in raising general health standards through
interventions which are less dependent on the intensive use of high
technology. To put issues in this fashion touches on philosophical
notions concerning the claims of distributive justice and the
ownership of biomedical knowledge.
Over a period of a year, the symposium on clinical judgment has
taken shape as a volume devoted to the analysis of how knowledge
claims are framed in medicine and how choices of treatment are
made. We hope it will afford the reader, whether layman, physician
or philosopher, a useful perspective on the process of knowing what
occurs in medicine; and that the results of the dis cussions at the
Fifth Symposium on Philosophy and Medicine will lead to a better
understanding of how philosophy and medicine can usefully challenge
each other. As the interchange between physicians, philosophers,
nurses and psychologists recorded in the major papers, the
commentaries and the round table discussion shows, these issues are
truly interdisciplinary. In particular, they have shown that
members of the health care professions have much to learn about
themselves from philosophers as well as much of interest to engage
philosophers. By making the structure of medical reasoning more
apparent to its users, philosophers can show health care
practitioners how better to master clinical judgment and how better
to focus it towards the goods and values medicine wishes to pursue.
Becoming clearer about the process of knowing can in short teach us
how to know better and how to learn more efficiently. The result
can be more than (though it surely would be enough ) a powerful
intellectual insight into a major cultural endeavor, medicine."
The growth of knowledge and its effects on the practice of medicine
have been issues of philosophical and ethical interest for several
decades and will remain so for many years to come. The outline of
the present volume was conceived nearly three years ago. In 1987, a
conference on this theme was held in Maastricht, the Netherlands,
on the occasion of the founding of the European Society for
Philosophy of Medicine and Health Care (ESPMH). Most of the
chapters of this book are derived from papers presented at that
meeting, and for the purpose of editing the book Stuart Spicker,
Ph. D. , joined two founding members of ESPMH, Henk ten Have and
Gerrit Kimsma. The three of them successfully brought together a
number of interesting contribu tions to the theme, and ESPMH is
grateful and proud to have initiated the production of this volume.
The Society intends that annual meetings be held in different
European countries on a rotating basis and to publish volumes
related to these meetings whenever feasible. In 1988, the second
conference was held in Aarhus, Denmark on "Values in Medical
Decision Making and Resource Allocation in Health Care". In 1989, a
meeting was held in Czestochowa, Poland, on "European Traditions in
Philosophy of Medicine. From Brentano to Bieganski". It is hoped
that these conferences and the books to be derived from them, will
initiate a new European tradition, lasting well into the 21 st
century! P. J.
There is both a timeliness and a transcendent 'rightness' in the
fact that scholars, clinicians, and health professionals are
beginning to examine the ethics-based components of decision making
in health care of the elderly. Ethics - as the discipline concerned
with right or wrong conduct and moral duty - pervades hospital
rooms, nursing home corridors, physicians' offices, and the halls
of Congress as decisions are made that concern the allocation of
health-related services to individuals and groups in need. In
particular, care of older persons recently has received dispropor
tionate attention in discussions of ethics and clinical care. Age
alone, of course, should not generate special focus on ill
individuals about whom concerns arise based on value conflicts
tacitly involved in the delivery of health care. Having said that
age is not the principal criterion for attention to ethics-based
concerns in health care, it must be acknowl edged that old people
have a high prevalence of conditions that provoke interest and put
them in harm's way if value conflicts are not identified and
seriously addressed. Issues that concern autonomy, the allocation
of scarce resources, inter-generational competition and conflict,
the withholding of treat ment in treatable disease, and
substitute and proxy decision making for the cognitively impaired
all have special relevance for older persons.
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