#415 Jacob Stegenga: Philosophy of Medicine, Evidence, Disease, and Medical Nihilism
RECORDED ON NOVEMBER 2nd 2020.
Dr. Jacob Stegenga is a Reader in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. He has published widely on fundamental topics in reasoning and rationality and philosophical problems in medicine and biology. Prior to joining Cambridge he taught in the United States and Canada, and he received his PhD from the University of California San Diego. He is the author of Medical Nihilism and Care and Cure: An Introduction to Philosophy of Medicine, and he is currently writing a book on the sciences of sexual desire.
In this episode, we talk about philosophy of medicine. We first discuss what is philosophy of medicine, and then go through some of the major questions asked by philosophers of the discipline, like what is evidence, what is effectiveness, and what is a disease. We also talk about sources of evidence, like randomized control trials (RCTs) and meta-analyses, and we mention the plurality of reasoning strategies appealed to by the epidemiologist Sir Bradford Hill. Finally, we discuss what is medical nihilism, and we Dr. Stegenga gives us a short teaser to his next book, focused on the sciences of sexual desire.
Time Links:
What is philosophy of medicine?
What is evidence in medicine?
RCTs and meta-analyses
What is effectiveness?
How to classify a disease
The plurality of reasoning strategies
Medical nihilism
New book on the sciences of sexual desire
Follow Dr. Stegenga’s work!
Follow Dr. Stegenga’s work:
Faculty page: https://bit.ly/35WaVmn
Academia.edu page: https://bit.ly/38bfw6K
PhilPeople page: https://bit.ly/3232ODy
Books: https://amzn.to/3mQOSEF