What is Medicine? with Alex Broadbent

Summary

What is medicine? That question certainly has the ring of a paradigmatic philosophical problem. Yet surprisingly few contemporary philosophers have devoted sustained attention to it. Nonetheless, potentially underlying the question ‘what is medicine?’ are problems concerning the goals of medicine, about medical expertise, and about what counts as health and what counts as disease, problems that determine the very scope of medicine and medical practice. So perhaps it’s time to get paradigmatically philosophical about medicine.

Today’s consultation is with philosopher Alex Broadbent, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Johannesburg.

This episode is published jointly with the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Visit the Journal website to read an accompanying article by Prof. Broadbent, “The inquiry model of medicine” (2019, 191: E105-E106).

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Jonathan Fuller

Jonathan Fuller MD PhD is a philosopher of medicine and Associate Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. He is co-host of the NBN channel Philosophy of Medicine and a producer of its podcast series 'New Books in Philosophy of Medicine' and 'Philosophers on Medicine'.
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