Philosophy and Methodology of Medicine (1-3 June 2021)
The claims of medicine have been supported by a wide variety of different methods, ranging from randomized controlled trials to expert judgement and mechanism-based reasoning. Miriam Solomon has therefore aptly characterized medicine in terms of a E2 80 9C developing, untidy, methodological pluralism. But can philosophers help with this development? In recent years, philosophers of science have become increasingly interested in assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the various methods employed in medicine. Some have defended the methodological superiority of randomized controlled trials, or at least meta-analyses of such trials. Others have challenged this superiority by on the one hand stressing the weaknesses of such methods in terms of their internal or external validity, and on the other hand emphasising the strengths of alternative methods, including methods involving expert judgement and mechanistic evidence.
This online conference will bring together philosophers of science and medical methodologists in an attempt to make progress towards resolving these debates concerning the strengths and weaknesses of the various methods employed in medicine.
We welcome submissions of abstracts of no longer than one page (not including references) for thirty-minute talks on topics in the philosophy and methodology of medicine, including but not limited to:
- Causal inference in medicine
- Foundational issues in statistics in medicine
- Bias in medical inference
- Medical epistemology
- Multi-agent medical epistemology
- Mechanisms in medicine
- Analogy and extrapolation in medicine
- Expert judgement in medicine.
The conference will be preceded by a Summer School to introduce graduate students and others to the main themes in the debates.