Jacob Stegenga is a Professor 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.
Jacob runs the YouTube channel PhiSci: Conversations about Philosophy and Science, where he interviews some of the world's most prominent philosophers and scientists about a wide range of topics.
Research interests
Philosophy of science, philosophy of biology, philosophy of medicine
Selected publications
For a complete list of publications, please see my Academia.edu site.
Medical Nihilism, Oxford University Press, 2018
Care and Cure: An Introduction to Philosophy of Medicine, University of Chicago Press, 2018
'Three Arguments for Absolute Outcome Measures' (with Jan Sprenger), 2017, Philosophy of Science 84: 840–852
'Population Pluralism and Natural Selection', The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 2016 67: 1–29
'Probabilizing the End', Philosophical Studies 2013 165: 95–112
'Is Meta-Analysis the Platinum Standard of Evidence?', Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 2011 42: 497–507
Syllabi for philosophy of medicine
The following two syllabi are for philosophy of medicine courses, structured around my introductory text Care and Cure. One syllabus is for a lower-level undergraduate course and the other syllabus is for an upper-level course or graduate seminar. Please feel free to use and modify these syllabi to suit your teaching needs. Also, if you are a student and are planning to pursue an MPhil or PhD in our department, the reading list in the upper-level syllabus would be good prior preparation.
