Minor Subject 107 in Part II Biological and Biomedical Sciences (BBS)
Paper manager: Stephen John
Lectures are held in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science.
| Michaelmas Term | |
|---|---|
| Ethics and Politics of Science and Medicine Stephen John (8) |
Mon 4pm (weeks 1–8) |
| Philosophy of the Biomedical Sciences: Concepts and Evidence Tom McClelland (4), Stephen John (4) |
Tue 4pm (weeks 1–8) |
| Lent Term | |
|---|---|
| Ethics and Politics of Science and Medicine (continued) Ahmad Elabbar (4) |
Mon 4pm (weeks 1–4) |
| Philosophy of Psychiatry Matt Farr (4) |
Tue 4pm (weeks 1–4) |
Do we have a human right to health? What is it to be healthy anyway, and can good health be measured? How can we know that smoking causes lung cancer, rather than that they are merely correlated? Is it ethical to experiment on humans to gain that knowledge? Is the foetus a person, and does this affect the morality of abortion? How should we decide between funding basic science and applied studies? Medical practice raises significant philosophical, ethical and political questions. This course studies these questions and shows how different answers may influence practice.
Aims and learning outcomes
- to introduce students to core issues in the ethics of medical practice and the politics of health policy;
- to provide students with conceptual tools for understanding the ethics and politics of medicine more generally;
- to introduce students to core debates over the epistemology and metaphysics of biomedical and health-related research and practice;
- to provide students with resources for thinking through emerging paradigms in medical research;
- to help students to understand how 'ethical' and 'scientific' concerns inter-relate in core areas of medical research, such as the measurement of health or the value-ladenness of inference;
- to enable students to take on roles as engaged citizens and practitioners.
Lectures
Ethics and Politics of Science and Medicine
Stephen John, Ahmad Elabbar (12 lectures, Michaelmas & Lent Terms)
This course considers two important sets of questions. In the first eight lectures, we look at some of the central questions of bio-medical ethics, focusing on different issues from different stages of the life-course: ranging from whether you should be vaccinated, to whether you should be allowed to get drunk, to when you should have children, and, finally, whether you should be allowed to choose how you die. Through this approach, we show how our individual choices are wrapped inside larger social and political structures. In Lent Term, we turn from thinking about ethical issues raised by medical technologies to consider the broader question of how ethical and social values do and should shape science. Many philosophers now hold that science is ineliminably laden with ethical, political or other 'non-epistemic' values. Does that imply that science isn't objective and, if so, what does that imply for the place of science in society, or should we change our view of what counts as objective?
Philosophy of the Biomedical Sciences: Concepts and Evidence
Tom McClelland, Stephen John (8 lectures, Michaelmas Term)
Medicine is among our most important institutions. Though its aim is practical, medicine is shot through with conceptual commitments and theoretical assumptions, its basic tools rely on causal hypotheses supported to varying degrees by inductive inferences, and medical research is developed in a complex political and economic nexus. Thus medicine is a prime subject for philosophical analysis. This eight-week sequence of lectures will examine conceptual, normative, epistemological, methodological, metaphysical and political questions underlying medicine and medical science.
Philosophy of Psychiatry
Matt Farr (4 lectures, Lent Term)
Philosophy of psychiatry stands at the intersection of philosophy of medicine, philosophy of psychology/cognitive science, and philosophy of mind. This course considers various topics within philosophy of psychiatry, focusing on how the study of psychopathology interacts with the study of mind and brain. We will consider several key questions, including: What are mental disorders? Are they disorders of mind, brain or society? How are conceptualisations of mental disorder influenced by culture? How are they influenced by developments in neuroscience? Is there such a thing as a 'normal' mind? What can psychopathology tell us about 'normal' mental functioning?
Preliminary reading
- Buchanan, Allen, Dan W. Brock, Norman Daniels and Daniel I. Wilker, From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
- Harris, John (ed.), Bioethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)
- Hausman, Daniel, Valuing Health: Well-Being, Freedom and Suffering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015)
- Kuhse, Helga, Udo Schüklenk and Peter Singer (eds), Bioethics: An Anthology (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2016)
- O'Neill, Onora, Autonomy and Trust in Bioethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)
- Porter, Theodore M., Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Public Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995)
- Stegenga, Jacob, Care and Cure: An Introduction to Philosophy of Medicine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018)