Psychometrics is one of the main approaches to social scientific measurement. It is relied upon in drug testing, economic policymaking, recruitment, and other decision-making contexts. The first aim of this article is to introduce philosophers to key aspects of psychometrics, namely, classical test theory, item response theory, and construct validity. The second aim is to show how a debate on the nature of psychological attributes manifests in psychometrics. In this debate, realists claim that psychometric measures are indicators of independently existing (...) qualities, while operationalists argue that a measure defines its target attribute. The third and final aim is to argue that despite its poor reputation among philosophers, operationalism is a viable approach to psychometrics. (shrink)

The purpose of this chapter is to describe what we see as several important new directions for philosophy of medicine. This recent work (i) takes existing discussions in important and promising new directions, (ii) identifies areas that have not received sufficient and deserved attention to date, and/or (iii) brings together philosophy of medicine with other areas of philosophy (including bioethics, philosophy of psychiatry, and social epistemology). To this end, the next part focuses on what we call the “epistemological turn” in (...) recent work in the philosophy of medicine; the third part addresses new developments in medical research that raise interesting questions for philosophy of medicine; the fourth part is a discussion of philosophical issues within the practice of diagnosis; the fifth part focuses on the recent developments in psychiatric classification and scientific and ethical issues therein, and the final part focuses on the objectivity of medical research. (shrink)

Measuring the effectiveness of medical interventions faces three epistemological challenges: the choice of good measuring instruments, the use of appropriate analytic measures, and the use of a reliable method of extrapolating measures from an experimental context to a more general context. In practice each of these challenges contributes to overestimating the effectiveness of medical interventions. These challenges suggest the need for corrective normative principles. The instruments employed in clinical research should measure patient-relevant and disease-specific parameters, and should not be sensitive (...) to parameters that are only indirectly relevant. Effectiveness always should be measured and reported in absolute terms (using measures such as 'absolute risk reduction'), and only sometimes should effectiveness also be measured and reported in relative terms (using measures such as 'relative risk reduction')-employment of relative measures promotes an informal fallacy akin to the base-rate fallacy, which can be exploited to exaggerate claims of effectiveness. Finally, extrapolating from research settings to clinical settings should more rigorously take into account possible ways in which the intervention in question can fail to be effective in a target population. (shrink)

The Habermasian concept of ‘interest’ has had a profound effect on the characterization of scientific disciplines. Going beyond issues unrelated to the theory itself, intra‐theoretical interest characterizes the specific ways of approaching any science‐related discipline, defining research topics and methodologies. This approach was developed by Jürgen Habermas in relation to empirical–analytical sciences, historical–hermeneutics sciences, and critical sciences; however, he did not make any specific references to health sciences. This article aims to contribute to shaping a general epistemological framework for health (...) sciences, as well as its specific implications for the medical and nursing areas, via an analysis of the basic knowledge interests developed by Habermas. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for a distinction between two scales of coordination in scientific inquiry, through which I reassess Georg Simon Ohm’s work on conductivity and resistance. Firstly, I propose to distinguish between measurement coordination, which refers to the specific problem of how to justify the attribution of values to a quantity by using a certain measurement procedure, and general coordination, which refers to the broader issue of justifying the representation of an empirical regularity by means of abstract mathematical (...) tools. Secondly, I argue that the development of Ohm’s measurement practice between the first and the second experimental phase of his work involved the change of the measurement coordination on which he relied to express his empirical results. By showing how Ohm relied on different calibration assumptions and practices across the two phases, I demonstrate that the concurrent change of both Ohm’s experimental apparatus and the variable that Ohm measured should be viewed based on the different form of measurement coordination. Finally, I argue that Ohm’s assumption that tension is equally distributed in the circuit is best understood as part of the general coordination between Ohm’s law and the empirical regularity that it expresses, rather than measurement coordination. (shrink)

We are pleased to once again present to the readers of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics papers from the Philosophy of Medicine Roundtable. Previous issues have followed the 3rd and 4th Roundtables, and the current issue presents a selection from the more than 20 papers presented at the 5th Philosophy of Medicine Roundtable, which took place in New York, at Columbia University, in November 2013. Like its predecessors, held in Birmingham, AL, Rotterdam, and San Sebastian, this Roundtable attracted speakers from around (...) the world. It also featured keynote presentations from Rita Charon of Columbia University and Ross Upshur of the University of Toronto.It may seem somewhat odd to feature a special issue on philosophy of medicine in a journal that effectively has philosophy of medicine in its title. However, a review of the contents of this journal and similar ones, such as the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, will quickly reveal such an issue’s purpose. The dominant content of these j .. (shrink)

What clinicians, biomedical scientists, and other health care professionals know as individuals or as groups and how they come to know and use knowledge are central concerns of medical epistemology. Activities associated with knowledge production and use are called epistemic practices. Such practices are considered in biomedical and clinical literatures, social sciences of medicine, philosophy of science and philosophy of medicine, and also in other nonmedical literatures. A host of different kinds of knowledge claims have been identified, each with different (...) uses and logics of justification. A general framework is needed to situate these diverse contributions in medical epistemology, so we can see how they fit together. But developing such a framework turns out to be quite tricky. In this survey, three possible frameworks are considered along with the difficulties associated with each of them. The essay concludes with a fourth framework, which considers any epistemology as part of a practice that is oriented toward overcoming errors that emerge in antecedently given practices where knowledge is developed and used. As medicine indirectly advances health by directly mitigating disease, so epistemology indirectly advances knowledge by directly mitigating error. (shrink)