Machine generated contents note: pt. A WHAT IS MEDICINE? -- 1.Varieties of Medicine -- 1.1.Early Medicine -- 1.2.Mainstream Medicine -- 1.3.Alternative Medicine -- 1.4.Non-Western Traditions -- 1.5.Conclusion -- 2.The Goal of Medicine -- 2.1.How to Answer the Question -- 2.2.The Curative Thesis -- 2.3.What Does "Goal of Medicine" Mean? -- 2.4.Is Cure the Goal of Medicine? -- 2.5.Medicine and Pain -- 2.6.Prevention, Cure, and Medicine -- 2.7.Cure Is the Goal of Medicine -- 2.8.The Puzzle of Ineffective Medicine -- 2.9.The Argument from the Persistence of Ineffective Medicine -- 2.10.Conclusion -- 3.The Business of Medicine -- 3.1.The Inquiry Thesis -- 3.2.An Inference to the Best Explanation -- 3.3.The Primacy of Understanding and Prediction -- 3.4.The Bullshit Objection -- 3.5.Not All Ineffective Medicine Is Bullshit -- 3.6.The Whig's Objection -- 3.7.The Whig's Other Objection -- 3.8.Conclusion -- 4.Health and Disease -- 4.1.Remarks About the State of the Art -- 4.2.Two Ways to Disagree About Health -- 4.3.Secondary Properties -- 4.4.Health as a Secondary Property -- 4.5.Evolution and the Concept of Health -- 4.6.Health in Different Times and Places -- 4.7.Disease -- 4.8.Conclusion -- pt. B WHAT SHOULD WE THINK OF MEDICINE? -- 5.Evidence-Based Medicine -- 5.1.EBM as an Attitude -- 5.2.A Prescription for Medicine -- 5.3.A Prescription for Patients -- 5.4.Trials and Biases -- 5.5.The Problem of Transportability -- 5.6.What's Good About EBM? -- 5.7.Conclusion -- 6.Medical Nihilism -- 6.1.Is Medicine Any Good at All? -- 6.2.Clarifying Medical Nihilism -- 6.3.Wootton's Whiggish Nihilism -- 6.4.Stegenga's Contemporary Nihilism -- 6.5.Kinds of Evidence -- 6.6.The Blue Bus Problem -- 6.7.Should We Be Medical Nihilists? -- 6.8.Conclusion -- 7.Medical Cosmopolitanism -- 7.1.Looking Elsewhere -- 7.2.Appiah's Cosmopolitanism -- 7.3.Metaphysical Stance -- 7.4.The Epistemic Stance -- 7.5.The Moral Stance -- 7.6.The Practical Stance -- 7.7.Medical Cosmopolitanism -- 7.8.Conclusion -- 8.Alternatives and Medical Dissidence -- 8.1.Mainstream, Alternative, and Traditional -- 8.2.Four Bad Arguments in Favor of Effectiveness -- 8.3.A Cosmopolitan Approach -- 8.4.Experience and Testimony -- 8.5.The Primacy of Practice -- 8.6.Conclusion -- 9.Decolonizing Medicine -- 9.1.Medicine and Power -- 9.2.What Is Decolonization of Knowledge? -- 9.3.Decolonization as Fairness -- 9.4.Decolonization as Epistemic Equality -- 9.5.Decolonizing Decolonization -- 9.6.Conclusion.
Summary:
'Philosophy of Medicine' provides a fresh and comprehensive treatment of the topic. It offers a novel theory of the nature of medicine, and proposes a new attitude to medicine, aimed at improving the quality of debates between medical traditions (including alternatives) and facilitating medicine's decolonization.
