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Chapter 5 - Understanding in Medicine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2024

Somogy Varga
Affiliation:
Aarhus Universitet, Denmark
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Summary

The chapter delves into the specific kind of understanding aimed at in medicine, starting from the Understanding Thesis. Drawing on recent work by Broadbent (2019), debates in the epistemology of understanding (Kvanvig 2009; Grimm 2012; Khalifa 2017), and scholarship on the aims of inquiry, the chapter unpacks what it means to understand something, differentiating types of understanding, and using the history of scurvy to explore understanding a disease in medicine. The hypothesis is that biomedical understanding of a disease requires grasping a mechanistic explanation of the disease. This understanding of causal and constitutive relationships draws on an influential account of causation (Woodward 2003; 2010; 2015) and work on mechanistic explanations in biological sciences and neuroscience (Thagard 2003; 2005; Craver 2007; Nervi 2010; Kaplan and Craver 2011; Darrason 2018). However, it argues that biomedical understanding is necessary but not sufficient for clinical understanding, which combines biomedical understanding of a disease with personal understanding of an illness. This chapter revisits the distinction between "understanding" and "explanation" from debates in the field.

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Chapter
Information
Science, Medicine, and the Aims of Inquiry
A Philosophical Analysis
, pp. 106 - 131
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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  • Understanding in Medicine
  • Somogy Varga, Aarhus Universitet, Denmark
  • Book: Science, Medicine, and the Aims of Inquiry
  • Online publication: 16 May 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009449977.007
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  • Understanding in Medicine
  • Somogy Varga, Aarhus Universitet, Denmark
  • Book: Science, Medicine, and the Aims of Inquiry
  • Online publication: 16 May 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009449977.007
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Understanding in Medicine
  • Somogy Varga, Aarhus Universitet, Denmark
  • Book: Science, Medicine, and the Aims of Inquiry
  • Online publication: 16 May 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009449977.007
Available formats
×