Program
12:30-13:00 Coffee and bring-your-own-lunch
13:00-13:10 Gry Oftedal: Introduction
13:10-13:50 Rachel Ankeny: Defending Medical Cases as Abduction
13:50-14:10 Questions and discussion
14:10-14:20 Break
14:20-15:00 Robert Northcott: The Necessity of Going Local
15:00-15:30 Questions and discussion
Abstracts and bios
Defending Medical Cases as Abduction (Rachel Ankeny)
This paper explores medical case reports and their status as a form of evidence particularly in our current era dominated by so-called ‘evidence-based medicine’ (EBM). I investigate what it means to use them ‘well,’ including what epistemic resources need to be in place, and what they are best viewed as being good for. I contend that the form of logical inference that underlies medical cases is more closely related to abductive reasoning of the type espoused by the American philosopher C.S. Peirce in his later views. These arguments provide important considerations not just for those interested in medical cases or philosophy of medicine, but more generally for those seeking to provide more complex accounts of sciences in practice.
Rachel A. Ankeny is Chair and Professor of Philosophy at Wageningen University, where her research fields include history/philosophy of biomedical and biological sciences, bioethics, and food/agricultural studies. She also is an Affiliate Professor at the University of Adelaide in the School of Humanities and Honorary Visiting Professor in the College of Social Science and International Studies (Philosophy) at the University of Exeter. She was a co-founder of the Society for the Philosophy of Science in Practice (SPSP) and is Editor-in-Chief of Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. The paper to be presented is part of a book manuscript in progress entitled In Defense of Medical Cases.
The necessity of going local (Robert Northcott)
Frequently in science, warrant for causal explanations extends only locally, and causal inference cannot be done with experiments or statistical methods. Take species invasions, for example: the only way to explain the success (or non-success) of a particular species invasion is through contextual, historian-like investigation. I’ll defend this localism and argue that it is widespread.
Robert Northcott is professor of philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London. He is founding co-editor of the Cambridge University Press Elements series in Philosophy of Science, and recently finished a term as Honorary Secretary of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science. He has published extensively on the philosophy of economics and other sciences, and on causation and causal explanation. His new book, ‘Science for a Fragile World’, develops a systematic position on the methodology of non-laboratory sciences.