TEC: Causation in medicine. 8/10/2014, 10:30, Aula 0.2

TEC: Causation in medicine. 8/10/2014, 10:30, Aula 0.2

30/09/2014

Rani Anjum (Norwegian University of Life Sciences)

ABSTRACT Causation matters in all sciences. But it matters more than usual in the health sciences. Everyone has an interest in the identification and understanding of the causes of health, disease and recovery. In order to do the detailed scientific work of discovering what causes what, we must also have a grasp of what causation is in general. What is it for one thing to cause another? In particular, we must understand: - what happens when multiple causal factors operate at the same time; - the effects that a single factor can have on different people, perhaps with a variety of other conditions; - what are the appropriate research methods for finding the evidence of medical causes. In this talk I argue that medicine needs a new philosophical framework for dealing with complex diseases. This framework includes an anti-Humean ontology, a singularist theory of causation and a propensity theory of probability.