Understanding Mechanisms in the Health Sciences

Overview

Journal Theor Med Bioeth

Publisher Springer

Specialty Medical Ethics

Date 2010 Dec 7

PMID 21132564

Citations 5

Authors

Raffaella Campaner

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

This article focuses on the assessment of mechanistic relations with specific attention to medicine, where mechanistic models are widely employed. I first survey recent contributions in the philosophical literature on mechanistic causation, and then take issue with Federica Russo and Jon Williamson's thesis that two types of evidence, probabilistic and mechanistic, are at stake in the health sciences. I argue instead that a distinction should be drawn between previously acquired knowledge of mechanisms and yet-to-be-discovered knowledge of mechanisms and that both probabilistic evidence and manipulation are essential with respect to newly discovered mechanisms.

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