Clinical judgment : a critical appraisal : proceedings of the Fifth Trans-disciplinary Symposium on Philosophy and Medicine, held at Los Angeles, California, April 14-16, 1977

Over a period of a year, the symposium on clinical judgment has taken shape as a volume devoted to the analysis of how knowledge claims are framed in medicine and how choices of treatment are made. We hope it will afford the reader, whether layman, physician or philosopher, a useful perspective on the process of knowing what occurs in medicine; and that the results of the dis­ cussions at the Fifth Symposium on Philosophy and Medicine will lead to a better understanding of how philosophy and medicine can usefully challenge each other. As the interchange between physicians, philosophers, nurses and psychologists recorded in the major papers, the commentaries and the round table discussion shows, these issues are truly interdisciplinary. In particular, they have shown that members of the health care professions have much to learn about themselves from philosophers as well as much of interest to engage philosophers. By making the structure of medical reasoning more apparent to its users, philosophers can show health care practitioners how better to master clinical judgment and how better to focus it towards the goods and values medicine wishes to pursue. Becoming clearer about the process of knowing can in short teach us how to know better and how to learn more efficiently. The result can be more than (though it surely would be enough!) a powerful intellectual insight into a major cultural endeavor, medicine. Front Matter....Pages i-xxvi Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Clinical Judgment....Pages 3-16 Human Factors in Clinical Judgment: Discussion of Scriven’s ‘Clinical Judgment’....Pages 17-28 The Art and Science of Clinical Judgment:....Pages 29-44 When Does a Diagnosis Become a Clinical Judgment?....Pages 45-56 Front Matter....Pages 57-57 Classification and Its Alternatives....Pages 59-85 Comments on Murphy’s ‘Classification and Its Alternatives’....Pages 87-92 Simulating Clinical Judgment....Pages 93-113 A Clinician’s Quest for Certainty....Pages 115-129 A Reply to Ernan McMullin....Pages 131-143 The Logic of Clinical Judgment: Bayesian and Other Approaches....Pages 145-159 Suppes on the Logic of Clinical Judgment....Pages 161-166 Front Matter....Pages 167-167 The Anatomy of Clinical Judgments....Pages 169-194 Comments on Pellegrino’s ‘Anatomy of Clinical Judgments’....Pages 195-197 The Subjective in Clinical Judgment....Pages 199-215 Subjectivity and the Scope of Clinical Judgment....Pages 217-226 Front Matter....Pages 227-227 Round Table Discussion....Pages 229-237 Round Table Discussion....Pages 238-247 Round Table Discussion....Pages 248-253 Round Table Discussion....Pages 254-258 Round Table Discussion....Pages 259-264 Front Matter....Pages 227-227 Closing Remarks....Pages 265-271 Back Matter....Pages 273-279