Alireza Monajemi; Hamidreza Namazi
Abstract
"Medical humanities" seems to be a paradoxical phrase primarily. How these two distinct and separate fileds of knowledge have been linked is due to the problematic state of medicine. In the first part of the article, we will analyze medical humanities based on the controversies in this field, and in ...
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"Medical humanities" seems to be a paradoxical phrase primarily. How these two distinct and separate fileds of knowledge have been linked is due to the problematic state of medicine. In the first part of the article, we will analyze medical humanities based on the controversies in this field, and in the second part, the critical meta-medical studies will be proposed as an alternative to medical humanities. To answer the first question, we have used the controversies studies. The contemporary trend of medical humanities began with the critique of modern medicine in the late sixties and early seventies, which was concerned with the growing development of biomedical sciences and dehumanization of medicine. The pioneers in this field found a solution that could be linking the humanities to the field of medicine. The medical humanities has established by reforming the curricula of many medical schools , and gradually expanded to clinical research and clinical practice. A careful review and analysis of medical humanities literature identified five main issues in surface layer: broad and different conceptions and definitions, discipline vs. field, multidisciplinary vs. interdisciplinary, medical humanities vs. health humanities, classical humanities vs. critical humanities and medical humanities vs. medical philosophy. In the final analysis in the deep layer, two elements can be distinguished: one is dichotomies and the other is drives or processes. Dichotomies can be classified into several general groups: methodological (instrumental-critical and concrete-integrated), epustemological (natural sciences-humanities, specialist-commoners), ontological (human-human sciences, art-science) and praxiological (health vs. clinical, care vs. cure). In the case of drives or processes, we can mention medicaliztion, bureaucratization, technicalization, ethicization, scientificization, specialization, individualization. But as we mentioned in the final analysis, both approaches has suffered from serious limitations. In the second part of the article, two questions will be addressed: What is the defensible critical approach in medical / health sciences and what are the proposed critical meta-medical studies as an alternative to medical / health sciences? Modern medicine and humanities and social sciences have the same origins, and therefore sociology, psychology, etc., as medical humanities, cannot humanize medicine. Hence, a critical theory should be considered that critiques both social sciences and medicine at the same time; Like Foucault, Gadamer and Habermas. Critical meta-medical studies, such as the cross-disciplinary umbrella, pay attention to the fundamental questions of medicine and, of course, inforce the discipline to a critical appraoch, both among themselves and towards the goal of medicine.
Alireza Monajemi
Abstract
In “Birth of the Clinic” Foucault's shows that it was not the natural sciences but the clinical medicine that laid the foundation for the humanities. At the end of the book The Birth of the Clinic, he argues that the humanities are based on modern clinical medicine. The importance of medical ...
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In “Birth of the Clinic” Foucault's shows that it was not the natural sciences but the clinical medicine that laid the foundation for the humanities. At the end of the book The Birth of the Clinic, he argues that the humanities are based on modern clinical medicine. The importance of medical science in the founding of the humanities, he says, is not purely methodological because human existence is defined or perceived as the object of positive science. Of course, Foucault does not make more of his claim and does not expand it. In this article I will try to show how this claim can be defended on the basis of his formulation of clinical medicine, and what implications it will have for the humanities.In order to understand comprehensively the thesis medicine should be framed based on the views of medical philosophers. Without these arrangements, it would be difficult to understand Foucault's claim. It seems that not only he has suspended implicitly or neglected many of philosophical issues of medicine in the Birth of the Clinic, but also his interpreters were unfamiliar with the tradition of medical philosophy. First, I'm trying to show that medicine is a different mode of thinking than the natural sciences, if that were not the case, Foucault's claim would be so trivial: human being has been transformed to the object by medicine, and it was then that the founding of the human sciences was inspired by the natural sciences, which is a mistaken belief. This section will be based on the views of Ludwig Falk on the serious differences between medical thinking and the natural sciences. I describe the structure of clinical medicine and its various disciplines and their interaction. In this is based on Kazem Sadeghzadeh ideas. In the next section, I will attempt to show how Foucault has formulated modern clinical medicine and its evolution in the form of three-level spatialization. In the final chapter, I will show how Foucault's formulation of clinical medicine can form the basis of the humanities. Thus this article appears to be an attempt to link the philosophy of medicine and the philosophy of the humanities through a new reading of the Birth of a Clinic
elahe soroush; Alireza Monajemi
Volume 7, Issue 14 , Winter and Spring 2018, , Pages 27-58
Abstract
In today’s world, technology plays an important and crucial role in medicine and healthcare. Medical Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems are only subsets of the technologies which try to provide automated decision aids for physicians and clinicians. Their goal is to diagnose the illness ...
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In today’s world, technology plays an important and crucial role in medicine and healthcare. Medical Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems are only subsets of the technologies which try to provide automated decision aids for physicians and clinicians. Their goal is to diagnose the illness and make treatment recommendations. MYClN and INTERNIST-I are among the earliest developed expert systems. However, despite the fact that several of these medical systems have achieved high levels of performance, hardly any has progressed from the research laboratory into practical use. But because of overpromising and failing to deliver them, in artificial intelligence researches face toreduced funding and interest. One of the major reason of these failures is inadequate attention and studies about epistemological considerations. In this paper we are looking for some epistemological obstacles which prevent AI from being successful in medicine. To do so we first briefly introduce cognition errors in medicine which motivate using AI in this field, then review several implemented medical AI systems and finally we discuss epistemological reasons which leads to failure of AI in medicine. These reasons are incorrect hypotheses about nature of knowledge, separating knowledge from decision strategies, inadequate consideration to tacit knowledge and separating knowledge from its context.
Alireza Monajemi; Hamidreza Ayatollahy; Mehdi Moinzadeh
Volume 3, Issue 6 , Winter and Spring 2014, , Pages 99-118
Abstract
Medicalization is a term for the process by which medical definitions and practices are applied to behaviors, psychological phenomena, and somatic experiences which previously were not within the conceptual or therapeutic scope of medicine. There have been two distinct main approaches to medicalization. ...
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Medicalization is a term for the process by which medical definitions and practices are applied to behaviors, psychological phenomena, and somatic experiences which previously were not within the conceptual or therapeutic scope of medicine. There have been two distinct main approaches to medicalization. The first was a Marxist critique of medicine as authoritarian and imperialistic, while the second was a critique of the expanding role of medicine in the social control of deviant behavior. This article contends that none of these approached could explain medicalization comprehensively. The main thesis of this paper is that medicalization as a technology could be an alternative. In this paper, this thesis will be examined in the light of Heidegger’s, Bergmann’s and Feinberg’s philosophy of technology.
