Handbook of Analytic Philosophy of Medicine

Medical practice is practiced morality, and clinical research belongs to normative ethics. The present book elucidates and advances this thesis by: 1. analyzing the structure of medical language, knowledge, and theories; 2. inquiring into the foundations of the clinical encounter; 3. introducing the logic and methodology of clinical decision-making, including artificial intelligence in medicine; 4. suggesting comprehensive theories of organism, life, and psyche; of health, illness, and disease; of etiology, diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, and therapy; and 5. investigating the moral and metaphysical issues central to medical practice and research. Many systems of (classical, modal, non-classical, probability, and fuzzy) logic are introduced and applied. Fuzzy medical deontics, fuzzy medical ontology, fuzzy medical concept formation, fuzzy medical decision-making and biomedicine and many other techniques of fuzzification in medicine are introduced for the first time.

Kazem Sadegh-Zadeh (born 23 April 1942) is an analytic philosopher of medicine. He studied medicine and philosophy at the German universities of Munster, Berlin, and Gottingen with Internship and residency 1967-1971, assistant professor 1972-1982, full professor of philosophy of medicine at the University of Munster 1982-2004. Sadegh-Zadeh was born in Tabriz, Iran. He has made significant contributions to the analytic philosophy of medicine. His international recognition came especially through his work on clinical logic and methodology, including fuzzy logic and artificial intelligence in medicine. He is the founding editor of the international journals Metamed, founded in 1977 (current title: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, published by Springer) and Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, founded in 1989. Among his extensive work are the following innovative theories: theory of medicine, theory of fuzzy biopolymers, the prototype resemblance theory of disease, and theory of the Machina Sapiens.