Explore the vast range of titles available.

Despite its phenomenal success since its inception in the early nineteen-nineties, the evidence-based medicine movement has not succeeded in shaking off an epistemological critique derived from the experiential or tacit dimensions of clinical reasoning about particular individuals. This critique claims that the evidence-based medicine model does not take account of tacit knowing as developed by the philosopher Michael Polanyi. However, the epistemology of evidence-based medicine is premised on the elimination of the tacit dimension from clinical judgment. This is demonstrated through analyzing the dichotomy between clinical and statistical intuition in evidence-based medicine's epistemology of clinical reasoning. I argue that clinical epidemiology presents a more nuanced epistemological model for the application of statistical epidemiology to the clinical context. Polanyi's theory of tacit knowing is compatible with the model of clinical reasoning associated with clinical epidemiology, but not evidence-based medicine.

[...]the ethical issues around suffering are still very much open for clinical and philosophical assessment. Since the publication of The Nature of Suffering (1991), a handful of philosophical papers have elucidated the issue of suffering in the clinical encounter.3 Suffering does, however, receive primary attention in the developing field of narrative medicine (Charon 2001). Important recent theoretical insights into the neurobiology of pain present the opportunity to review Cassell's theory of suffering and to rethink the relation between pain and suffering in the clinical context. Because suffering necessarily involves issues of subjectivity, it is impossible to reflect on suffering as a purely neurobiological phenomenon.

James Giordano's and Gerrit Glas's commentaries on my paper have the timbre of a contemporary symposium, in this instance to discern the nature of suffering. [...]I take Giordano's and Glas's commentaries to be generally sympathetic to my offering, although providing further critical insights that deepen the multidimensional understanding of suffering and the correct ethical and medical response. [...]this discussion of hermeneutics in my response should not detract from another key methodological concern in my paper, namely, phenomenology.

The popularity of yoga and Zen meditation has heightened awareness of somatic practices. Individuals develop the conscious embodiment central to somatics work via movement and dance, or through touch from a skilled teacher or therapist often called a somatic bodyworker. Methods of touch and movement foster generative processes of consciousness in order to create a fluid interconnection between sensation, thought, movement, and expression. In Moving Consciously , Sondra Fraleigh gathers essays that probe ideas surrounding embodied knowledge and the conscious embodiment of movement and dance. Using a variety of perspectives on movement and dance somatics, Fraleigh and other contributors draw on scholarship and personal practice to participate in a multifaceted investigation of a thriving worldwide phenomenon. Their goal: to present the mental and physical health benefits of experiencing one's inner world through sensory awareness and movement integration. A stimulating addition to a burgeoning field, Moving Consciously incorporates concepts from East and West into a timely look at life-changing, intertwined practices that involve dance, movement, performance studies, and education. Contributors: Richard Biehl, Robert Bingham, Hillel Braude, Alison East, Sondra Fraleigh, Kelly Ferris Lester, Karin Rugman, Catherine Schaeffer, Jeanne Schul, and Ruth Way.

Ariadne's thread in the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur is symbolic for the intuitive element of human cognition. Its mythic depth alludes to the animal and corporeal basis of human thought. The question of intuition is important in discussions about the nature of scientific reasoning, and the nature of being human. This dissertation analyzes the \"invisible thread\" of intuition in the medical context. Medicine as neither art nor science but a mixture of both crystallizing around individuals is a pre-eminent field for investigation into the nature of practical reasoning. Intuition provides the prism through which this study reflects on the individual particular within professional structures of medical reasoning. Broadly speaking, intuition refers to a pre-conceptual element of human cognition. It also has specific meanings within particular epistemological traditions. Within philosophy it refers to direct certainty attained through sensible perception, and within medicine it pertains to cognitive processes cognition associated with practical reasoning. Clinical intuition provides an empathetic means for physicians to visualize the inner essence of individual patients, taking account of the continual flux of temporal physiological changes. However, because of the uncertainty and vagueness surrounding intuition, its use is controversial. Rather than defining and using a single concept of intuition, this study analyzes intuition as it occurs in different contexts of clinical reasoning. This emphasis on intuition provides a means for this study to investigate epistemological, ontological, and ethical issues in relation to clinical reasoning. While the approach taken here is fundamentally interdisciplinary, this investigation may be conceived as a project in philosophical anthropology that is ever mindful of the importance for clinical reasoning of a moral image. Aristotle's insight in the Nicomachean Ethics that practical reasoning requires a form of proof sufficient for its context, not necessarily mathematical, informs every level of this analysis. By focusing on tacit elements of clinical reasoning, this approach challenges a positivist notion of medical science, and provides a critique of rationalism that is not necessarily irrational. By developing a theory of clinical reasoning that draws on personal phenomenologically lived clinical experience; this analysis is intended to overcome the chasm between philosophical theory and clinical practice.

Nos connaissances génétiques et nos techniques de procréation assistée nous donnent-elles un pouvoir nouveau de faire des êtres humains et, plus encore, de définir les nouvelles normes de la vie humaine souhaitable ? En suivant l'intrigue d'un roman de science-fiction, l'auteur décortique les possibilités et les limites de cet éventuel pouvoir, tout en soulignant la part de hasard et de contingence qui préside in fine à toute existence humaine.