Download or read book Medical Nihilism written by Jacob Stegenga and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Medical nihilism is the view that we should have little confidence in the effectiveness of medical interventions. This book argues that medical nihilism is a compelling view of modern medicine. If we consider the frequency of failed medical interventions, the extent of misleading evidence in medical research, the thin theoretical basis of many interventions, and the malleability of empirical methods in medicine, and if we employ our best inductive framework, then our confidence in the effectiveness of medical interventions ought to be low" --

Download or read book Medical Nihilism written by Jacob Stegenga and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-08 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that if we consider the ubiquity of small effect sizes in medicine, the extent of misleading evidence in medical research, the thin theoretical basis of many interventions, and the malleability of empirical methods, and if we employ our best inductive framework, then our confidence in medical interventions ought to be low.

Download or read book Medical Nihilism written by Jacob Stegenga and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-08 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that if we consider the ubiquity of small effect sizes in medicine, the extent of misleading evidence in medical research, the thin theoretical basis of many interventions, and the malleability of empirical methods, and if we employ our best inductive framework, then our confidence in medical interventions ought to be low.

Download or read book Philosophy of Medicine written by Alex Broadbent and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-17 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophy of Medicine asks two central questions about medicine: what is it, and what should we think of it? Philosophy of medicine itself has evolved in response to developments in the philosophy of science, especially with regard to epistemology, positioning it to make contributions that are medically useful. This book locates these developments within a larger framework, suggesting that much philosophical thinking about medicine contributes to answering one or both of these two guiding questions. Taking stock of philosophy of medicine's present place in the landscape and its potential to illuminate a wide range of areas, from public health to policy, Alex Broadbent introduces various key topics in the philosophy of medicine. The first part of the book argues for a novel view of the nature of medicine, arguing that medicine should be understood as an inquiry into the nature and causes of health and disease. Medicine excels at achieving understanding, but not at translating this understanding into cure, a frustration that has dogged the history of medicine and continues to the present day. The second part of the book explores how we ought to consider medicine. Contemporary responses, such as evidence-based medicine and medical nihilism, tend to respond by fixing high standards of evidence. Broadbent rejects these approaches in favor of Medical Cosmopolitanism, or a rejection of epistemic relativism and pluralism about medicine that encourages conversations between medical traditions. From this standpoint, Broadbent opens the way to embracing alternative medicine. An accessible and user-friendly guide, Philosophy of Medicine puts these different debates into perspective and identifies areas that demand further exploration.

Download or read book Care and Cure written by Jacob Stegenga and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The philosophy of medicine has become a vibrant and complex intellectual landscape, and Care and Cure is the first extended attempt to map it. In pursuing the interdependent aims of caring and curing, medicine relies on concepts, theories, inferences, and policies that are often complicated and controversial. Bringing much-needed clarity to the interplay of these diverse problems, Jacob Stegenga describes the core philosophical controversies underlying medicine in this unrivaled introduction to the field. The fourteen chapters in Care and Cure present and discuss conceptual, metaphysical, epistemological, and political questions that arise in medicine, buttressed with lively illustrative examples ranging from debates over the true nature of disease to the effectiveness of medical interventions and homeopathy. Poised to be the standard sourcebook for anyone seeking a comprehensive overview of the canonical concepts, current state, and cutting edge of this vital field, this concise introduction will be an indispensable resource for students and scholars of medicine and philosophy.

Download or read book Beyond Nihilism written by Ofelia Schutte and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1986-11-15 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nietzsche is regarded by some as a great liberator, a thinker far more radical than Marx. For others, he is an ideologue of power, a spokesman for domination, a protofascist. Ofelia Schutte holds that these conflicting assessments result from a failure to distinguish between two paradigms of power found in Nietzsche's work: power as recurring energy and power as domination. Schutte uses this fundamental distinction to analyze comprehensively Nietzsche's metaphysics, ethics, and politics. She addresses both the positive and the negative in the whole of his thought, seeking to read Nietzsche 'without masks'--without the cultural and intellectual biases of many of his previous interpreters.

Download or read book Eco Nihilism written by Wendy Lynne Lee and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-02-22 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If we were to ask what is the root cause of our current and unprecedented environmental crisis, climate change, many, particularly on the progressive Left, would refer to the excesses of capitalism—and they’d be right. In Eco-Nihilism: The Philosophical Geopolitics of the Climate Change Apocalypse, Wendy Lynne Lee demonstrates that there are no versions of conquest capital compatible with the fact of a finite planet and that a logic whose operating premise is growth is destined to not only exhaust our planetary resources, but also generate profound social injustice and geopolitical violence in its pursuit. Nonetheless, it is clear that the violence and injustice of capital is selective—some benefit greatly while others are subjugated to its pathological drive to profit. Hence, Lee argues that any comprehensive analysis of what Jason Moore has dubbed the Capitalocene must include an equally probing account of human chauvinism, that is, the axes along which capital is supplied with resources and labor. Defined in terms of race, sex, gender, and species, these axes come ready-made to the advantage of capitalist commodification. Without an understanding of how and why, humanity will remain doomed to settling for a sustainably unjust world as opposed to realizing a just and desirable one. Indeed, on our current trajectory, we may not even achieve the sustainable. The introduction of climate change into the mix of environmental deterioration, the ever-widening economic gap between global North and global South, and the accelerating violence of terrorism, civil war, and human slavery make of a warming planet a combustible world. The only way out requires ending the myth of endless resources, a rejection of climate change denial, and a radical re-valuation of human-centeredness, not as a locus of power, but as an opportunity to take moral and epistemic responsibility for a world whose biotic diversity and ecological integrity make the struggle to realize it worthwhile. This solution demands not only an end to capitalism, but the deliberate reclamation of value—aesthetic, moral, and civic—and a radical transformation of both personal and collective conscience. Lee appeals to the experiential aesthetics of John Dewey and the feminist concept of the standpoint of the subjugated. She argues for a version of the precautionary principle informed by an environmentally and socially responsible concept of the desirable future as the clearest path away from the precipice.

Download or read book Nihilism written by Bulent Diken and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-11-28 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses the genealogy and consequences of nihilism, attempts at 'sociologizing' the concept of nihilism by relating nihilism to capitalism, post-politics and terrorism, and considers the possibilities of overcoming nihilism.

Download or read book Nihilism written by Nolen Gertz and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of the meaning of meaninglessness: why it matters that nothing matters. When someone is labeled a nihilist, it's not usually meant as a compliment. Most of us associate nihilism with destructiveness and violence. Nihilism means, literally, “an ideology of nothing. “ Is nihilism, then, believing in nothing? Or is it the belief that life is nothing? Or the belief that the beliefs we have amount to nothing? If we can learn to recognize the many varieties of nihilism, Nolen Gertz writes, then we can learn to distinguish what is meaningful from what is meaningless. In this addition to the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Gertz traces the history of nihilism in Western philosophy from Socrates through Hannah Arendt and Jean-Paul Sartre. Although the term “nihilism” was first used by Friedrich Jacobi to criticize the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, Gertz shows that the concept can illuminate the thinking of Socrates, Descartes, and others. It is Nietzsche, however, who is most associated with nihilism, and Gertz focuses on Nietzsche's thought. Gertz goes on to consider what is not nihilism—pessimism, cynicism, and apathy—and why; he explores theories of nihilism, including those associated with Existentialism and Postmodernism; he considers nihilism as a way of understanding aspects of everyday life, calling on Adorno, Arendt, Marx, and prestige television, among other sources; and he reflects on the future of nihilism. We need to understand nihilism not only from an individual perspective, Gertz tells us, but also from a political one.

Download or read book Power Nihilism A Case for Moral Political Nihilism written by James Theodore Stillwell III and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2017-09-27 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Within this text James Theodore Stillwell III extracts thought strands from profound thinkers such as Hume, Nietzsche, Kant A.J. Ayer, C.L. Stevenson, J. L. Mackie, Ragnar RedBeard, Peter Sjöstedt-H and interweaves them into a meta ethical tapestry that is a liberating-brutally honest red pill. Mixing non cognitivism, error theory, with projectivism, Stillwell puts forth a kind of moral nihilism (Power-Nihilism) that dispenses with both secular and theistic forms of moral realism. In the final chapter James articulates his qualified form of political nihilism and critiques such concepts as ""Natural law"" and ""Natural Rights"" along with a few other pivotal concepts within political theory. This book also covers such topics as the will to power, slave morality, bad conscience, the on going destruction of Western civilization, radical individualism, collectivism, egalitarianism, hierarchy and much more...

Download or read book Nihilism written by Freydis and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2013-08 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Beyond right and left, beyond right and wrong - this is Nihilism.' Built and expanded from the most extensive and thoroughly researched website on political and historic Nihilism in the world, Nihilism the book is the summation of over 20 years of effort and 280 million years of history.

Download or read book Para States and Medical Science written by Paul Wenzel Geissler and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-07 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Para-States and Medical Science, P. Wenzel Geissler and the contributors examine how medicine and public health in Africa have been transformed as a result of economic and political liberalization and globalization, intertwined with epidemiological and technological changes. The resulting fragmented medical science landscape is shaped and sustained by transnational flows of expertise and resources. NGOs, universities, pharmaceutical companies and other nonstate actors now play a significant role in medical research and treatment. But as the contributors to this volume argue, these groups have not supplanted the primacy of the nation-state in Africa. Although not necessarily stable or responsive, national governments remain crucial in medical care, both as employers of health care professionals and as sources of regulation, access, and – albeit sometimes counterintuitively - trust for their people. “The state” has morphed into the “para-state” — not a monolithic and predictable source of sovereignty and governance, but a shifting, and at times ephemeral, figure. Tracing the emergence of the “global health” paradigm in Africa in the treatment of HIV, malaria, and leprosy, this book challenges familiar notions of African statehood as weak or illegitimate by elaborating complex new frameworks of governmentality that can be simultaneously functioning and dysfunctional. Contributors. Uli Beisel, Didier Fassin, P. Wenzel Geissler, Rene Gerrets, Ann Kelly, Guillaume Lachenal, John Manton, Lotte Meinert, Vinh-Kim Nguyen, Branwyn Poleykett, Susan Reynolds Whyte

Download or read book Could There Have Been Nothing written by Geraldine Coggins and published by Palgrave MacMillan. This book was released on 2010-11-24 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Could there have been nothing? is the first book-length study of metaphysical nihilism – the claim that there could have been no concrete objects. It critically analyses the debate around nihilism and related questions about the metaphysics of possible worlds, concrete objects and ontological dependence.

Download or read book The Movement of Nihilism written by Laurence Paul Hemming and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2011-03-03 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Nietzsche announced 'the advent of nihilism' in 1887/88, he argued that he was sketching 'the history of the next two centuries': 'For some time now', he wrote, 'our whole European culture has been moving as toward catastrophe [...]: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that want to reach the end, that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect.' Can we gain a ground for reflection upon our own condition? Can we heed Nietzsche's warning? Can we respond to the challenge? In this book, eleven newly commissioned essays from leading scholars offer an attempt to grasp Nietzsche's prescience through Heidegger's critique of it; attempting to think through the philosophical consequences of the last century in reading the signs of our own condition. The book also provides and fascinating and unique discussion of some of the lesser-known texts of the later Heidegger.

Download or read book A Cheerful Nihilism written by Richard Boyd Hauck and published by Bloomington : Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1971 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The awareness that the absurd view is both progressive an destructive, serious and hilarious,yet the only possible view, permeated American humor," writes Richard Hauck in the opening chapter of this engrossing study of American humorous fiction. The American absurdist, he finds, takes the exploration of meaninglessness as "a grim and hilarious game"; philosophically a nihilist, he is nonetheless "cheerful" in his persistence in creating comedy in the face of an unresponsive universe. Mr. Hauck begins his survey with Benjamin Franklin, whose writings he regards as "the first well-known" and fully expressed American humor of the absurd," and proceeds to a telling examinationof the grim "tall tales" of the western frontier. Against this background he explores in detail the work of Melville and Twain, Faulkner and John Barth.

Download or read book Positive Nihilism written by Hartmut Lange and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-10-06 with total page 95 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A German writer's aphoristic, poetic, and difficult reflections on Heidegger's Being and Time. There is a beyond of reason and unreason. It is the human psyche. —Positive Nihilism Like many German intellectuals, Hartmut Lange has long grappled with Heidegger. Positive Nihilism is the result of a lifetime of reading Being and Time and offers a series of reflections that are aphoristic, poetic, and (appropriately, considering his object of study) difficult. Lange begins with an abyss (“There is an abyss of the finite. It is temporality”) and proceeds almost immediately to extremity: “The twentieth century was governed by psychopaths. They collapsed the boundaries of moral reason and refuted Kant's analysis of consciousness.” He reflects further: “But who shall punish whom? One man's virtue is another man's crime. Thus Hitler could feel unwaveringly, as he wiped out entire populations, the starry sky above him and the moral law within him, as stipulated by Kant.” He considers the concept of civilization (“misleading”; “how should one oppose the remedies of civilization to the egomania, the murderous appetites of such outright psychopaths as Stalin or Pol Pot?”), the act of thinking (a fata morgana), the psyche, and Heidegger's Dasein. Positive Nihilism can be considered a pocket companion to Being and Time. “Heidegger's understanding of Being is nihilistic,” Lange writes, and then explains his assertion. He draws on Kant, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Shakespeare's Othello for supporting arguments and illustrations. “Everyone is possessed of the courage to have angst about death. The question is whether this courage necessarily secures those vital advantages Heidegger alleges”–that “self-understanding [is] the mental anticipation of death.” Lange wrestles with Heidegger's position, calling on Tolstoy, Georg Trakl, Herman Bang, and Heinrich von Kleist to argue against it.

Download or read book Black Nihilism and Antiblack Racism written by Devon R. Johnson and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-11-04 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an innovative work in Africana philosophical thought that links the phenomenon of nihilism in black America, in particular black American youth, to modern traditions of Western philosophy. Black Nihilism and Antiblack Racism engages defining themes of black existential life by offering a framework for considering the relationships between antiblack racism, pessimism, nihilism, weakness, strength, maturity, freedom, and hope in the 21st century. This book readdresses themes popularly raised by Cornel West in 1994 regarding the nature, causes, evaluations, diagnoses, and prognoses of what has been called, “nihilism in black America.” Black Nihilism and Antiblack Racism seeks to recontextualize discussions of nihilism and its possibilities for American cultural life. As a result, this book bears important questions, offers unique analyses, and suggests radical responses that are relevant for studies of black life and theories of justice in twenty-first century America.