This document discusses the author's background in human biology, anatomy, and history of philosophy. It explores anti-reductionist approaches to understanding concepts of disease and health. The author contends that biology and evolution must be considered to understand medicine, questions how selection pressures shape daily life, and advocates studying biology philosophically like Canguilhem to address profound questions at the intersection of philosophy and science.

1. Taking An Anti-Reductionist Turn
Lewis

3. 'Philosophy is often a matter of finding a suitable context in
which to say the obvious.'
Iris Murdoch
'The point of philosophy is to start with something so
simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with
something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.'
Bertrand Russell

4. From whence I come
BSc - Human Biology
PhD - Anatomy
MA - History of Philosophy

5. 'My research is concerned with
exploring the biological and
philosophical aspects of the concepts of
disease and health and considering the
uses and applications of these findings.'

6. An essentialist position holds that not all of an object's
properties are of equal signification – that is, some are
essential to its being what it is, whereas others are
accidental. For example, one might argue that the
possession of pages is an essential feature if we are to
call something a book, whereas the precise colour of
those pages is accidental. The main problem with an
essentialist position is that of establishing the grounds
upon which to base the distinctions one makes
between essential and accidental features. It does not
necessarily follow that what one 'knows' intuitively
can be easily supported by a rational argument. There
are always 'what ifs' with which to contend.

7. 'Historically, the focus of philosophical interest in medicine
has been on its ethics, to the neglect of its logic,
epistemology, and metaphysics. As a result, no philosophy
of medicine exists comparable to the extant philosophies
of science, law, religion, politics, history, or art.'
Edmund Pellegrino

9. 'Darwinian medicine is the enterprise of trying to find
evolutionary explanations for vulnerabilities to
disease.'
Randolph Nesse
Nesse contends that since, according to Dobzhansky
'nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of
evolution', the same must also be true of medicine
since biology is a basic science underpinning medicine.

10. What is it like to be exposed to selection
pressures?
What forms do such pressures take
in daily life?
How do we even begin to investigate
questions such as these?

11. 'As taught in Nat Sci 2, science was a liberal art, a
way of knowing. We were taught how, through
science, we could go about answering important
philosophical questions ...
There science facilitated the query of profound
questions where philosophy and science merge ...'
Lynn Margulis

12. It seems to be physics that most often gets associated with the
really questions about 'life, the universe and everything'.
While there may be some perks to studying physics …

13. … of the sciences, it is biology that may be best
suited to the enterprise to which Margulis refers.
However,
it depends very much on the way in which it is
undertaken.
It's not just a matter of worrying about words.
What is needed is a philosophy of the object.
(à la Georges Canguilhem (1904-1995))

14. What I did most recently.
(i.e. the last couple of weeks)

16. Where I'm going
To be a Locke
one must also learn from Hume