Causality and Precision Medicine

Conférence de Marco Nathan
(Département de philosophie, Université de Denver)

Résumé :

Causality, a core concept in the philosophy of science, has been central through- out the history of medicine, from its Epicurean origins to the modern age. Yet, the unprecedented degree of quantitative determinacy characterizing contemporary biomedical science requires a notion of causality that keeps up with the steady pace of theoretical and technological advancements. The goal of this talk is to survey recent developments in the philosophy of causation and discuss whether (and to what extent) they provide an adequate foundation for an epistemology of causality—an assessment of causal relations, especially in relation to human diseases—in the rapidly developing ‘omics’ era of precision medicine.