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CauseHealth: £1m Philosophy and Science project to better understand unexplained conditions like CFS

Dolphin

Senior Member
Messages
17,567
I haven't looked into this deeply but thought I'd highlight it.

According to this article, it has a £1 million budget (or whatever the equivalent is in Norwegian kroner)

Physio joins groundbreaking study into unexplained medical conditions

A BOURNEMOUTH physiotherapist is taking part in a £1million study exploring how philosophy can be used to find the causes of unexplained medical symptoms.

Matthew Low, who works for the Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals Trust, has been selected to take part in the groundbreaking research along with other leading international health experts.

The musculoskeletal physiotherapist is one of a 27-strong team made up of fellow physiotherapists as well as health scientists and philosophers, who have been awarded the grant by the Research Council of Norway.

The team’s four-year study has been inspired by people with complex medical problems such as chronic fatigue syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome and lower back pain, which science has not always supplied a satisfactory explanation for.



Continues at:
http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/ne...ng_study_into_unexplained_medical_conditions/

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More info at:

Causation, Complexity and Evidence in Health Sciences (CAUSEHEALTH)

This is a 4 year research project, funded by the FRIPRO scheme for independent projects of Research Council of Norway (NFR) and hosted by School of Economics and Business (HH) at Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU). The project will start up in the spring 2015.

https://sites.google.com/site/ranilillanjum/research/causehealth

Probably if one searches around the internet one can find out more. I'll leave that to others for the moment.
 
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A.B.

Senior Member
Messages
3,780
He seems to like the word psychosocial on his blog. Nothing extremist but I'm afraid this doesn't look good.
 

user9876

Senior Member
Messages
4,556
A different article on it

https://sites.google.com/site/ranilillanjum/research/causehealth

They seem doomed to failure in that they are starting from the assumption that there is no explanation rather than we have not found an explanation. They seem to be looking for a philosophy behind a psychosocial approach but I suspect if they applied any form of logical system to the reasoning it would collapse in a puff of logic. So I suspect that they will come up with a number of vague ill defined theories.

I quite like the idea of looking at how people reason about unexplained illness but I would start from different perspectives. A much more formal approach is needed than I would detect here providing logical or evidential frameworks to understand how we can reason about unexplained disease.
 

Bob

Senior Member
Messages
16,455
Location
England (south coast)
I quite like the idea of looking at how people reason about unexplained illness...
If studying the inappropriate presumptions about unexplained medical conditions that the medical establishment has been repeatedly making and perpetuating throughout the ages, then that might be quite an interesting philosophical study. (Edit: But not if it's going to waste £1m of research funding that could otherwise go towards biomedical research.)
 
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Jonathan Edwards

"Gibberish"
Messages
5,256
A different article on it

https://sites.google.com/site/ranilillanjum/research/causehealth

They seem doomed to failure in that they are starting from the assumption that there is no explanation rather than we have not found an explanation. They seem to be looking for a philosophy behind a psychosocial approach but I suspect if they applied any form of logical system to the reasoning it would collapse in a puff of logic. So I suspect that they will come up with a number of vague ill defined theories.

I quite like the idea of looking at how people reason about unexplained illness but I would start from different perspectives. A much more formal approach is needed than I would detect here providing logical or evidential frameworks to understand how we can reason about unexplained disease.

The justification is pompous twaddle. The philosophical issues about the nature of cause, which include things like Mackie's INUS theory and other such obscurities have nothing to do with the practical problems of working out causation in medicine. You have to think clearly to understand disease causes but philosophy will be of no help whatever.

Maybe since Fluge and Mella got asked to put in a proposal all Norwegian academics think that the way to get a grant is to put one in on ME - not such a bad thing, but this one looks like money down the drain.
 

user9876

Senior Member
Messages
4,556
The justification is pompous twaddle. The philosophical issues about the nature of cause, which include things like Mackie's INUS theory and other such obscurities have nothing to do with the practical problems of working out causation in medicine. You have to think clearly to understand disease causes but philosophy will be of no help whatever.

Maybe since Fluge and Mella got asked to put in a proposal all Norwegian academics think that the way to get a grant is to put one in on ME - not such a bad thing, but this one looks like money down the drain.

Shouldn't philosophy bring a clarity of thought? I'm assuming philosphy has a strong logical component. So many papers seem to have muddled thinking and over generalisation.
 

Jonathan Edwards

"Gibberish"
Messages
5,256
Shouldn't philosophy bring a clarity of thought? I'm assuming philosphy has a strong logical component. So many papers seem to have muddled thinking and over generalisation.

Yes, on my MA philosophy course I learnt a lot about logic. It is very important to write A's upside down and E's backwards it seems. The problem, though, is that in logic what they are interested in is valid arguments. A valid argument generates a true answer if the premises are true. What they do not often talk about is a sound argument, which is a valid argument where the premises are true. So most of philosophy is the generation of false conclusions by valid argument from false premises.

All philosophers are clever
Clever people are always right

Therefore
Philosophers are always right

Easy.
 

user9876

Senior Member
Messages
4,556
Yes, on my MA philosophy course I learnt a lot about logic. It is very important to write A's upside down and E's backwards it seems. The problem, though, is that in logic what they are interested in is valid arguments. A valid argument generates a true answer if the premises are true. What they do not often talk about is a sound argument, which is a valid argument where the premises are true. So most of philosophy is the generation of false conclusions by valid argument from false premises.

All philosophers are clever
Clever people are always right

Therefore
Philosophers are always right

Easy.

But they also have to write down the assumptions and hence acknowlegde them as beliefs. As I see it quite a lot of papers the assumptions are unclear. Having done quite a lot of mathematical modelling of various situations one of the big gains as to force people to carefully think through what assumptions they were making. Where people were disagreeing it often turned out they had different assumptions but until we applied a degree of rigour to their arguments that was not apparent.

Having said that its applied maths really rather than philosopy.

Maybe there are other ways to get people to think clearly but I worry about the reasoning and lack of acknowedgement of assumptions in some papers.
 

alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
One of the issues here is that good science has sound philosophical underpinnings.

Philosophy without evidence runs right into classical rationalism. Which is largely discredited. Its babble.

Modern rationalists use empirical rationalism, or in Jonathon's words look for sound argument.

Falsification theory is often important too, and as applied to science gives us critical rationalism. You have to be critical of your hypotheses, and can never presume you have found the ultimate truth.

When you generalize these, and put primacy on asking questions, you have pancritical rationalism.

A million pounds is not going to come even close to a minimal review of what we do know. The IOM spent most of that just on ME and CFS, and still fell short.

Now a proper philosophical view of psychobabble .. my, my, that might get some results and discredit it even more. All the invalid argument and the failure to establish premises in evidence.
 

TiredSam

The wise nematode hibernates
Messages
2,677
Location
Germany
Bad enough having to argue with psychoquackers, but philosophers can be even more infuriating / harder to pin down and counter with rational, evidence based arguments. Would anyone else like to use our illness as a vehicle to espouse their particular brand of pseudointellectual nonsense? Spiritualist mediums perhaps? Faerie believers? Please anyone feel free to blow a million pounds on your own publicity by linking your "study" to our illness.