What is medicine? That question certainly has the ring of a paradigmatic philosophical problem. Yet surprisingly few contemporary philosophers have devoted sustained attention to it. Nonetheless, potentially underlying the question ‘what is medicine?’ are problems concerning the goals of medicine, about medical expertise, and about what counts as health and what counts as disease, problems that determine the very scope of medicine and medical practice. So perhaps it’s time to get paradigmatically philosophical about medicine.

Today’s consultation is with philosopher Alex Broadbent, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Johannesburg.

This episode is published jointly with the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Visit the Journal website to read an accompanying article by Prof. Broadbent, “The inquiry model of medicine” (2019, 191: E105-E106).