Category Archives: Reading Group

International Philosophy of Medicine Reading Group

Philosophy of Medicine Reading Group, October-December 2025

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The International Philosophy of Medicine Reading Group is now well into its third season. The group is truly international and interdisciplinary (yes, there are medical doctors and philosophers!), with participants from different research backgrounds and at different career stages. Like last Spring, we are not working through a single monograph, but reading and discussing a variety of recent papers.

You can choose to join either the Wednesday meeting, 5pm UK time, or the Thursday meeting, 10.05am UK time, depending on what works best for you and your time zone. Feel free to drop into the sessions whenever you can — there is no commitment to attend the whole series.

Here’s the calendar.

  • Week 1 Weds 22 Oct, Thurs 23 Oct
    Maung, H. H. (2025). The Disunity of Disease. Philosophy of Medicine, 6(1).
  • Week 2 Weds 29 Oct, Thurs 30 Oct
    Larcher, Vic. (2025) Children are not small adults: Significance of biological and cognitive development in medical practice. Handbook of the philosophy of medicine. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2025. 435-457.
  • Week 3 Weds 5 Nov, Thurs 6 Nov
    Hucklenbroich, Peter (2025) Medical theory and its notions of definition and explanation. Handbook of the Philosophy of Medicine. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2025. 1041-1049.
  • Week 4 Weds 12 Nov, Thurs 13 Nov
    Wiggleton-Little J. (2025) Pain Dismissal and the Limits of Epistemic Injustice. Hypatia. Published online 2025:1-17.
  • Week 5 Weds 19 Nov, Thurs 20 Nov
    De Marco, Gabriel, et al. “What makes a medical intervention invasive?.” Journal of medical ethics 50.4 (2024): 226-233.
  • Week 6 Weds 26 Nov, Thurs 27 Nov
    Brock, Dan, ‘Quality of Life Measures in Health Care and Medical Ethics’, in Martha Nussbaum, and Amartya Sen (eds), The Quality of Life (Oxford, 1993; online edn, Oxford Academic, 1 Nov. 2003)
  • Week 7 Weds 3 Dec, Thurs 4 Dec
  • Al-Juhany, A. (2025). Why We Should Not Characterize Aging as a Disease. Philosophy of Medicine, 6(1). 
  • Week 8 Weds 10 Dec , Thurs 11 Dec
  • Glackin, S. (2025). Externalist Medicine and Externalist Biology. Philosophy of Medicine, 6(1).

We meet on Teams. If you would like to receive weekly reminders, email Sarah Wietens and join the Google group (if you haven’t already).

Philosophy of Medicine Reading Group (online)

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This term we will be tackling a variety of articles rather than a monograph. I hope this added flexibility can encourage new people to join, even if they cannot make the meeting every week.

Each week there will be two online meetings of the group to discuss the same section of text, one on Wednesday night at 5pm UK time, one on Thursday morning at 9 am UK time, in hopes of accommodating group members in a variety of time zones. There is no need to attend all meetings-please come when you can.

Schedule

May 21 and 22

Pappalardo F, Russo G, Tshinanu FM, Viceconti M. In silico clinical trials: concepts and early adoptions. Brief Bioinform. 2019 Sep 27;20(5):1699-1708. doi: 10.1093/bib/bby043. PMID: 29868882

May 28 and 29 

Serrahima, C., Martínez, M. The experience of dysmenorrhea. Synthese 201, 173 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-023-04148-9

June 4 and 5 

Dings R, Strijbos DW. Being in a position to know: attuned responsiveness as the hallmark of experiential knowledge and expertise in mental healthcare. Front Psychiatry. 2025 Jan 13;15:1490489. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1490489. PMID: 39872434; PMCID: PMC11770679.

June 11 and 12

Zhou, J. (2025). Pregnancy Is a Survival Pathology: A Biostatistical Approach. Philosophy of Medicine, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.5195/pom.2025.214

June 18 and 19

Allen, H. (2024). Forsaking Fortune: Luck and Its Limited Utility to Cancer Diagnosis. Philosophy of Medicine, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.5195/pom.2024.188

June 25 and 26

Woodward, J., & Kendler, K. (2023). Polygene Risk Scores: A Philosophical Exploration. Philosophy of Medicine, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.5195/pom.2023.156

If you would like to join the group please go to https://groups.google.com/g/philmed-rg/

Reading Group Schedule: Feb-Mar 2025

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This is an open international reading group, hosted by the Centre but open to all, for bringing together people with interests in philosophy of medicine construed broadly to include epidemiology, public health, biomedical science, and so on. If you would like to join, please request membership of the google group and you’ll be able to access the meeting link there: https://groups.google.com/g/philmed-rg/

Each week there will be two online meetings of the group to discuss the same text, one on Wednesday night at 5pm UK time (BST), one on Thursday morning at 9 am UK time (BST), in hopes of accommodating group members in a variety of time zones. There is no need to attend all meetings – please come when you can.

This term we will be tackling an exciting new text: Leah M. McClimans’ “Patient-centered measurement: Ethics, Epistemology, and Dialogue in Contemporary Medicine” published by OUP last year: https://academic.oup.com/book/56467

Weds 5 Feb and Thurs 6 Feb: McClimans, Leah M. Patient-centered measurement: Ethics, Epistemology, and Dialogue in Contemporary Medicine. Oxford University Press, 2024. Introduction and Chapter 1 (48 pages)

Weds 12 Feb and Thurs 13 Feb: McClimans, Leah M. Patient-centered measurement: Ethics, Epistemology, and Dialogue in Contemporary Medicine. Oxford University Press, 2024. Chapter 2 (26 pages)

Weds 19 Feb and Thurs 20 Feb: McClimans, Leah M. Patient-centered measurement: Ethics, Epistemology, and Dialogue in Contemporary Medicine. Oxford University Press, 2024. Chapter 3 (34 pages)

Weds 26 Feb and Thurs 27 Feb: McClimans, Leah M. Patient-centered measurement: Ethics, Epistemology, and Dialogue in Contemporary Medicine. Oxford University Press, 2024. Chapter 4 (36 pages)

Weds 5 March and Thurs 6 March: McClimans, Leah M. Patient-centered measurement: Ethics, Epistemology, and Dialogue in Contemporary Medicine. Oxford University Press, 2024. Chapter 5 (33 pages)

Weds 12 March  and Thurs 13 March: McClimans, Leah M. Patient-centered measurement: Ethics, Epistemology, and Dialogue in Contemporary Medicine. Oxford University Press, 2024. Chapter 6 and Conclusion (37 pages)

Weds 19 March and Thurs 20 March: TBD

If you have any difficulty accessing the text, please email cpemph@durham.ac.uk for assistance.

Any enquiries, please get in touch. And to join, it’s https://groups.google.com/g/philmed-rg/

Philosophy of Medicine Reading Group, Oct-Dec 24

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This is an open international reading group, hosted by the Centre but open to all, for bringing together people with interests in philosophy of medicine construed broadly to include epidemiology, public health, biomedical science, and so on. If you would like to join, please request membership of the google group and you’ll be able to access the meeting link there: https://groups.google.com/g/philmed-rg/

Each week there will be two online meetings of the group to discuss the same text, one on Wednesday night at 5pm UK time, one on Friday morning at 9 am UK time, in hopes of accommodating group members in a variety of time zones. There is no need to attend all meetings-please come when you can.

  1. Wednesday Oct 16 5pm (Chair: Alex), and Friday Oct 18 9am (Chair: Sarah) to read: Varga 2023, Science, Medicine, and the Aims of Inquiry A Philosophical Analysis. https://www.doi.org/10.1017/9781009449977 Beginning through chapter 2, pages 1-55
  2. Wednesday Oct 23rd 5pm (Alex), Friday Oct 25th 9am (Alex). Varga 2023, Science, Medicine, and the Aims of Inquiry A Philosophical Analysis https://www.doi.org/10.1017/9781009449977 Chapters 3 and 4, pages 56-104
  3. Wednesday Oct 30th 5pm (Elisabetta), Friday Nov 1 9am (Sarah). Varga 2023, Science, Medicine, and the Aims of Inquiry A Philosophical Analysis https://www.doi.org/10.1017/9781009449977 Chapter 5
  4. Wednesday Nov 6 5pm (Elisabetta), Friday Nov 8 9am (Sarah). Varga 2023, Science, Medicine, and the Aims of Inquiry A Philosophical Analysis https://www.doi.org/10.1017/9781009449977 Chapter 6
  5. Wednesday Nov 13 5pm (tbc), Friday Nov 15 9 am (Sarah). Varga 2023, Science, Medicine, and the Aims of Inquiry A Philosophical Analysis https://www.doi.org/10.1017/9781009449977 Chapter 7
  6. Wednesday Nov 20 5pm (Alex), Friday Nov 22 9am (Sarah). Chapter 8 and Conclusion.
  7. Wednesday Nov 27 5pm (Elisabetta), Friday Nov 29 9 am (Sarah). Spencer and Carel 2021, ‘Isn’t Everyone a Little OCD?’ The Epistemic Harms of Wrongful Depathologization https://doi.org/10.5195/pom.2021.19
  8. Wednesday Dec 4 5pm (Alex), Friday Dec 6 9 am (Elisabetta). John 2022, Death Sentences: Criminalization, Medicalization, and the Nature of Disease https://doi.org/10.5195/pom.2022.48
  9. Wednesday Dec 11 5pm (Alex), Friday Dec 13 9 am (Elisabetta). Grote 2023, The Allure of Simplicity, On Interpretable Machine Learning Models in Healthcare https://doi.org/10.5195/pom.2023.139

Any enquiries, please get in touch. And to join, it’s https://groups.google.com/g/philmed-rg/

First Two Meetings of International Philosophy of Medicine Reading Group

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This group – let’s call it Philmed-RG – will have a couple of pilot meetings in July, before settling into a series of meetings in the period September-December, after the Northern summer break is over. (Read more about the group here.)

We have over 130 expressions of interest from all over the world, so we are looking to split the meetings into two, at different sides of the clock. Therefore we propose the following first two meetings and readings.

  1. Fagerberg, H. (2023). What We Argue about when We Argue about Disease. Philosophy of Medicine, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.5195/pom.2023.172
    • Thursday 11 July at 5pm BST
    • Friday 12 July at 9am BST
  2. Stoellger, D. (2023). Why It (Also) Matters What Infectious Disease Epidemiologists Call “Disease”. Philosophy of Medicine, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.5195/pom.2023.149
    • Thursday 25 July at 5pm BST
    • Friday 26 July at 9am BST

The zoom link will be circulated to the reading group email list. You may request to join the list and group here: https://groups.google.com/g/philmed-rg/

We look forward to seeing you at one of these meetings!

The Philmed-RG Organising Committee (Alex Broadbent, Elisabetta Lalumera, Sarah Wieten)

International PhilMed Reading Group

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In various conversations, some of us have thought it might be nice to have a reading group on philosophy of medicine, with international reach. As well as creating a nice place for regular conversations, this might support people who feel a bit isolated where they are, to connect more with the international philosophy of medicine community. And of course it encourages those of us who suffer from “readers block” to read on a regular basis!

We haven’t yet decided what to read, or exactly how often to meet. So we might do a sort of pilot, and continue if it feels good, or drop it otherwise. As a rough guide, we’re imagining having maybe 8 or 10 meetings at intervals of 2 or 3 weeks, each lasting about 90 mins. These might run Sept-Dec (perhaps with some earlier meetings in June/July for those who are free). Then we review, and decide whether to line another series of meetings up for the following year. However, everything is open.

If you would like to be part of this experiment, please would you drop us a line at cpemph@durham.ac.uk? No commitment.