The Epistemological Bases That Support Reasoning of Clinical Diagnosis

Abstract

We find difficulties when defining disease in relation to a set of sufficient and necessary characters that we can see repeated uniformly in every instance of this term or under the principle in which all its members have identical properties as they have a common nature. In studying the term disease, we have to explore other principles which could help us categorize it. In this work, we analyze other alternatives. Following the epistemologist Cesar Lorenzano, we claim that each disease is a clinical theory, and each patient is an example of that theory. How we learn is through exemplary demonstrations that teachers practically show. It is what we call paradigmatic exemplars necessary for doctors to incorporate the theoretical structure of each disease, which, together with the clinical case models, instructs how the patient can present himself to the consultation. How do the doctors select from all the diseases the one that best fits as a hypothesis for their patient? How does the doctor elaborate and epistemically justify his diagnosis? We can explain this subject through Pierce's abductive reasoning, with the elements of structuralist metatheory and the use of paradigmatic exemplars.