Varieties of Pluralism: A Qualified Defence

Abstract

AbstractReflections presented in the chapters above have pointed out, by considering them through the lens of debates on explanation, differences between various fields of medical investigation, their epistemic goals, the peculiar features of some sorts of diseases and progressing approaches to them. All these features – it has been argued – are to be taken extremely seriously in explanatory practices, given how they ultimately impact what can be taken to count as genuinely explanatory. All these elements lead us to reconsider the pluralistic views sketched in Chap. 1 – as well as others – which have found a particularly fertile terrain in the philosophy of the biological and biomedical sciences. Pluralistic views elaborated in the philosophy of science have been translated and applied in investigations on biological and biomedical explananda; the latter, in turn, have contributed to some development or refinement of the pluralistic stance. The more philosophy of biology and of medicine have got deeper into specific fields, research trends, kinds of phenomena, or particular case studies, the wider the range of epistemological tools has proved to be needed to tackle them. This has been accompanied by the aim to be as close as possible to scientific practice. Various philosophical reflections on pluralism have specifically addressed the health sciences, following different axes. In Sect. 8.1 we will dwell on some of them, stressing their motivations. While being, as it emerges throughout the volume, sympathetic with an overall pluralistic account, I also believe that the consideration of different contexts and aims calls for a qualified defence of a pluralistic attitude – as will be argued in the concluding section, Sect. 8.2.