by Matthew Rehrl MD | Philosophy
“Post hoc ergo propter hoc.” Which, directly translated is: “After this, therefore because of this.” It suggests, often (but not always) incorrectly, that if Event B follows Event A, then Event A caused B. This is also known as the Post Hoc Fallacy, and it is the most...
by Matthew Rehrl MD | Book Reviews, Philosophy
I just finished reading The Universe Speaks in Numbers, by the physicist Graham Farmelo. It’s a great week’s read for those people interested in the relationship between math and science, and it borders on a must-read for those younger people interested in STEM,...
by Matthew Rehrl MD | Philosophy
After re-reading Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, I am more convinced than ever that there have been at least two true paradigm shifts in physics: The Copernican Revolution and Quantum Mechanics ( I am still on the fence about Relativity). But is...
by Matthew Rehrl MD | Definition of Health, Philosophy
As pointed out by A. C. Grayling in The History of Philosophy,1 Plato believed his Forms were real things: In Plato’s philosophy, the Forms in the Realm of Being are real things: they are not mental objects only. They are Beauty, Truth, Goodness; but they are also...
by Matthew Rehrl MD | Definition of Health, Philosophy
The ordinary language philosopher Raiziel Abelson divides schools of thought about what a definition is into three groups1: essentialism, prescriptivism, and linguistic theories. Roughly an essentialist will be looking for the essence of a word, a prescriptivist will...
by Matthew Rehrl MD | Definition of Health, Philosophy
As I recently mentioned in my blog post Definitions: Healthcare’s Rabbit Hole, one of my deep projects is to understand the ethics of AI in healthcare. However, to do this well I feel I need to first understand what health means, or at least have a good definition of...
