The concept of biological and cognitive identity in medicine and Orthodox Tradition

1. Entity type Lemma
2. Original titleКонцепция тождества биологического и когнитивного в медицине и православном Предании
3. Language term Russian
4. lemma author Saprykin, Dmitry
5. lemma category Scientific theories and disciplines > Medicine - Concepts of knowledge and modes of reasoning > Philosophy of science/epistemology - Co-existence
6. Publication date 2007
7. lemma work Шевченко Александр [Author]. The concept of biological and cognitive identity in medicine and Orthodox Tradition
8. lemma manifestations Страницы Библейско-Богословского Института Св. Апостола Андрея
9. Keywords epistemology - radical constructivism
10. Citations
    1. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By6FTbBmfqZRajdvS2hOUm9yU00/view
11. Lemma body

    1. The author believes the essential condition for dialogue between theology and science to be an epistemology acceptable for both sides of the dialogue.

       The article represents a comparative analysis of the New European medical science epistemology and the epistemology of Christian theological disciplines. The author argues that the most influential epistemological trend claiming to be the new paradigm of medicine today can be called radical constructivism. It studies biological prerequisites of human cognition the essence of which is reduced to unbelief in reality. No wonder, according to the author, that the philosophy of radical constructivism very quickly found its embodiment in psychiatry, particularly in the form of neurolinguistic programming technique.

       For the Orthodox epistemology central is the concept of personality and ontological dualism associated with this concept: the existence of cognizable and cognizing, spiritual and corporeal.

       The author comes to the conclusion that existence of medicine, "in general, is ill-explainable from the point of view of radical constructivism. Medical activity presupposes natural reality changing not only in physician’s mind, but also by the patient whose body is changed by the physician. All medical practice is based on the principle of identity of cognitive and biological. Both in the sense of adequate reflecting of disease images by doctor in diagnostic process, and in the sense of constructing one’s health (and illness) by his cognitive practices and behavioral preferences and habits born from them." That is, the epistemological foundations of medical knowledge are much closer to Christian epistemology than to radical constructivism, concludes the author.

       Theology and medicine are epistemologically heterogeneous, however, their "epistemological convergence" should not be thought of as a change in their epistemological paradigms in order to form some third epistemology. Nevertheless, "in theological perspective, medicine can be the place to use the most advanced epistemological concepts and, at the same time, the place where the most urgent issues for modern epistemology are generated."