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An Intentionalist Account of Doctor -Patient Relationship and Biomedical Ethics

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The Mental Mechanisms of Patient Adherence to Long-Term Therapies

Part of the book series: Philosophy and Medicine ((PHME,volume 118))

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Abstract

This analysis may also be relevant for understanding the interaction established between the physician and the patient during their encounter: They must be able to express the contents of their minds in a way that will be intelligible. Indeed when the doctor introduces a novel concept, she extracts it from her own mental puzzle where all concepts are linked in a logical way. This concept may not fit to the mental puzzle of the patient. In the second part of this chapter, our intentionalist model is used to discuss the issue of patient autonomy: An autonomous person is an individual capable of deliberation about personal goals and of acting under the direction of such deliberation. However, this deliberation may be jeopardized by the limits of our rationality delineated in this book. It may therefore happen, at least some time or temporarily, that the patient asks the physician to impose constraints on her. Because the patient comes to see a physician who is also a person with her own mental states , among them knowledge , competence, beliefs , desires , and the emotions that make her capable of empathy. What the patient expects is for the physician to be capable of making the best decisions for her. And when the patient sometimes goes so far as to ask the physician to force her to take care of herself, perhaps she does it because she hopes that this will be done with the cold objectivity of which she knows herself to be incapable.

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  1. Avicenne Hospital and Paris 13 University, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Bobigny, France

    Gérard Reach

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Reach, G. (2015). An Intentionalist Account of Doctor -Patient Relationship and Biomedical Ethics. In: The Mental Mechanisms of Patient Adherence to Long-Term Therapies. Philosophy and Medicine, vol 118. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12265-6_8

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