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Abduction, Clinical Reasoning, and Therapeutic Strategies

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Handbook of Abductive Cognition

Abstract

The debate on the role and possible uses of abduction in the health sciences has mainly concerned diagnosis. Indeed, whereas a range of works have addressed abductive reasoning in the elaboration of diagnoses, very limited attention has been devoted to whether and how abduction plays a relevant role also in the adoption and implementation of therapeutic strategies. This chapter provides an attempt to start filling such a gap, considering, in particular, two aspects, that is, the selection and evaluation of evidence when addressing clinical decisions on single cases and the choice of some therapeutic strategy rather than others. Some reflections will be put forward which try to set a dialogue between philosophical discourse on abductive reasoning and actual therapeutic situations in clinical practice where clinicians’ expertise is particularly relevant in conceiving hypotheses about which treatment should be adopted. A couple of actual cases will be presented to exemplify conditions in which abductive reasoning actually plays an important part in clinical contexts.

Raffaella Campaner and Fabio Sterpetti contributed equally to the chapter. More specifically, the first two sections are due to Fabio Sterpetti, while the last two sections are due to Raffaella Campaner.

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Author notes

    Authors and Affiliations

    1. Department of Philosophy and Communication Studies, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

      Raffaella Campaner

    2. Department of Philosophy, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy

      Fabio Sterpetti

    Authors
    1. Raffaella Campaner
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    2. Fabio Sterpetti
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    Correspondence to Raffaella Campaner .

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    Editors and Affiliations

    1. Department of Humanities, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy

      Lorenzo Magnani

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    1. DAStU, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy

      Daniele Chiffi

    2. Faculty of Philosophy, Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Milano, Italy

      Mattia Andreoletti

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    Campaner, R., Sterpetti, F. (2022). Abduction, Clinical Reasoning, and Therapeutic Strategies. In: Magnani, L. (eds) Handbook of Abductive Cognition. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68436-5_12-1

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    • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68436-5_12-1

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