Information Technology Reference
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Some years later, I got the opportunity to learn playing the trumpet by chance - and
it works perfectly.
I take this example to show, how much better it would be to include the first per-
son's perspective next to the third person's perspective in medical diagnosis, progno-
sis and therapy - concerning what Sadegh-Zadeh mentioned on the very first pages
of his book: “the subject of Medicine is
the patient
” and “their actions deal with the
patient history” (§12).
Not only the notion of the person's dignity demands a serious consideration of the
first person's perspective and its very own needs and history. Actually, in some way
the physician always has to deal with the patient's history too and he has to decide
if one is a “patient” or not, if he is intact or not. But the medical agent respects
this 'subjective' and individually on context-dependent factors as the individuality
of a person and his very own situation just in a heuristic sense of intuitive practice
by doing. Although, there are no defined factors and formalized criteria used until
now.
As Elaine Scarry describes in her book “The Body in Pain”
16
, it is impossible
to communicate pain in a full sense, therefore it cannot be formalized with distinct
measures. Whereas the own personal pain is one of the most reliable cases of evi-
dence for 'being certain', but to hear about the pain of the other is a prime example
for 'being in doubt'. In her inquiry based on a well-founded analysis of Amnesty-
International-files, Scarry argues, that the experience of pain hints to a kind of basic
inseparability of knowledge and experience of a human being, therefore pain is enor-
mously difficult to describe in words. So the pain felt and expressed by the other is
not possible to conceptualize in an accessible way for understanding from the third
person's perspective. But that doesn't matter for reliability, because we do under-
stand and normally accept that one is in pain
17
, it's just a kind of artificial problem
in the technical bound medicine. But it shouldn't be, if the first person's perspective
also counts as reliable in medicine. Why should the feelings of a person and her
individual perceived signs of illness or deprivation be less trustworthy than a deficit
or disease measured actually by another person (the physician) or by a measuring
instrument or machine?
In the following I want to propose a helpful triad of criteria for medicine to take
into account in every decision whether one is a 'patient' or not and to make less
mistakes in diagnosis and therapy. Without doubt, all these three factors are 'sub-
jective', but also measurable when taking fuzzy measures. So it would be possible
to integrate the first person's perspective in a formalized way. That is necessary in
order to consider
adequately
the real and special situation of the individual and his
own experience.
16
[6], pp. 161ff.
17
[7], §293, 302, 303, 350: Here he discussed with a discerning eye the question of commu-
nicating and understanding the pain of the other.
