Kenneth Schaffner
Professor of History and Philosophy of Science
University of Pittsburgh
Kenneth F. Schaffner (Ph.D., Columbia, 1967; M.D., University of Pittsburgh, 1986) is University Professor of History and Philosophy of Science and University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. Before returning to Pittsburgh, he was University Professor of Medical Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at the George Washington University. His most recent book is Discovery and Explanation in Biology and Medicine, published in 1993 by the University of Chicago Press. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and has published extensively in philosophical and medical journals on ethical and conceptual issues in science and medicine. He is a current member of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA)-World Health Organization (WHO) Workgroup on Classification and on International Diagnostic Systems, where the task is to advise on the approach and content of the Mental Health Section of the eleventh version of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), due out in 2011. He is developing papers for this WPA-WHO workgroup that apply the multilevel prototype model of biological sciences from his 1993 book to psychiatric classification and diagnosis. His recent work has been on ethical and philosophical issues in human behavioral and psychiatric genetics, and he is in the final editing stages of a book on Behaving: What's Genetic and What's Not, and Why Should We Care? for Oxford University Press. Dr. Schaffner is a Fellow of both the Hastings Center and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is a former Editor-in-Chief of Philosophy of Science (1975-80), and was section editor psychiatry and philosophy of medicine of the recent 3rd edition of the Encyclopedia of Bioethics. Currently is an associate editor of Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology, and also serves on the editorial boards of Biology and Philosophy, The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, and Psychiatry: Interpersonal and Biological Processes.
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