Before returning to Pittsburgh, he was University Professor of Medical Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at the George Washington University where he is now Emeritus. 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 2016. His most comprehensive book was Discovery and Explanation in Biology and Medicine, published in 1993 by the University of Chicago Press. His recent work has been on ethical and philosophical issues in human behavioral and psychiatric genetics, and he has just published a book entitled Behaving: What's Genetic and What's Not, and Why Should We Care?with Oxford University Press. Dr. Schaffner, who was trained both in philosophy (Ph.D.) and in medicine (M.D.), is a Fellow of both the Hastings Center and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is a former Editor-in-Chief of Philosophy of Science (1975-80).
Recent Courses Taught
- The Gene: The Transformation and Fragmentation of a Concept
- Historical and Philosophical Issues in Behavioral Genetics
- Philosophy of Psychiatry (co-taught with Peter Machamer)
Professional Fellowships and Honors
- Guggenheim Post Doctoral Fellowship, 1972
- Institute for Human Values in Medicine Fellowship, 1977
- Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1986
- Fellow, Hastings Center, 1991
- Fellow, Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry, 1992
Education & Training
- PhD, Columbia University, 1967
- MD, University of Pittsburgh, 1986
Representative Publications
Schaffner, K. F. “Ernest Nagel and Reduction,” Journal of Philosophy, 2012, CIX, Nos. 8/9, pp. 534-565.
Schaffner, K.F and Tabb, K. C., "Varieties of Social Constructionism and the Problem of Progress in Psychiatry," in K. S. Kendler and J. Parnas (eds.), Philosophical Issues in Psychiatry III, Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. 83-115.
Schaffner, K.F and Tabb, K. C., "Hempel as a Critic of Bridgeman’s Operationalism: Lessons for Psychiatry from the History of Science,” in K. S. Kendler and J. Parnas (eds.), Philosophical Issues in Psychiatry III, Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. 213-220.
Schaffner, K.F. (2015) “Neuroethics” in Scientism: The New Orthodoxy. Edited by Richard N. Williams and Daniel N. Robinson. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Pp. 147-176.
K. F. Schaffner, Behaving: What's Genetic and What's Not, and Why Should We Care?, a book MS, has been accepted and is now in the publication process with Oxford University Press, with a scheduled publication date in late summer or early fall 2015.
Nineteenth Century Aether Theories, Oxford, Pergamon Press. (part historical commentary and analysis (~ 150 pages) and part selective reprints (~150 pages). (1972)
Logic of Discovery and Diagnosis in Medicine (editor), Berkeley: University of California Press (1985).
Discovery and Explanation in Biology and Medicine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (1993).
"Approaches to Reduction," Philosophy of Science, 34, 137-147 (1967).
“Logic of Discovery and Justification in Regulatory Genetics,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 4, 397-433 (1973).
"Theory Structure in the Biomedical Sciences," The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 5, 57-95 (1980).
“Genes, Behavior, and Developmental Emergentism: One Process, Indivisible?," Philosophy of Science, 65, 209-252; reply to comments: 276-288 (1998).
"Reduction: the Cheshire cat problem and a return to roots," Synthese, 151, 377-402 (2006).