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Medicine is far more than an empirical activity, and physicians are not mere technocrats. The underlying philosophies of how we regard nature and ourselves determine the very character of medicine. Thus, the vast differences between medicines in China and the West may be traced to their differing views of the world. One of the quandaries in Western thought and Western medicine is the Cartesian mind-body duality. Various philosophical responses to this problem have given rise to different psychologies of the self. In medicine, our understanding of selfhood -- what it means to be an individual -- has implications for everything
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