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  1. Mental health promotion and the positive concept of health: Navigating dilemmas.Somogy Varga, Martin Marchmann, Paldam Folker Anna & Büter Anke - 2024 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 105.
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  • Psychopathology and Metaphysics: Can One Be a Realist About Mental Disorder?Simoni Iliadi - 2024 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 49 (3):283-297.
    Metaphysical realism about mental disorder is the thesis that mental disorder exists mind-independently. There are two ways to challenge metaphysical realism about mental disorder. The first is by denying that mental disorder exists. The second is by denying that mental disorder exists mind-independently. Or, differently put, by arguing that mental disorder is mind-dependent. The aim of this paper is three-fold: (a) to examine three ways in which mental disorder can be said to be mind-dependent (namely, by being causally dependent on (...)
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  • New Approach to Disease, Risk, and Boundaries Based on Emergent Probability.Patrick Daly - 2022 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 47 (3):457-481.
    The status of risk factors and disease remains a disputed question in the theory and practice of medicine and healthcare, and so does the related question of delineating disease boundaries. I present a framework based on Bernard Lonergan’s account of emergent probability for differentiating (1) generically distinct levels of systematic function within organisms and between organisms and their environments and (2) the methods of functional, genetic, and statistical investigation. I then argue on this basis that it is possible to understand (...)
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  • An integral approach to health science and healthcare.Patrick Daly - 2017 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 38 (1):15-40.
    Defining disease and delineating its boundaries is a contested area in contemporary philosophy of medicine. The leading naturalistic theory faces a new round of difficulties related to defining a normal environment alongside normal organismic functioning and to delineating a discrete boundary between risk factors and disease. Normative theories face ongoing and seemingly intractable difficulties related to value pluralism and the problematic relation between theory and practice. In this article, I argue for an integral—as opposed to a hybrid—philosophy of health based (...)
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  • Flourishing and Freedom: Exploring Their Tensions and Their Relevance to Chronic Disease.João Calinas Correia - 2016 - Health Care Analysis 24 (2):148-160.
    In this paper I will briefly discuss flourishing and freedom, relating them to health and disease; discuss the tensions between flourishing and freedom; and exemplify how those discussions are relevant to chronic disease suffering. The concept of freedom has significant connections with the concepts of health, disability and disease. Understanding disease and disability in terms of the loss of aspects of freedom may help our understanding of the suffering that arises from chronic disease. On the other hand, flourishing may require (...)
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  • The Concept of Disorder Revisited: Robustly Value-Laden Despite Change.I.—Rachel Cooper - 2020 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 94 (1):141-161.
    Our concept of disorder is changing. This causes problems for projects of descriptive conceptual analysis. Conceptual change means that a criterion that was necessary for a condition to be a disorder at one time may cease to be necessary a relatively short time later. Nevertheless, some conceptually based claims will be fairly robust. In particular, the claim that no adequate account of disorder can appeal only to biological facts can be maintained for the foreseeable future. This is because our current (...)
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  • Medicine, Morality, and Mortality: The Challenges of Moral Diversity.Mark J. Cherry - 2015 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 40 (5):473-483.
    This issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy assesses the deep and abiding tensions that exist among the competing epistemic perspectives that bear on medicine and morality. Concepts of health and disease, as well as the theoretical framing of medical ethics and health care policy, intersect with an overlapping set of culturally situated communities, striving to understand and manipulate the world in ways that each finds explanatory, appropriate, or otherwise befitting. The articles explore the complexities of framing public health (...)
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  • Normality in medicine: a critical review.Marisa Catita, Artur Águas & Pedro Morgado - 2020 - Philosophy, Ethics and Humanities in Medicine 15 (1):1-6.
    What is considered normal determines clinical practice in medicine and has implications at an individual level, doctor-patient relationship and health care policies. With the increase in medical information and technical abilities it is urgent to have a clear concept of normality in medicine so that crucial discussions can be held with unequivocal terms.The different meanings for normality were analyzed throughout the literature and grouped according to their relevance in the academic community in models, namely the Biostatistical Theory (BST), Health, Ideal, (...)
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  • Malfunctions and teleology: On the chances of statistical accounts of functions.Lorenzo Casini - 2017 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 7 (2):319-335.
    The core idea of statistical accounts of biological functions is that to function normally is to provide a statistically typical contribution to some goal state of the organism. In this way, statistical accounts purport to naturalize the teleological notion of function in terms of statistical facts. Boorse’s, 542–573, 1977) original biostatistical account was criticized for failing to distinguish functions from malfunctions. Recently, many have attempted to circumvent the criticism, 519–541, 2012, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 39, 634–647, 2014). Here, I (...)
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  • Justificatory explanations in machine learning: for increased transparency through documenting how key concepts drive and underpin design and engineering decisions.David Casacuberta, Ariel Guersenzvaig & Cristian Moyano-Fernández - 2024 - AI and Society 39 (1):279-293.
    Given the pervasiveness of AI systems and their potential negative effects on people’s lives (especially among already marginalised groups), it becomes imperative to comprehend what goes on when an AI system generates a result, and based on what reasons, it is achieved. There are consistent technical efforts for making systems more “explainable” by reducing their opaqueness and increasing their interpretability and explainability. In this paper, we explore an alternative non-technical approach towards explainability that complement existing ones. Leaving aside technical, statistical, (...)
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  • Health as a Secondary Property.Alex Broadbent - 2019 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 70 (2):609-627.
    In the literature on health, naturalism and normativism are typically characterized as espousing and rejecting, respectively, the view that health is objective and value-free. This article points out that there are two distinct dimensions of disagreement, regarding objectivity and value-ladenness, and thus arranges naturalism and normativism as diagonal opposites on a two-by-two matrix of possible positions. One of the remaining quadrants is occupied by value-dependent realism, holding that health facts are value-laden and objective. The remaining quadrant, which holds that they (...)
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  • Reconsidering harm in psychiatric manuals within an explicationist framework.Mia Biturajac & Marko Jurjako - 2022 - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 25:239–249.
    The notion of harm has been a recurring and a significant notion in the characterization of mental disorder. It is present in eminent diagnostic manuals such as DSM and ICD, as well as in the discussion on mental disorders in philosophy of psychiatry. Recent demotion of harm in the definition of mental disorders in DSM-5 shows a general trend towards reducing the significance of harm when thinking about the nature of mental disorders. In this paper, we defend the relevance of (...)
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  • The function of the heart is historically contingent.Nicholas Binney - 2018 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 68-69 (C):42-55.
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  • Reference-Class Problems Are Real: Health-Adjusted Reference Classes and Low Bone Mineral Density.Nicholas Binney - 2024 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 49 (2):jhae005.
    Elselijn Kingma argues that Christopher Boorse’s biostatistical theory (the BST) does not show how the reference classes it uses are objective and naturalistic. Recently, philosophers of medicine have attempted to rebut Kingma’s concerns. I argue that these rebuttals are theoretically unconvincing, and that there are clear examples of physicians adjusting their reference classes according to their prior knowledge of health and disease. I focus on the use of age-adjusted reference classes to diagnose low bone mineral density in children. In addition (...)
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  • Osteoporosis and risk of fracture: reference class problems are real.Nicholas Binney - 2022 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 43 (5):375-400.
    Elselijn Kingma argues that Christopher Boorse’s biostatistical theory does not show how the reference classes it uses—namely, age groups of a sex of a species—are objective and naturalistic. Boorse has replied that this objection is of no concern, because there are no examples of clinicians’ choosing to use reference classes other than the ones he suggests. Boorse argues that clinicians use the reference classes they do because these reflect the natural classes of organisms to which their patients belong. Drawing on (...)
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  • Why we should not assume that ‘normal’ is ambiguous.Jon Bebb - 2023 - Analysis 83 (4):653-661.
    There is a widespread and largely unchallenged assumption within philosophy that the word ‘normal’ is ambiguous: i.e., that it can mean different things in different contexts. This assumption appears in work within topics as varied as the philosophy of biology, medicine, justification, causation, and more. In this paper I argue that we currently lack any independent reason for adopting such an assumption. The reason that would most likely be offered in its favour requires us to ignore an alternative and equally (...)
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  • Survival, Reproduction, and Functional Efficiency.Bengt Autzen - 2019 - Philosophy of Science 86 (5):1157-1167.
    The article examines the relationship between a trait’s effect on survival and reproduction and the notion of functional efficiency underlying the biostatistical theory of health. BST faces the problem of how to measure a trait’s joint effect on survival and reproduction in its account of function. If one measures the joint effect by means of the biological notion of fitness, examples such as the hereditary breast and ovarian cancer syndrome do not count as a disorder. If one does not invoke (...)
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  • Pathologizing Ugliness: A Conceptual Analysis of the Naturalist and Normativist Claims in “Aesthetic Pathology”.Yves Saint James Aquino - 2022 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 47 (6):735-748.
    Pathologizing ugliness refers to the use of disease language and medical processes to foster and support the claim that undesirable features are pathological conditions requiring medical or surgical intervention. Primarily situated in cosmetic surgery, the practice appeals to the concept of “aesthetic pathology”, which is a medical designation for features that deviate from some designated aesthetic norms. This article offers a two-pronged conceptual analysis of aesthetic pathology. First, I argue that three sets of claims, derived from normativist and naturalistic accounts (...)
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  • The concept of disease in the time of COVID-19.Maria Cristina Amoretti & Elisabetta Lalumera - 2020 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 41 (5):203-221.
    Philosophers of medicine have formulated different accounts of the concept of disease. Which concept of disease one assumes has implications for what conditions count as diseases and, by extension, who may be regarded as having a disease and for who may be accorded the social privileges and personal responsibilities associated with being sick. In this article, we consider an ideal diagnostic test for coronavirus disease 2019 infection with respect to four groups of people—positive and asymptomatic; positive and symptomatic; negative; and (...)
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  • Harm should not be a necessary criterion for mental disorder: some reflections on the DSM-5 definition of mental disorder.Maria Cristina Amoretti & Elisabetta Lalumera - 2019 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 40 (4):321-337.
    The general definition of mental disorder stated in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders seems to identify a mental disorder with a harmful dysfunction. However, the presence of distress or disability, which may be bracketed as the presence of harm, is taken to be merely usual, and thus not a necessary requirement: a mental disorder can be diagnosed as such even if there is no harm at all. In this paper, we focus on the (...)
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  • The Quantitative Problem for Theories of Dysfunction and Disease.Thomas Schramme - 2021 - European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 17 (2):(SI7)5-30.
    Mnoge biološke funkcije dopuštaju stupnjevanje. Na primjer, lučenje određenog hormona u organizmu može biti na višoj ili nižoj razini, u usporedbi s istim organizmom drugom prilikom ili u usporedbi s drugim organizmima. Koje razine funkcioniranja predstavljaju slučajeve disfunkcije; gdje da povučemo crtu? To je kvantitativni problem za teorije disfunkcije i bolesti. Cilj mi je braniti verziju bioloških teorija disfunkcije kako bih se uhvatio u koštac s ovim problemom. Međutim, također ću dopustiti da evaluativna razmatranja uđu u teoriju bolesti. Moj argument (...)
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  • Beyond Conceptual Analysis: Social Objectivity and Conceptual Engineering to Define Disease.Anne-Marie Gagné-Julien - 2024 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 49 (2):jhae002.
    In this article, I side with those who argue that the debate about the definition of “disease” should be reoriented from the question “what is disease” to the question of what it should be. However, I ground my argument on the rejection of the naturalist approach to define disease and the adoption of a normativist approach, according to which the concept of disease is normative and value-laden. Based on this normativist approach, I defend two main theses: (1) that conceptual analysis (...)
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  • The dental anomaly: how and why dental caries and periodontitis are phenomenologically atypical.Dylan Rakhra - 2019 - Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine 14 (1):1-7.
    Despite their shared origins, medicine and dentistry are not always two sides of the same coin. There is a long history in medical philosophy of defining disease and various medical models have come into existence. Hitherto, little philosophical and phenomenological work has been done considering dental caries and periodontitis as examples of disease and illness. A philosophical methodology is employed to explore how we might define dental caries and periodontitis using classical medical models of disease – the naturalistic and normativist. (...)
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  • Can machine learning make naturalism about health truly naturalistic? A reflection on a data-driven concept of health.Ariel Guersenzvaig - 2023 - Ethics and Information Technology 26 (1):1-12.
    Through hypothetical scenarios, this paper analyses whether machine learning (ML) could resolve one of the main shortcomings present in Christopher Boorse’s Biostatistical Theory of health (BST). In doing so, it foregrounds the boundaries and challenges of employing ML in formulating a naturalist (i.e., prima facie value-free) definition of health. The paper argues that a sweeping dataist approach cannot fully make the BST truly naturalistic, as prior theories and values persist. It also points out that supervised learning introduces circularity, rendering it (...)
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  • Persons and their Brains: Life, Death, and Lessened Humanity.Caitlin Maples - 2024 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 49 (2):117-127.
    The authors of the articles in this issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy address a wide variety of topics, from definitions of disease to bioenhancement. Each author, however, draws out the importance of careful use of language. Over the years, philosophers of medicine and bioethicists have debated questions such as what qualifies something as a disease, whether disease language is evaluative, whether the term “person” encompasses more than just human beings, and what language ought to be used to (...)
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  • Vrijednosti u psihijatriji i pojam mentalne bolesti (Eng. Values in psychiatry and the concept of mental illness).Luca Malatesti & Marko Jurjako - 2016 - In Snježana Prijić-Samaržija, Luca Malatesti & Elvio Baccarini (eds.), Moralni, Politički I Društveni Odgovori Na Društvene Devijacije (Eng. Moral, Political, and Social Responses to Antisocial Deviation). Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Rijeka. pp. 153-181.
    The crucial problem in the philosophy of psychiatry is to determine under which conditions certain behaviors, mental states, and personality traits should be regarded as symptoms of mental illnesses. Participants in the debate can be placed on a continuum of positions. On the one side of the continuum, there are naturalists who maintain that the concept of mental illness can be explained by relying on the conceptual apparatus of the natural sciences, such as biology and neuroscience. On the other side (...)
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  • Duševne bolesti i rasprava o biološkim funkcijama (Eng. Mental illnesses and the debate on biological functions).Zdenka Brzović - 2016 - In Snježana Prijić-Samaržija, Luca Malatesti & Elvio Baccarini (eds.), Moralni, Politički I Društveni Odgovori Na Društvene Devijacije (Eng. Moral, Political, and Social Responses to Antisocial Deviation). Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Rijeka. pp. 183-199.
    In this paper, I discuss the question whether objective criteria could be provided for judging something to be a mental illness. I consider the two most prominent objectivist or naturalistic accounts of mental illness, evolutionary and bio-statistical account, which offer such a criterion by relying on the notion of biological function. According to such suggestions, illness is a condition in which there is dysfunciton in some feature of an organism. In this context, I consider different accounts for ascribing functions in (...)
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  • Why It (Also) Matters What Infectious Disease Epidemiologists Call “Disease”.David Stoellger - 2023 - Philosophy of Medicine 4 (1).
    Infectious diseases figure prominently as (counter)examples in debates on how to conceptualize “disease.” But crucial epidemiological distinctions are often not heeded in the debate, and pathological and clinical perspectives focusing on individual patients are favored at the expense of perspectives from epidemiology focusing on populations. In clarifying epidemiological concepts, this paper highlights the distinct contributions infectious disease epidemiology can make to the conception of “disease,” and the fact that this is at least tacitly recognized by medical personnel and philosophers. Crucially, (...)
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  • ‘If it can't be coded, it doesn't exist’. A historical-philosophical analysis of the new ICD-11 classification of chronic pain.Rik van der Linden, Timo Bolt & Mario Veen - 2022 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 94 (C):121-132.
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  • Philosophy of Psychiatry.Jonathan Y. Tsou - 2021 - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    Jonathan Y. Tsou examines and defends positions on central issues in philosophy of psychiatry. The positions defended assume a naturalistic and realist perspective and are framed against skeptical perspectives on biological psychiatry. Issues addressed include the reality of mental disorders; mechanistic and disease explanations of abnormal behavior; definitions of mental disorder; natural and artificial kinds in psychiatry; biological essentialism and the projectability of psychiatric categories; looping effects and the stability of mental disorders; psychiatric classification; and the validity of the DSM's (...)
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  • An analytic framework for conceptualisations of disease: nine structuring questions and how some conceptualisations of Alzheimer’s disease can lead to ‘diseasisation’.Kristin Zeiler - 2020 - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 23 (4):677-693.
    According to the US National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer’s Association (NIA-AA), Alzheimer’s disease (AD) should be understood as a biological construct. It can be diagnosed based on AD-characteristic biomarkers only, even if AD biomarkers can be present many years before a person experiences any symptoms of AD. The NIA-AA’s conceptualisation of AD radically challenges past AD conceptualisations. This article offers ananalytic framework for the clarification and analysis of meanings and effects of conceptualisations of diseases such as that of (...)
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  • Bioenhancements and the telos of medicine.Michael J. Young - 2015 - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 18 (4):515-522.
    Staggering advances in biotechnology within the past decade have given rise to pharmacological, surgical and prosthetic techniques capable of enhancing human functioning rather than merely treating or preventing disease. Bioenhancement technologies range from nootropics capable of enhancing cognitive abilities to distraction osteogenesis, a surgical technique capable of increasing height through limb lengthening. This paper examines whether the use of bioenhancements falls inside or outside the proper boundaries of healthcare, and if so, whether clinicians have professional responsibilities to administer bioenhancements to (...)
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  • Health and Reference Classes.Sander Werkhoven - 2020 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 45 (2):145-158.
    In this article, I address two objections developed by Kingma against Boorse’s bio-statistical theory of health, the objections that choice of reference classes renders the theory both circular and problematically value-laden. These objections not only apply to the bio-statistical theory of health but also to other naturalistic theories, like the dispositional theory of health. I present three rejoinders. First, I argue that the circularity objection arises from excessive methodological demands. Second, I argue that naturalists can resist the normativist claim that (...)
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  • A Dispositional Theory of Health.Sander Werkhoven - 2019 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 70 (4):927-952.
    A satisfactory account of the nature of health is important for a wide range of theoretical and practical reasons. No theory offered in the literature thus far has been able to meet all the desiderata for an adequate theory of health. This article introduces a new theory of health, according to which health is best defined in terms of dispositions at the level of the organism as a whole. After outlining the main features of the account and providing formal definitions (...)
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  • Introduction: The Boundaries of Disease.Mary Jean Walker & Wendy A. Rogers - 2017 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 42 (4):343-349.
    Although health and disease occupy opposite ends of a spectrum, distinguishing between them can be difficult. This is the “line-drawing” problem. The papers in this special issue engage with this challenge of delineating the boundaries of disease. The authors explore different views as to where the boundary between disease and nondisease lies, and related questions, such as how we can identify, or decide, what counts as a disease and what does not; the nature of the boundary between the two categories; (...)
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  • The Biostatistical Theory Versus the Harmful Dysfunction Analysis, Part 1: Is Part-Dysfunction a Sufficient Condition for Medical Disorder?Jerome Wakefield - 2014 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 39 (6):648-682.
    Christopher Boorse’s biostatistical theory of medical disorder claims that biological part-dysfunction (i.e., failure of an internal mechanism to perform its biological function), a factual criterion, is both necessary and sufficient for disorder. Jerome Wakefield’s harmful dysfunction analysis of medical disorder agrees that part-dysfunction is necessary but rejects the sufficiency claim, maintaining that disorder also requires that the part-dysfunction causes harm to the individual, a value criterion. In this paper, I present two considerations against the sufficiency claim. First, I analyze Boorse’s (...)
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  • Biological normativity: a new hope for naturalism?Walter Veit - 2021 - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 24 (2):291-301.
    Since Boorse [Philos Sci 44(4):542–573, 1977] published his paper “Health as a theoretical concept” one of the most lively debates within philosophy of medicine has been on the question of whether health and disease are in some sense ‘objective’ and ‘value-free’ or ‘subjective’ and ‘value-laden’. Due to the apparent ‘failure’ of pure naturalist, constructivist, or normativist accounts, much in the recent literature has appealed to more conciliatory approaches or so-called ‘hybrid accounts’ of health and disease. A recent paper by Matthewson (...)
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  • The continuity of inquiry and normative philosophy of science.Somogy Varga - 2021 - Metaphilosophy 52 (5):655-667.
    This paper aims to contribute to debates about the nature of philosophical inquiry and its relation to science. The starting point is the Discontinuity View (DV), which holds that philosophy is discontinuous with science. Upon critically engaging two lines of argument in favor of DV, the paper presents and defends the Continuity View (CV), according to which philosophy and science are continuous forms of inquiry. The critical engagement sheds light on continuities between philosophical and scientific inquiry while underlining special normative (...)
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  • Naturalism, Disease, and Levels of Functional Description.Somogy Varga & David Miguel Gray - 2022 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 47 (3):482-493.
    The paper engages Christopher Boorse’s Bio-Statistical Theory. In its current form, BST runs into a significant challenge. For BST to account for its central tenet—that lower-level part-dysfunction is sufficient for higher-level pathology—it must provide criteria for how to decide which lower-level parts are the ones to be analyzed for health or pathology. As BST is a naturalistic theory, such choices must be based solely on naturalistic considerations. An argument is provided to show that, if BST is to be preserved, such (...)
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  • Epistemic Authority, Philosophical Explication, and the Bio-Statistical Theory of Disease.Somogy Varga - 2020 - Erkenntnis 85 (4):937-956.
    Christopher Boorse’s Health care ethics: an introduction, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, pp 359–393, 1987; in Humber, Almeder, Totowa What is disease?, Humana Press, New York City, pp 1–134, 1997; J Med Philos, 39:683–724, 2014) Bio-Statistical Theory comprehends diseases in terms of departures from natural norms, which involve an objectively describable deviation from the proper physiological or psychological functioning of parts of the human organism. I argue that while recent revisions and additional considerations shield the BST from a number of issues (...)
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  • Health and disease as practical concepts: exploring function in context-specific definitions.Rik van der Linden & Maartje Schermer - 2021 - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 25 (1):131-140.
    Despite the longstanding debate on definitions of health and disease concepts, and the multitude of accounts that have been developed, no consensus has been reached. This is problematic, as the way we define health and disease has far-reaching practical consequences. In recent contributions it is proposed to view health and disease as practical- and plural concepts. Instead of searching for a general definition, it is proposed to stipulate context-specific definitions. However, it is not clear how this should be realized. In (...)
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  • Function, Dysfunction, and the Concept of Mental Disorder.Jonathan Y. Tsou - 2021 - Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 28 (4):371-375.
    Naturalistic accounts of mental disorder aim to identify an objective basis for attributions of mental disorder. This goal is important for demarcating genuine mental disorders from artificial or socially constructed disorders. The articulation of a demarcation criterion provides a means for assuring that attributions of 'mental disorder' are not merely pathologizing different forms of social deviance. The most influential naturalistic and hybrid definitions of mental disorder identify biological dysfunction as the objective basis of mental disorders: genuine mental...
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  • Distinguishing Health from Pathology.Amanda Thorell - 2021 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 46 (5):561-585.
    This essay provides an account of how to distinguish between health and pathology of trait tokens in medical theory. It proposes to distinguish between two health/pathology concepts—health/pathology pertaining to survival and health/pathology pertaining to reproduction. It defines measures for survival-efficiency and reproduction-efficiency of performances of physiological functions. It provides an account of how, using the efficiency measures, to draw the line between health and pathology. The account draws, but seeks to improve, on Christopher Boorse’s biostatistical theory. In relation to that (...)
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  • What we talk about when we talk about pediatric suffering.Tyler Tate - 2020 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 41 (4):143-163.
    In this paper I aim to show why pediatric suffering must be understood as a judgment or evaluation, rather than a mental state. To accomplish this task, first I analyze the various ways that the label of suffering is used in pediatric practice. Out of this analysis emerge what I call the twin poles of pediatric suffering. At one pole sits the belief that infants and children with severe cognitive impairment cannot suffer because they are nonverbal or lack subjective life (...)
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  • Medicalización, prevención y cuerpos sanos: la actualidad de los aportes de Illich y Foucault.Diana Aurenque Stephan & Martín De la Ravanal - 2018 - Tópicos: Revista de Filosofía 55:407-439.
    A partir de los análisis de Illich y Foucault se sostiene que el desarrollo de la medicina moderna ocurre paralelo a una cada vez más profunda medicalización que conlleva a importantes cambios en lo que respecta al significado del cuerpo y de la salud. Una de las expresiones actuales más paradigmáticas de estas transformaciones se observa en la medicina preventiva de alta tecnología, en cuanto ella contribuye no sólo a diluir la experiencia subjetiva de enfermedad y sanidad, sino que también (...)
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  • Integrative pluralism for biological function.Beckett Sterner & Samuel Cusimano - 2019 - Biology and Philosophy 34 (6):1-21.
    We introduce a new type of pluralism about biological function that, in contrast to existing, demonstrates a practical integration among the term’s different meanings. In particular, we show how to generalize Sandra Mitchell’s notion of integrative pluralism to circumstances where multiple epistemic tools of the same type are jointly necessary to solve scientific problems. We argue that the multiple definitions of biological function operate jointly in this way based on how biologists explain the evolution of protein function. To clarify how (...)
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  • Is pregnancy a disease? A normative approach.Anna Smajdor & Joona Räsänen - forthcoming - Journal of Medical Ethics.
    In this paper, we identify some key features of what makes something a disease, and consider whether these apply to pregnancy. We argue that there are some compelling grounds for regarding pregnancy as a disease. Like a disease, pregnancy affects the health of the pregnant person, causing a range of symptoms from discomfort to death. Like a disease, pregnancy can be treated medically. Like a disease, pregnancy is caused by a pathogen, an external organism invading the host’s body. Like a (...)
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  • Reframing the Disease Debate and Defending the Biostatistical Theory.Peter H. Schwartz - 2014 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 39 (6):572-589.
    Similarly to other accounts of disease, Christopher Boorse’s Biostatistical Theory (BST) is generally presented and considered as conceptual analysis, that is, as making claims about the meaning of currently used concepts. But conceptual analysis has been convincingly critiqued as relying on problematic assumptions about the existence, meaning, and use of concepts. Because of these problems, accounts of disease and health should be evaluated not as claims about current meaning, I argue, but instead as proposals about how to define and use (...)
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  • Progress in Defining Disease: Improved Approaches and Increased Impact.Peter H. Schwartz - 2017 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 42 (4):485-502.
    In a series of recent papers, I have made three arguments about how to define “disease” and evaluate and apply possible definitions. First, I have argued that definitions should not be seen as traditional conceptual analyses, but instead as proposals about how to define and use the term “disease” in the future. Second, I have pointed out and attempted to address a challenge for dysfunction-requiring accounts of disease that I call the “line-drawing” problem: distinguishing between low-normal functioning and dysfunctioning. Finally, (...)
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  • Preclinical Disease or Risk Factor? Alzheimer’s Disease as a Case Study of Changing Conceptualizations of Disease.Maartje H. N. Schermer - 2023 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 48 (4):322-334.
    Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) provides an excellent case study to investigate emerging conceptions of health, disease, pre-disease, and risk. Two scientific working groups have recently reconceptualized AD and created a new category of asymptomatic biomarker positive persons, who are either said to have preclinical AD, or to be at risk for AD. This article examines how prominent theories of health and disease would classify this condition: healthy or diseased? Next, the notion of being “at risk”—a state somewhere in-between health and disease—is (...)
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