Cancer biology features the ascription of normal functions to parts of cancers. At least some ascriptions of function in cancer biology track local normality of parts within the global abnormality of the aberration to which those parts belong. That is, cancer biologists identify as functions activities that, in some sense, parts of cancers are supposed to perform, despite cancers themselves having no purpose. The present paper provides a theory to accommodate these normal function ascriptions—I call it the Modeling Account of (...) Normal Function (MA). MA comprises two claims. First, normal functions are activities whose performance by the function-bearing part contributes to the self-maintenance of the whole system and, thereby, results in the continued presence of that part. Second, MA holds that models of system-level activities that are (partly) constitutive of self-maintenance are improved by including a representation of the relevant function-bearing part and by making reference to the activity/activities that part performs which contribute(s) to those system-level activities. I contrast MA with two other accounts that seek to explicate the ascription of normal functions in biology, namely, the organizational account and the selected effects account. Both struggle to extend to cancer biology. However, I offer ecumenical readings which allow them to recover some ascriptions of normal function to parts of cancers. So, though I contend that MA excels in this respect, the purpose of this paper is served if it provides materials for bridging the gap between cancer biology, philosophy of cancer, and the literature on function. (shrink)

The notion of harm is frequently used in the discussion of the nature of mental disorder. Harm also plays important roles in the prominent diagnostic manuals such as DSM and ICD. Recently, however, Cristina Amoretti and Elisabetta Lalumera have questioned the idea that harm should be a necessary constituent of mental disorders. They argue that the notion of harm is underspecified and potentially leads to false negatives in diagnosing mental disorders. Given that harm plays significant roles in medical diagnosis and (...) treatment indicates that we should be reluctant to remove it as a criterion for deciding whether some condition is a mental disorder. Instead, we argue that harm should be understood in the prudential sense and harm in this sense provides a way of responding to worries raised by Amoretti and Lalumera, while staying true to the conception of harm that is relevant for psychiatric practice. (shrink)

Our goal in this paper is to reassess the relationship between norms and life by drawing on the philosophy of Georges Canguilhem, particularly some of his unpublished lectures about teratology and sexual determination. First, we discuss the difficulties Canguilhem identified in the introduction of life and sexuality as objects of philosophical reflection. Second, we reassess Canguilhem’s understanding of normativity as rooted in life and the axiological activity of the living. Third, we analyze how Canguilhem drew from past and contemporary teratology (...) to conceive of the notions of anomaly and abnormality. Finally, we reconstruct Canguilhem’s analysis of a case of hermaphroditism, highlighting how he presented it as evidence that sexual determination is the result of a normative choice. One of the key contributions of the paper to scholarly literature on Canguilhem is a better understanding of his notion of choice, which was considered not the conscious and intentional act of a subject but rather an axiological activity of the living. We conclude by positioning Canguilhem’s concept of normativity and his belief that norms are produced by the living in relation to the naturalist/normativist divide in medicine. (shrink)

This paper looks at the nature of normal-proper functions and the role they play in theories of representational content. More specifically: I lay down two desiderata for a theory which tries to capture what's distinctive of normal-proper functions and discuss two prominent theories which claim to satisfy them. I discuss the advantages of having normal-proper functions ground a theory of representational content. And, I look at both orthodox and heterodox versions of such theories.

In this paper we focus on some new normativist positions and compare them with traditional ones. In so doing, we claim that if normative judgments are involved in determining whether a condition is a disease only in the sense identified by new normativisms, then disease is normative only in a weak sense, which must be distinguished from the strong sense advocated by traditional normativisms. Specifically, we argue that weak and strong normativity are different to the point that one ‘normativist’ label (...) ceases to be appropriate for the whole range of positions. If values and norms are not explicit components of the concept of disease, but only intervene in other explanatory roles, then the concept of disease is no more value-laden than many other scientific concepts, or even any other scientific concept. We call the newly identified position “value-conscious naturalism” about disease, and point to some of its theoretical and practical advantages. (shrink)

This thesis is about the notions of health and pathology in medical theory. I develop a theory, which defines ‘health’ and ‘pathology’ in a way that solves several problems with earlier suggestions of how to define these terms. I call the theory ‘the disposition profile efficiency theory’, abbreviated ‘the DPE-theory’. According to the DPE-theory, a trait token is healthy, roughly, if and only if all of its dispositions for performing physiological functions are efficient enough. A trait token is pathological, roughly, (...) if and only if at least one of its dispositions for performing a physiological function is not efficient enough. The notion of efficiency, I suggest, is reference class-relative: the efficiency of a trait token’s disposition for performing a physiological function expresses a relation between the trait token and a health standard for the trait token’s bearer’s reference class. The thesis also examines the most discussed theory of health and pathology, “the biostatistical theory” proposed by Boorse. Both the DPE-theory and the biostatistical theory are evaluated against a number of desiderata: the theory should be theoretically sound; only use empirical, statistical, and logical terms; not involve values; be clear; both account for health and pathology as reference class-relative properties, and account for the importance of integration of different physiological functions for health; and have reasonable implications. It is argued that the DPE-theory satisfies the desiderata, and that it does so better than the biostatistical theory. The main contributions of the thesis are the DPE-theory’s models of dispositions, its approach to defining reference classes, its efficiency measure, and its way of drawing the line between high enough efficiencies and too low efficiencies. Other important contributions concern the desideratum about reasonable implications. It is shown how the DPE-theory contributes to solving two much discussed objections directed towards the biostatistical theory, “the problem of common diseases” and “Kingma’s dilemma”. Further, the DPE-theory is used to illuminate discussions about certain types of conditions for which it is contested whether they should count as healthy or pathological. (shrink)

As individuals grow older, they usually require assistance with the daily tasks of self-care. This type of assistance, ancillary care, is essential to maintaining the health of those who need these services. In his prudential lifespan account, Norman Daniels includes access to such services making his account an attractive proposal given the current demographic shift. In this paper, I examine the prudential lifespan account through the lens of old age and I focus on the two concepts on which the lifespan (...) account relies. I show that these two concepts, normal species functioning and opportunity cannot buttress Daniels’s lifespan account; at least it cannot do so for older persons. The tensions that I identify in the prudential lifespan account in relation to aging are instructive for the more recent proposals to include aging in a theory of health and health justice. In addition, my analysis allows me to demonstrate that Daniels’s view of opportunity is irreconcilable to capabilities, the latter being more adaptable to the realities of aging. If capabilities appear more promising, it is nonetheless imperative that the specificities of extended care, such as the need for unpaid caregiving, be taken into consideration. (shrink)

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 (...) diagnostic categories. The main argument defended by Tsou is that genuine mental disorders are biological kinds with harmful effects. This argument opposes the dogma that mental disorders are necessarily diseases that result from biological dysfunction. Tsou contends that the broader ideal of biological kinds offers a more promising and empirically ascertainable naturalistic standard for assessing the reality of mental disorders and the validity of psychiatric categories. (shrink)

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 (...) and Griffiths [J Med Philos 42(4):447–466, 2017], however, may bear the seeds for the revival of purely naturalist approach to health and disease. In this paper, I defend their idea of Biological Normativity against recent criticism by Schwartz [J Med Philos Forum Bioethics Philos Med 42(4):485–502, 2017] and hope to help it flower into a revival of naturalist approaches in the philosophy of medicine. (shrink)

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. (...) We identify shared threads and highlight how the features of these highly prevalent dental diseases prevent them fitting in either definition. The article describes phenomenology and the current thought around the phenomenology of illness, exploring how and why these dental illnesses might integrate into a phenomenological model. We discover that there are some features particular to dental caries and periodontitis: ubiquity, preventability and hyper-monitorablility. Understanding the differences that these dental diseases have compared to many other classically studied diseases leads us to ethical questions concerning how we might manage those who have symptoms and seek treatment. As dental caries and periodontitis are common, preventable and hyper-monitorable, it is suggested that these features affect the phenomenology of these illnesses. For example, if we experience dental illness when we have consciously made decisions that have led to it, do we experience them differently to those rarer illnesses that we cannot expect? Other diseases share these features are discussed. This paper highlights the central differences between the classical philosophical notion of disease in medicine and the dental examples of caries and periodontitis. It suggests that a philosophical method of conceptualising medical illness - phenomenology - should not be applied to these dental illnesses without thought. A phenomenological analysis of any dental illness is yet to be done and this paper highlights why a separate strand of phenomenology should be explored, instead of employing those that are extant. The article concludes with suggestions for further research into the nascent field of the phenomenology of dental illness and aims to act as a springboard to expose the dental sphere to this philosophical method of analysis. (shrink)

In their paper “Is psychopathy a mental disease?”, Thomas Nadelhoffer and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argue that according to any plausible account of mental disorder, neural and psychological abnormalities correlated with psychopathy should be regarded as signs of a mental disorder. I oppose this conclusion by arguing that at least on a naturalistically grounded account, such as Wakefield’s ‘Harmful Dysfunction’ view, currently available empirical data and evolutionary considerations indicate that psychopathy is not a mental disorder.

Synthetic biology promises to eliminate the distinction between biology and engineering by delivering a philosophically interesting new kind of entity: a biological organism that is wholly designed and constructed by humans. The possibility of such organisms raises interesting questions in three domains: the analysis of (1) biological functions, (2) engineering functions, and (3) health and disease. This paper identifies and systematically answers these questions. This does not only establish how we should think about functions and health and disease in synthetic (...) biological organisms, but it also reveals insights that are of broader relevance: (1) aetiological accounts of biological function need to omit or reinterpret reference to natural selection. This results in complete continuity between aetiological analyses of function in engineering and philosophy; (2) considering synthetic biology prompts interesting further questions about heritability, ancestry, and biological individuals; and (3) accounts of disease as biological dysfunction do not straightforwardly map onto our intuitive health and disease judgments regarding non‐human animals. In response to the latter point I examine three possible avenues, and tentatively defend one on behalf of the ‘disease as dysfunction’ theorist. (shrink)

After describing the disorder of psychopathy, I examine the theories and the evidence concerning the psychopaths’ deficient moral capacities. I first examine whether or not psychopaths can pass tests of moral knowledge. Most of the evidence suggests that they can. If there is a lack of moral understanding, then it has to be due to an incapacity that affects not their declarative knowledge of moral norms, but their deeper understanding of them. I then examine two suggestions: it is their deficient (...) practical reason or their stunted emotions that are at fault. The evidence supports both explanations. I conclude with an overview of the debate concerning whether they are morally or legally responsible for their actions. (shrink)

Some ‘naturalist’ accounts of disease employ a biostatistical account of dysfunction, whilst others use a ‘selected effect’ account. Several recent authors have argued that the biostatistical account offers the best hope for a naturalist account of disease. We show that the selected effect account survives the criticisms levelled by these authors relatively unscathed, and has significant advantages over the BST. Moreover, unlike the BST, it has a strong theoretical rationale and can provide substantive reasons to decide difficult cases. This is (...) illustrated by showing how life-history theory clarifies the status of so-called diseases of old age. The selected effect account of function deserves a more prominent place in the philosophy of medicine than it currently occupies. _1_ Introduction _2_ Biostatistical and Selected Effect Accounts of Function _3_ Objections to the Selected Effect Account _3.1_ Boorse _3.2_ Kingma _3.3_ Hausman _3.4_ Murphy and Woolfolk _4_ Problems for the Biostatistical Account _4.1_ Schwartz _5_ Analysis versus Explication _6_ Explicating Dysfunction: Life History Theory and Senescence _7_ Conclusion. (shrink)

One of the major developments in cancer research in recent years has been the construction of models that treat cancer as a cellular population subject to natural selection. We expand on this idea, drawing upon multilevel selection theory. Cancer is best understood in our view from a multilevel perspective, as both a by-product of selection at other levels of organization, and as subject to selection at several levels of organization. Cancer is a by-product in two senses. First, cancer cells co-opt (...) signaling pathways that are otherwise adaptive at the organismic level. Second, cancer is also a by-product of features distinctive to the metazoan lineage: cellular plasticity and modularity. Applying the multilevel perspective in this way permits one to explain transitions in complexity and individuality in cancer progression. Our argument is a reply to Germain’s scepticism towards the explanatory relevance of natural selection for cancer. The extent to which cancer fulfills the conditions for being a paradigmatic Darwinian population depends on the scale of analysis, and the details of the purported selective scenario. Taking a multilevel perspective clarifies some of the complexities surrounding how to best understand the relevance of evolutionary thinking in cancer progression. (shrink)

To be effective, a medical intervention must improve one's health by targeting a disease. The concept of disease, though, is controversial. Among the leading accounts of disease-naturalism, normativism, hybridism, and eliminativism-I defend a version of hybridism. A hybrid account of disease holds that for a state to be a disease that state must both (i) have a constitutive causal basis and (ii) cause harm. The dual requirement of hybridism entails that a medical intervention, to be deemed effective, must target either (...) the constitutive causal basis of a disease or the harms caused by the disease (or ideally both). This provides a theoretical underpinning to the two principle aims of medical treatment: care and cure. (shrink)

In contrast to the “normativist” view, “naturalist” theorists claim that the concept of health refers to natural or normal states and propose different characterizations of healthy and diseased conditions that are meant to be objectivist and biologically grounded. In this article, we examine the core concept of these naturalist accounts of disease, i.e., the concept of biological malfunction, and develop a new formulation of the notion of malfunction following the recent organizational approach to functions in the philosophy of biology. We (...) focus on the notions of adaptive regulation and functional presupposition to develop a new conceptual framework that justifies the ascription of malfunctional behaviors to biological systems according to the embodied normativity of biological organizations. (shrink)

I argue that ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), the tumor most commonly diagnosed by breast mammography, cannot be confidently classified as cancer, that is, as pathological. This is because there may not be dysfunction present in DCIS—as I argue based on its high prevalence and the small amount of risk it conveys—and thus DCIS may not count as a disease by dysfunction-requiring approaches, such as Boorse’s biostatistical theory and Wakefield’s harmful dysfunction account. Patients should decide about treatment for DCIS based (...) on the risks it poses and the risks and benefits of treatment, not on its disease status. (shrink)

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 (...) these terms in the future, a methodology suggested by Quine and Carnap. I begin this article by describing problems with conceptual analysis and advantages of “philosophical explication,” my favored approach. I then describe two attacks on the BST that also question the entire project of defining “disease.” Finally, I defend the BST as a philosophical explication by showing how it could define useful terms for medical science and ethics. (shrink)

Christopher Boorse’s Biostatistical Theory of Health has been the main contender among naturalistic accounts of health for the last 40 years. Yet, a recent criticism of this theory, presented by Elselijn Kingma, identifies a dilemma resulting from the BST’s conceptual linking of health and statistical typicality. Kingma argues that the BST either cannot accommodate the situation- specificity of many normal functions or cannot account for many situation-specific diseases. In this article, we expand upon with Daniel Hausman’s response to Kingma’s dilemma. (...) We propose that recalling Boorse’s specification that health is an intrinsic property of its bearers and explicating this intrinsic property in relation to the concept of homeostasis can illuminate how proponents of naturalistic accounts of health should deal with the situation- specificity of normal functions. We argue that beyond what Boorse and Hausman have delineated, the situation- specificity of normal function cannot be fully captured in a simple dichotomy between normal and abnormal environment or between relevant and irrelevant situations. By bringing homeostasis to the fore of the analysis of health, we set out a richer picture of what the various situations that affect living organisms’ functional performance can be. Accordingly, we provide a broader classification of these various situations which, we contend, better accounts for the main intuitions that philosophers of medicine have sought to accommodate than previous naturalistic theories of health. (shrink)

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 (...) biological fitness, it is unclear how to measure the joint effect while keeping to BST’s naturalist credentials. (shrink)

Biological dysfunction is regarded, in many accounts, as necessary and perhaps sufficient for disease. But although disease is conceptualized as all-or-nothing, biological functions often differ by degree. A tension is created by attempting to use a continuous variable as the basis for a categorical definition, raising questions about how we are to pinpoint the boundary between health and disease. This is the line-drawing problem. In this paper, we show how the line-drawing problem arises within “dysfunction-requiring” accounts of disease, such as (...) those of Christopher Boorse and Jerome Wakefield. We then provide several detailed examples to establish that biological dysfunction cannot provide a boundary. We examine potential ways of resolving the line-drawing problem, either by dropping one of the claims that generates it, or by appealing to additional criteria. We argue that two of these options are plausible, and that each of these can be applied with regard to different diseases. (shrink)

In, I argued that Boorse's biostatistical theory of health is unable to accommodate diseases that are the normal result of harmful environments. Hausman disagrees: if the BST compares normal dispositional function against the whole population or reference class, rather than against organisms in similar circumstances as I proposed, then my challenge can be avoided. In this paper, I argue that Hausman's response fails: his proposal cannot accommodate a series of common physiological processes, such as sleep and those involved in reproduction. (...) In the course of this argument, I also offer a detailed discussion of the concept of functional efficiency, and reveal a link between the problem of environments and that of reference classes. 1 Introduction2 Kingma on Boorse3 Hausman on Kingma4 Response to Hausman5 Three Possible Replies5.1 Reference classes5.2 Temporary pathologies5.3 Adequacy of function6 Concluding Discussion. (shrink)

We sketch a novel and improved version of Boorse’s biostatistical theory of functions. Roughly, our theory maintains that (i) functions are non-negligible contributions to survival or inclusive fitness (when a trait contributes to survival or inclusive fitness); (ii) situations appropriate for the performance of a function are typical situations in which a trait contributes to survival or inclusive fitness; (iii) appropriate rates of functioning are rates that make adequate contributions to survival or inclusive fitness (in situations appropriate for the performance (...) of that function); and (iv) dysfunction is the inability to perform a function at an appropriate rate in appropriate situations. Based on our theory, we sketch solutions to three problems that have afflicted Boorse’s theory of function, namely, Kingma’s ([2010]) problem of the situation-specificity of functions, the problem of multi-functional traits, and the problem of how to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate rates of functioning. (shrink)

The following article presents preliminary reflections on a processual theory of health and disease. It does this by steering the discussion more toward an ontology of organisms rather than conceptual analysis of the semantic content of the terms “health” and “disease.” In the first section, four meta-theoretical assumptions of the traditional debate are identified and alternative approaches to the problems are presented. Afterwards, the view that health and disease are constituted by a dynamic relation between demands imposed on an organism (...) and individual presuppositions for adequate response is developed. In the last section, the paper takes stock of three possible objections to and clarifies some implications of this approach to the notions of health and disease. (shrink)

How can we draw the line between health and disease? This crucial question of demarcation has immense practical implications and has troubled scholars for ages. The question will be addressed in three steps. First, I will present an important contribution by Rogers and Walker who argue forcefully that no line can be drawn between health and disease. However, a closer analysis of their argument reveals that a line-drawing problem for disease-related features does not necessarily imply a line-drawing problem for disease (...) as such. The second step analyzes some alternative approaches to drawing the line between health and disease. While these approaches do not provide full answers to the question, they indicate that the line-drawing question should not be dismissed too hastily. The third step investigates whether the line-drawing problem can find its solution in the concept of suffering. In particular, I investigate whether returning to the origin of medicine, with the primary and ultimate goal of reducing suffering, may provide sources of demarcation between health and disease. In fact, the reason why we pay attention to particular phenomena as characteristics of disease, consider certain processes to be relevant, and specific functions are classified as dys-functions, is that they are related to suffering. Accordingly, using suffering as a criterion of demarcation between health and disease may hinder a wide range of challenges with modern medicine, such as unwarranted expansion of disease, overdiagnosis, overtreatment, and medicalization. (shrink)

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, (...) I have used a dysfunction-requiring approach to argue that some extremely prevalent conditions, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and ductal carcinoma in situ, are not diseases, but instead are risk factors. Four of the papers in this issue directly engage my previous work. In this commentary, I applaud the advances these authors make, address points of disagreement, and make suggestions about where the discussion should go next. (shrink)

We defend a view of the distinction between the normal and the pathological according to which that distinction has an objective, biological component. We accept that there is a normative component to the concept of disease, especially as applied to human beings. Nevertheless, an organism cannot be in a pathological state unless something has gone wrong for that organism from a purely biological point of view. Biology, we argue, recognises two sources of biological normativity, which jointly generate four “ways of (...) going wrong” from a biological perspective. These findings show why previous attempts to provide objective criteria for pathology have fallen short: Biological science recognizes a broader range of ways in which living things can do better or worse than has previously been recognized in the philosophy of medicine. (shrink)

The literature on health and diseases is usually presented as an opposition between naturalism and normativism. This article argues that such a picture is too simplistic: there is not one opposition between naturalism and normativism, but many. I distinguish four different domains where naturalist and normativist claims can be contrasted: (1) ordinary usage, (2) conceptually clean versions of “health” and “disease,” (3) the operationalization of dysfunction, and (4) the justification for that operationalization. In the process I present new arguments in (...) response to Schwartz (2007) and Hausman (2012) and expose a link between the arguments made by Schwartz (2007) and Kingma (2010). Distinguishing naturalist claims at these four domains will allow us to make progress by (1) providing more nuanced, intermediate positions about a possible role for values in health and disease; and (2) assisting in the addressing of relativistic worries about the value-ladenness of health and disease. (shrink)

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 (...) concept of disorder continues to be laden with ethical and political values in multiple ways. (shrink)

Galen conceives of wounds, fractures, and similar conditions as belonging to one of the highest genera in his taxonomy of disease. This classification is puzzling, as much from an ancient Greco-Roman perspective as from a contemporary one. In what sense are wounds and other injuries diseases? The classification appears more perplexing in light of Galen's method of conceptual analysis, which takes ordinary language use as a starting point. What, then, motivated Galen's departure from common Greek conceptions of disease? This article (...) examines the class of disease that Galen called “dissolutions of continuity” in the broader context of his system of nosological definition and classification. It concludes that Galen's analysis of wounds is driven by his theory of causation, and by his localization of disease and its mechanism inside the body, a conceptualization typical of Greco-Roman medical writing. This conclusion sheds further light on Galen's method of disease classification and the role of dissolutions within it. (shrink)

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 (...) raised by critics, they give rise to significant new challenges. These are related to the attribution of epistemic authority, the possibility of multiple concepts in the authoritative literature, and the framing of BST as “philosophical explication.” The conclusion is that, in its current form, the BST is unable to provide a robust framework for a naturalist classification. (shrink)

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 (...) theory, the suggested account has the advantages that it defines efficiency and that it harmonizes with judgments in medical theory in cases of common diseases and “normal aging.” Furthermore, the essay argues against a competing idea of how to improve on the biostatistical theory, advocated by Peter Schwartz and Daniel Hausman. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophy of health and disease has been quite focused on the problem of determining the nature of the concepts of health and disease from a scientific point of view. Some theorists claim and argue that these concepts are value-free and descriptive in the same sense as the concepts of atoms, metal, and rain are value-free and descriptive. According to this descriptive or naturalist line of thought, the notions of health and disease are furthermore related to the idea of a (...) normal or natural function. A bodily organ is healthy insofar as it functions normally, and it is diseased when it does not fulfill its functions. Other philosophers claim that the concept of health, together with other medical concepts, is essentially value-laden. To establish that a person is healthy does not just entail some objective inspection and measurement. It presupposes also an evaluation of the general state of the person. My purpose in this article is to scrutinize the relation between the notion of a natural function, on the one hand, and the concepts of health and disease on the other. In characterizing the notion of a normal function I will follow the classic analysis put forward by American philosopher Christopher Boorse. I will criticize Boorse’s proposal mainly by using arguments from the analysis of ordinary lay and medical language. I ask questions such as: what do we normally mean when we ascribe health or disease to a person? In the end I will recommend an analysis of these and related medical notions, which is unrelated to the notion of a natural function as normally interpreted. (shrink)

The capability approach, originated by Amartya Sen is among the most comprehensive and influential accounts of justice that applies to issues of health and health care. However, although health is always presumed as an important capability in Sen’s works, he never manages to fully explain why health is distinctively valuable. This paper provides an explanation. It does this by firstly laying out the general capability-based argument for health justice. It then discusses two recent attempts to justify why health is distinctively (...) valuable from within a capability framework – these are Sridhar Venkatapuram’s conception of health as the central human meta-capability and, respectively, Norman Daniels’ embrace of the capability metric in his use of Rawls’ principle of fair equality of opportunity. The paper argues that none of these accounts succeed in providing a plausible justification of the value of health. Finally, the paper suggests an alternative more complex justification, closely tied to different but central element of the capability view, that captures the core intuitions of both Venkatapuram and Daniels’ accounts but without being vulnerable to the objections raised against each of them. This, the paper concludes, provides a promising ground on which the capability view on health justice should be founded. (shrink)

Theoretical accounts of health attempt to ground the concept in the relevant underlying biological facts. Discussions of such accounts have largely focused on whether they successfully identify necessary and sufficient conditions for a state to count as pathological. Correctly accounting for examples of pathology, however, is not the only basis for evaluating an understanding of disease. Here I argue that we should expect any understanding of health and disease to be consistent with the view that medicine’s central aim is health (...) promotion. I argue that the theoretical account of health offered by Christopher Boorse faces particular difficulties in this regard. (shrink)

The breadth of themes addressed in this issue of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy is striking. These articles brim with some of the most foundational questions one can ask in bioethics and the philosophy of medicine: Under what circumstances might we risk some harm in pursuit of a greater good? In the setting of experimental therapies, how should we weigh the potential risk and benefit for an individual patient against the broader potential benefit realized for society as a whole? (...) How might we consistently differentiate health from pathology? Under what circumstances might we say that a human being has died? Does acknowledging particular things as good generate duties? Duties for whom and enforced by whom? These articles share a preoccupation with foundational questions that must be addressed in any sound bioethics curriculum, and they make clear that our answers to these questions are not simply theoretical but manifest in policy and in practice. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, Zachary Ardern criticizes our view that the most promising candidate for a naturalized criterion of disease is the "selected effects" account of biological function and dysfunction. Here we reply to Ardern’s criticisms and, more generally, clarify the relationship between adaptation and dysfunction in the evolution of health and disease.

Christopher Boorse’s bio-statistical theory of health and disease argues that the central discipline on which theoretical medicine relies is physiology. His theory has been much discussed but little has been said about its focus on physiology or, conversely, about the role that other biomedical disciplines may play in establishing a theoretical concept of health. Since at least the 1950s, epidemiology has gained in strength and legitimacy as an independent medical science that contributes to our knowledge of health and disease. Indeed, (...) it not only provides important information about disease distribution and aetiology, but the risk-factor approach it employs seems to challenge BST’s binary conception of health and disease. The objective of the article is to show, firstly, how important information deriving from descriptive and analytical epidemiology forms part of our contemporary medical concepts of health and disease, and secondly, that these elements are not taken into account by BST in a satisfactory way. The article’s central contention, therefore, is that if the project of defining the theoretical concept of health is to be maintained, more importance should be accorded to the contribution made by epidemiology—alongside physiology—in defining health. (shrink)

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 (...) on Bernard Lonergan’s notion of generalized empirical method that provides a way to settle these difficulties dynamically and comprehensively, both in theory, by orienting functional and statistical investigation toward an explanatory ecological viewpoint, and in practice, by framing critiques in relation to the normativity intrinsic to all human inquiry. (shrink)

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 (...) review such attempts and find them inadequate. The reason, ultimately, is that functional attribution depends on how traits would behave in relevant situations, a condition that resists statistical characterizations in terms of how they typically behave. This, I conclude, undermines the attempt to naturalize functions in statistical terms. (shrink)

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 (...) the notion of harm in the characterization of mental disorder against some of these attacks. We approach this issue by using the method of conceptual explication pioneered by Rudolf Carnap. Within this framework, we argue that keeping the notion of harm not only helps to discriminate what is pathological from the nonpathological but also prevents potential misuses of psychiatric authority. (shrink)

Cancer—and scientific research on cancer—raises a variety of compelling philosophical questions. This entry will focus on four topics, which philosophers of science have begun to explore and debate. First, scientific classifications of cancer have as yet failed to yield a unified taxonomy. There is a diversity of classificatory schemes for cancer, and while some are hierarchical, others appear to be “cross-cutting,” or non-nested. This literature thus raises a variety of questions about the nature of the disease and disease classification. Second, (...) philosophers of science have historically taken the aim of science to be arriving at true theories. However, scientists studying cancer come from a variety of disciplines, with different scientific as well as practical aims. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that historians and philosophers of science do not seem to agree on how best to characterize the aim and structure of cancer research; it is far from clear whether the appropriate characterization of the aim is arriving at true theories, or even whether the proper units of analysis are “theories”, or instead, “models”, “explanatory frameworks”, “research programs”, “paradigms”, or perhaps, “experimental traditions”. With the rise of “big data” science—such as the Cancer Genome Atlas Project (or TCGA)—and “systems” approaches to the study of disease, both philosophers and historians of science are rethinking how best to describe and explain these distinctive kinds of scientific inquiry. -/- Third, cancer is in part a byproduct of our developmental and life history, as well as our evolutionary history. Cancer progression can be compared to a reversion of development, or, to the evolution of multicellularity. Thus, cancer raises intriguing questions about how we conceive of “functions”, “development”, and the role of our evolutionary history and particularly, selective trade-offs, in vulnerability to disease. -/- Last but not least, cancer research provides a case study for consideration of the roles of values at the science-policy interface. Epidemiological and toxicological research on cancer’s causes informs toxics law and regulatory policy, which raises a variety of questions about the nature of evidence and inductive risk in such contexts. (shrink)