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Health, Naturalism, and Functional Efficiency

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Daniel M. Hausman
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Abstract

This essay develops an account of health, the functional efficiency theory, which derives from Christopher Boorse's biostatistical theory (BST). Like the BST, the functional efficiency theory is a nonevaluative view of health, but unlike the BST, it argues that the fundamental theoretical task is to distinguish levels of efficiency with which the parts and processes within organisms and within systems within organisms function. Which of these to label as healthy or pathological is of secondary importance. Because the statistical distributions that Boorse's account relies on are distributions of functional efficiency, the functional efficiency theory arguably complements rather than challenges the BST.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 79 , Issue 4 , October 2012 , pp. 519 - 541
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I began this article during a delightful month in residence at the Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio, and I want to express my gratitude for the opportunity to visit there. This article owes an enormous debt to Christopher Boorse, Peter Schwartz, S. Andrew Schroeder, and Elliott Sober. I am also indebted to Martin Barrett, Hayley Clatterbuck, J. Paul Kelleher, Elselijn Kingma, Trever Pearce, Reuben Stern, Naftali Weinberger, and anonymous referees for this journal. I cannot blame any of these generous critics for the flaws that remain.

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