Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-03T20:01:54.157Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Theoretical Health and Medical Practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

James Krueger
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 82 , Issue 3 , July 2015 , pp. 491 - 508
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

I am grateful to Matthew Caselli, two anonymous reviewers, and the audiences at the PSA meeting in 2012 and the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology meeting in 2013 for helpful comments and conversation.

References

Boorse, Christopher. 1977. “Health as a Theoretical Concept.” Philosophy of Science 44:542–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boorse, Christopher 1987. “Concepts of Health.” In Health Care Ethics: An Introduction, ed. van DeVeer, Donald and Regan, Tom, 359–93. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Regan, Tom 1997. “A Rebuttal on Health.” In What Is Disease?, ed. Humber, James M. and Almeder, Robert F., 1–134. Totowa, NJ: Humana.Google ScholarPubMed
Almeder, Robert F. 2011. “Concepts of Health.” In Philosophy of Medicine, ed. Gifford, Fred, 13–64. Handbook of the Philosophy of Science 16. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Cooper, Rachel. 2002. “Disease.” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 33:263–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hausman, Daniel. 2012. “Health, Naturalism, and Functional Efficiency.” Philosophy of Science 79:519–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kingma, Elseljin. 2007. “What Is It to Be Healthy?” Analysis 67:128–33.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed