Abstract
This essay compares in a preliminary way, concepts of disability to those of medicine, especially medical theory. Besides minor theses, I reach four major, not wholly original, conclusions. First, it does not seem that, in most usage, ‘disability’ has a clear enough meaning to determine how disability relates to medical status. Whether in common sense, ethics, or law, disability is a highly indeterminate concept. One reason is that the few paradigm cases at its core fall within many possible outer boundaries. Worse yet, even some core examples are disabilities in one context but not another. So, in practice, there is no one disability concept—or, if there is, it is ambiguous in including several variables fixed only by context. Second, all types of practical disability may be species of a value-free generic concept: organismic dysfunction, or gross impairment. But to call gross impairment disability will have consequences unattractive to many writers. Third, in two important contexts where usage is fairly clear by definition and example, disability currently bears no simple relation to the basic concept of medical theory, disorder or pathological condition.
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Boorse, C. (2009). Disability and Medical Theory. In: Ralston, D., Ho, J. (eds) Philosophical Reflections on Disability. Philosophy and Medicine, vol 104. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2477-0_4
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