Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Handbook of the Philosophy of Medicine pp 45–63Cite as

Disease as Scientific and as Value-Laden Concept

  • Reference work entry
  • First Online:

Abstract

Health and disease are central concepts in medical practice. Defining them may assist in determining the scope of medicine; legitimizing medicine and psychiatry; and determining or even justly distributing medical care. This chapter reviews the philosophical literature on health and disease. It discusses naturalism (the view that disease is a value-free concept), normativism (the view that the concept of disease is, essentially, value laden), and reasons why the polarizing opposition between naturalism and normativism may have to be rejected or, at least, nuanced.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

References

  • Agich GJ (1983) Disease and value: a rejection of the value-neutrality thesis. Theor Med 4:27–41

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ananth M (2008) In defense of an evolutionary concept of health: nature, norms and human biology. Ashgate, Aldershot

    Google Scholar 

  • Ariew A, Cummins R, Perlman M (2002) Functions. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Bayer R (1987) Homosexuality and American psychiatry: the politics of diagnosis. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Boorse C (1977) Health as a theoretical concept. Philos Sci 44:542–573

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boorse C (1997) A rebuttal on health. In: Humber JM, Almeder RF (eds) What is disease? Humana Press, Totowa

    Google Scholar 

  • Boorse C (2014) Replies to my critics. J Med Philos 39:683–724

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Broadbent A (under review) Health as a secondary property

    Google Scholar 

  • Brown WM (1985) On defining “disease”. J Med Philos 10:311–328

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Caplan AL, Engelhardt HT Jr, McCartney JJ (1981) Concepts of health and disease: interdisciplinary perspectives. Addison-Wesley Publishing, Reading

    Google Scholar 

  • Clouser KD, Culver CM, Gert B (1981) Malady: a new treatment of disease. Hastings Cent Rep 11:29–37

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cooper R (2002) Disease. Stud Hist Phil Biol Biomed Sci 33:263–282

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cooper R (2007) Aristotelian accounts of disease – what are they good for? Philos Pap 36:427–442

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Daniels N (1985) Just health care. Cambridge University Press, New York

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Dupré J (1993) The disorder of things: metaphysical foundations of the disunity of science. Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Engelhardt HT (1976) Ideology and etiology. J Med Philos 1:256–268

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Foot P (2001) Natural goodness. Clarendon, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Fulford KWM (1989) Moral theory and medical practice. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Garson J, Piccinini G (2014) Functions must be performed at appropriate rates in appropriate situations. Br J Philos Sci 65:1–20

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goosens W (1980) Values, health and medicine. Philos Sci 47:100–115

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Griffiths PE, Matthewson J (forthcoming) Evolution, dysfunction and disease: a reappraisal. Br J Philos Sci. Accepted 21 Sept 2015

    Google Scholar 

  • Guerrero JD (2010) On a naturalist theory of health: a critique. Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 41:272–278

    Google Scholar 

  • Hausman D (2011) Is an overdose of paracetamol bad for one’s health? Br J Philos Sci 62:657–668

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hausman D (2012) Health, naturalism and functional efficiency. Philos Sci 79:519–541

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hawthorne S (2007) ADHD drugs: values that drive the debates and decisions. Med Health Care Philos 10:129–140

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Horwitz AV, Wakefield JC (2007) The loss of sadness: how psychiatry transformed normal sorrow into depressive disorder. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Kass LR (1975) Regarding the end of medicine and the pursuit of health. Public Interest 40:11–42

    Google Scholar 

  • Kendell R (1975) The concept of disease and its implications for psychiatry. Br J Psychiatry 127:305–315

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kingma E (2007) What is it to be healthy? Analysis 67:128–133

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kingma E (2010) Paracetamol, poison and polio: why Boorse’s account of function fails to distinguish health and disease. Br J Philos Sci 61:241–264

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kingma E (2012) Health and disease: social constructivism as a combination of naturalism and normativism. In: Carel H, Cooper R (eds) Health, illness and disease: philosophical essays. Acumen Publishing, Durham

    Google Scholar 

  • Kingma E (2013) Naturalist accounts of disorder. In: Fulford KWM, Davies M, Graham G, Sadler J, Stanghellini G, Thornton T (eds) Oxford handbook of philosophy and psychiatry. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Kingma E (2014) Naturalism for health and disease: adding nuance for progress. J Med Philos 39:590–608

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kingma E (2015) Situational disease and dispositional function. Br J Philos Sci. Advanced access doi:10.1093/bjps/axu041

    Google Scholar 

  • Lewens T (2015) The biological foundation of bioethics. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Margolis J (1976) The concept of disease. J Med Philos 1:238–255

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Martin M (1985) Malady and menopause. J Med Philos 10:329–337

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Megone C (1998) Aristotle’s function argument and the concept of mental illness. Philos Psychiatry Psychol 5:187–201

    Google Scholar 

  • Michael J (2016) Race. The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Spring 2016 Edition), Zalta EN (ed) URL http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2016/entries/race/

  • Murphy D, Woolfolk RL (2000) Conceptual analysis versus scientific understanding: an assessment of Wakefield’s folk psychiatry. Philos Psychiatry Psychol 7:271–293

    Google Scholar 

  • Nordenfelt L (1987) On the nature of health: an action-theoretic approach. Reidel, Dordrecht

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Nordenfelt L (1993) Quality of life, health and happiness. Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot

    Google Scholar 

  • Reznek L (1987) The nature of disease. Routledge, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Scadding JG (1988) Health and disease: what can medicine do for philosophy? J Med Ethics 14:118–124

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schramme T (2007) A qualified defence of a naturalist theory of health. Med Health Care Philos 10:11–17

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schwartz P (2007) Defining dysfunction: natural selection, design, and drawing a line. Philos Sci 74:364–385

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Simons J (2007) Beyond naturalism and normativism: reconceiving the “disease” debate. Philos Pap 36:343–370

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Szasz TS (1960) The myth of mental illness. Am Psychol 15:113–118

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wakefield JC (1992) Disorder as harmful dysfunction: a conceptual critique of DSM-III-R’s definition of mental disorder. Psychol Rev 99:232–247

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wakefield JC et al (1999) Special section: the concept of disorder: evolutionary analysis and critique. J Abnorm Psychol 108:371–472

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Whitbeck C (1978) Four basic concepts of medical science. PSA Proc Biennial Meet Philos Sci Assoc 1:210–222

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

    Elselijn Kingma

Authors
  1. Elselijn Kingma
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Elselijn Kingma .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom

    Thomas Schramme

  2. Philosophy, History and Law, Swansea University, Swansea, United Kingdom

    Steven Edwards

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

About this entry

Cite this entry

Kingma, E. (2017). Disease as Scientific and as Value-Laden Concept. In: Schramme, T., Edwards, S. (eds) Handbook of the Philosophy of Medicine. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8688-1_75

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation