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Health and disease as practical concepts
- Source :
- Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, 25(1), 131-140. Springer Netherlands
- Publication Year :
- 2022
- Publisher :
- Springer Netherlands, 2022.
-
Abstract
- Despite the longstanding debate on definitions of health and disease concepts, and the multitude of accounts that have been developed, no consensus has been reached. This is problematic, as the way we define health and disease has far-reaching practical consequences. In recent contributions it is proposed to view health and disease as practical- and plural concepts. Instead of searching for a general definition, it is proposed to stipulate context-specific definitions. However, it is not clear how this should be realized. In this paper, we review recent contributions to the debate, and examine the importance of context-specific definitions. In particular, we explore the usefulness of analyzing the relation between the practical function of a definition and the context it is deployed in. We demonstrate that the variety of functions that health and disease concepts need to serve makes the formulation of monistic definitions not only problematic but also undesirable. We conclude that the analysis of the practical function in relation to the context is key when formulating context-specific definitions for health and disease. At last, we discuss challenges for the pluralist stance and make recommendations for future research.
- Subjects :
- Pragmatism
Consensus
Health (social science)
Relation (database)
Health Policy
media_common.quotation_subject
Multitude
Context (language use)
Education
Variety (cybernetics)
Epistemology
SDG 3 - Good Health and Well-being
Health
Philosophy of medicine
Terminology as Topic
Humans
Disease
Sociology
Monism
Function (engineering)
media_common
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 15728633 and 13867423
- Volume :
- 25
- Issue :
- 1
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....0b647be15b7d285a2a5708beb938e04c