A Dispositional Theory of Health

Abstract

A satisfactory account of the nature of health is important for a wide range of theoretical and practical reasons. No theory offered in the literature thus far has been able to meet all the desiderata for an adequate theory of health. This article introduces a new theory of health, according to which health is best defined in terms of dispositions at the level of the organism as a whole. After outlining the main features of the account and providing formal definitions of ‘health’, ‘healthy’, and ‘healthier than’, I present the main strengths of the proposed account. I argue that the proposed dispositional theory accounts for all paradigm cases of health and pathology, that it circumvents a number of problems faced by rival theories, and that it makes for a naturalistic theory of health with a rigorous metaphysical underpinning. 1Introduction2The Dispositional Account3Further Specification of the Dispositional Account 3.1Reference classes3.2Comparison classes3.3Which dispositions?4Advantages of the Dispositional view5Three Objections and Replies 5.1Objection 1: Counter-examples5.2Objection 2: Issues with holism5.3Objection 3: Expediting medicalization6Final Remarks

Out of our heads: Addiction and psychiatric externalism

“…And other theorists have advanced self-consciously "holistic" views of health and illness (e.g. [60][61][62][63]), 5 which have nevertheless sought to incorporate the main insights of the classic "biomedical" accounts associated with Boorse [26,27] and Wakefield [64,65]. In short, as far as the current literature on disease goes, those who view addiction as a disease should not on that ground object to this modification.…”

Infinity, Technology, Degeneracy: A Note on Werkhoven’s Dispositional Theory of Health

“…The second is for a derived, comparative concept of 'healthier than'; 2 'A shoulder lesion prevents one from lifting one's arm; intermittent claudication reduces the ability to walk; Broca aphasia constrains the capacity for speech, anxiety disorders limit people in specific actions (like appearing in public, or entering airplanes); depressions inhibit people more generally in activities of daily living (like getting dressed, preparing food, going to work, and so on); and so on'. (Werkhoven [2018], p. 3).…”

“…It is in the loss of these that illness consists, 2 and in their full or partial restoration that being healed or cured does. Health, he says, is therefore 'a certain measure of what a living organism can and cannot do', relative to the most we can expect an organism of its sort to be able to do (Werkhoven [2018], p. 7). This is certainly an intuitively attractive view.…”

“…And it poses a problem for Werkhoven. Whether or not rival views 'can claim an advantage' regarding cases of functional compensation, he writes, 'depends on the genuine possibility of such a scenario' (Werkhoven [2018], p. 21), and he professes himself 'sceptical' (p. 22) on the point. Such potentially advantage-shifting cases turn out not to be merely possible, however, but virtually ubiquitous.…”

Health and Reference Classes

“… 1. One example is Werkhoven’s (2018) dispositional theory of health. On this view, an organism’s health consists in the ratio of what an organism can do compared to what it could maximally do, given its reference class (also constituted by species, sex, and age).…”