Organizational Malfunctions and the Notions of Health and Disease

Saborido, Cristian; Moreno, Álvaro; González-Moreno, María; Clemente, Juan Carlos Hernández

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-29091-1_7

Cited by 16 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…On many occasions, this approach is based on the assumption of a sort of "natural normativity" in biological organizations. This natural normativity is sometimes justified by the disposition of the organization of living beings to regulate themselves (Saborido and Moreno 2015;Saborido et al 2016), or by the action of natural selection to maximize organic designs to improve fitness (Boorse 1976). In any case, the objectivist approach assumes -in a way reminiscent of Aristotle's biological teleologythat the organic design of living beings allows us to infer proper norms for organisms (González de Prado Salas 2018), and that this design can be inferred from the statistical distribution of individuals: the normal in a statistical sense corresponds with the normative.…”

Section: Naturalists Versus Normativistsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is Aging a Disease? The Theoretical Definition of Aging in the Light of the Philosophy of Medicine

Saborido

García-Barranquero

2022

The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy: A Forum for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine

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In the philosophical debate on aging, it is common to raise the question of the theoretical definition of aging in terms of its possible characterization as a disease. Understanding aging as a disease seems to imply its medicalization, which has important practical consequences. In this paper, we analyze the question of whether aging is a disease by appealing to the concept of disease in the philosophy of medicine. As a result of this analysis, we argue that a pragmatist approach to the conception of disease is the best alternative to highlight the relevance of the medicalization of aging. From this pragmatist perspective, it can be seen that the notion of aging is going through a conceptual change, and aging can today be understood as a not radically different process from any other condition that is usually considered a disease.

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Section: Naturalists Versus Normativistsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is Aging a Disease? The Theoretical Definition of Aging in the Light of the Philosophy of Medicine

Saborido

García-Barranquero

2022

The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy: A Forum for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine

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“…Biology can account for several functional systems within a type of organism and for their interdependence (Saborido et al 2016). At least in biological theory, the ontological perspective on drawing the quantitative boundary between normal levels of performance and dysfunction-even where there are grades of performance-can be addressed by purely factual considerations.…”

Section: Taking the Sting Out Of The Quantitative Problemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Kvantitativni problem za teorije disfunkcije i bolesti

Schramme

2021

EuJAP

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Many biological functions allow for grades. For example, secretion of a specific hormone in an organism can be on a higher or lower level, compared to the same organism at another occasion or compared to other organisms. What levels of functioning constitute instances of dysfunction; where should we draw the line? This is the quantitative problem for theories of dysfunction and disease. I aim to defend a version of biological theories of dysfunction to tackle this problem. However, I will also allow evaluative considerations to enter into a theory of disease. My argument is based on a distinction between a biological and a clinical perspective. Disease, according to my reasoning, is restricted to instances that fall within the boundaries of biological dysfunctions. Responding to the quantitative problem does not require arbitrary decisions or social value-judgements. Hence, I argue for a non-arbitrary, fact-based method to address the quantitative problem. Still, not all biological dysfunctions are instances of disease. Adding a clinical perspective allows us to prevent the potential over-inclusiveness of the biological perspective, because it restricts the boundaries of disease even further.

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“…Most of the functions literature, for example, is devoted to analyzing how functions are explanatory in distinctive ways, each scientifically legitimate in its own right (Mitchell 1995;Wouters 2007;Perlman 2009). There is also an ongoing debate over whether any non-historical definition of function is capable of supporting normative judgments about malfunction (Kingma 2010;Boorse 2014;Saborido et al 2016).…”

Section: Disjunctive Pluralismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrative pluralism for biological function

Cusimano

Sterner

2019

Biol Philos

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We introduce a new type of pluralism about biological function that, in contrast to existing, demonstrates a practical integration among the term's different meanings. In particular, we show how to generalize Sandra Mitchell's notion of integrative pluralism to circumstances where multiple epistemic tools of the same type are jointly necessary to solve scientific problems. We argue that the multiple definitions of biological function operate jointly in this way based on how biologists explain the evolution of protein function. To clarify how our account relates to existing views, we introduce a general typology for monist and pluralist accounts along with standardized criteria for judging which is best supported by evidence.

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Organizational Malfunctions and the Notions of Health and Disease

Cited by 16 publications

References 37 publications

Is Aging a Disease? The Theoretical Definition of Aging in the Light of the Philosophy of Medicine

Is Aging a Disease? The Theoretical Definition of Aging in the Light of the Philosophy of Medicine

Kvantitativni problem za teorije disfunkcije i bolesti

Integrative pluralism for biological function

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