Abstract
Although Christopher Boorse relies in part on distributional facts to distinguish health from pathology, his account rests on comparisons of the functional efficiency of parts and processes. It is thus ironic that in defending a comparative view of health (whereby “healthy” is defined in terms of “healthier than”, as “tall” is defined in terms of “taller then”), Andrew Schroeder criticizes Boorse for defending a non-comparative view. Schroeder’s critique cannot be easily dismissed, because a comparative view of the functional efficiency of parts such as Boorse’s, is consistent with a non-comparative view of overall health. This essay draws some conclusions concerning both how to interpret Boorse’s view and whether a comparative view of health is, as Schroeder argues, superior to a non-comparative view.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
See also Boorse 1977, 559.
- 3.
He maintains that he has found only one explicitly comparative proposal, but he also concedes that some definitions of health appear to be implicitly comparative, and he allows for the possibility of what he regards as strained comparative interpretations of some explicitly non-comparative accounts (2013, 150). What matters, he maintains is that the accounts he will discuss are “formally non-comparative” (2013, 135).
- 4.
For an overview of the HUI(3) including the quality weights assigned to the health states, see http://www.healthutilities.com/hui3.htm. The emotion dimension makes it especially easy to make my case, but one can make similar arguments about all the dimensions.
- 5.
It might be apparently uncharitable to attribute this interpretation to Schroeder. I think it is a common misreading, and it was in fact my own interpretation until recently.
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- 7.
Boorse is aware of this difficulty from his earliest publications. Schwartz (2007) argues that the problems extend to statistically abnormal but nevertheless common diseases, on the grounds that the distinction among subnormal states that are diseases and those that are not is not a statistical matter. On the interpretation defended here, the position Schwartz is criticizing is not Boorse’s.
References
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Boorse, C. (2002). A rebuttal on functions. In A. Ariew, R. Cummins, & M. Perlman (Eds.), Functions: New essays in the philosophy of psychology and biology (pp. 63–112). New York: Oxford University Press.
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Schroeder, S. (2013). Rethinking health: Healthy or healthier than? British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 64, 131–159.
Schwartz, P. H. (2007). Defining dysfunction: Natural selection, design, and drawing a line. Philosophy of Science, 74, 364–385.
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Hausman, D.M. (2016). Comparative and Non-comparative Concepts of Health. In: Giroux, É. (eds) Naturalism in the Philosophy of Health. History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29091-1_4
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