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

British Journal for the Philosophy of Science:axz033 (forthcoming)
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Abstract

Werkhoven’s ‘A Dispositional Theory of Health’ is an important and original contribution to debates about the disease concept, which persuasively demonstrates that dispositions must play some role in a full account of what it is to be healthy or ill. Unfortunately, as a theory, it cannot as it stands be correct.I first demonstrate what appears to be a significant, and possibly fatal, flaw; the proliferation of dispositions which Werkhoven’s theory requires makes impossible, at least in the absence of significant further metaphysical work, the comparative numerical judgements on which its account of health and illness are based. I then demonstrate two further problems, concerning the exclusion of ‘technological’ dispositions from those under consideration, and a large class of compensatory biological functions which Werkhoven’s theory seems to have overlooked.

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Shane Glackin
University of Exeter

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References found in this work

Health as a theoretical concept.Christopher Boorse - 1977 - Philosophy of Science 44 (4):542-573.
Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology.Daniel J. Nicholson & John Dupré (eds.) - 2018 - Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
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A Manifesto for a Processual Philosophy of Biology.John A. Dupre & Daniel J. Nicholson - 2018 - In Daniel J. Nicholson & John Dupré (eds.), Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.

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