ArticleMedicine, health care, and philosophy2007
The concepts of health and illness revisited.
Article in Medicine, health care, and philosophy, 2007. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 68 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
68 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Seroprevalence of Toxoplasma gondii infection among patients with psychiatric and neurologic disorders in Türkiye: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC psychiatry · 2026Pooled it
- A systematic review of the literature on ethical aspects of transitional care between child- and adult-orientated health services.BMC medical ethics · 2018Pooled it
- Practical wisdom in medicine: defending a multidimensional, integrated view of an indispensable virtue.Theoretical medicine and bioethics · 2026Article
- Ontological deskilling: clinical expertise and the changing disease object in precision medicine.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2026Article
- Enactive Mind Autism: Autopoietic Enactivism as a Practical Framework for Autism Healthcare.Psychopathology · 2026Article
- Reassessing onco-exceptionalism: equity and resource allocation in immunotherapeutic cancer treatments.Journal of medical ethics · 2026Article
- Digital paradigm of public health.Frontiers in public health · 2026Review
- Intrinsic health as a foundation for a science of health.Science advances · 2025Review
- Healthcare exceptionalism: should healthcare be treated differently when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions?Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2025Article
- Changing definitions of disease: Transformations in the diagnostic criteria for Alzheimer's disease.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2025Article
- Mental health pluralism.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2025Article
- Problem-sustaining patterns: redesigning the concept of mental disorder.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- What is a cure through gene therapy? An analysis and evaluation of the use of "cure".Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2024Article
- What is Alzheimer's disease? An analysis of nosological perspectives from the 20th and 21st centuries.European journal of neurology · 2024Review
- Can hemophilia be cured? It depends on the definition.Research and practice in thrombosis and haemostasis · 2024Review
- Sense of coherence and health in women: a 25-year follow-up study.BMC women's health · 2023Article
- Understanding language processing in variable populations on their own terms: Towards a functionalist psycholinguistics of individual differences, development, and disorders.Applied psycholinguistics · 2023Article
- Preclinical Disease or Risk Factor? Alzheimer's Disease as a Case Study of Changing Conceptualizations of Disease.The Journal of medicine and philosophy · 2023Article
- Ecosystem health and malfunctions: an organisational perspective.Biology & philosophy · 2023Article
- But what do we mean by "health"? A critical perspective on the concept of health in the adolescent transition program of a Norwegian university hospital.BMC health services research · 2022Article
8 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Abstract
Contemporary philosophy of health has been quite focused on the problem of determining the nature of the concepts of health, illness and disease from a scientific point of view. Some theorists claim and argue that these concepts are value-free and descriptive in the same sense as the concepts of atom, metal and rain are value-free and descriptive. To say that a person has a certain disease or that he or she is unhealthy is thus to objectively describe this person. On the other hand it certainly does not preclude an additional evaluation of the state of affairs as undesirable or bad. The basic scientific description and the evaluation are, however, two independent matters, according to this kind of theory. Other philosophers claim that the concept of health, together with the other medical concepts, is essentially value-laden. To establish that a person is healthy does not just entail some objective inspection and measurement. It presupposes also an evaluation of the general state of the person. A statement that he or she is healthy does not merely imply certain scientific facts regarding the person's body or mind but implies also a (positive) evaluation of the person's bodily and mental state. My task in this paper will be, first, to present the two principal rival types of theories and present what I take to be the main kind of reasoning by which we could assess these theories, and second, to present a deeper characterization of the principal rival theories of health and illness.
Indexed as
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16955344What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.