Paracetamol, poison, and polio: why Boorse’s account of function fails to distinguish health and disease
Paracetamol, poison, and polio: why Boorse’s account of function fails to distinguish health and disease
Christopher Boorse’s Bio Statistical Theory (BST) defines health as the absence of disease, and disease as the adverse departure from normal species functioning. This paper presents a two-pronged problem for this account. First I demonstrate that, in order to accurately account for dynamic physiological functions, Boorse’s account of normal function needs to be modified to index functions against situations. I then demonstrate that if functions are indexed against situations, the BST can no longer account for diseases that result from specific environmental factors. The BST is impaled on either horn of this dilemma and therefore must be dismissed.
241-264
Kingma, Elselijn
24f1e065-3004-452c-868d-9aee3087bf63
June 2010
Kingma, Elselijn
24f1e065-3004-452c-868d-9aee3087bf63
Kingma, Elselijn
(2010)
Paracetamol, poison, and polio: why Boorse’s account of function fails to distinguish health and disease.
British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 61 (2), .
(doi:10.1093/bjps/axp034).
Abstract
Christopher Boorse’s Bio Statistical Theory (BST) defines health as the absence of disease, and disease as the adverse departure from normal species functioning. This paper presents a two-pronged problem for this account. First I demonstrate that, in order to accurately account for dynamic physiological functions, Boorse’s account of normal function needs to be modified to index functions against situations. I then demonstrate that if functions are indexed against situations, the BST can no longer account for diseases that result from specific environmental factors. The BST is impaled on either horn of this dilemma and therefore must be dismissed.
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e-pub ahead of print date: 24 August 2009
Published date: June 2010
Organisations:
Philosophy
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Local EPrints ID: 356568
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/356568
ISSN: 0007-0882
PURE UUID: 6e33cde2-f5fc-4b8a-9742-c3a7c4d66038
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Date deposited: 30 Sep 2013 13:49
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 14:50
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