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'What is (mental) disease?': an open letter to Christopher Boorse
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UNSPECIFIED (2001) 'What is (mental) disease?': an open letter to Christopher Boorse. JOURNAL OF MEDICAL ETHICS, 27 (2). pp. 80-85. ISSN 0306-6800.
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Abstract
This "open letter" to Christopher Boorse is a response to his influential naturalist (value-excluding) analysts of disease from the perspective of linguistic-analytic value theory. The hey linguistic-analytic point against Boorse (and other naturalists) is that, although defining disease value free, he land they) continue to use the term with clear evaluative,e connotations. A descriptivist (value-entailing) analysis of disease would allow value-free definition consistently with value-laden use: but descriptivism fails when applied to mental disorder because it depends on shared values whereas the values relevant to mental disorders are highly diverse. A parr-function analysis, similarly, although initially persuasive for physical disorders,fails with the psychotic mental disorders because these, characteristically, involve disturbances of the rationality of the person as a whole. The difficulties encountered in applying: naturalism to mental disorders point, linguistic-analytically, to the possibility that there is, after all, an evaluative element of meaning, deeply hidden bur still logically operative, in the concept of disease.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||
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Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BJ Ethics R Medicine H Social Sciences > HM Sociology H Social Sciences |
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Journal or Publication Title: | JOURNAL OF MEDICAL ETHICS | ||||
Publisher: | BRITISH MED JOURNAL PUBL GROUP | ||||
ISSN: | 0306-6800 | ||||
Official Date: | April 2001 | ||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 27 | ||||
Number: | 2 | ||||
Number of Pages: | 6 | ||||
Page Range: | pp. 80-85 | ||||
Publication Status: | Published |
Data sourced from Thomson Reuters' Web of Knowledge
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