Abstract:

In the contemporary literature about the nature of disease, we distinguish between three groups of theories of disease, which may be labeled “axiologism about disease”, “malfunctionalism about disease” and “hybridism about disease”. These three groups of theories of disease are distinguished with respect to the emphasis put on one or both of the two (main) intuitions that we have about what disease is: (1) saying that e.g. cell growth is cancerous is making a specific negative value judgement toward cell growth, where the value at issue is intuitively a certain lethal one (like death), by contradistinction with a vital value like health or life; (2) saying that cell growth is cancerous is saying that cell growth is biologically malfunctioning.

In this talk, after presenting (and critically illustrating) the above three groups of theories of disease, I argue, in the second part, for a certain hybrid theory of disease called “essentialism about disease”, according to which x is diseased, if and only if (i) x is a healthy processual part of an organism, and (ii) x has a specific lethal value i.e. that x hosts properties destroying x’s essence.

Speaker:

François Pellet is a philosopher of science with a research focus on philosophy of (evolutionary) biology and of medicine. He is currently working as a PhD student at the University of Münster within the Münster Graduate School of Evolution on a DAAD-funded research project, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Ulrich Krohs, on the nature of disease. 
From April to May 2019, he is holding a visiting position at the Duesseldorf Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science.