The concept of disease in the time of COVID-19

Philosophers of medicine have formulated different accounts of the concept of disease. Which concept of disease one assumes has implications for what conditions count as diseases and, by extension, who may be regarded as having a disease (disease judgements) and for who may be accorded the social privileges and personal responsibilities associated with being sick (sickness judgements). In this article, we consider an ideal diagnostic test for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection with respect to four groups of people—positive and asymptomatic; positive and symptomatic; negative; and untested—and show how different concepts of disease impact on the disease and sickness judgements for these groups. The suggestion is that sickness judgements and social measures akin to those experienced during the current COVID-19 outbreak presuppose a concept of disease containing social (risk of) harm as a component. We indicate the problems that arise when adopting this kind of disease concept beyond a state of emergency

Harm shouldn\u2019t be a necessary criterion for mental disorder: Some reflections on the DSM-5 definition of mental disorder

The general definition of mental disorder stated in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders seems to identify a mental disorder with a harmful dysfunction. However, the presence of distress or disability, which may be bracketed as the presence of harm, is taken to be merely usual, and thus not a necessary requirement: a mental disorder can be diagnosed as such even if there is no harm at all. In this paper, we focus on the harm requirement. First, we clarify what it means to say that the harm requirement is not necessary for defining the general concept of mental disorder. In this respect, we briefly examine the two components of harm, distress and disability, and then trace a distinction between mental disorder tokens and mental disorder types. Second, we argue that the decision not to regard the harm requirement as a necessary criterion for mental disorder is tenable for a number of practical and theoretical reasons, some pertaining to conceptual issues surrounding the two components of harm and others pertaining to the problem of false negatives and the status of psychiatry vis-\ue0-vis somatic medicine. However, we believe that the harm requirement can be (provisionally) maintained among the specific diagnostic criteria of certain individual mental disorders. More precisely, we argue that insofar as the harm requirement is needed among the specific diagnostic criteria of certain individual mental disorders, it should be unpacked and clarified

Ricostruire la fiducia nel dibattito pubblico in materia di sanità

L'articolo ricostruisce la crisi di fiducia tra i cittadini e le istituzioni sanitarie che precede la pandemia e suggerisce alcune strategie per contrastarla

Friendship as a Political Concept: A Groundwork for Analysis

What kind of a concept is friendship, and what is its connection to politics? Critics sometimes claim that friendship does not have a role to play in the study of politics. Such objections misconstrue the nature of the concept of friendship and its relation to politics. In response, this article proposes three approaches to understanding the concept of friendship: (1) as a ‘family resemblance’ concept, (2) as an instance of an ‘essentially contested’ concept, and (3) as a concept indicating a problématique. The article thus responds to the dismissal of friendship by undertaking the groundwork for understanding what kind of a concept friendship might be, and how it might serve different purposes. In doing so, it opens the way for understanding friendship’s relation to politics

Conceptual Analysis and Philosophical Naturalism

This chapter focuses on a recent revival of conceptual analysis, and the philosophical method of discovering necessary and a priori contents by describing conceptual relations. According to some philosophers, contents such as "Red is a color" are true by virtue of the deep structure of our cognitive system, and assuming that this structure is innate, such contents are true independently of experience. The chapter shows that the agenda of the inward approach contains at least two points. First, more empirical evidence needs to be found for the hypothesis of hard-wired conceptual rules, which would supplement the transcendental arguments given so far. Second, a supporter of the inward approach appears to be forced to choose between two alternative strategies. The first is to admit that conceptual relations are merely the rules of a system of representation; the second is to strive for a new version of the Transparency Thesis. © 2005 Elsevier Ltd

Concepts exist. More about Eliminativism

According to the recent trend of concept eliminativism in cognitive science, the term ‘concept’ is of no explanatory value and should be banned from scientific use. I argue that the version of eliminativism due to Edouard Machery does not individuate the referent of ‘concept’ at the right level of abstraction; in other words, it confuses concepts with their realizers. I recommend is that concepts are individuated at the level of functional kinds, and suggest some of their explanatory functions

Normatività

Le norme sono standard di valutazione e guidano il nostro comportamento razionale. Tutte le aree della filosofia trattano di norme e concetti normativi. Il presente contributo illustra in breve le principali questioni discusse oggi in filosofia analitica sulla norme e i concetti normativi: la domanda metafisica, la questione epistemologica, il problema della motivazione e l'estensione dell'ambito del normativo dai domini tradizionali dell'etica e teoria dell'azione, allo studio del significato e della mente