What are chronic diseases?

Jonathan Fuller

pp. 3197-3220

in: Luca Moretti, Tommaso Piazza (eds), Defeaters in current epistemology, Synthese 195 (7), 2018.

Abstract

What kind of a thing are chronic diseases? Are they objects, bundles of signs and symptoms, properties, processes, or fictions? Rather than using concept analysis—the standard approach to disease in the philosophy of medicine—to answer this metaphysical question, I use a bottom-up, inductive approach. I argue that chronic diseases are bodily states or properties—often dispositional, but sometimes categorical. I also investigate the nature of related pathological entities: pathogenesis, etiology, and signs and symptoms. Finally, I defend my view against alternate accounts of the nature of disease.