Brown W M
J Med Philos. 1985 Nov;10(4):311-28. doi: 10.1093/jmp/10.4.311.
This essay examines several recent philosophical attempts to define 'disease'. Two prominent ones are considered in detail, an objective approach by Christopher Boorse and a normative approach by Caroline Whitbeck. Both are found to be inadequate for a variety of reasons, though Whitbeck's is superior because of her careful preliminary distinctions and because of its normative approach which is more nearly in accord with medical and lay usage. The paper concludes with a discussion of the nature of such efforts at definition and suggests that their limitations are due both to the nature of our language and concepts in general, and to the nature of medicine in particular. It is the practical and changing character of medicine and its language that frustrates the efforts of philosophers to formulate such definitions.
本文考察了近期一些试图定义“疾病”的哲学尝试。详细探讨了两种突出的方法，一种是克里斯托弗·波尔斯的客观方法，另一种是卡罗琳·惠特贝克的规范方法。尽管惠特贝克的方法因其细致的初步区分以及更符合医学和外行用法的规范方法而更具优势，但由于各种原因，这两种方法都被认为是不充分的。本文最后讨论了此类定义努力的性质，并指出其局限性既源于我们一般语言和概念的性质，也源于医学本身的性质。正是医学及其语言的实践性和不断变化的特征，使得哲学家们难以制定出这样的定义。
