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Accepted manuscript

A Domino Theory of Disease

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 December 2024

Harriet Fagerberg*
Affiliation:
Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, [email protected]
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Abstract

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This paper advances a theory of disease as domino dysfunction. It is often argued that diseases are biological dysfunctions. However, a theory of disease as biological dysfunction is complicated by some plausible cases of dysfunction, which seem clearly non-pathological. I argue that pathological conditions are not just dysfunctions but domino dysfunctions, and that domino dysfunctions can be distinguished on principled biological grounds from non-pathological dysfunctions. I then show how this theory can make sense of the problem cases; they are not diseases because they are not domino dysfunctions.

Type
Article
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Philosophy of Science Association