The disease characteristics is where this essay breaks down. Those don’t really line up with any medical definition of disease. Seems like he redefines disease in order to deconstruct it a bit.
Most of, if not all of them have nothing to do with what disease is. He is creating a definition wholecloth through his characteristics.
disease /dis·ease/ (dĭ-zēz´) any deviation from or interruption of the normal structure or function of any body part, organ, or system that is manifested by a characteristic set of symptoms and signs and whose etiology, pathology, and prognosis may be known or unknown.
It isn’t “mere contradiction”. It is a looking at what the writer is doing rhetorically and questioning the root of his argument. Again his characteristics of disease have nothing to do with our medical understanding of disease. Disease means something rather specific in the medical profession, and just throwing up a bunch of characteristics based on nothing more than he writers intuition (and with no supporting evidence) is a horrible foundation for an argument.
Disease does mean something specific to doctors, but doctors aren’t the only ones asking questions like “Is obesity really a disease?”
And when people ask that question, what matters to them isn’t really whether obesity matches the dictionary definition. In practice, it does boil down to trying to figure out whether the obesity should be treated medically, and whether obese people deserve sympathy. (On occasion, another question that is asked is “Does the condition need to be ‘fixed’ at all?”)
You can’t answer these questions by checking the dictionary to see if obesity is a disease. In general, thinking of “disease” as a basic concept results in confusion. If you’re not certain whether obesity is a disease, and what you really want to know is whether it should be treated medically, then the right thing to do is to first figure out “What about diseases makes medical intervention a good idea?” And then you figure out whether obesity satisfies the criteria you come up with.
No. That is not how things work. All you are doing is confusing several different questions into one. The response to peoples’ misunderstanding of what disease means isn’t to embrace their understanding as a new definition of disease and take each component of that new definition bit by bit. It is to clarify what disease is (and disease means something). Then once you estabish the medical definition of disease, you can ask: does obesity qualify as a disease. Then you can ask ose other questions in light of our answer (do sufferers from obesity deserve our sympathy, is obesity a good or bad thing, should it be treated, etc). That doctors label it a disease doesn’t give us an ought, it gives us an is. Just because doctors determine something is a disease that doesn’t mean it has to be treated. We need to establish what the individual wants and give him the best info to make that choice himself (how long does he want to live, what kind of lifestyle and diet is acceptable to him, how important is it to him to be perceived as fit, etc). We can also establish general shoulds for the population if we assume most people want to live long and healthy livestherefore doctors encourage patients to avoid being obese (with the understanding that individual goals and desires vary). Then there is the quesiton of whether obesity is a matter of self control or not. Siply being a disease wouldn’t provide an answer to this. Soe diseases are outside the patient’s control, others aren’t. Again you are respondong to an inccorect understanding of what disease is, by offering up a bad new definition of disease and then confounding the definition with a bunch of questions that are largley seperate from the definiton itself. Tis more wrong, not less....
I’m not offering up a new definition of disease! I’m doing precisely the opposite.
Look, maybe you’re a perfect rational thinker already, but most people aren’t like that. They do conflate a bunch of different questions into the “disease” label.
If you impose a single fixed definition on everyone, and make sure they are all talking about the same thing… well, if it works, I don’t actually know what would happen, but it won’t work. You’ll just be arguing about the definition of disease all day.
The important point to make is that the people asking “is obesity a disease” don’t actually want to know that. They want to answer some other question. It’s simply irrelevant, most of the time, whether or not obesity satisfies the medical definition of disease, to do this.
So why waste time establishing that your official definition of the disease is better than someone else’s intuitive one? This just seems like an effort to try and frame the debate, so that people will address the real question “in light of your answer”.
The disease characteristics is where this essay breaks down. Those don’t really line up with any medical definition of disease. Seems like he redefines disease in order to deconstruct it a bit.
It does however, fit with (my impressions of) the way people use the word in real life, which is far more relevant to the point of this article.
Could you be more specific? Which characteristics do you dispute, and which other ones would you propose?
Most of, if not all of them have nothing to do with what disease is. He is creating a definition wholecloth through his characteristics.
disease /dis·ease/ (dĭ-zēz´) any deviation from or interruption of the normal structure or function of any body part, organ, or system that is manifested by a characteristic set of symptoms and signs and whose etiology, pathology, and prognosis may be known or unknown.
Ah. I think you are looking for something different in definitions than Yvain is getting at here. Have you read the linked posts “Disguised Queries”, “The Cluster Structure of Thingspace”, and “Words as Hidden Inferences”? These might explain some of the difference.
And?
Ah. I had assumed you were expressing curiosity, not merely contradiction. My mistake. Sorry about that.
It isn’t “mere contradiction”. It is a looking at what the writer is doing rhetorically and questioning the root of his argument. Again his characteristics of disease have nothing to do with our medical understanding of disease. Disease means something rather specific in the medical profession, and just throwing up a bunch of characteristics based on nothing more than he writers intuition (and with no supporting evidence) is a horrible foundation for an argument.
Disease does mean something specific to doctors, but doctors aren’t the only ones asking questions like “Is obesity really a disease?”
And when people ask that question, what matters to them isn’t really whether obesity matches the dictionary definition. In practice, it does boil down to trying to figure out whether the obesity should be treated medically, and whether obese people deserve sympathy. (On occasion, another question that is asked is “Does the condition need to be ‘fixed’ at all?”)
You can’t answer these questions by checking the dictionary to see if obesity is a disease. In general, thinking of “disease” as a basic concept results in confusion. If you’re not certain whether obesity is a disease, and what you really want to know is whether it should be treated medically, then the right thing to do is to first figure out “What about diseases makes medical intervention a good idea?” And then you figure out whether obesity satisfies the criteria you come up with.
No. That is not how things work. All you are doing is confusing several different questions into one. The response to peoples’ misunderstanding of what disease means isn’t to embrace their understanding as a new definition of disease and take each component of that new definition bit by bit. It is to clarify what disease is (and disease means something). Then once you estabish the medical definition of disease, you can ask: does obesity qualify as a disease. Then you can ask ose other questions in light of our answer (do sufferers from obesity deserve our sympathy, is obesity a good or bad thing, should it be treated, etc). That doctors label it a disease doesn’t give us an ought, it gives us an is. Just because doctors determine something is a disease that doesn’t mean it has to be treated. We need to establish what the individual wants and give him the best info to make that choice himself (how long does he want to live, what kind of lifestyle and diet is acceptable to him, how important is it to him to be perceived as fit, etc). We can also establish general shoulds for the population if we assume most people want to live long and healthy livestherefore doctors encourage patients to avoid being obese (with the understanding that individual goals and desires vary). Then there is the quesiton of whether obesity is a matter of self control or not. Siply being a disease wouldn’t provide an answer to this. Soe diseases are outside the patient’s control, others aren’t. Again you are respondong to an inccorect understanding of what disease is, by offering up a bad new definition of disease and then confounding the definition with a bunch of questions that are largley seperate from the definiton itself. Tis more wrong, not less....
I’m not offering up a new definition of disease! I’m doing precisely the opposite.
Look, maybe you’re a perfect rational thinker already, but most people aren’t like that. They do conflate a bunch of different questions into the “disease” label.
If you impose a single fixed definition on everyone, and make sure they are all talking about the same thing… well, if it works, I don’t actually know what would happen, but it won’t work. You’ll just be arguing about the definition of disease all day.
The important point to make is that the people asking “is obesity a disease” don’t actually want to know that. They want to answer some other question. It’s simply irrelevant, most of the time, whether or not obesity satisfies the medical definition of disease, to do this.
So why waste time establishing that your official definition of the disease is better than someone else’s intuitive one? This just seems like an effort to try and frame the debate, so that people will address the real question “in light of your answer”.