After considering Plato’s Theory of Forms as one type of essentialist definition, (as I discussed in my recent posts Definitions and Essentialism: Plato and Is There a Platonic Form of Health?) let’s see what Aristotle has to offer.
Let’s consider his concept of a causal definition, which, simply put, means that in order to define a thing we need to identify its cause.
Without getting into the complicated subject of Aristotle’s thoughts about causality ( and perhaps also Hume’s doubts about causality), let’s take a look at an example. Quoting Raizel Abelson1:
As an example of a causal definition, Aristotle defined a lunar eclipse as a privatization of the moon’s light because of the interposition of the earth between the moon and the sun (Posterior Analytics 90a).
Now, for the word eclipse, I like this definition. It feels right, and I would have a hard time defining what an eclipse is without a similar description. To me, this appears to be a “good definition.”
But what makes it a good definition, and how can this be applied within healthcare and more specifically to the concept of health?
It appears that causal definitions do have some value to describe specific physical events, and I do think this does occur frequently within healthcare, especially in the context of defining a specific disease.
For example, most people would be comfortable with defining “strep throat’ as an infection in the throat and tonsils which is caused by bacteria called group A Streptococcus, or defining cholera as an acute, diarrheal illness caused by infection of the intestine with the toxigenic bacterium Vibrio cholerae serogroup O1 or O139. Causal definitions for diseases are quite useful and widespread within healthcare.
However, health is certainly not a disease, and as it’s unlikely there will ever be any widespread consensus of any necessary and sufficient causes for health, I suspect pursuing a causal definition of health will be a dead end.
- Raiziel Abelson, “Defintions,” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards (New York: Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1967), 314-324.