An analysis of the meaning of some concepts related to health.
From the logical point of view health is a certain condition (state) of the human organism, i.e. a set of the organism's attributes. The components of an abstract (general) notion of health, i.e. its features, are classes of phenomena which may be ascribed to a given individual. The concrete notion of health (condition of health) of a given individual embraces particular realisations of the features, i.e. values or properties of the organism. The health attributes are one-argument relations as well as two- or multi-argument ones. The health features and properties are either external (subjectively and/or intersubjectively observable) or internal (characterizing the internal parts of the organism). The distinction of normal (positive) and abnormal (negative, pathological) external and internal health properties is based mainly on systemic, statistic and subjective criteria. According to the everyday usage, the sets of external negative properties are illnesses, while the sets of internal negative ones that provoke (actually or potentially) and illness correspond to diseases or pathological entities.
Doroszewski
J
J
Department of Biophysics and Biomathematics, Medical Centre for Postgraduate Education, Warszawa, Poland.
D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D008128:Logic; D010686:Philosophy, Medical; D012016:Reference Values