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    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Wakefield's connection of disease to an evolutionary concept of function is doubtful as a basis for medical science or common sense about disease

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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Wakefield ties disease conceptually to naturally selected capacity
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    • 2.Most theorists in biomedical contexts agree that organ function can be understood without treating it as an adaptation
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    • 3.The connection between disease and evolutionary function cannot be found in either science or common sense about disease
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Boorse's biostatistical theory defines disease via species-typical functioning without invoking natural selection, providing a viable non-evolutionary alternative.
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    • 2.Biomedical practice routinely classifies iatrogenic conditions and novel pathogens as diseases, yet these lack evolutionary histories of selection against them.
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    • 3.If evolutionary function were necessary for disease, then conditions arising post-industrially—like repetitive strain injury—would be categorically excluded, contra clinical consensus.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Neander and Millikan's teleosemantic work shows evolutionary functions face the 'swampman' problem: functional identity cannot depend on causal history alone.
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    • 2.Wakefield's hybrid account inherits indeterminacy from cladistic disputes about which ancestral population fixes the relevant selective environment for a trait.
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