Concept(s) of Health: Lifestyle at the Heart of Modern Health

Abstract

One significant project within the philosophy of medicine has been to explore the concepts of health and disease and their conceptual relationship—whether health is the absence of disease (negativism) or the presence of a positive state or capacity (positivism). While some contend that this project is hampered by some limitations of traditional philosophical analysis, this paper employs a multi-method approach, incorporating corpus linguistics, semantic feature production tasks, and vignette studies, to investigate the concept of health. Our principal finding is that adherence to healthy behaviors is one of the key criteria for assessing overall health. This finding not only contributes to the philosophical-medical debate but also has implications for health communication and policy development.