What question did this study set out to answer?

This research questions the definitions of health based on abilities and offers a new framework, the Blueprint View.

May 2, 2026Open Access

What Health Is

Key Points

This research questions the definitions of health based on abilities and offers a new framework, the Blueprint View.
Introduced the line-drawing challenge for defining health based on abilities.
Critically assessed existing theories of health and highlighted their flaws.
Proposed the Blueprint View as a comprehensive approach to understanding health.
Proposed that complete health corresponds to abilities in an organism's design state.
Established an objective definition of health that balances physiology and well-being.
Differentiated treatment from enhancement and real pathology from pathologized variation.

Abstract

This paper introduces the line-drawing challenge for ability-based accounts of health. What degree of which abilities is required for complete health? I argue that the answers provided by existing theories are flawed and propose the Blueprint View. On this view, an organism is completely healthy if and only if it has the abilities it would have in its design state, where design is determined by the etiology of its traits. This view provides an objective, naturalistic distinction between health and non-health. It strikes a balance between pure physiology and well-being, and distinguishes treatment from enhancement, as well as real pathology from pathologized variation.

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