Are Models Irrelevant and Incoherent?

摘要

Bolton's (2014) article provides a wonderful sketch of the problems facing the Biopsychosocial model. His analysis is pithy and provocative. I focus on the conceptual issues he raises, with the aim of soliciting clarifications about his position. I will also argue that his argument has more radical conclusions than he himself spells out. It is difficult to get a grip on what a model of disease is meant to achieve. It is different from an analytic definition of disease, which presents necessary and sufficient conditions for what conditions count as disease. It is also different from giving a paradigm case of disease with the aim of explaining the meaning of a disease without providing necessary and sufficient conditions. Similarly, it is different from explaining disease as a cluster of concepts that are connected by family resemblance. But if it is not about definition, then what does a model aim to achieve?