Rethinking health and disease in the age of the cyborg: Conceptual challenges for philosophy of medicine

Abstract

Concepts of health and disease occupy a foundational position within medicine, shaping clinical decision-making, research agendas, public health policies, and ethical evaluation. Despite their differences, both naturalistic and normativist approaches to health and disease share an organism-centered orientation. While these frameworks have offered important insights, their underlying assumptions have become increasingly difficult to sustain in contemporary medical practice.

Advances in medical technology have produced forms of embodiment in which implantable devices, long-term pharmacological regulation, neurotechnological interventions, and algorithmic decision systems play a constitutive role in regulating bodily functions and clinical judgment. In such contexts, technology can no longer be understood as merely external to a self-contained organism. Drawing on the concept of the cyborg condition, this paper analyzes the growing interdependence between biological and technological elements in medicine. Against this background, the paper critically examines naturalistic and normativist theories, focusing on their reliance on biological norms and species-typical functioning. As technological interventions become pervasive, distinctions between natural and artificial, internal and external, and therapy and enhancement grow increasingly unstable.Rather than proposing a complete alternative theory, the paper highlights the limits of existing frameworks and argues for a more relational and systemic view in which health and disease are understood as features of human-technology systems.