On Defining Illness

K. W. M. Fulford argues that illness can be defined as action failure where someone finds themselves unable to do something which they would normally ‘just get on and do’ though there is no external impediment. Thus a paralysed person intends to raise their arm but finds that they cannot or an alcoholic intends to stop drinking but is unable to. I argue that such people are ill whether or not they have the relevant intentions and that their illness may consist in the fact that even if they had had those intentions they would have been unable to act on them.