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4 - Philosophical Issues in the Addictions

from Part I - Concepts of Addiction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2020

By
Shane N. Glackin
Edited by
Steve Sussman
Steve Sussman
Affiliation:
University of Southern California
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Summary

The study of addiction throws up a wide range of philosophical issues, connecting with some of the deepest and longest-running debates in ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of science, to name but a few subdisciplinary areas. By straddling such a wide range of fields of scientific enquiry, as this Handbook demonstrates, it also throws up numerous conceptual, explanatory, and methodological quandaries between disciplines, of the sort that philosophers have over the years developed many tools to deal with and reconcile. In this chapter, I first summarize some early philosophical treatments of addiction, as well as descriptions of addiction among the ancient philosophers themselves, before considering some of the major philosophical debates with which the study of addiction intersects, and the significance of those debates and intersections for the understanding of addiction in other disciplines.

Keywords

akrasiaaddictionnaturalistsconventionalismloopingdiseasemorality
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Substance and Behavioral Addictions , pp. 38 - 50
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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