In the philosophy of medicine, great attention has been paid to defining disease, yet less attention has been paid to the classification of clinical conditions. These include conditions that look like diseases but are not; conditions that are diseases but that (currently) have no diagnostic criteria; and other types, including those relating to risk for disease. I present a typology of clinical conditions by examining factors important for characterizing clinical conditions. By attending to the types of clinical conditions possible on the basis of these key factors (symptomaticity, dysfunction, and the meeting of diagnostic criteria), I draw attention to how diseases and other clinical conditions as currently classified can be better categorized, highlighting the issues pertaining to certain typology categories. Through detailed analysis of a wide variety of clinical examples, including Alzheimer disease as a test case, I show how nosology, research, and decisions about diagnostic criteria should include normative as well as naturalistically describable factors.

在医学哲学上，人们对疾病的定义给予了极大的关注，而对临床状况的分类却给予了较少的关注。这些条件包括看似疾病但并非如此的疾病；属于疾病但目前（没有）诊断标准的疾病；和其他类型，包括与疾病风险有关的类型。通过检查对表征临床状况重要的因素，我提出了临床状况的类型学。通过根据这些关键因素（症状，功能障碍和诊断标准的达到）来研究可能的临床状况类型，我提请注意如何更好地对当前分类的疾病和其他临床状况进行分类，从而突出问题关于某些类型学类别。