What does it mean to be healthy?

The concept of health has long been debated in philosophy and medicine, with discussions often centering on whether health is merely the absence of disease (negativism) or requires the presence of some positive state or ability (positivism). Empirical studies on the folk concept remain scarce and inconclusive. This paper investigates the folk concept of health through implication and contradiction tests. Our findings reveal that while people often infer that health entails both a disease-free state and lifestyle-related factors, interpretations of ‘health’ vary significantly depending on context, with participants associating health primarily with the absence of disease in medical settings while emphasizing lifestyle factors like diet and activity in personal training scenarios. These results suggest that the meaning of the folk concept of health is strongly context-dependent.