REPLY TO LILIENFELD - WHY ALCOHOLISM IS A DISEASE

Lilenfeld's attack on my conceptual examination of the disease concept of alcoholism suffers from erroneous interpretations, fallacious reas oning, and a lack of familiarity with relevant alcoholism research. He offers an alternative nominalist interpretation of the disease concep t of alcoholism based on a fuzzy boundary between disease and wellness . He fails to recognize that the basic issue between nominalist and re alist accounts of a lower-order concept such as alcoholism is the pres ence or absence of general principles that may account for the observe d signs and symptoms characterizing a specific disease entity, not fuz zy boundaries between higher-order categories. Extensive evidence (whi ch Lilienfeld ignores) of biological bases for the pathognomic signs a nd symptoms of alcoholism, particularly loss of control, demonstrates that the disease concept of alcoholism refers to a disease entity that has a biological basis. It is not a ''mental construct.''