Incapacity

Definition

A broad umbrella concept spanning medical, legal, and functional inability, contrasted with "disability" (often more status/rights-based) and "incapacitation" (often the active process of losing capacity).

Prerequisite chain

1. Condition. Varies by discipline - medical, legal, or functional inability
2. Functional status. A specific act or decision can't be performed
3. Applied test. Modern approach favours decision-specific, functional testing over blanket status labels

Qualifiers

• Severity. N/A
• Duration. N/A
• Scope. N/A
• Other. Academic usage varies significantly by discipline (law, medicine, sociology, bioethics)

Impact

Varies by discipline; commonly used to denote a functional or legal inability to perform a specific act or decision.

Example

A bioethics paper argues for decision-specific incapacity assessments in hospital consent processes, rather than a single global "incapacitated" label.