Action, Ability and Health Essays in the Philosophy of Action and Welfare [Paperback]

This book is a contribution to the general philosophy of action and the philosophy of welfare. The author makes separate analyses of concepts such as action, ability, interaction, action-explanation, happiness, health, illness and disability. At the same time he explores and substantiates the idea of a strong interdependence between the concept of action and some of the central concepts of welfare, in particular health and illness and related concepts.

This book is a part of the ongoing enterprise to understand the nature of human health and illness. This enterprise has expanded dramatically during the last decades. A great number of articles, as weIl as a fair number of monographs, on this topic have been published by renowned international publishers. In this discussion most participants share the idea that health is a partially normative concept, Le. that health is not a phe? nomenon which can be wholly characterised in biological (or otherwise descriptive) terms. To ascribe health to a person is eo ipso, according to this line of thought, to as? cribe a positively evaluated property to this person. Moreover, most debators share the idea that health is a holistic property, belonging to the person as a whole, whereas dis? eases, injuries and defects are entities (or properties of entities) which can be very lim? ited and and normally affect only a part of the individual. My own monograph belongs to this tradition. A feature of my position, which is not universally acknowledged in riyal theories, however, is my emphasis on the notion of ability as a fundament in the theory of health. In my formal characterisation of health I view it as astate of a person which is such that the person has the ability to fulfi1 his or her vital goals.Preface. Introduction. Part I: Action Theory. 1. Towards an ontology of episodes. 2. Towards an analysis of the concept of action. 3. On complex actions: accomplishments and projects. 4. On the explanation and determlc,