Health Problems : Philosophical Puzzles about the Nature of Health

Cover
Health Problems: Philosophical Puzzles about the Nature of Health
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
	1. The Distinctive Biological Importance of Health
	2. The Distinctive Normative Importance of Health
	3. The Distinctive Political Importance of Health
	4. The Distinctive Phenomenological Importance of Health
	5. Ameliorative Skepticism
	6. In Praise of Messiness
	7. A Reader’s Guide: Outline and Overview
		Chapter 1: Theories of Health
		Chapter 2: Health and Wellbeing
		Chapter 3: Health, Subjectivity, and Capability
		Chapter 4: Health and Disability
		Chapter 5: Ameliorative Skepticism and the Nature of Health
		Chapter 6: Ameliorative Skepticism, Shifting Standards, and the Measure of Health
1: Theories of Health
	1. Welcome to the Jungle
		1.1 Targets of Analysis
		1.2 Terminology and Methodology
	2. Function-Based Theories
		2.1 Biostatistical Theory
			2.1.1 Functional efficiency
			2.1.2 Dispositions and counterfactuals
			2.1.3 Hausman on benchmark environments
		2.2 Selected Function Theory
		2.3 What Normal Function Views Are Missing
	3. Normative Theories
		3.1 Cooper’s Account of Disease
		3.2 Teleological Views of Health
		3.3 Wellbeing-Based Views
			3.3.1 Health as wellbeing
			3.3.2 Health as an aspect of wellbeing
		3.4 Summary
	4. Phenomenological Theories
	5. Social Constructionist Theories
	6. Hybrid Theories
	7. Summing Up
2: Health and Wellbeing
	1. Health and Wellbeing: The Importance of the Distinction
		1.1 You Can Sacrifice Your Health to Increase Your Wellbeing
		1.2 Things Can Harm Your Wellbeing without Harming Your Health
		1.3 You Can Have Poor Health but High Levels of Wellbeing
		1.4 The Dangers of Healthism
	2. The Value of Health
		2.1 Resilience
		2.2 Social Stigma
		2.3 Previous Health Experiences
		2.4 Where Contribution Goes Systematically Wrong
	3. Grief, Loss, and Wellbeing
		3.1 A Small Story about Grief and the Good Life
		3.2 Grief and Wellbeing
		3.3 The Relevance of Grief to Thinking about Health
	4. Conclusion
3: Health, Subjectivity, and Capability
	1. Objectivity and Subjectivity
	2. The Objective Nature of Health
	3. The Subjective Nature of Health
		3.1 Pain and Subjectivity
		3.2 Subjectivity and the Biological Function of Pain
		3.3 Pain, Subjectivity, and Measurement
	4. Subjectivity, Equality, and Capability
		4.1 Equality and Subjectivity
		4.2 The Problem of the High Achiever
		4.3 Pain Tolerance and Coping
	5. The Social Components of Health
	6. In Practice: Measuring Health
		6.1 Pitfalls of Objective Outcome Measures
		6.2 Pitfalls of Subjective Outcome Measures
		6.3 The Fifth Vital Sign
		6.4 The Curious Case of the Functional Disorder
		6.5 Self-Rated Health
	7. Conclusion
4: Health and Disability
	1. Disability and Health: It’s Complicated
		1.1 Against the Spectrum View
		1.2 Against a Purely Social View
		1.3 Disability and Health: The Close Connection
	2. Disability, Health, and Wellbeing
	3. Some Unsuccessful Solutions
		3.1 Deny the Correlation
		3.2 Healthy versus Unhealthy Disabled
	4. A Metaphysical Interlude: The Statue and the Clay
		4.1 Two-Thing Solutions
		4.2 Dominant Sortal Solutions
		4.3 Lewis on Context and Counterparts
	5. Disability, Health, and Context
		5.1 A Lewisian Take on Disability and Loss of Health
		5.2 An Analogy to Aging
		5.3 Contexts and Justice
		5.4 Contexts and Conflict
	6. Grief, Loss, and the Good Life
	7. Conclusion
Appendix: Empirical Research on Disability and Subjective Wellbeing
	1. What Is Being Measured: Quality of Life
	2. What Is Being Measured: Disability
	3. What Is Being Measured: Severity
	4. What Is Being Measured: Co-Variables
	5. What Current Research Suggests: Subjective Wellbeing
	6. What Research Suggests: Hedonic Adaptation
	7. Conclusion
5: Ameliorative Skepticism and the Nature of Health
	1. Health: The Core Problem
	2. Ameliorative Skepticism
	3. Why Not Error Theory?
	4. Why Not Non-Reductive Realism?
	5. Why Not a Vague or Inconsistent Object?
	6. Why Not Pluralism or Pragmatism?
	7. Amelioration and Messiness
	8. A Model for Ameliorative Skepticism
	9. The Important, Impossible Role of Health
6: Ameliorative Skepticism, Shifting Standards, and the Measure of Health
	1. Health Judgments and Hard Cases
	2. Health and Shifting Standards
	3. Health as a Useful Shorthand
	4. Delia Graff Fara on Shifting Standards
		4.1 First Key Point: Terms Can Inherit the Imprecision of Our Aims and Purposes
		4.2 Second Key Point: We Can Make the Application of a Term More Precise by Making Our Aims and Goals More Precise
		4.3 Third Key Point: We Often Benefit from Having Imprecise Aims and Goals, and It Would Not Always Be Better for Us to Make Our Aims and Goals More Precise
		4.4 Fourth Key Point: Sometimes We Can Disagree with Each Other about the Application of a Term Because We Have Different Aims and Goals
	5. A Fara-Style Approach to Shifting Standards for Health
		5.1 We Inherit the Imprecision of Our Aims and Purposes—Health Redux
		5.2 We Can Make Our Aims and Goals More Precise—Health Redux
		5.3 We Often Benefit from Having Imprecise Aims and Goals, and It Would Not Always Be Better for Us to Make Our Aims and Goals More Precise—Health Redux
		5.4 Sometimes We Can Disagree with Each Other Because We Have Different Aims and Goals—Health Redux
	6. Messy Times, Messy Measures
	7. The Distinctive Significance of Health
Afterword: Parkinson’s Disease
	1. The Multiple Roles of Health
	2. Health and Wellbeing
	3. Health and Subjectivity
	4. Health and Disability
	5. Ameliorative Skepticism
	6. Health in Context
	7. Conclusion
Bibliography
Index