Author	Nordenfelt, Lennart. author
Title	Action, Ability and Health [electronic resource] : Essays in the Philosophy of Action and Welfare / by Lennart Nordenfelt
Imprint	Dordrecht : Springer Netherlands : Imprint: Springer, 2000
Connect to	http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9361-8
Descript	XVII, 173 p. 1 illus. online resource

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 pheยญ 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 asยญ 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 disยญ eases, injuries and defects are entities (or properties of entities) which can be very limยญ 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

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 determination of actions -- 5. On the logical form of action-explanations -- 6. On the logical form of interaction -- 7. Towards a theory of ability and disability -- II: Action-Theory as a Basis for the Theories of Health and Welfare -- 8. On the notion of health as ability -- 9. On the concepts of vital goal and happiness -- 10. On the multiplicity of health concepts -- III: Action-Theoretic Applications in the Theory of Health and Health Care -- 11. On the technical notions of disability and handicap: the WHO context -- 12. On the complexity of autonomy -- 13. A sketch for a theory of health enhancement -- 14. On the role of compulsion in mental illness. The case of forensic psychiatry -- IV: Summary of Basic Concepts

1. Philosophy
2. Philosophy of mind
3. Medicine -- Philosophy
4. Public health
5. Medical ethics
6. Philosophy
7. Philosophy of Medicine
8. Philosophy of Man
9. Philosophy of Mind
10. Theory of Medicine/Bioethics
11. Public Health