pitt hps graduate student wip talks

The graduate students in the History and Philosophy of Science department at the University of Pittsburgh host regular Work in Progress talks to share ideas, get feedback, and promote community.

Talks are held in Room G28 of the Cathedral of Learning. While talks are not generally open to the public, exceptions can be made: Please contact Bryan Roberts if you are interested in attending an upcoming talk.
 

Next WIP Talk
2009 November 6 at 5:30 pm
Health Need
Jason Byron

Norman Daniels has developed an influential account of the just distribution of health care services and of what constitutes health needs. On that account, health needs are just those things we need to maintain, restore, or provide functional equivalents to (where possible) health. Health is the absence of pathology, which Daniels defines as any deviation from the functional organization of a typical member of the species or relevant species subgroup. Harmful pathologies are just those deviations in normal species functioning that restrict affected persons from a fair share of the normal range of opportunity open to them. One’s fair share of the normal range are the life plans one may reasonably choose, given one’s talents and skills (and correcting for unjust social arrangements that disadvantage some from developing their skills and talents). When one’s fair share of the normal range is restricted by harmful pathology, justice demands that society make certain efforts to restore it via access to health care services. This is because failing to restore that share of the normal range deprives individuals of their capacity to function as free and equal citizens—that is, citizens able to change their conception of the good over time and able to take advantage of their basic rights and liberties. In this way, meeting health needs is a fundamental requirement of justice.

In this talk, I criticize Daniels's account on two grounds. First, I argue that pathologies are not in fact objectively ascribable in the sense Daniels claims. Second, I argue that objective ascribability in Daniels’s sense is not required for pathology to be objectively important. (I will not directly consider whether welfarist accounts of health, according to which health needs arise solely from preferences, could satisfactorily answer the question of equity. It will suffice for my purposes that Daniels’s non-welfarist account provides grounds on which reasoned consensus is plausible.)

upcoming wip talks

September 18, 2009:
Tom Pashby
(abstract)

October 9, 2009:
Greg Gandenberger
(abstract)

October 16, 2009:
Balazs Gyenis
(abstract)

October 23, 2009:
Bryan Roberts
(abstract)

October 30, 2009:
Julia Bursten
(abstract)

November 6, 2009:
Jason Byron
(abstract)