Universal Health Coverage: Solution or Siren? Some Preliminary Thoughts

In recent years, there has been a growing groundswell of support for the idea that universal health coverage should be provided even in the developing world. While I wholeheartedly agree with the eventual goal of attaining universal health coverage globally, and the sooner the better, I have worries as to whether the world's rich countries, or institutions like the World Health Organization, should be pushing the world's poorest countries to take whatever steps are necessary to achieve that goal. My fear is that universal health coverage in the developing world is an intoxicating, but potentially dangerous, idea whose time may not yet have come. This article's aim is not to settle the question of whether the developing world should be urged, or pushed, to adopt policies of universal health coverage. It is merely to explore some worries about the wisdom of such a tack. The article is divided into eight sections. In Section 1, I give a brief introduction. In Section 2, I provide some background for my topic. In Section 3, I discuss the notion of universal health coverage, and what the push for such a goal in the developing world seemingly involves. In Section 4, I raise some general worries I have about the push for universal health coverage in the developing world. In Section 5, I present a wide range of possible justifications for universal health coverage in the developing world. In Section 6, I discuss whether any of the purported justifications of universal health coverage in the developing world actually do so. In Section 7, I consider some comments, objections, and responses. Finally, in Section 8, I offer a brief conclusion.     

The Value of Nonhuman Nature: A Constitutive View

A central question of environmental ethics remains one of how best to account for the intuitions generated by the Last Man scenarios; that is, it is a question of how to explain our experience of value in nature and, more importantly, whether that experience is justified. Seeking an alternative to extrinsic views, according to which nonhuman entities possess normative features that obligate us, I turn to constitutive views, which make value or whatever other limits nonhuman nature places on action dependent on features intrinsic to human beings and constitutive of them or their obligations. After examining two kinds of constitutive views—environmental virtue ethics and Korsgaard’s Kantianism—I suggest an alternative that takes up the strengths of both while avoiding their shortcomings. On this view, we have an indirect obligation to experience nature as obligating us, although we have direct obligations only to human beings.     

A Primate Dictionary? Decoding the Function and Meaning of Another Species' Vocalizations

Decoding the function and meaning of a foreign culture's sounds and gestures is a notoriously difficult problem. It is even more challenging when we think about the sounds and gestures of nonhuman animals. This essay provides a review of what is currently known about the informational content and function of primate vocalizations, emphasizing the problems underlying the construction of a primate “dictionary.” In contrast to the Oxford English Dictionary, this dictionary provides entries to emotional expressions as well as potentially referential expressions. It therefore represents a guide to what animals do with their vocalizations, as well as how they are represented by signalers and perceivers. I begin by a discussion of the unit problem, of how an acoustic space is carved up into functionally significant components leading to a species‐specific repertoire or lexicon of sorts. This section shows how little we know about the units of organization within animal vocal repertoires, and how such lack of information constrains our ability to tackle the problem of syntactic structure. In Section III, I review research on the production and perception of vocal signals that appear to be functionally referential. This work shows that several nonhuman primates produce vocalizations that share some of the key properties of reference, but certainly not all; the components that are missing raises questions about their role as precursors to human words. In Section IV, I explore the social uses of vocalizations, assessing whether the signal contains sufficient information for listeners to judge a caller's credibility; ultimately, caller credibility determines how receivers select an appropriate response. Results show that individuals can use calls to assess whether someone is reliable or unreliable, and that such attributes are associated with individuals and particular contexts. I conclude by synthesizing the issues presented and then raise some directions for future conceptual and methodological progress.     

Careful What You Wish

Dilip Ninan has raised a puzzle for centered world accounts of de re attitude reports extended to accommodate what he calls “counterfactual attitudes.” As a solution, Ninan introduces multiple centers to the standard centered world framework, resulting in a more robust semantics for de re attitude reports. However, while the so-called multi-centered world proposal solves Ninan’s counterfactual puzzle, this additional machinery is not without problems. In Section 1, I present the centered world account of attitude reports, followed by the extension to counterfactual attitudes which Ninan targets with his puzzle. In Section 2, I pose the counterfactual puzzle and present Ninan’s multi-centered world solution, emphasizing similarities and differences between multi-centered and centered world accounts of attitude reports. In Section 3, I argue the counterfactual attitude wishing falls under the purview of the multi-centered proposal, but that the proposal generates false predictions for wish reports concerning unsatisfiable content. I canvass responses, ultimately concluding Ninan’s proposal requires substantial revisions.     

The elements of emotion

I join the growing ranks of theorists who reject the terms of traditional debates about the nature of emotion, debates that have long focused on the question of whether emotions should be understood as either cognitive or somatic kinds of states. Here, I propose and defend a way of incorporating both into a single theory, which I label the “Integrated Representational Theory” of emotion (IRT). In Section 2 I begin to construct the theory, defining and explaining emotions in terms of three pieces of content: representations of (1) the emoter’s body, (2) something in the world, and (3) a relevance relation between the objects of these first two pieces of content. I describe four general advantages I think the IRT offers. Finally, in Section 3, I elucidate and defend my account by contrasting it with another, similar proposal: Barlassina and Newen’s Impure Somatic Theory. In so doing, I explain two additional advantages of my view: first, it supports a unified explanation of all types of emotional response; and second, it offers the best framework for explaining how the representational contents of an emotion are integrated.     

Causes and mixed probabilities

In Section 1 I examine the use of probabilistic data to establish causal conclusions in non‐experimental research. In Section 2 I show that the probabilities involved in such research are inhomogeneous ‘mixed’ probabilities. Section 3 then argues that such mixed probabilities are responsible for the way common causes screen off correlations between their joint effects. Section 4 concludes that mixed probabilities are therefore crucial for the nature of the causal relation itself.     

Kant on Duties Regarding Nonrational Nature: Allen W. Wood

Kant's moral philosophy is grounded on the dignity of humanity as its sole fundamental value, and involves the claim that human beings are to be regarded as the ultimate end of nature. It might be thought that a theory of this kind would be incapable of grounding any conception of our relation to other living things or to the natural world which would value nonhuman creatures or respect humanity's natural environment. This paper criticizes Kant's argumentative strategy for dealing with our duties in regard to animals, but defends both his theory and most of his conclusions on these topics.     

Minding Animals, Minding Earth: Old Brains, New Bottlenecks

Abstract. I emphasize the importance of broadening behavioral, ecological, and conservation science into a more integrative, interdisciplinary, socially responsible, compassionate, spiritual, and holistic endeavor. I stress the significance of studies of animal behavior, especially ethological research concerned with animal emotions in which individuals are named and recognized for their own personalities, for helping us to learn not only about the nonhuman animal beings with whom we share Earth but also about who we are and our place in nature. We are best understood in relationship with others. To this end I develop the notions of “minding animals” and “deep ethology.” Animals are sources of wisdom, a way of knowing. We are all citizens of Earth, members of a global community in which intimate reciprocal and beneficent peaceful relationships are mandatory. A world without cruelty and with boundless compassion, respect, grace, humility, spirituality, and love would be a better world in which to live. We have compelling responsibilities for making Earth a better and more peaceful habitat for all beings. It is essential that we do better than our ancestors. We must reflect and step lightly as we “redecorate” nature. Time is not on our side. I plead for the development of heartfelt and holistic science that allows for joy and play. Science need not be suspicious of things it cannot fully understand. We must not avert our eyes or other senses from the eyes and voices of other beings who urgently need our uncompromising and unconditional aid and love. We can do much more than we have done for animals and the Earth.     

Are animals moral?: Zhu Xi and Jeong Yakyong’s views on nonhuman animals

One significant feature of Jeong Yakyong’s丁若鏞 (1762–1836) thought is his deconstruction of Zhu Xi’s 朱熹 (1130–1200) moral universe based on li 理 and qi 氣. For Zhu Xi, the world in its entirety was a moral place, but Jeong Yakyong distinguished nonmoral domains from the moral domain. One question that follows in pursuing a comparison of their philosophies on this topic is what each thinker meant by ‘moral’ and, in particular, whether they meant the same thing. In this paper, I delve deeper into this topic by comparing their respective perspectives on whether nonhuman animals are moral. Interestingly, they held exactly opposite views: Zhu Xi believed that certain actions on the part of nonhuman animals manifest moral values, whereas Jeong Yakyong claimed that none of the actions of nonhuman animals has moral value. In comparing their views, I introduce Mark Rowlands’ distinction between ‘moral subjects’ and ‘moral agents.’     

CHINESE MORAL VISION, RESPONSIVE AGENCY, AND FACTUAL BELIEFS

The principal aim of this essay is to offer a plausible basis for a philosophical appreciation of the Chinese vision of Tao^a as creative harmony of man and world. In Section I, I shall present a distinction between ideal norm and ideal theme and suggest that the Confucian and the Classical Taoist points of view may be regarded as encapsulating distinct but not necessarily incornpatible moral attitudes. Section II develops this contrast in terms of two different conceptions of responsive agency. In Section III, the final section, I turn to the problem of the characterization of moral vision in relation to the role of factual beliefs.     

Confronting ethical permissibility in animal research: rejecting a common assumption and extending a principle of justice

A common assumption in the selection of nonhuman animal subjects for research and the approval of research is that, if the risks of a procedure are too great for humans, and if there is a so-called scientific necessity, then it is permissible to use nonhuman animal subjects. I reject the common assumption as neglecting the central ethical issue of the permissibility of using nonhuman animal subjects and as being inconsistent with the principle of justice used in human subjects research ethics. This principle requires that certain classes of individuals not be subjected to a disproportionate share of the burdens or risks of research. I argue for an extension of this principle to nonhuman animal research and show that a prima facie violation of the principle occurs because nonhuman animals bear an overwhelmingly disproportionate share of the risks of research without sufficient justification or reciprocal benefit.     

Hegel,grandfather of disjunctivism

In this paper, I shall investigate whether Hegel can be considered as a sort of ancestor of McDowell’s disjunctivism. If this hypothesis turns out to be plausible, then the paper offers two gains. On the one hand, it offers an innovative interpretation of the way in which Hegel conceives of our sensible epistemic access to the world. On the other hand, McDowell's own claim that his own theoretical proposal has a Hegelian sound is supported by a previously unexplored argument. I organize my analysis into three parts: I sketch McDowell’s version of disjunctivism (Section 2); I analyze some passages from Hegel that I believe are important for showing some similarities between his and McDowell’s argumentative strategy (Section 3); in the conclusion (Section 4), I highlight a number of core features that Hegel seems to share with McDowell’s disjunctivism and I submit that they are sufficient to label Hegel the “grandfather” of McDowell's disjunctivism.     

What Is an Antique?

Antiques are undoubtedly objects worthy of aesthetic appreciation, but do they have a distinctive aesthetic value in virtue of being antiques? In this article we give an account of what it is to be an antique that gives the thesis that they do have a distinctive aesthetic value a chance of being true and suggests what that distinctive value consists in. After introducing our topic in Section I, in Section II we develop and defend the Adjectival Thesis: the thesis that the concept of being an antique is an adjectival concept. This provides us with the means to formulate our definition, which we do in Section III. In Section IV we further explicate and defend our definition. In Section V we conclude by briefly saying where we think our definition could be improved, by making a few comments about the aesthetics of antiques and by stating an interesting consequence of our definition: that it is not analytic that antiques are old.     

What are we frightened of?

I am concerned to understand that relation to a situation which we call fearing it. Some say this cannot be done: it is a brute fact about us that we fear certain things and we understand another's fear when we see that he confronts a situation of this sort (a basic fear object) or one which he understandably associates with this sort. In Section I, I argue that being associated with a basic fear object will not usefully explain a current fear. In Section II, I argue that the obvious candidates for being basic fears will not do the required work. The notion should be rejected. I then argue that to fear an object is to take it as exhibiting one's lack of control and I proceed to describe the nature and content of this notion.     

Infinite Value and the Best of All Possible Worlds

A common argument for atheism runs as follows: God would not create a world worse than other worlds he could have created instead. However, if God exists, he could have created a better world than this one. Therefore, God does not exist. In this paper I challenge the second premise of this argument. I argue that if God exists, our world will continue without end, with God continuing to create value‐bearers, and sustaining and perfecting the value‐bearers he has already created. Given this, if God exists, our world—considered on the whole—is infinitely valuable. I further contend that this theistic picture makes our world's value unsurpassable. In support of this contention, I consider proposals for how infinitely valuable worlds might be improved upon, focusing on two main ways—adding value‐bearers and increasing the value in present value‐bearers. I argue that neither of these can improve our world. Depending on how each method is understood, either it would not improve our world, or our world is unsurpassable with respect to it. I conclude by considering the implications of my argument for the problem of evil more generally conceived.     

Heidegger,Art, and the Overcoming of Metaphysics

In this paper, I advance a new interpretation of Heidegger's reflections on art as we find them in his essay, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’. I begin, in Section 1, by uncovering the fundamental concern that motivates Heidegger's essay. I show that Heidegger's reflections on art are part of his attempt to uncover a path beyond the history of metaphysics. I then suggest, in Section 2, that while Heidegger does think that art may allow for the overcoming of metaphysics, recent interpreters [Dreyfus ( 2005 ), Thomson ( 2011 ), and Young ( 2001 )] have mistook the kind of art that Heidegger has in mind here. The kind of art that can allow for the overcoming of metaphysics, I argue, is not art that simply thematizes and/or reconfigures cultural worlds (as these interpreters have argued). It is instead what Heidegger calls ‘primal poesy’. After discussing the nature of primal poesy, I show in more detail how this kind of art may be capable of getting us beyond the history of metaphysics in Section 3. Finally, in Section 4, I reconsider the more common reading of ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ in light of the interpretation I've offered in Sections 2 and 3.     

Abortion and the human animal.

I discuss three topics. First, there is a philosophical connecting thread between several recent trends in the abortion discussion, namely, the issue of our animal nature, and physical embodiment. The philosophical name given to the position that you and I are essentially human animals is "animalism." In Section II of this paper, I argue that animalism provides a unifying theme to recent discussions of abortion. In Section III, I discuss what we do not find among recent trends in the abortion discussion, namely "the right to privacy." I suggest some reasons why the right to privacy is conspicuous by its absence. Finally, I address Patrick Lee's claim that the evil of abortion involves "the moral deterioration that the act brings to those who are complicit in it, and to the culture that fosters it."     

Measurability And Physical Laws

I propose and motivate a new account of fundamental physical laws, the Measurability Account of Laws (MAL). This account has a distinctive logical form, in that it takes the primary nomological concept to be that of a law relative to a given theory, and defines a law simpliciter as a law relative to some true theory. What makes a proposition a law relative to a theory is that it plays an indispensable role in demonstrating that some quantity posited by that theory is measurable. In Section 1, I motivate the project of seeking a philosophical account of fundamental physical laws, as opposed to laws of nature in general. In Section 2, I motivate seeking an account with the distinctive logical form of the MAL. In Section 3, I present the MAL and illustrate the way it works by applying it to a simple example.     

On Davidson and interpretation

Davidson's theory of interpretation, I argue, is vulnerable to a number of significant difficulties, difficulties which can be avoided or resolved by the more Quinean approach which I develop. In Section 1 I note difficulties which apply to T-theories but are avoided by translation manuals. In Section 2 I show how to construct what I call T-manuals, which are like T-theories in requiring Tarskian structure, but like translation manuals in avoiding the difficulties discussed in Section 1. In Section 3 I show that the approach using T-manuals does at least as well as Davidson's with respect to a number of other concerns of his. In Section 4 I show that it does better than Davidson's with respect to reporting interpretations, especially where demonstrative utterances are concerned. In Section 5 I argue for (somewhat modified) Quinean empirical constraints, which go with manuals, as superior to the empirical constraints Davidson imposes, which go with T-theories. In Section 6 I show that Davidson is unable to offer an adequate account of what an interpreter knows; and propose a more acceptable theory of language mastery which gives a central role to the requirement that the interpreter's language usage satisfy the refined and amplified Quinean empirical constraints of Section 5.I wish to thank Susan Haack for her help in turning a draft into the present paper.     

Descartes,Malebranche and Leibniz: conceptions of substance in arguments for the immateriality of the soul

ABSTRACT

The most prominent early modern argument against materialism is to be found in Descartes. Previously I had argued that this argument relies crucially on a robust conception of substance, according to which it has a single principal attribute of which all its other intrinsic qualities are modes. In the present paper I return to this claim. In Section 2, I address a question that is often raised about that conception of substance: its commitment to the idea that a substance has a single such principal attribute. Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra and Daniel Garber have argued that this claim relies on Descartes's identification of substance with attribute. But I argue that it relies on his view that a substance has a single, unitary nature. In Section 3, I examine the role of this conception of substance in arguments found in Malebranche and Leibniz and compare these arguments with Descartes's.