Computer Ethics

Well-Being: Part 1

Christopher L. Holland

Saint Louis University

September 5, 2024

Well-Being

What is noninstrumentally good for a person

Well-Being

Theories of well-being attempt to tell us what makes a person’s life better or worse for them.

Synonyms and terms closely associated with well-being include:

• welfare
• personal-interest
• self-interest
• quality of life

• eudaimonia
• happiness
• flourishing

Key Concepts

Instrumental Value

Something is instrumentally valuable if and only if it is valuable as a means to some other valuable thing.

Final Value (non-instrumental value)

Something is finally valuable if and only if it is valuable as an end.

Prudential/Personal Value

Something is prudentially valuable for someone if and only if it benefits that person.

Theories of Well-being

We can divide theories of well-being into four major types:¹

• hedonism
• desire satisfactionism
• eudaimonism
• objective list theories

Each theory offers a different account of final prudential value.

1. This taxonomy is based on Appendix I of Derek Parfit’s Reasons and Persons ([1984] 1987). Parfit did not include eudaimonism.

Hedonism

Pleasure is finally valuable, and pain is finally disvaluable. A person is doing well to the extent that their life is pleasant and poorly to the extent that their life is unpleasant.

Desire Satisfactionism

Also called preferentialism and desire-fulfillment theory. It is finally good for a person to have their desires satisfied, and it is bad for a person to have their desires frustrated. A person is doing well to the extent that their desires are satisfied, and a person is doing poorly to the extent that they are frustrated.

Hedonism. There are multiple theories of pleasure and pain available to welfare hedonists. Some hedonists—for example, Roger Crisp (2006) and Ben Bramble (2016)—adopt a phenomenological theory of pleasure and pain. According to phenomenological theories, pleasure and pain are part of the felt quality of an experience—the parts that feel good or bad. Call the corresponding hedonism phenomenological hedonism. Other hedonists—for example, Fred Feldman (2002, 2004) and Chris Heathwood (2006, 2007)—adopt an attitudinal theory of pleasure and pain. According to these theories, pleasure and pain are attitudes directed toward states of affairs. For example, I take pleasure in the fact that my team won, or I am pained that they lost.^factive On these views, sensory pleasures and pains (a warm feeling on my skin, a twinge in my knee) are pleasant or unpleasant because of our attitude toward them (because we enjoy or disenjoy them^disenjoy). Call the corresponding hedonism attitudinal hedonism.^hedonisms

^factive: My use of the phrase “in the fact that” should not imply that attitudinal pleasures and pains are factive.
^disenjoy: I borrow the admittedly awkward term disenjoy from Feldman: “Enjoyment has its opposite number. We might call this ‘disenjoyment’ but it is easier to call it attitudinal pain. Just as we say that someone takes pleasure in some things, we can say that he ‘takes pain’ in others. To take pain in something is to disenjoy it. If we represent amounts of enjoyment with numbers, then we can introduce a simplifying assumption: to disenjoy something to some extent, \(n\), is to enjoy it to some negative extent, \(-n\)” (2002). ^hedonisms: For more on the phenomenological and attitudinal theories of pleasure, see Bramble (2011); Lin (2020).

Desire satisfactionism. Desire satisfaction theories of well-being employ a technical sense of the terms desire, satisfy, and frustrate. Desires are factive, intentional states that take states of affairs as their objects. A desire is satisfied when the desired state of affairs obtains and frustrated when it does not. Eden Lin (2022, sec. 3) provides a helpful example. Suppose I desire that there is life on Mars, and there is. Then my desire is satisfied—even if I never come to believe that the planet is inhabited. It is important to separate this from the experiential sense of satisfaction—a cool glass of water slakes my thirst. An unrestricted version of the theory treats satisfaction as the sole criterion for prudential value. However, most desire theorists endorse a restricted view. For example, they might add that my desire must be about my life or that I must believe that my desire has been satisfied.

Call the first constraint success (see Parfit [1984] 1987, 494) and the second awareness (see Heathwood 2021, 72).

Eudaimonism

Also called nature-fulfillment theory and perfectionism. It is finally good for a person to fulfill (or perfect) their nature. Here, nature fulfillment is sometimes understood in functional terms. A person is doing well to the extent that they are functioning well, and poorly when they are not.

List Theories

These theories begin with a list of intuitively plausible final goods. Lists vary from theory to theory but often include achievement, friendship, happiness, pleasure, and virtue.

Eudaimonism. Eudaimonists tend to focus on species-level (or kind-level) nature fulfillment. Call this subject-transcendent eudaimonism. Another option, less explored in current literature, is individual nature fulfillment. Call this subject-dependent eudaimonism.^eudaimonisms I suspect that subject-transcendent eudaimonism is the preferred theory for most Christian philosophers. This is certainly true of the Catholic natural law tradition.

List Theories. There are two significant divisions for list theories. First, a list theory can be brute or principled. If the list items are justified individually and intuitively, call this a brute list. If the list items are unified under a single principle, call this a principled list. For example, eudaimonists who generate a list of goods from their account of human nature are also list theorists.^brutelist Second, a list theory can be subjective or objective. If at least one list item is good for welfare subjects, regardless of how they feel about it, call this an objective list; otherwise, call this a subjective list.^plur-list

^eudaimonisms: On the varieties of eudaimonism, see Haybron (forthcoming, ch. 3, sec. 4). ^brutelist: See Haybron (2008, 36, 287n23; forthcoming, ch. 6, sec. 5.2) for the distinction between brute and principled lists. ^plur-list: Some theorists (e.g., Fletcher 2013, 2015) allow for one-item lists. Hedonism, then, is a list theory—a very short list theory. This leads to a third division among list theories—a list can be monistic or pluralistic. Pace Fletcher, I will assume that a list involves two or more items.

Subjective Theories of
Well-Being

Subjectivist (or mental-state) theorists tend to endorse one or both the experience requirement and the resonance constraint.

The Experience Requirement

Something can benefit or harm a being only if it affects her experiences in some way—specifically, their phenomenology (or ‘what it is like’ to be having them). (Bramble 2016, 88)

The Resonance Constraint

What is intrinsically valuable for a person must have a connection with what he would find in some degree compelling or attractive, at least if he were rational and aware. It would be an intolerably alienated conception of someone’s good to imagine that it might fail in any such way to engage him. (Railton 1986, 9)

Hedonism

Intense, long, certain, speedy, fruitful, pure—
Such marks in pleasures and in pains endure.
Such pleasures seek if private be thy end:
If it be public, wide let them extend.
Such pains avoid, whichever be thy view:
If pains must come, let them extend to few.

            —Jeremy Bentham ([1789] 1996, 38)

Hedonism

• Often associated with the consequentialist moral theories of Jeremy Bentham and J. S. Mill, but hedonic theories have ancient roots (e.g., Plato’s Philebus and Epicurus.)
• Something is finally good (non-instrumentally good) for a person if and only if it is a pleasant/pleasurable mental experience.
• Something is finally bad (non-instrumentally bad) for a person if and only if it is an unpleasant/painful mental experience.
• Hedonism is making a comeback. Contemporary hedonist include: Roger Crisp, Ben Bradley, Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek, Peter Singer, Theron Pummer, Fred Feldman and Chris Heathwood.

Issue: Nozick’s Experience Machine thought experiment



Nozick’s Experience Machine Thought Experiment

Suppose there were an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired. Superduper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain. Should you plug into this machine for life, preprogramming your life’s experiences? . . . [S]uppose that business enterprises have researched thoroughly the lives of many others. You can pick and choose from their large library or smorgasbord of such experiences. . . . After two years… you will have [time] out of the tank, to select the experiences of your next two years. Of course, while in the tank . . . you’ll think it’s all actually happening. Others can also plug in to have the experiences they want, so there’s no need to stay unplugged [for] them. . . . Would you plug in? What else can matter to us, other than how our lives feel from the inside? (Nozick [1974] 2013, 42–43)

Some philosophers think that a revised version of the thought experiment comparing two experientially identical whole lives—one lived inside the machine and one outside of it—gives a better result (Crisp 2006; Lin 2016).

Nozick’s argument:

Inside the machine you cannot

1. Do anything (the machine does everything for you by manipulating your brain)
2. Be a certain kind of person (your character is essentially replaced by the character of the life you choose)
   ISSUE: Does the machine basically kill by replacing you with someone else?
3. Have contact with reality

Reality Machines (VR)

VR is different from the original thought experiment.

Inside the machine you cannot

1. Do anything (the machine does everything for you by manipulating your brain)
2. Be a certain kind of person (your character is essentially replaced by the character of the life you choose)
   ISSUE: Does the machine basically kill by replacing you with someone else?
3. Have contact with reality

Is 3 a problem for the future of VR?

David Chalmers (Chalmers 2022, 2017, 2019) has argued that virtual reality is a sort of genuine reality and that virtual worlds (under the right conditions) can have the same sort of value that non-virtual worlds have.

Desire-Fulfillment Theories

• A person’s life goes better for them to the extent that their actual or idealized desires are satisfied/fulfilled and worse for them to the extent that their desires are frustrated/unfulfilled.
• Also called preference theories or desire-satisfaction theories.

Issues:

• What about base and trivial desires?
• The problem of adaptive preferences (e.g., aim low so you will not be disappointed)

Grass Counter Objection

Rawls “grass counter” is often cited as an objection to the desire-fulfillment view of well-being

Thus imagine someone whose only pleasure is to count blades of grass in various geometrically shaped areas such as park squares and well-trimmed lawns. He is otherwise intelligent and actually possesses unusual skills, since he manages to survive by solving difficult mathematical problems for a fee. The definition of the good [think final prudential good as desire-fulfillment* forces us to admit that the good for this man is indeed counting blades of grass, or more accurately, his good is determined by a plan that gives an especially prominent place to this activity. Naturally we would be surprised that such a person should exist. (Rawls [1971] 2005, 432)

Sources

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———. 2016. “A New Defense of Hedonism about Well-Being.” Ergo, an Open Access Journal of Philosophy 3 (4). https://doi.org/10.3998/ergo.12405314.0003.004.

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———. 2019. “The Virtual as the Digital.” Disputatio 11 (55): 453–86. https://doi.org/10.2478/disp-2019-0022.

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———. 2004. Pleasure and the Good Life: Concerning the Nature, Varieties, and Plausibility of Hedonism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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———. 2015. “Objective List Theories.” In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Well-Being, edited by Guy Fletcher, 148–60. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315682266.

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———. Forthcoming. The Lives We Should Want. May 9, 2023, manuscript. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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