Well-Being: Part 1
1 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
Heathwood’s Minimal Pairs Test for Final Prudential Value
From Chris Heathwood (2021).
- Coma
- Giles is in a terrible accident and falls into a coma. Although his brain is damaged, the rest of his body is a specimen of perfect health. Two days later, Giles dies.
- Coma Minus Health
- Giles is in a terrible accident and falls into a coma. Although his brain is damaged, the rest of his body is a specimen of near-perfect health. His only health defect is a minor renal contusion, caused by the accident, which makes one of Giles’s kidneys function slightly less well. Two days later, Giles dies.
- Coma Plus Life
- Giles is in a terrible accident and falls into a coma. Although his brain is damaged, the rest of his body is a specimen of perfect health. Three days later, Giles dies.
- Coma Plus Flicker
- Giles is in a terrible accident and falls into a coma. Although his brain is damaged, the rest of his body is a specimen of perfect health. Two days later, Giles dies. One evening while in the coma, he experiences a dim flicker of consciousness—a low-volume auditory hum. The sound does not cause him to have any thoughts: It doesn’t frighten him or make him wonder where he is; it is neither pleasant nor unpleasant.
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.
- 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
- It is finally good for a person to have their desires satisfied, and it is finally 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.
- 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.
2 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).
— Ben 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.
— Peter 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)
- 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.
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
- Do anything (the machine does everything for you by manipulating your brain)
- 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? - Have contact with reality
Reality Machines (VR)
VR is different from the original thought experiment.
Inside the machine you cannot
Do anything (the machine does everything for you by manipulating your brain)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?- Have contact with reality
Is 3 really a problem?
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 Satisfactionism
- Also called preference theories or desire fulfillment theories.
- A person’s life goes better for them to the extent that their intrinsic desires are satisfied/fulfilled and worse for them to the extent that their desires are frustrated/unfulfilled.
Types of Desire Satisfaction
- Subjective Desire Satisfactionism
- You are benefited when you intrinsically desire that something is true and you believe that it is true.
- Objective Desire Satisfactionism
- You are benefited when you intrinsically desire that something is true and it is true.
- Informed Desire Satisfactionism
- You are benefited whenever the desires of a hypothetical fully and vividly informed version of yourself are satisfied.
Issues for Desire Satisfactionism
- 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 desire-fulfilment theory of well-being] 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.
— John Rawls ([1971] 2005, 432)
References
Footnotes
This taxonomy is based on Appendix I of Derek Parfit’s Reasons and Persons ([1984] 1987). Parfit did not include eudaimonism.↩︎