Welfare

What role does pleasure play in well-being? (2000 Q10)

• Note that this presupposes that pleasure plays some role. That seems legitimate: a theory of wellbeing that denies the relevance of pleasure altogether seems implausible.
  • Why does this matter at all? Well, plausible moral theories will ascribe some moral value to well-being. So understanding what constitutes it matters morally.
• The three main accounts:
  • Hedonism: wellbeing is the balance of pleasure over pain, adjusting for intensity and duration.
    • Substantive vs explanatory questions: you could say that wellbeing consists in the balance of pleasure over pain; or make the further claim that the only good-making property is pleasantness.
      • Someone might think that pleasure constitutes wellbeing, but what makes it good is some further property, e.g. the fact that it fulfils human nature.
    • Note that you can cash out pleasure in two different ways:
      • Attitudinal account: pleasure is whatever experiences the subject wants to continue hedonism is closer to a restricted desire-satisfaction theory.
      • Objective account: pleasure is some particular state of affairs identifiable independently of the subject’s attitudes hedonism is a monist objective list theory
  • Objective list.
    • Most objective list theorists would put pleasure as among the intrinsic goods.
  • Desire satisfaction.
    • Pleasure matters only incidentally, because people (as a psychological fact) tend to desire it.
• Objection to hedonism: oyster vs Haydn (Crisp).
  • Mill tries to invoke higher/lower pleasures to address this.
    • But really he is bringing in a new quality dimension, which is a non-hedonic good-making property.
  • A better reply: transitivity argument (Huemer)
    • P1: If you make every day of a person’s life better and then add new days of their life which are good at the end of their life, you make the person’s life better.
    • P2: If one life has a million times higher average utility per day than another, a million times higher total utility, and more equal distribution of utility, it is a better life.
    • P3: Transitivity
    • C: It’s better to be the oyster than Haydn.
      • Because suppose you slightly increased Haydn’s utility every day to 1.1e3, then added a huge number of days at the end with miniscule utility 1e-100. That does improve his life by (1)
      • But even better than that, would be to be the oyster with constant utility 0.1, over a sufficiently longer period that total utility is higher, by (2)
    • One way to reject this argument is to deny P2. E.g., on Velleman’s view that the narrative structure of a life matters for overall wellbeing, not just the integral of welfare wrt time.
• Nozick’s experience machine is another attempt to provide intuitive force to non-hedonism.
  • The thought is that pleasure isn’t sufficient for the good life; we’d like real achievements etc.
  • Note that it’s wrong to think of the experience machine as wire-heading / direct pleasurable stimulation.
    • If that weren’t pleasant, then the experience machine would do something else that maximises pleasure (e.g. allowing me to immerse myself in activities like reading, which reliably generate pleasure).
  • One way to deflate those intuitions: we have strong status quo bias.
  • Also, hedonists can point to the “paradox of hedonism”: the pursuit of pleasure is in practice self-effacing (to maximally attain it you must do so indirectly), so we’ve developed heuristics according to which attempting to obtain pleasure directly seems very unattractive.
• For desire satisfaction, you need to be precise about which desires are to be satisfied.
  • Recall the present-aim theory. That seems incorrect: intuitively, we ought to sometimes go against our present desires for maximal lifetime wellbeing (e.g., going to dentist)
    • (You could claim that we always want what is best for us, just are misguided, cf Protagoras and akrasia. But this makes the theory rather undistinctive.)
  • What about summative comprehensive desire, where what matters is the total amount of desire-fulfilment over a lifetime?
    • But then, this suggests I should deliberately become addicted to a drug which gives me no pleasure from taking it, but I can reliably fulfil the desire to consume (Parfit)
  • Perhaps global comprehensive desire, where we put additional weight on preferences about the shape and content of my life.
    • Then, if I prefer not to become a drug addict, that’s a reason to not take Parfit’s drug.
    • But there’s a different, habituation-based counterexample: suppose I were brought up in a monastery and as a result desire only to live there. Is that the best life for me, as opposed to going outside?
  • Informed desire account: X promotes my welfare if I would desire it when fully informed about all non-evaluative facts, and actually do desire it now.
    • Objection from Rawls: the grass-counter’s life doesn’t seem like it’s good for her, even if she is perfectly informed about the options available.
    • Note that the informed desire account cannot talk about welfare in terms of the satisfaction of hypothetical desires I would have were I fully informed – because then there’s no actual desire being satisfied.
      • In that case the theory would collapse into an objective list theory with a desire-based epistemology (i.e., we discover what’s on the list via our desires in a maximally-informed state)
  • But all these desire satisfaction theories seem to fail for the same reason: they are reversing the explanatory priority between value and desire.
    • It’s not very plausible that desire is a good-making property. Surely the good is prior to our desire for it!
    • Cf Aristotle: we desire things because they seem good to us; their seeming good isn’t constituted by our desiring them.
    • Raz makes the point similarly: for X to be good for S, it must be choiceworthy in some non-relational sense.
  • So the real debate is between hedonism and objective list theories.
• Trouble with the objective list: seems elitist (it’s about the noble, to kalon!)
  • It claims that things are good for people even if they will not enjoy them, or even actively dislike them.
    • But why should knowledge be good for me if I care not at all about it?
  • Resonance view: non-hedonic goods genuinely are good for you, but only when you take some pleasure/satisfaction in them.
    • The resonance view agrees with Moore (ideal utilitarianism/pluralist consequentialism) that non-hedonic intrinsic goods exist. It just imposes an subjective restriction on when they contribute to prudential wellbeing.
    • Vs pure hedonism, the difference is that resonant objective list theorists believe that there are good-making properties besides pleasure – e.g., knowledge.
  • Structurally, the resonance view is very similar to Aristotle’s position.
    • The person who attains eudaimonia not only performs right & fine actions, but also takes pleasure in the fineness.

* If there were no beings with desires or preferences, could anything be of any value? (2001 Q13)

‘Hedonism is merely an arbitrarily short version of the objective list theory of wellbeing, and moreover one that can’t avail itself of a perfectionist rationale.’ Is this a compelling reason to favour the objective list theory over hedonism? (2022 Q13)

• The fact that hedonism can’t avail itself of a perfectionist rationale is a pro tanto reason to favour objective list theory over it, but not an overriding one. We have strong independent reasons to favour hedonism – specifically, its parsimony and intuitiveness.
• A theory of wellbeing seems like it ought to satisfy:
  • Vindicates our intuitions about the good life
  • Provides guidance about how to attain the best life
  • …?
• As the question suggests, hedonism is a special case of the objective list.
  • Hedonism is the claim that an individual’s wellbeing consists solely in the balance of pleasure over pain, weighted by intensity and duration.
  • Objective list theories assert that there exists some enumerable collection of goods (perhaps including: friendship, knowledge, pleasure) whose possession constitutes an individual’s wellbeing.
• It’s not right to say that hedonism is arbitrarily short, however.
  • Among all the candidates for what is good, pleasure seems like it intuitively ranks highest.
  • Indeed, if we try to explain what is good for me in having friends, I might offer explanations like: they care for me, I enjoy their company, I show love towards them. But all these come back to bringing me pleasure, in one form or another – i.e. positively-valenced experiences.
• Objective list theory does have an advantage in that it can capture the competing intuition that someone’s life would lack a certain fullness if they were narrowly happy but without friends or knowledge.
  • [is this the perfectionist rationale?]
  • Example: Haydn and the oyster; Aristotle on the life of grazing animals.
• But this intuition is defeasible, and objective list theory has its own costs.
  • Defeat: Michael Huemer’s argument:
    • Pareto-pointwise: A life which is better at every moment and has positive experience added on at the end, is better overall
    • Pareto-distributionwise: A life which has much higher average welfare and more equal distribution of welfare, is better overall
    • Then take Haydn’s life, improve it with (1) by adding an extraordinarily long period of miniscule positive welfare at the end [lower than oyster’s], and then show that the oyster’s life is better than that by (2) if we make it long enough.
  • Costs: need to appeal to more complex ideas like resonance to explain how something can be good for a person if they take no pleasure in it. And epistemologically, how do we arrive at what’s on the list?
• On balance, hedonism preferred.

After Claude comments

• Need to be aware of what perfectionism is really about (from Hurka, after Aristotle).
  • It’s the idea that things are good for humans because they perfect/realise human nature.
  • So the items on the objective list are justified by reference to some determinate human essence – i.e., the exercise of distinctly human capacities like rationality, sociability, autonomy.
  • The reason hedonism can’t avail itself of this rationale is that pleasure is shared with grazing animals, etc.
    • Perfectionism gives an argument for the justification of the objective list; the “arbitrarily short” complaint is more about the content of the list.
• It’s worth pushing back more on the idea that hedonism is a special case of objective list.
  • Recall the substantive/explanatory distinction! Hedonists go further than objective list theorists might, in claiming that the sole good-making property is pleasantness.
• Challenge the status of perfectionism.
  • If it’s false, then it’s not useful to them that objective list theories have the perfectionist rationale available.
  • And perfectionism does seem questionable: it relies on an Aristotelian commitment to a human function.
• Don’t overreach in the conclusion; the question asked you about this particular reason to favour hedonism, not which theory you prefer overall.

Can one’s welfare be improved by things that happen after one dies? (2023 Q13)

• No, one’s welfare cannot be improved by things that happen after one dies. This counts against the preference satisfaction view.
• What do we mean by welfare? A measure of how well someone’s life has gone, for them.
  • Prima facie, it seems extremely surprising that this measure might change after someone’s life has already ended. Can anything be good for S if S no longer exists? [perhaps that antecedent is too strong]
• The case in favour:
  • People do care about things that happen after they die! The author’s magnum opus, reputation, funeral, etc.
• Aristotle’s view: he thinks your welfare can only be affected in small and unimportant ways by what happens after your death, e.g. to your descendants.
  • But actually, this seems somewhat inconsistent with the rest of his account. He thinks a person is happy (i.e. has eudaimonia) insofar as they attain the fine.
  • Consider: Saul the soldier. He goes into battle for a noble cause and dies. Then, as Aristotle says explicitly, Saul gets eudaimonia if the fine is actually attained. But this may depend on many things that happen after he dies, e.g. the whole course of the campaign.
• Because it’s difficult to reason about things that happen after one dies, let’s consider a weaker example. If we can then establish that one’s welfare isn’t improved in these circumstances, a fortiori it can’t be improved by things after death.
  • Specifically, suppose Carla has gotten into a coma and it is known that she will never recover.
  • Some supposed examples of one’s welfare being affected:
    • Unfair reputational damage
    • Success of a project she had committed much effort to (say, animal rights bill passes)
  • In either case, it seems like although Carla would be happy about those things were she not in a coma, neither of them contribute to her welfare given that she is in a coma.

Post-Claude & examiner report notes

• Have added notes on the posthumous harm literature to main doc.
• Some philosophers think there’s an asymmetry between posthumous harms and posthumous benefits.
• If you’re going to reject an intuition, you had better present some plausible debunkings of it.

Is wanting something necessary for getting it to be good for you? (2024 Q14)

• Yes, it is necessary (although clearly not sufficient). It’s hard to motivate theories of welfare so disconnected from a person’s preferences that something can be good for them without them wanting it.
• This might seem to be a reason to reject objective list theories of welfare in favour of preference satisfaction accounts, but actually objective list theory can handle this, by imposing the condition that those goods benefit you only when desired.
  • i.e., resonance views
• Consider a putative case where obtaining X is good for S despite them not wanting it. For example, knowledge.
  • We need to be able to point to a way in which their life goes better on account of having X.
  • One way you could justify this is in terms of eudaimonia – in attaining X, their life is objectively more complete and fulfilled, irrespective of their preferences
  • But this proves too much. If there are no conditions on the agent’s desires, then getting X could be good for S even if they have first- and higher-order desires to actively avoid X.
    • So we at least want to have condition NU: if getting X is good for S, then X is not unwanted by S
  • It’s somewhat more defensible to argue that if S is neutral about X, and X is good in some objective sense, their getting it might be good for them.
    • But this does rely on the idea that an agent can (at least sometimes) not assess their own wellbeing accurately.
    • Because surely if getting X is good for S, and they know this to be the case, then S would want it. So S is sometimes unaware on the things that would make their welfare better
    • We should distinguish this from practical cases where, e.g., a child or an adult with bounded rationality does not want a vaccination, even though getting the vaccination is good for them. Here we’re focused on cases in the abstract (?)

Post-Claude & examiner report notes

• The essay actually settles on the weaker claim NU, rather than strong claim W that wanting is necessary
• Some points from the literature:
  • Railton thinks that “wholehearted endorsement under conditions of full information” is required for X to be good for S
  • Parfit has a minimal resonance condition: he thinks that X cannot be good for S if they would be “coldly indifferent” to it
  • Sumner’s view is that welfare requires attitudinal endorsement and that this endorsement is authentic / not based on deception. He has a hybrid theory.
  • Recall Aristotle’s remark that we desire things because they seem good to us. So, provided that S correctly perceives the good, they would desire it – and then all the other cases are when S is ignorant.
  • Could bring Cecil the grass-counter example here – e.g., maybe to support the view that even under idealisation, people can have weird preferences which intuitively we think mean they forgo goods
• Distinguish more formally between different senses of wanting.
  • First-order vs higher-order desires
  • Wanting-the-thing vs wanting-the-effects
  • Present aim vs lifetime-comprehensive
  • Actual vs informed/idealised desire
  • Occurrent vs standing desires
    • The former are ones that actually play a role in your psyche at a moment; standing desires are the others
    • Some claim that standing desires are really just dispositions to generate desires
• Notice that resonance accounts can struggle with deprivation cases
  • E.g., a deprived subject might not want some good X like political agency because of habituation.
  • A resonance view needs to say either:
    • 1. it wouldn’t be good for the subject to have political freedom (bullet-biting)
    • 2. we consider the idealised preferences – but then we’re back towards pure objective list with desire-based epistemology
• Two arguments for the necessity claim that don’t just rely on brute intuition:
  • Welfare is welfare for someone. But if we strip out any connection to the subject’s attitudes, then we seem to have lost the subject-relativity that distinguishes welfare from impersonal value.
  • Welfare claims ought to have practical relevance: telling S that X is good for them seems like it should be action-guiding. But that’s incoherent if attaining X has no motivational force on S at all!
• When we talk about the kind of necessity, some accounts (i.e. desire satisfaction) would actually say that wanting something is not only necessary but constitutive of its being good for you
• Maybe worth mentioning that if you adopt reductive (sensation) hedonism, then the wanting isn’t necessary; only the brain-state correlate of pleasure is.
  • However, most contemporary hedonists are attitudinal ones, who define pleasure as taking pleasure in