Perfectionism about well-being is, at a minimum, the view that people’s lives go well when, and because they realize their capacities. It is common to link perfectionism with an idea of human essence or nature, to yield the view that what constitutes people’s well-being is the development and exercise of characteristically human capacities. The first part of this paper considers the very serious problems associated with the idea of human nature or essence, and argues that perfectionism would be more plausible (...) if it abandons reliance on it and focuses instead on the unfolding of some valuable capacities that need not be unique to, or shared by all human beings. This revised perfectionism is evaluative all the way down, pragmatic but not unprincipled, and holistic. In its second part, the paper articulates this account in terms of the dignitarian approach—the view that we have reason to organize our personal and social life in such a way that we respond appropriately to the valuable features of individuals that give rise to their dignity. Dignity is a non-conventional, normative status based on a diverse and disjunctive set of valuable capacities. The dignitarian approach helps develop, defend, and identify the implications of the revised perfectionism suggested in the previous part of the paper while also allowing us to make sense of the role of some generalizations that animated some of the plausibility of traditional perfectionism—and this without the pitfalls of reliance on an idea of human nature. On this paper’s proposed view—Dignitarian Perfectionism—human individuals’ well-being consists, at least in part, in developing and exercising the capacities at the basis of their dignity. (shrink)

A number of recent works in the metaethics of practical rationality have suggested that features of a person’s character, commitments, projects, practical identities and social roles have important normative consequences. For instance, I might commit to caring for a loved one, or I might become an artist, or take on the role of father to a child. In each case, it seems right to say that the normative landscape I face has been altered by this new fact – to put (...) them under one general heading, the new fact about my self. In this paper, I explore the normative significance of self and how best it is to be understood. Typically, views that posit the normative significance of self hold that the content of one’s self can create practical reasons to behave in particular ways. For instance, if I become a father, this means that there are additional reasons to care for my child than there were prior to this fact of self. I argue, however, that this suggestion cannot be plausibly sustained – facts of self do not give rise to practical reasons. I show that, while there are two ways that facts of self might give rise to or create new practical reasons, both succumb to very serious problems. However, or so I also argue, we can salvage the normative significance of self via an alternative mechanism. Facts of self, such as the fact that one is an artist or a father, do not create new reasons. Rather, they strengthen certain pre-existing reasons, viz., those reasons to which I am especially susceptible given this fact of self. (shrink)

Perfectionism, the view that well-being is a matter of developing characteristically human capacities, has relatively few defenders in the literature, but plenty of critics. This paper defends perfectionism against some recent formulations of classic objections, namely, the objection that perfectionism ignores the relevance of pleasure or preference for well-being, and a sophisticated version of the ‘wrong properties’ objection, according to which the intuitive plausibility of the perfectionist ideal is threatened by an absence of theoretical pressure to accept putative wrong properties (...) cases. The paper argues these objections are unsuccessful, but introduce a new worry, the Deep Problem: Perfectionism fails to offer a satisfying foundational justification for why developing the human essence is valuable. The paper responds to the deep problem, ultimately arguing that it is a puzzle put to all theories of well-being to provide a justification for their normative significance. (shrink)

So-called theories of well-being (prudential value, welfare) are under-represented in discussions of well-being. I do four things in this article to redress this. First, I develop a new taxonomy of theories of well-being, one that divides theories in a more subtle and illuminating way. Second, I use this taxonomy to undermine some misconceptions that have made people reluctant to hold objective-list theories. Third, I provide a new objective-list theory and show that it captures a powerful motivation for the main competitor (...) theory of well-being (the desire-fulfilment theory). Fourth, I try to defuse the worry that objective-list theories are problematically arbitrary and show how the theory can and should be developed. (shrink)

In this chapter I explore what painful art can tell us about the nature and importance of human welfare. My goal is not so much to defend a new solution to the paradox of tragedy, as it is to explore the implications of the kinds of solutions that I find attractive. Both nonhedonic compensatory theories and constitutive theories explain why people seek out painful art, but they have troublesome implications. On some narrow theories of well-being, they imply that painful art (...) is bad for us. Accordingly, we may rightly wonder if it rational for people to watch melodramas or to listen to love songs. One might think that we should generally avoid unpleasant works of art. This implication flirts with absurdity. I show how it can be avoided by making a distinction between well-being and worth. (shrink)

Preferences play a role in well-being that is difficult to escape, but whatever authority one grants to preferences, their malleability seems to cause problems for any theory of well-being that employs them. Most importantly, preferences appear to display a status-quo bias: people come to prefer what they are likely rather than unlikely to get. I try to do two things here. The first is to provide a more precise characterization of the status-quo bias, how it functions, and how it infects (...) commonly accepted theories of well-being. The second is to give an alternative characterization of an agent's preferences that succeeds in avoiding the status-quo bias. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to articulate a version of qualitative hedonism, grounded in the value theory of the British Moralists. I argue that this view is novel, presents substantial advantages over alternative hedonisms (including rival approaches to qualitative hedonism and its quantitative cousin), and can avoid classic challenges to qualitative hedonism that emerged in the post‐Mill era. If I succeed, this is a significant result for substantive value theory, given the dismissiveness with which qualitative hedonism is generally treated in (...) the literature on the good. (shrink)

The phenomenon of resonance is central in the contemporary literature on well-being. Many philosophers accept the Resonance Constraint: if something is good for a person, it must resonate with her. Failing to meet this constraint is often thought to be a forceful blow to a theory of well-being. It is widely assumed that resonance must be motivational. I call attention to and argue for an underexplored aspect of resonance, namely cognitive resonance. I provide arguments for Belief-Resonance, the claim that if (...) a person believes that something is good for her, it resonates with her. The Resonance Constraint allegedly favors subjectivism. I argue that there are facts about people’s well-being and that someone who is fully informed and reasons well would come to have true beliefs about her well-being. Based on these arguments, I formulate and defend a novel strategy for objectivists to respond to alienation objections. I conclude that objectivism is as well equipped to deal with alienation problems as prominent subjectivist views that appeal to idealization. (shrink)

This paper is about two seemingly inconsistent theories of well-being and how to reconcile them. The first theory is perfectionism, the view that the good of a human is determined by human nature. The second theory is preferentism, the view that the good of a human lies in the satisfaction of her preferences. I begin by sketching the theories and then developing an objection against each from the standpoint of the other. I then develop a version of each theory that (...) is meant to address the objection from the other theory. It turns out that these modified perfectionist and preferentist theories are mutually supporting and co-extensive. They can be combined into a new theory, perfectionist preferentism, which is an independently plausible theory of well-being. (shrink)

Subjectivism about wellbeing rests on the idea that what is good for a person must ‘fit’ her, ‘resonate’ with her, not be ‘alien’ to her, etc. This idea has been called the ‘beating heart’ of subjectivism. In this article, I present the No-Beating-Heart Challenge for subjectivism, which holds that there is no satisfactory statement of this idea. I proceed by first identifying three criteria that any statement of the idea must meet if it is to provide support for subjectivism: Distinctness, (...) Exclusiveness, and Explicitness. I then argue that no statement of this idea meets these criteria. (shrink)

Pain, failure and false beliefs all make a life worse, or so it is plausible to think. These things and possibly others seem to be intrinsically bad—no matter what further good comes of them they make a life worse pro tanto. In spite of the obvious badness, this is difficult to explain. While there are many accounts of well-being, few are up to the challenge of a univocal explanation of ill-being. Perfectionism has particular difficulty. Otherwise, it is a theory that (...) has quite a lot in its favour. This paper proposes a new valuation scheme for perfectionism, the tripartite scheme, which affords perfectionism the resources to give a comprehensive account of robust bads and has further additional advantages for the view. (shrink)

According to the guise of the good thesis, we desire things under the ‘guise of the good.’ Here I sympathetically articulate a generic formulation of the guise of the good thesis, and addre...

The point of departure of this paper is the recently emphasised distinction between psychological theories of happiness, on the one hand, and normative theories of well-being, on the other. With this distinction in mind, I examine three possible kinds of relation that might exist between (psychological) happiness and (normative) well-being; to wit, happiness may be understood as playing a central part in (1) a formal theory of well-being, (2) a substantive theory of well-being or (3) as an indicator for well-being. (...) I note that, in the relevant literature, happiness is mostly discussed in terms of either (1) or (2). In this paper, I attempt to motivate a shift of focus away from such accounts of happiness and towards (3), i.e. its epistemic role. When examined in connection to (normative) well-being, (psychological states of) happiness and unhappiness should be understood as psychological states that inform individuals about the contribution of various activities, pursuits, or situations to their well-being or ill-being. (shrink)

Subjectivism about well-being holds that ϕ is intrinsically good for x if and only if, and to the extent that, ϕ is valued, under the proper conditions, by x. Given this statement of the view, there is room for intramural dissent among subjectivists. One important source of dispute is the phrase “under the proper conditions”: Should the proper conditions of valuing be actual or idealized? What sort of idealization is appropriate? And so forth. Though these concerns are of the first (...) importance, this essay focuses on a second source of dispute. As stated, subjectivists must account for what it means for an individual x to value ϕ under any conditions. Though there has been some disagreement, most subjectivists hold that x values ϕ if and only if x desires ϕ. This essay argues that subjectivists have erred in accepting a desiderative theory of valuing. Instead, it argues that subjectivists should hold that x values ϕ to the extent that x judges or believes that ϕ is good for x. The resulting “judgment subjectivism” is intuitively superior to, and maintains important structural advantages over, its desiderative rival. (shrink)

Theories of well-being tell us what makes a life good for the one who lives it. But there is more to what makes a life worth living than just well-being. We care about the worth of our lives, and we are right to do so. I defend an objective list theory of the worth of a life: The most worthwhile lives are those high in various objective goods. These principally include welfare and meaning. By distinguishing between worth and welfare, we (...) can capture the intuitive pull of broad theories of welfare without their liabilities. (shrink)

An important constraint on the nature of intrinsic value---the “Supervenience Principle” (SP)---holds that some object, event, or state of affairs ϕ is intrinsically valuable only if the value of ϕ supervenes entirely on ϕ 's intrinsic properties. In this paper, I argue that SP should be rejected. SP is inordinately restrictive. In particular, I argue that no SP-respecting conception of intrinsic value can accept the importance of psychological resonance, or the positive endorsement of persons, in explaining value.

Hume argued that passions, unlike judgments of the understanding, cannot be reasonable or unreasonable. Crucial for his argument was the premise that passions cannot be correct or incorrect. As he put it: “[a] passion is an original existence … and contains not any representative quality” and “passions are not susceptible of any … agreement or disagreement either to the real relations of ideas, or to real existence and matter of fact … being original facts and realities, compleat in themselves.” In (...) this paper I will argue that desires, like beliefs, can be correct or incorrect. Specifically, I will argue that goodness is the correctness condition for desire, in the same way that truth is the correctness condition for belief. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I argue that all extant theories of prudential value are either a) enumeratively deficient, in that they are unable to accommodate everything that, intuitively, is a basic constituent of prudential value, b) explanatorily deficient, in that they are at least sometimes unable to offer a plausible story about what makes a given thing prudentially valuable, or c) both. In response to the unsatisfactory state of the literature, I present my own account, the Disjunctive Hybrid Theory or DHT. (...) DHT answers to and remedies each of the above inadequacies in a way that no other approach can. This account has the following general structure:Disjunctive Hybrid Theory (DHT): Thing x is basically good for person P if and only if x is either a) cared about (sufficiently and in the right way) by P, b) a bearer of (the right kind of) attitude-independent value, or c) both.Although it follows other recent accounts in combining elements from objective and subjective theories, DHT is a hybrid theory of a quite new kind. This is because it denies both subjective necessity (the constraint that, if thing x is to be basically good for person P, P must have some pro-attitude toward x) and objective necessity (the constraint that, if thing x is to be basically good for person P, x must have some attitude-independent value). I argue that the rejection of both necessity claims is called for if we are to move beyond the enumerative and explanatory limitations of existing accounts.I begin by outlining the general structure of DHT. I then argue, against various recent authors, that desire-satisfactionism remains the most appealing subjectivist approach to prudential value, in that it is best able to capture the central subjectivist insight. This insight is that a person can confer prudential value upon things by caring about them (sufficiently and in the right way). The subjectivist strand of DHT will thus be a version of desire-satisfactionism, which must be interpreted in line with what I call the object, as opposed to the combo, view. I move on to further motivate and develop the second, objectivist strand of DHT. This part of the theory involves a commitment to robustly attitude-independent prudential goods. I close by addressing some puzzles for the theory, and considering some of its more specific applications. (shrink)

It is through our actions that we affect the way the world goes. Whenever we face a choice of what to do, we also face a choice of which of various possible worlds to actualize. Moreover, whenever we act intentionally, we act with the aim of making the world go a certain way. It is only natural, then, to suppose that an agent's reasons for action are a function of her reasons for preferring some of these possible worlds to others, (...) such that what she has most reason to do is to bring about the possible world which, of all those available to her, is the one that she has most reason to want to obtain. This is what is known as the `teleological conception of practical reasons'. Whether this is the correct conception of practical reasons is important not only in its own right, but also in virtue of its potential implications for what sort of moral theory we should accept. Below, I argue that the teleological conception is indeed the correct conception of practical reasons. (shrink)

All people have human rights and, intuitively, there is a close connection between human rights, needs, and autonomy. The two main theories about the natureand value of human rights often fail to account for this connection. Interest theories, on which rights protect individuals’ important interests, usually fail to capturethe close relationship between human rights and autonomy; autonomy is not constitutive of the interests human rights protect. Will theories, on which human rights protect individuals’ autonomy, cannot explain why the nonautonomous have (...) a human right to meet their needs. This paper argues that it is possible to account for the close connection between human rights, needs, and autonomy if human rights at least protect individuals’ ability to live minimally good lives. It argues that people need whatever will enable them to live such lives and autonomy is partly constitutive of such a life. This argument also has importantimplications for some other key debates in the human rights literature. (shrink)

A second-order preference is a preference over preferences. This paper addresses the role that second-order preferences play in a theory of instrumental rationality. I argue that second-order preferences have no role to play in the prescription or evaluation of actions aimed at ordinary ends. Instead, second-order preferences are relevant to prescribing or evaluating actions only insofar as those actions have a role in changing or maintaining first-order preferences. I establish these claims by examining and rejecting the view that second-order preferences (...) trump first-order preferences. I also examine and reject the view that second-order preferences give additional normative force to an agent’s preferred first-order preferences. I conclude by arguing that second-order preferences should be integrated into an agent’s object-level preference ordering, and by explaining how best to make sense of this integration. (shrink)

One important proposal about the nature of well-being, prudential value or the personal good is that intrinsic values for a person ought to ‘resonate’ with the person for whom they are good. Indeed, virtually everyone agrees that there is something very plausible about this necessary condition on the building blocks of a good life. Given the importance of this constraint, however, it may come as something of a surprise how little reason we actually have to believe it. In this paper, (...) I'd like to do two things: first, to illustrate just how philosophically tenuous this thesis is, despite its apparent attraction, and to correct, or at least begin to correct, this state of affairs. My argument—which I call the ‘relationship to value’ argument—focuses in part on what it means to be a valuer—specifically, the peculiar relationship valuing agents bear to objects of value. (shrink)

According to a desire-satisfaction theory of well-being, the satisfaction of one’s desires is what promotes one’s well-being. Against this, it is frequently objected that some desires are beyond the pale of well-being relevance, for example: the desire to count blades of grass, the desire to collect dryer lint and the desire to make handwritten copies of War and Peace, to name a few. I argue that the satisfaction of such desires – I call them “quirky” desires – does indeed contribute (...) to a desirer’s well-being, when (and only when) the desirer is able to provide what Anscombe calls a desirability characterization of the object of the desire. One successfully provides such a characterization when one is able to describe the object of desire in such a way as to make comprehensible to others what she sees as positive, worthy of pursuit, in that object. To make the case, I consider common desires such as the desires to take a walk on the beach, drink a beer or listen to music. I argue that, although the well-being relevance of such common desires normally is not questioned, their satisfactions contribute to well-being just in case the same condition is met. I then argue by analogy with common desires that quirky desires are also relevant to well-being just in case that condition is met. After sketching this solution to the problem of quirky desires, I show that this response is better than other responses that have been given by desire theorists. I then develop several aspects of this account in response to objections that can be raised against it. Among these (to name a few) are the objection that my account does not apply to the well-being of infants and other inarticulate persons; the objection that intrinsic desires, such as for pleasure, cannot be given desirability characterizations; and the objection that desirability characterizations must advert to pleasure or to objectively good properties of the object of desire, so that my account reduces either to hedonism or to an objective view of well-being. (shrink)

People have various desires, but it is a contested moral issue when a desire becomes of such importance that it legitimizes a moral claim on others. This paper explores how the normative significance of desire satisfaction can be assessed and argues that a normatively significant desire can constitute a pro tanto obligation to help satisfy it. The paper presents a framework that relates the normative significance of a given desire to the general goal of living a reasonably valuable life and (...) inquires how the latter can be given determinate content without excluding a heterogeneity of the personal good. The paper contends that the set of possibly normatively significant desires is thus restricted by considerations about intelligibility, adequacy, and replaceability, which are mediated by societal background theories. (shrink)

I argue that desire sometimes amounts to knowledge, in the same sense that belief sometimes amounts to knowledge. The argument rests on two assumptions: that goodness is the correctness condition for desire and that knowledge is apt mental representation. Desire that amounts to knowledge—or ‘conative knowledge’—is illustrated by cases in which someone knows the goodness of something despite not believing that it is good.

When it comes to the metaethical task of explaining and making sense of what it is that we are doing while doing ethics, the subject of moral objectivity occupies an important and special place within that task. Thus, it is often agreed that being able to explain and justify the objective features of common moral practice is one of if not the most important task for any metaethical theory to undertake. In this dissertation, I tackle the issue of ethical objectivity (...) on behalf of metaethical constructivism. To be more precise, my aim is to make plausible, strengthen, and defend the constructivist original contribution to contemporary metaethics by developing a novel constructivist account on the objectivity of ethics. While the account that I develop herein presents a novel and independent approach to the subject of moral objectivity on behalf of constructivism, it also places itself between the two other positions within the constructivist camp that openly strive to secure ethical objectivity – namely Kantianism on the one hand, and the more recently developed Humean objectivist view on the other. It is for the latter reason that I call my own view the hybrid view. (shrink)