Theories of well-being are typically divided into subjective and objective. Subjective theories are those which make facts about a person’s welfare depend on facts about her actual or hypothetical mental states. I am interested in what motivates this approach to the theory of welfare. The contemporary view is that subjectivism is devoted to honoring the evaluative perspective of the individual, but this is both a misleading account of the motivations behind subjectivism, and a vision that dooms subjective theories to failure. (...) I suggest that we need to revisit and reinstate certain features of traditional hedonism, in particular the idea that felt experience plays a role that no theory of welfare can afford to ignore. I then offer a sketch of a theory that is subjective in my preferred sense and avoids the worst sins of hedonism as well as the problems generated by the contemporary constraints of subjective theorists. (shrink)

This essay criticizes the proposal recently defended by a number of prominent economists that welfare economics be redirected away from the satisfaction of people's preferences and toward making people happy instead. Although information about happiness may sometimes be of use, the notion of happiness is sufficiently ambiguous and the objections to identifying welfare with happiness are sufficiently serious that welfare economists are better off using preference satisfaction as a measure of welfare. The essay also examines and criticizes the position associated (...) with Daniel Kahneman and a number of co-authors that takes welfare to be ‘objective happiness’ – that is, the sum of momentary pleasures. (shrink)

The health gradient among those who are by historical standards both remarkably healthy and well-off is of considerable moral importance with respect to benevolence, justice and the theory of welfare. Indeed it may help us to realize that for most people the good life lies in close and intricate social ties with others which can flourish only when inequalities are limited. The health gradient suggests that there is a story to be told in which egalitarian justice, solidarity, health and well-being (...) go hand-in-hand. (shrink)

ABSTRACT What kind of basic minimum do we owe to others? This paper defends a new procedure for answering this question. It argues that its minimally good life account has some advantages over the main alternatives and that neither the first-, nor third-, person perspective can help us to arrive at an adequate account. Rather, it employs the second-person perspective of free, reasonable, care. There might be other conditions for distributive justice, and morality certainly requires more than helping everyone to (...) secure a basic minimum. Still, if the minimally good life account is correct, and we owe everyone a basic minimum, we must ensure that everyone lives well enough. (shrink)

Discussion regarding education’s aims, especially its ultimate aims, is a key topic in the philosophy of education. These aims or values play a pivotal role in regulating and structuring moral and other types of normative education. We outline two plausible strategies to identify and justify education’s ultimate aims. The first associates these aims with a normative standpoint, such as the moral, prudential, or aesthetic, which is overriding, in a sense of ‘overriding’ to be explained. The second associates education’s ultimate aims (...) with the intrinsic value of personal well-being. We advance reasons to doubt that these strategies are successful. The shortcomings of these strategies impute yet further urgency to the issue of how we are to ascertain and validate education’s ultimate aims. (shrink)

I address three issues in this paper: first, just as many have thought that there is a requirement of alternative possibilities for the truth of judgments of moral responsibility, is there reason to think that the truth of judgments of intrinsic value also presupposes our having alternatives? Second, if there is this sort of requirement for the truth of judgments of intrinsic value, is there an analogous requirement for the truth of judgments of moral obligation on the supposition that obligation (...) supervenes on goodness? Third, if the truth of judgments of intrinsic value and those of moral obligation do presuppose our having access to alternatives, what should be said about whether determinism imperils the truth of such judgments? I defend an affirmative answer to the first question, a more guarded answer to the second, and a yet more restrained answer to the third. (shrink)

What is the connection between action that is caused by inauthentic antecedent springs of action, such as surreptitiously engineered-in desires and beliefs, and moral obligation? If, for example, an agent performs an action that derives from such antecedent springs can it be that the agent is not obligated to perform this action owing to the inauthenticity of its causal antecedents? I defend an affirmative response, assuming that we morally ought to bring about the states of affairs that occur in the (...) intrinsically best worlds accessible to us and that a version of attitudinal hedonism is the axiology for ranking worlds. (shrink)

In this paper we explore the relation between health-care needs and patients’ desires within shared decision-making in a context of priority setting in health care. We begin by outlining some general characteristics of the concept of health-care need as well as the notions of SDM and desire. Secondly we will discuss how to distinguish between needs and desires for health care. Thirdly we present three cases which all aim to bring out and discuss a number of queries which seem to (...) arise due to the double focus on a patient’s need and what that patient desires. These queries regard the following themes: the objectivity and moral force of needs, the prediction about what kind of patients which will appear on a micro level, implications for ranking in priority setting, difficulties regarding assessing and comparing benefits, and implications for evidence-based medicine. (shrink)

While objective values need not be intrinsically motivating, need not actually motivate us, they would determine what we ought to pursue and protect. They would provide reasons for actions. Objective values would come in degrees, and more objective value would provide stronger reasons. It follows that, if objective value exists, we ought to maximize it in the world. But virtually no one acts with that goal in mind. Furthermore, objective value would exist independently of our subjective valuings. But we have (...) no way of measuring amounts of such values independently of the ways we value objects. While a subjectivist can account for mistaken values, a fully impersonal viewpoint, from which objective values would appear, seems instead to cause all values to disappear. Nor does the moral point of view, which requires more impartiality than agents usually exhibit, reveal fully objective values. The paper closes with an examination of the most widely endorsed candidates for states having positive and negative objective values: pleasures and pains. It concludes again that, once we adjust for worthiness of the object and desert of the subject for such states, there is no way to measure their supposed objective value. (shrink)

We ordinarily think that, keeping all else equal, a life that improves is better than one that declines. However, it has proven challenging to account for such value judgments: some, such as Fred Feldman and Daniel Kahneman, have simply denied that these judgments are rational, while others, such as Douglas Portmore, Michael Slote, and David Velleman, have proposed justifications for the judgments that appear to be incomplete or otherwise problematic. This article identifies problems with existing accounts and suggests a novel (...) alternative theory: what best accounts for our preference for an uphill over a downhill life (and many other episodes) is that losses of momentary value are themselves bad and gains in momentary value are themselves good. (shrink)

Does our life have value for us after we die? Despite the importance of such a question, many would find it absurd, even incoherent. Once we are dead, the thought goes, we are no longer around to have any wellbeing at all. However, in this paper I argue that this common thought is mistaken. In order to make sense of some of our most central normative thoughts and practices, we must hold that a person can have wellbeing after they die. (...) I provide two arguments for this claim on the basis of postmortem harms and benefits as well as the lasting significance of death. I suggest two ways of underwriting posthumous wellbeing. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that a modified version of well-being subjectivism can avoid the standard, yet unintuitive, conclusion that morally horrible acts may contribute to an agent’s well-being. To make my case, I argue that “Modified Subjectivists” need not accept such conclusions about well-being so long as they accept the following three theoretical addenda: 1) there are a plurality of values pertaining to well-being, 2) there are some objective goods, even if they do not directly contribute to well-being, and (...) 3) some of these values and goods are bound-up with one another. (shrink)

Most agree that, in some special scenarios, prudence can speak against feeling a fitting emotion. Some go further, arguing that the tension between fittingness and prudence afflicts some emotions in a fairly general way. This paper goes even further: it argues that, when it comes to anxiety, the tension between fittingness and prudence is nearly inescapable. On any plausible theory, an enormous array of possible outcomes are both bad and epistemically uncertain in the right way to ground fitting anxiety. What’s (...) more, the fittingness of an emotion is a demanding, not a permissive, normative status. So the norms of fitting emotion demand a great deal of anxiety. For almost any realistic agent, it would be deeply imprudent to feel anxiety in a way that meets the demands set by norms of fitting emotion. (shrink)

Roy W. Perrett argues that the Hindu sage, like the western moral saint, seems precluded from pursuing non-moral ends for their own sakes. If he is precluded from pursuing non-moral ends for their own sakes, then he is precluded from pursuing non-moral virtues, interests, activities, relationships, and so on for their own sakes. A life devoid of every such pursuit seems deficient. Hence, the Hindu sage seems to forsake the good life. In response, I adapt a reply that Vanessa Carbonell (...) offers in the context of the moral saint. The Hindu sage might pursue non-moral virtues, interests, activities, relationships, and so on for their own sakes, so long as his motivation to pursue moksa is read de re rather than de dicto. Indeed, this reply is more convincing in the case of the Hindu sage than it is in the case of the moral saint. (shrink)

A dogma of contemporary normative theorizing holds that some reasons are distinctively moral while others are not. Call this view Reasons Pluralism. This essay looks at four approaches to vindicating the apparent distinction between moral and non-moral reasons. In the end, however, all are found wanting. Though not dispositive, the failure of these approaches supplies strong evidence that the dogma of Reasons Pluralism is ill-founded.

THE STRUCTURE OF THIS PAPER IS AS FOLLOWS. I begin §1 by dealing with preliminary issues such as the different relations expressed by the “good for” locution. I then (§2) outline the Locative Analysis of good for and explain its main elements before moving on to (§3) outlining and discussing the positive features of the view. In the subsequent sections I show how the Locative Analysis can respond to objections from, or inspired by, Sumner (§4-5), Regan (§6), and Schroeder and (...) Feldman (§7). I then (§8) reply to an imagined objector who claims that the Locative Analysis generates implausible results with respect to punishment, virtue and agent-centered duties. (shrink)

This paper aims to cast doubt upon a certain way of analysing prudential value (or good for ), namely in the manner of a ‘buck-passing’ analysis. It begins by explaining why we should be interested in analyses of good for and the nature of buck-passing analyses generally (§I). It moves on to considering and rejecting two sets of buck-passing analyses. The first are analyses that are likely to be suggested by those attracted to the idea of analysing good for in (...) a buck-passing fashion (§II). The second are the buck-passing analyses of good for proposed by John Skorupski (§III), Henry Sidgwick (§IV), and Stephen Darwall (§V). Along the way the paper shows that Michael Smith’s and Peter Railton’s analyses of other concepts—analyses that could be (and have been) taken to be analyses of good for —are similarly unsuitable as analyses of it. The paper concludes by suggesting that the fact that none of the buck-passing accounts of good for considered here is satisfactory, coupled with an appreciation of the various problems that a buck-passing analysis of good for would have to avoid, suggests that we should be sceptical about the prospects of finding such an analysis and should look for one of a different type. (shrink)

In earlier work I defended Intrinsic Attitudinal Hedonism—a view about what makes for individual personal welfare. On this view, a person’s level of welfare is entirely determined by the amounts of intrinsic attitudinal pleasure and pain he or she takes in things. The view seems to run into trouble in cases involving individuals who take their pleasure in disgusting, immoral things; and in cases involving individuals who take their pleasure in things that really don’t actually happen; and in cases involving (...) individuals who enjoy pleasures but who lead meaningless lives; and in cases involving individuals whose lives fail to manifest an attractive narrative structure. After sharpening up the objections, I introduce a distinction between Pure Welfare Narrowly Conceived and Enriched Welfare Broadly Conceived. I go on to claim that if this distinction is recognized, we will be able to say that each of the objections rests on the fallacy of equivocation. If, years ago, I had been more sensitive to the distinction between Pure Welfare and Enriched Welfare I would have been able to respond to the objections in a more coherent and effective way. I present that response here. In an appendix, I compare my current view with a related view defended by Shelly Kagan in ‘Me and My Life’. (shrink)

...there can be cases in which we reject pleasure because there is too much of it. Sometimes we decide that pleasure is bad, or not worth having, not because of an extrinsic factor like moral, aesthetic etc. constraints but rather because one is experiencing enough pleasure to the point that more would in itself be undesirable. (2005: 144).

The philosophical and scientific literature on play is extensive and the approaches to the study, description, and explanation of play are diverse. In this paper I intend to provide an overview of approaches to play. My interest is in describing the most fundamental categories in terms of which play is characterized, explained, and evaluated. Insofar as these categories attempt to describe what kind of reality we are talking about when we make claims about play, I hope to clarify the metaphysics (...) of play. Once this categorical scheme is made clear, we will be in a better position to evaluate the task of definition, claims about the relation of sport and play, and assertions about the significance of play. First, I place the discussion in the context of Bernard Suits's account of play and some other recent approaches to play. Next, I distinguish the following approaches to play: (a) play as behavior or activity; (b) play as motive, attitude, or state of mind; (c) play as form or structure; (d) play as meaningful experience; (e) play as an ontologically distinctive phenomenon. There is a natural progression in the way the analysis unfolds. In the final section I argue that my analysis generates a pluralist, nonreductive account of play. (shrink)

In a recent paper in this journal, Tobias Fuchs has offered a ‘working test’ for well-being. According to this test, if it is fitting to feel compassion for a subject because they have some property, then the subject is badly off because they have that property. Since subjects of deception seem a fitting target for compassion, this test is said to imply that a number of important views, including hedonism, are false. I argue that this line of reasoning is mistaken: (...) seems fitting does not imply is badly off. I suggest that Fuchs’s test can tell us little about well-being that we do not already know; and ultimately, tests of the sort he proposes can yield little insight into the nature of well-being. (shrink)

In the Philebus Plato argues that every rational human being, given the choice, will prefer a life that is moderately thoughtful and moderately pleasant to a life that is utterly thoughtless or utterly pleasureless. This is true, he thinks, even if the thoughtless life at issue is intensely pleasant and the pleasureless life at issue is intensely thoughtful. Evidently Plato wants this argument to show that neither pleasure nor thought, taken by itself, is sufficient to make a life choiceworthy for (...) us. But there is some disagreement among commentators about whether or not he also wants the argument to show why. Is the argument designed to establish that we should reject thoughtless and pleasureless lives because some pleasures and some thoughts are goods? Or is it silent on this issue? Many interpreters take the first option, claiming that Plato uses the argument to attack both the hedonist view that only pleasures are goods and the intellectualist view that only thoughts are goods. My aim in this paper is to show that the second option is at least as attractive as the first, both exegetically and philosophically. (shrink)

(2013). The Authority of Competence and Quality as Extrinsic. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 78-99. doi: 10.1080/09608788.2012.689752.

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.

An e-book devoted to 13 critical discussions of Thaddeus Metz's book "Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study", with a lengthy reply from the author. -/- Preface Masahiro Morioka i -/- Précis of Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study Thaddeus Metz ii-vi -/- Source and Bearer: Metz on the Pure Part-Life View of Meaning Hasko von Kriegstein 1-18 -/- Fundamentality and Extradimensional Final Value David Matheson 19-32 -/- Meaningful and More Meaningful: A Modest Measure Peter Baumann 33-49 -/- Is Meaning in (...) Life Comparable?: From the Viewpoint of ‘The Heart of Meaning in Life’ Masahiro Morioka 50-65 -/- Agreement and Sympathy: On Metz’s Meaning in Life Sho Yamaguchi 66-89 -/- Metz’s Quest for the Holy Grail James Tartaglia 90-111 -/- Meaning without Ego Christopher Ketcham 112-133 -/- Death and the Meaning of Life: A Critical Study of Metz’s Meaning in Life Fumitake Yoshizawa 134-149 -/- Metz’ Incoherence Objection: Some Epistemological Considerations Nicholas Waghorn 150-168 -/- Meaning in Consequences Mark Wells 169-179 -/- Defending the Purpose Theory of Meaning in Life Jason Poettcker 180-207 -/- Review of Thaddeus Metz’s Meaning in Life Minao Kukita 208-214 -/- A Psychological Model to Determine Meaning in Life and Meaning of Life Yu Urata 215-227 -/- Assessing Lives, Giving Supernaturalism Its Due, and Capturing Naturalism: Reply to 13 Critics of Meaning in Life Thaddeus Metz 228-278 . (shrink)

Desire theories of well-being claim that how well someone’s life goes for them is entirely determined by the fulfilment and frustration of their desires. This thesis considers the viability of theories of this sort. It examines a series of objections that threaten to undermine these views. These objections claim that desire theories of well-being are incorrect because they have implausible implications. I consider four main objections over the course of this thesis. The first claims that these theories are incorrect because (...) they implausibly entail that self-sacrifice does not exist. The second claims that these theories are incorrect because they implausibly entail that severe depression does not diminish the well-being of those afflicted by this condition. The third claims that these theories are incorrect because they have implausible implications about the relative importance of fleeting desires, long-standing desires, and fluctuations in desire strength to well-being. The fourth claims that these theories are incorrect because they fail to capture the intuition that desire fulfilments which leave us disappointed and bereft of feelings of satisfaction do not improve well-being. In each of these cases, I find that desire theories of well-being have sufficient resources to refute these objections. The primary finding of this thesis is that many of the arguments against desire theories of well-being are unsuccessful. A secondary set of findings concern observations about the structure of human psychology. (shrink)

A good deal of recent debate over the nature of pleasure and pain has surrounded the alleged phenomenon of unconscious sensory pleasure and pain, or pleasures and pains whose subjects are entirely unaware of them while experiencing them. According to Ben Bramble, these putative pleasures and pains present a problem for attitudinal theories of pleasure and pain, since these theories claim that what makes something a sensory pleasure or pain is that one has a special sort of pro- or con-attitude (...) toward it at the time one experiences it. In this paper, I look at the two existing defenses of attitudinal theories against this worry and explain (following Bramble) that each is inadequate. I show that this inadequacy is in part a result of existing attitudinal theories failing to recognize an important distinction in pro- and con-attitudes, and I propose and defend an amended attitudinal view that does recognize this distinction. I then offer a more promising response to the objection from unconscious sensory pleasures and pains: that experiences of apparently unconscious pleasure or pain only seem pleasant or unpleasant because their subjects are disposed to experience pleasantness or unpleasantness. In this sense, unconscious pleasures and pains are not really pleasures or pains at all. (shrink)

Under what conditions would an artificially intelligent system have wellbeing? Despite its obvious bearing on the ethics of human interactions with artificial systems, this question has received little attention. Because all major theories of wellbeing hold that an individual’s welfare level is partially determined by their mental life, we begin by considering whether artificial systems have mental states. We show that a wide range of theories of mental states, when combined with leading theories of wellbeing, predict that certain existing artificial (...) systems have wellbeing. While we do not claim to demonstrate conclusively that AI systems have wellbeing, we argue that our metaphysical and moral uncertainty about AI wellbeing requires us dramatically to reassess our relationship with the intelligent systems we create. (shrink)

Intrinsic value has traditionally been thought to lie at the heart of ethics. Philosophers use a number of terms to refer to such value. The intrinsic value of something is said to be the value that that thing has “in itself,” or “for its own sake,” or “as such,” or “in its own right.” Extrinsic value is value that is not intrinsic.

Presents and argues for a novel interpretation of Ross's distinctive contribution to moral theory and meta-ethics.

Overview of the main issues about value pluralism.

Pleasure, in the inclusive usages most important in moral psychology, ethical theory, and the studies of mind, includes all joy and gladness — all our feeling good, or happy. It is often contrasted with similarly inclusive pain, or suffering, which is similarly thought of as including all our feeling bad. Contemporary psychology similarly distinguishes between positive affect and negative affect.[1..

There are roughly two philosophical literatures on “happiness,” each corresponding to a different sense of the term. One uses ‘happiness’ as a value term, roughly synonymous with well-being or flourishing. The other body of work uses the word as a purely descriptive psychological term, akin to ‘depression’ or ‘tranquility’. An important project in the philosophy of happiness is simply getting clear on what various writers are talking about: what are the important meanings of the term and how do they connect? (...) While the “well-being” sense of happiness receives significant attention in the contemporary literature on well-being, the psychological notion is undergoing a revival as a major focus of philosophical inquiry, following on recent developments in the science of happiness. This entry focuses on the psychological sense of happiness (for the well-being notion, see the entry on well-being). The main accounts of happiness in this sense are hedonism, the life satisfaction theory, and the emotional state theory. Leaving verbal questions behind, we find that happiness in the psychological sense has always been an important concern of philosophers. Yet the significance of happiness for a good life has been hotly disputed in recent decades. Further questions of contemporary interest concern the relation between the philosophy and science of happiness, as well as the role of happiness in social and political decision-making. (shrink)

This paper argues that relations of mutual recognition (love, respect, esteem, trust) contribute directly and non-reductively to our flourishing as relational selves. -/- Love is important for the quality of human life. Not only do everyday experiences and analyses of pop culture and world literature attest to this; scientific research does as well. How exactly does love contribute to well-being? This chapter discusses the suggestion that it not only matters for the experiential quality of life, or for successful agency, but (...) that it actualizes our nature as “relational selves” (Chen, Boucher & Kraus 2011). I defend a hybrid or pluralist theory, which sees humans not only as subjects of experiences, or agents, or valuers, but also as relational selves. Expanding from love to other interpersonal relations, thriving relations of mutual recognition (love, respect, esteem, trust), contribute directly and non-reductively to our flourishing as relational selves. The paper will start by putting forward the proposal (Section 2), and then discussing it in relation to important alternatives. The focus is on alternatives which hold that love, and other forms of mutual recognition, are important for well-being, but only indirectly. One kind of challenge against the constitutive role of relations to others for well-being comes from the traditional theories that accommodate relations in some indirect ways (Section 3). A second kind of challenge admits that perhaps love is central to well-being in a direct way, but do we have reason to believe that other forms of mutual recognition are as well? (Section 4) Yet another kind of challenge is that love matters for the quality of lives in some other way than contributing to its prudential value: love is good, but is it good for us? (Section 5) A fourth kind of challenge concerns what we are, and the nature of “essentialism” involved in the approach stressing relational selfhood: cannot, say, motherhood contribute to one’s good life even if motherhood is contingent and not essential? (Section 6). In debates on recognition the idea that mutual recognition is also relevant for well-being has been put forward, for example in Axel Honneth’s (1992, ch.9 ) ”formal” theory of good life. Whatever else constitutes good life, relations of recognition form its backbone (cf. Ikäheimo 2014). Surprisingly little however is written about mutual recognition and well-being in detail, or recognition in comparison to traditional theories of well-being. This chapter aims to fill some of that void, and at the same time defend the view that well-being is one of the normative notions with which mutual recognition has a constitutive relationship. (shrink)

American philosopher Wilfrid Sellars (1962) once said that “the aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense hang together in the broadest possible sense.” My main question is this: within the context of contemporary sustainability science, how does the concept of ‘sustainability’ in the broadest possible sense of the concept hang together in the broadest possible sense? I will answer this question by advancing two new explicative definitions of sustainability that jointly constitute a (...) unifying concept of sustainability. This meta-level concept accommodates most of the central meanings conventionally assigned to ‘sustainability’ by sustainability scientists and scholars, offers a useful division of labor between scientists and scholars, and makes explicit value judgements commonly associated with the concept of sustainability. (shrink)

This dissertation is about the partiality problem for fitting attitude (FA) analyses of value. More specifically, it is about whether and how the problem might be resolved. In Chapter 1, I set the stage by offering a short introduction to the topic and a rationale for investigating it. I then give a more detailed account of FA analyses of value in Chapter 2, including a brief outline of their history and appeal, before explaining more thoroughly just what the partiality problem (...) is for such analyses in Chapter 3, where I distinguish between several different versions of the problem, identify two broad strategies for resolving it and put forward six evaluation criteria in terms of which the plausibility of a resolution can be assessed. According to FA analyses of value, what it is for something to have value is, roughly, for it to be fitting to have a certain sort of attitude toward it. To have a positive value, such as being good, is to be something that it is fitting to favor (to have a pro-attitude toward); to have a negative value, such as being bad, is to be something that it is fitting to disfavor (to have a con-attitude toward); and to have a relational or comparative value like being better than, worse than, equally good as or equally bad as something else is to be something that it is fitting to favor more than, disfavor more than, favor equally much as or disfavor equally much as the other thing. The partiality problem is, roughly, that there are situations in which two things seem to have equal value, which, if things are as they seem and FA analyses of value are correct, means that it is fitting to respond to them equally – to be impartial between them. However, in these situations, there are some people for whom it does not seem fitting to respond in that way because they stand in a certain relationship to one of the bearers of value. For these people, it seems that the fitting response is an unequal or partial response, not an impartial one. If such intuitions about fitting partiality and value are veridical, then how can FA analyses of value be correct? The rest of the dissertation is then a critical, in-depth study of a wide range of responses to the partiality problem. In Chapter 4, I examine the first of the two response strategies, which is to deny the veracity of at least one of the intuitions that generate the problem without making any changes to the FA analyses themselves. I then turn to the second strategy, which is to try to accommodate the intuitions by revising the FA analyses in some suitable manner. In Chapters 5–13, I consider the possibility and plausibility of solving the problem by revising the FA analyses on the basis of: the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties (Chapter 5), the notion of basic value (Chapter 6), the notion of agent-relative value (Chapter 7), the notion of an impartial observer (Chapter 8), the distinction between moral and non-moral fittingness (Chapter 9), a sui generis notion of fittingness (Chapter 10), the distinction between pro tanto and overall fittingness (Chapter 11), the distinction between actions and attitudes (Chapter 12) and the notions of evaluative distance and perspective (Chapter 13). My assessment is that none of these responses is entirely plausible. Thus, in Chapter 14, I conclude that although the partiality problem may not be irresolvable, it is yet to receive a fully plausible resolution. I also discuss the ramifications of this conclusion. (shrink)

Is it ever bad to take pleasure in the suffering of fictional characters? I think so. I attempt to show when and why. I begin with two powerful objections to my view: (1) engaging with fiction is akin to morally unproblematic autonomous fantasy, and (2) since no one is harmed, it is morally unproblematic. I reply to the objections and defend a Moorean view on the issue: It is intrinsically bad to enjoy evil, actual (past, present, or future) and merely (...) imagined. In support, I offer four examples. Then I argue against Moore's claim that it is equally bad to delight in fictional suffering as it is to enjoy actual suffering. Finally, I argue that even though it is bad to enjoy imagined suffering, the power of fiction is often mitigating. The moral problems are more often with the works of fiction than with the audience. (shrink)

This paper attempts to explain the conceptual connections between happiness and well-being. It first distinguishes episodic happiness from happiness in the personal attribute sense. It then evaluates two recent proposals about the connection between happiness and well-being: (1) the idea that episodic happiness and well-being both have the same fundamental determinants, so that a person is well-off to a particular degree in virtue of the fact that they are happy to that degree, and (2) the idea that happiness in the (...) personal attribute sense can serve as a ‘‘proxy’’ for well-being, i.e., that a person’s degree of deep or robust happiness approximates their degree of well-being. It is argued that happiness in both these senses is conceptually, metaphysically, and empirically distinct from well- being. A new analysis of welfare, well-being as agential flourishing, can explain welfare’s real connection to happiness in both the episodic and personal attribute senses. It predicts that such happiness is only directly beneficial when it is valued, when it is a form of valuing, or when it underwrites (i.e., serves as the causal basis for) the disposition to realize one’s values. It is therefore a necessary—but not sufficient—condition for especially high levels of well-being. This analysis of welfare integrates many insights from the eudaimonic tradition of welfare and happiness research in psychology, and also addresses common criticisms of these eudaimonic models. (shrink)

On the face of it, suffering from the loss of a loved one and suffering from intense pain are very different things. What makes them both experiences of suffering? I argue it’s neither their unpleasantness nor the fact that we desire not to have such experiences. Rather, what we suffer from negatively transforms the way our situation as a whole appears to us. To cash this out, I introduce the notion of negative affective construal, which involves practically perceiving our situation (...) as calling for change, registering this perception with a felt desire for change, and believing that the change is not within our power. We (attitudinally) suffer when negative affective construal is pervasive, either because it colours a large swath of possibilities, as in the case of anxiety, or because it narrows our attention to what hurts, as in the case of grief. On this view, sensory or bodily suffering is a special case of attitudinal suffering: the unpleasantness of pain causes pervasive negative affective construal. Pain that doesn’t negatively transform our world doesn’t make for suffering. (shrink)

Welfarism is a theory of value (or the good) simpliciter. Theories of value are fundamentally concerned with explaining what makes some possible worlds better than others. Welfarism is the view according to which the relative value of possible worlds is fully determined by how individuals are faring—or, in other words, by the facts about well-being that obtain—in these worlds. This entry begins by distinguishing between various forms of welfarism (pure vs. impure welfarism, and then narrow vs. wide welfarism). It then (...) outlines some of the key attractions of welfarism. Finally, it surveys some of the most serious objections to welfarism (including malicious pleasure, the well-being of the wicked, great works of art, the non-identity problem, human extinction, transitivity of betterness, and distribution). (shrink)