Desires matter. What are desires? Many believe that desire is a motivational state: desiring is being disposed to act. This conception aligns with the functionalist approach to desire and the standard account of desire's role in explaining action. According to a second influential approach, however, desire is first and foremost an evaluation: desiring is representing something as good. After all, we seem to desire things under the guise of the good. Which understanding of desire is more accurate? Is the guise (...) of the good even right to assume? Should we adopt an alternative picture that emphasizes desire's deontic nature? What do neuroscientific studies suggest? -/- Essays in the first section of the volume are devoted to these questions, and to the puzzle of desire's essence. In the second part of the volume, essays investigate some implications that the various conceptions of desire have on a number of fundamental issues. For example, why are inconsistent desires problematic? What is desire's role in practical deliberation? How do we know what we want? -/- This volume will contribute to the emergence of a fruitful debate on a neglected, albeit crucial, dimension of the mind. (shrink)

Research interest in topics such as happiness, the quality of life, and the experience of well-being has dramatically increased in the past four decades. Global measures of Subjective Well-Being have long held a prominent position in this burgeoning body of research. Despite their widespread acceptance and use, the validity and utility of global measures of SWB have been challenged at several levels of analysis. These critiques have ranged from the conceptual basis of SWB to very specific concerns about the context (...) of the assessment situation and the cognitive processes involved in formulating a response to such measures. The purpose of this paper is to review and address some of the more prominent critiques of global measures of SWB, and to discuss methodological procedures and strategies for minimizing threats to the validity and increasing the utility of global measures of SWB. (shrink)

Well-being in the broadest sense is what we have when we are living lives that are not necessarily morally good, but good for us. In philosophy, well-being has been an important topic of inquiry for millennia. In psychology, well-being as a topic has been gathering steam very recently and this research is now at a stage that warrants the attention of philosophers. The most popular theories of well-being in the two fields are similar enough to suggest the possibility of interdisciplinary (...) collaboration. In this essay I provide an overview of three of the main questions that arise from psychologists’ work on well-being, and highlight areas that invite philosophical input. Those questions center on the nature, measurement, and moral significance of well-being. I also argue that the life-satisfaction theory is particularly well suited to meet the various demands on a theory of well-being. (shrink)

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 2, February 2022.

Is it possible to be happy without virtues? At least for the kind of enduring human happiness Aristotle bears, virtues are required (NE, I). In addition to virtues, some prosperity is necessary for flourishing, like having friends and minimal external goods. Nowadays, we witness different approaches to happiness – well-being – focusing on mental states – i. e. affective – usually without reference to moral issues, concretely moral dispositions, or virtues. At the crossroads of Philosophy and Psychology, the present article (...) discusses the connection of happiness – well-being – and affective states by presenting Fredrickson’s theory of positive emotions, which has been criticised as approaching only hedonic well-being and therefore overlooking its eudaimonic aspects. In her approach, there is no reference to the good life connected to the human good, as in Aristotle’s ethics. However, there is instead an understanding of becoming a benevolent, a better person as a necessary human aspiration. (shrink)

The thesis investigated the impact of critical life events (marriage, divorce, birth of child, widowhood, and unemployment) on dynamics of subjective well-being (SWB). It contributed to specification of the hedonic treadmill theory by a) addressing the issue of events timing, b) exploring inter-individual differences in adaptation, and c) analyzing differences in adaptation across countries. The work comprised 3 empirical studies. The first study estimated the effect of life events not with a temporal precision of 12 months (as is common in (...) the literature) but of 3 months. As expected, higher precision of events' timing allows a clearer view on hedonic adaptation, in particular following negative events (divorce, widowhood, unemployment). The second study analyzed inter-individual differences in adaptation to divorce. The findings confirmed that a) the reaction to divorce is not uniform, b) adaptation pattern depends on resources that are available to the individual. The third study compared the impact of divorce on SWB in Russia and West Germany and showed that the divorce-related dynamics, as well as the relevance of particular resources, are contingent on the larger socio-economic and cultural context a person lives in. (shrink)