I.e., welfare, happiness, the good life, self-interest Well-being I.e., welfare, happiness, the good life, self-interest

How should I live my life? What are we to look to in deciding between possible futures for ourselves? Let’s set aside nihilism and allow that some lives go better than others. What makes one life go better than another? (constitutive question) This theoretical question is central in discussions of meaning of life, but it is also of great relevance to ethical theory. E.g. suppose we have a duty to benefit those in need. We need an account of what it is to benefit someone.

Hedonism One life is better than another with respect to well-being provided it is, on balance (when pain & misery are weighed in), more pleasant overall. Two points: Hedonism is here understood as a way of comparing how well lives go. We are not concerned with comparing portions of a life (e.g. a day). Hedonism isn’t just the claim that a better life is more pleasant. Hedonism is the view that what makes a life better is precisely that it is, on balance, more pleasant. (constitutive claim)

A difference in well-being → a phenomenal difference Pleasures are assumed to be aspects of one’s conscious mental life. Two points: A zombie would be incapable of pleasure. What makes a difference to how well a life goes is just how things seem from the first-person perspective, i.e. “from the inside.” Since only what gets registered in one’s conscious life can make a difference to one’s well-being, two lives that are phenomenally identical could not differ with respect to well-being.

Some questions to ask Do you agree that well-being is exhausted by how things seem from the inside? Does this idea succeed in capturing the insight behind the clumsy slogan what you don’t know can’t hurt you? Do you have any worries about the attempt to clarify well-being by reference to pleasure? Is the idea of pleasure any clearer than that of well-being? Hedonism presupposes that it makes sense to make comparisons among pleasures and pains to determine which of two lives is more pleasant. Do you think this sort of comparison is possible?

Robert Nozick’s experience machine Nozick has us imagine a machine with the power to yield a lifetime of experiences far more pleasant than anything we would be likely to attain in everyday life. In order to attain this virtual bliss, we have to sacrifice life in the real world. Two questions: Would you enter the machine? Nozick claims that few would make such a choice, even though our lives would be considerably more pleasant. Nozick takes this fact about us to show that we care about more than how things seem from the inside. What else might we care about?

Why we are able to care about more Given our cognitive sophistication, it is no surprise that we care about more than just how things seem. We have a theory of mind, which we employ in explaining and predicting the behavior of others. Consequently, we distinguish —representation vs. reality —how things seem/appear vs. how things are —mind vs. world Thanks to this cognitive sophistication, it is plausible that we are able to care about more than just appearances.

Nietzsche on hedonism “Mankind does not strive for happiness; only the Englishman does that.”

Hedonism: summing up Advantage: How pleasant things are from the first- person perspective is clearly something we care about. Disadvantages: Seems like we can and do care about more. Further, pleasantness is difficult to measure and compare.

Desire-satisfaction theory In the experience machine many of your desires for your life will appear to be satisfied while remaining unfulfilled—desires for friendship/love, desires to accomplish various things, desires to be a certain kind of person, to encounter mysteries of the world… Two points: Perhaps that is why life in the machine seems less good than real life: in the machine you likely have less desire satisfaction overall. Perhaps what makes one life better than another is just that it contains a greater sum of desire satisfaction.

Advantages? Avoids the Experience Machine worry. The key notion of desire satisfaction is relatively easy to understand (as compared, say, to the notion of pleasure). Yields a scientifically respectable notion of happiness, something accessible from the third- person perspective and empirically measurable.

Parfit’s addiction case Parfit doubts that we regard a life as better just in virtue of its containing a greater amount of desire satisfaction. In principle, you could increase the total amount of desire satisfaction in your life by way of an addiction (which has no undesirable side-effects). However, a drug addiction which does nothing more than add desire satisfaction does not seem to make life better!

Parfit’s amendment to the theory In place of a summation version of the desire satisfaction theory, we should prefer a life-satisfaction version: a life is better insofar it involves greater satisfaction of desires you have regarding your life as a whole. A life is happier to the extent that it contains greater life satisfaction. *How does this amendment help to address the addiction case?

Children of the cult Suppose you have been raised in a compound by cult leaders who have limited your exposure to the possibilities that life affords. Do we really want to say that the good life for you is determined by satisfaction of your actual desires for your life as a whole?

Children of the cult RESPONSE: Insist that only relatively informed desires about one’s life count when we are attempting to assess well-being.

Absurd life plans Suppose someone capable of remarkable scientific achievements (or great moral deeds or superior artistic performance) is well informed about life’s possibilities and yet she decides to devote herself to a life of counting blades of grass. (example ultimately derived from John Rawls) According to desire satisfaction theory, the good life for this individual consists in attaining satisfaction in this desire for her life as a whole.

Does desire satisfaction theory get things backwards? Don’t you desire certain things for your life as a whole because you think they’re good? You don’t think they’re good for you because you desire them!

Objective-list theory Let’s take seriously this idea that what makes a life desirable is the fact that it’s a good life. It’s not good because we desire it (and attain what we desire). The thought is that some things are good for us— whether we want them or not. They are thereby objective goods: their goodness does not depend on the attitudes subjects have towards them. (E.g. truth, beauty, and moral goodness.)

Questions to consider Do our everyday judgments about well-being tacitly presuppose a theory (e.g. hedonism) or are they based on non-rational reactions (à la Haidt)? Do you think Nozick’s Experience machine and Rawls’ grass counter show that meaningfulness is central to our idea of well-being? Does meaning presuppose an objective list (like Truth, Beauty, & Goodness)? Which theory of well-being do you find most plausible: Hedonism, D-S theory, or O-L theory?