Lecture 3: theories of well-being

theories don’t necessarily disagree, but if they agree, they agree for different reasons.

utilitarianism justifies choices by referring to well-being of everyone involved.

but what is well-being? what’s ultimately good for one?

Hedonism

your well-being depends on whether you enjoy your life. something matters because it brings you pleasure.

but pleasure is valuable in itself.

but if you had an experience machine that could give you any experience you wanted, would you plug in?

why not, based on Nozick:

1. I want to be someone, not just a set of experiences
   • but there could be a machine in which we could be transformed into any character we ant
2. I want to do things, achieve things through pain and effort, not just sit and wait for things to happen.
   • but there could be a machine in which we work on and accomplish all sorts of great projects
3. I want contact with reality, not a reality restricted to what humans can imagine and program.

Preference satisfaction

your well-being depends on whether you get what you want. life goes better if more of your preferences are satisfied i.e. not just about pleasure.

is it always good to get what you want? people make bad choices…maybe because they are misinformed? amend: what matters is if your laundered preferences are satisfied (i.e. those you’d have if you were sufficiently informed).

policies can influence people’s preferences. some might seem good, like smokers losing their desire for smoking. but what’s the justification? at what point does it just become propaganda, i.e. people like stuff because of the policy? though preference satisfaction says it’s good if people get what they want after being informed, not after having their desires manipulated.

also, what if someone’s only fully-informed desire is to count blades of grass? if life going well for this person if they get all the time to count blades of grass? based on preference satisfaction, yes. but like, for real?

Objective list theory

your well-being depends on whether you have the items that are on the objective list. i.e. there are things that are good for everyone.

so what’s on the list?

based on Martha Nussbaum:

• life: being able to live a life of normal length
• health: good health, including reproductive
• bodily integrity: being able to move freely, be secure against assault/violence, and having opportunities for sexual satisfaction
• senses, imagination, thought: being bale to use senses, to imagine, to think and reason with adequate education; being able to experience and produce self-expressive works of religion/literature/music/etc.; being able to have pleasurable experiences and avoid unnecessary pain.
• emotions: being able to have attachments to other things and people, to love, to grieve, to experience justified anger
• practical reason: being able to form conception of good, and to engage in critical reflection about planning of one’s life
• affiliation: being able to live with/toward others, to show concern for other people, being able to work as a human being, having social bases of self-respect and non-humiliation
• other species: being able to live with concern for and relation to animals, plants, and nature.
• play: being able to laugh, play, enjoy recreational activities.
• control over one’s environment: political (participating in political choices, protections of free speech and association), material (being able to have property, having right to equally seek employment, having freedom from unwarranted search and seizure)

advantage: this view might be more suitable for policy.

disadvantage: less room for choice and diversity.