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Hedonist Accounts of Well-Being
Edited by Ben Bramble (Australian National University, Princeton University)
About this topic
| Summary | Hedonism about well-being, roughly put, says that how good or bad our lives are for us is just a matter of our pleasures and pains. Whether hedonism counts as a subjective or objective theory of well-being depends on whether it is paired with an attitude-based or felt-quality theory of pleasure. The most influential contemporary challenge to hedonism is Robert Nozick's "experience machine" thought experiment, according to which hedonism entails that it would be best for one to plug into a machine that would give one any future course of experiences one wanted, when this plainly would not be best for one. |
| Key works | Important historical discussions of hedonism are found in Plato's Philebus, Epicurus' Letter to Menoeceus, Bentham's Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, and Mill's Utilitarianism. The most comprehensive contemporary defenses of hedonism are Feldman 2004, Crisp 2006 (Ch. 4), and Bramble 2016. Other defenses include Bradley 2009 (Ch. 1), Heathwood 2006, and Lazari-Radek & Singer 2014 (Ch. 9). Nozick's experience machine thought experiment appears in Nozick 1989. |
| Introductions | Feldman 2004 provides the most thorough introduction to hedonism about well-being. See also Crisp 2013 (Sec. 4.1) and Heathwood 2014 (Sec. 3.1). |
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- The Epistemic Argument for Hedonism.Neil Sinhababu - 2024 - In Sanjit Chakraborty, Human Minds and Cultures. Switzerland: Springer Nature Switzerland. pp. 137-158.I defend ethical hedonism, the view that pleasure is the sole good thing, by arguing that it offers the only answer to an argument for moral skepticism. The skeptical problem arises from widespread fundamental moral disagreement, which entails the presence of enough moral error to undermine the reliability of most processes generating moral belief. We know that pleasure is good through the reliable process of phenomenal introspection, which reveals what our experiences are like. If knowing of pleasure’s goodness through phenomenal (...)
- The Four Buddhist Truths - Old but Still Relevant.Bruno Contestabile - manuscriptIn the Socratic tradition, the Buddhist truths are regarded as theses that are open to examination. Moving beyond traditional interpretations, this paper explores how the Buddhist truths connect with current scientific findings and ethical discussions.
- Is There a Predominance of Suffering?Bruno Contestabile - manuscriptIn 2022 a group of researchers published an empirical study on population ethical intuitions, which remained largely unnoticed, but has the potential to revolutionize the hedonist account of global well-being. The study disclosed that – in valuing entire populations – the majority’s intuitions are asymmetric about happiness and suffering. If this asymmetry is applied to the life evaluations of the World Happiness Report, then the aggregated total turns negative.
- Can I Get A Little Less Satisfaction, Please?Michael Plant - manuscriptWhile life satisfaction theories (LSTs) of well-being are barely discussed in philosophy, they are popular among social scientists and wider society. When philosophers have discussed LSTs, they are taken to be a distinct alternative to the three canonical accounts of well-being—hedonism, desire theories, the objective list. This essay makes three main claims. First, on closer inspection, LSTs are indistinguishable from a type of desire theory—the global desire theory. Second, the life satisfaction/global desire theories are the only subjectivist accounts of well-being (...)
- Wireheading as a Possible Contributor to Civilizational Decline.Alexey Turchin - manuscriptAbstract: Advances in new technologies create new ways to stimulate the pleasure center of the human brain via new chemicals, direct application of electricity, electromagnetic fields, “reward hacking” in games and social networks, and in the future, possibly via genetic manipulation, nanorobots and AI systems. This may have two consequences: a) human life may become more interesting, b) humans may stop participating in any external activities, including work, maintenance, reproduction, and even caring for their own health, which could slowly contribute (...)
- A Defense Of Nozick's "experience Machine".Nathan Ballantyne - unknown - Eidos: The Canadian Graduate Journal of Philosophy 18.Remove from this listExport citation
Bookmark - Clearing our Minds for Hedonic Phenomenalism.Lorenzo Buscicchi & Willem van der Deijl - forthcoming - Review of Philosophy and Psychology:1-16.What constitutes the nature of pleasure? According to hedonic phenomenalism, pleasant experiences are pleasant in virtue of some phenomenological features. According to hedonic attitudinalism, pleasure involves an attitude—a class of mental states that necessarily have an object. Consequently, pleasures are always _about_ something. We argue that hedonic attitudinalism is not able to accommodate pleasant moods. We first consider this argument more generally, and then consider what we call _the globalist strategy response_ to the possible objectless of moods, namely that pleasant (...)
- Is Mill's hedonism inconsistent?'.Norman O. Dahl - forthcoming - American Philosophical Quarterly.
- Desire, Aversion, and Welfare.James Fanciullo - forthcoming - Analysis.According to desire satisfactionism, well-being consists in getting what you desire. Recently, several theorists have suggested that this view should be extended to claim that ill-being consists in getting what you are averse to. I argue that both of these paradigmatic claims are false. As I show, desire and aversion are indeed both relevant to well-being and ill-being—in fact, perhaps surprisingly, each attitude has unique effects on both our well-being and ill-being. However, these effects are a matter of the unique (...)
- The Value of Consciousness to the One Who Has It.Uriah Kriegel - forthcoming - In Geoffrey Lee & Adam Pautz, The Importance of Being Conscious. Oxford University Press.There is a strong intuition that a zombie’s life is never good or bad for the zombie. What explains this? In this paper, I consider five possible explanations of the intuition that a zombie’s life is never worth living, plus the option of rejecting the intuition. I point out the considerable costs of each option, though making clear which option strikes me as least problematic.
- Consciousness Makes Things Matter.Andrew Y. Lee - forthcoming - Philosophers' Imprint.This paper argues that phenomenal consciousness is what makes an entity a welfare subject. I develop a variety of motivations for this view, and then defend it from objections concerning death, non-conscious entities that have interests (such as plants), and conscious entities that necessarily have welfare level zero. I also explain how my theory of welfare subjects relates to experientialist and anti-experientialist theories of welfare goods.
- Philosophy as Therapy - Limitations of the Medical Model: A Historical View.Bruno Contestabile & Michael Hampe - 2025 - Philosophical Practice Appa 20 (1):3472-3484.In his article Banicki proposes a universal model for all forms of philosophical therapy. He is guided by works of Martha Nussbaum, who in turn makes recourse to Aristotle. As compared to Nussbaum’s approach, Banicki’s model is more medical and less based on ethical argument. He mentions Foucault’s vision to apply the same theoretical analysis for the ailments of the body and the soul and to use the same kind of approach in treating and curing them. In his interpretation of (...)
- Are current AI systems capable of well-being?James Fanciullo - 2025 - Asian Journal of Philosophy 4 (1):1-10.Recently, Simon Goldstein and Cameron Domenico Kirk-Giannini have argued that certain existing AI systems are capable of well-being. They consider the three leading approaches to well-being—hedonism, desire satisfactionism, and the objective list approach—and argue that theories of these kinds plausibly imply that some current AI systems are capable of welfare. In this paper, I argue that the leading versions of each of these theories do not imply this. I conclude that we have strong reason to doubt that current AI systems (...)
- Alienation, Engagement, and Welfare.James Fanciullo - 2025 - Philosophical Quarterly 75 (1):40-60.The alienation constraint on theories of well-being has been influentially expressed thus: 'what is intrinsically valuable for a person must have a connection with what he would find in some degree compelling or attractive …. It would be an intolerably alienated conception of someone’s good to imagine that it might fail in any such way to engage him' (Railton 1986: 9). Many agree this claim expresses something true, but there is little consensus on how exactly the constraint is to be (...)
- AI wellbeing.Simon Goldstein & Cameron Domenico Kirk-Giannini - 2025 - Asian Journal of Philosophy 4 (1):1-22.Under what conditions would an artificially intelligent system have wellbeing? Despite its clear bearing on the ethics of human interactions with artificial systems, this question has received little direct 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 (...)
- Mood and Wellbeing.Uriah Kriegel - 2025 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 68 (1):1-24.The two main subjectivist accounts of wellbeing, hedonism and desire-satisfactionism, focus on pleasure and desire (respectively) as the subjective states relevant to evaluating the goodness of a life. In this paper, I argue that another type of subjective state, mood, is much more central to wellbeing. After a general characterization of some central features of mood (§1), I argue that the folk concept of happiness construes it in terms of preponderance of good mood (§2). I then leverage this connection between (...)
- Pleasure, Pain, and Pluralism about Well-Being.Eden Lin - 2025 - Philosophical Quarterly 75 (2):632-651.Pluralistic theories of well-being might appear unable to accommodate just how important pleasure and pain are to well-being. Intuitively, there is a finite limit to how well your life can go for you if it goes badly enough hedonically (e.g. because you never feel any pleasure and you spend two years in unrelenting agony). But if there is some basic good distinct from pleasure, as any pluralistic theory must claim, then it seems that you could be made arbitrarily well off (...)
- Sidgwick's Ethics.Anthony Skelton - 2025 - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Henry Sidgwick's The Methods of Ethics is one of the most important and influential works in the history of moral philosophy. The Methods of Ethics clarifies and tackles some of the most enduring and difficult problems of morality. It offers readers a high-calibre example of analytical moral philosophy. This Element interprets and critically evaluates select positions and arguments in Sidgwick's The Methods of Ethics. It focuses specifically on Sidgwick's moral epistemology, his argument against common-sense morality, his argument for utilitarianism, his (...)
- Attraction, Aversion, and Meaning in Life.Alisabeth Ayars - 2024 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 28 (3).Desire comes in two kinds: attraction and aversion. But contemporary theories of desire have paid little attention to the distinction, and some philosophers doubt that it is psychologically real. I argue that one reason to think there is a difference between the attitudes, and to care about it, is that attractions and aversions contribute in radically different ways to our well-being. Attraction-motivated activity adds to the good life in a way that aversion-driven activity does not. I argue further that the (...)
- The Folk Theory of Well-Being.John Bronsteen, Brian Leiter, Jonathan Masur & Kevin Tobia - 2024 - In Shaun Nichols & Joshua Knobe, Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy, Volume 5. Oxford University Press.What constitutes a “good” life—not necessarily a morally good life, but a life that is good for the person who lived it? In response to this question of “well-being," philosophers have offered three significant answers: A good life is one in which a person can satisfy their desires (“Desire-Satisfaction” or “Preferentism”), one that includes certain good features (“Objectivism”), or one in which pleasurable states dominate or outweigh painful ones (“Hedonism”). To adjudicate among these competing theories, moral philosophers traditionally gather data (...)$124.39 used (collection) View on Amazon.comRemove from this list Direct download (2 more)Export citation Bookmark 5 citations
- The Pursuit of Happiness: Philosophical and Psychological Foundations of Utility, Louis Narens and Brian Skyrms. Oxford University Press, 2020, 208 pages. [REVIEW]Krister Bykvist & Johan E. Gustafsson - 2024 - Economics and Philosophy 40 (1):233-239.
- Between Saying and Doing: Aristotle and Speusippus on the Evaluation of Pleasure.Wei Cheng - 2024 - Apeiron (3):391-426.This study aims to provide a coherent new interpretation of the notorious anti-hedonism of Speusippus, Plato’s nephew and the second scholarch of the Academy, by reconsidering all the relevant sources concerning his attitude toward pleasure—sources that seem to be in tension or even incompatible with each other. By reassessing Speusippus’ anti-hedonism and Aristotle’s response, it also sheds new light on the Academic debate over pleasure in which he and Aristotle participated: This debate is not merely concerned with the truth and (...)
- Hume’s Hedonism.Roger Crisp - 2024 - Hume Studies 49 (1):35-51.This paper seeks critically to elucidate Hume’s views on pleasure and the good, in particular his evaluative hedonism, and to show that evaluative hedonism is in certain respects at least as significant a component of his philosophical ethics as sentimentalism. The first section explains his notion of pleasure, and how it is, in an important sense, prior to desire. The following two sections show how this conception of pleasure and its relation to desire leads Hume to accept evaluative hedonism, as (...)
- Strangers to ourselves: a Nietzschean challenge to the badness of suffering.Nicolas Delon - 2024 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 67 (9):3600-3629.Is suffering really bad? The late Derek Parfit argued that we all have reasons to want to avoid future agony and that suffering is in itself bad both for the one who suffers and impersonally. Nietzsche denied that suffering was intrinsically bad and that its value could even be impersonal. This paper has two aims. It argues against what I call ‘Realism about the Value of Suffering’ by drawing from a broadly Nietzschean debunking of our evaluative attitudes, showing that a (...)
- The Secular Hedonism of the Cārvākas.Pradeep P. Gokhale - 2024 - In Michael Hemmingsen, Ethical Theory in Global Perspective. Albany: SUNY Press. pp. 109-124.An accessible introduction to Cārvāka moral philosophy.Remove from this listExport citation Bookmark
- Welfare Subjectivism, Sophistication, and Procedural Perfectionism.Shu Ishida - 2024 - The Journal of Ethics:1-20.Welfare subjectivists face a dilemma. On the one hand, traditional subjectivist theories—such as the desire-fulfillment theory—are too permissive to account for the well-being of typical mature human beings. On the other hand, more “refined” theories—such as the life-satisfaction theory—are too restrictive to account for the well-being of various welfare subjects, including newborns, those with profound cognitive impairments, or non-human animals. This paper examines a class of welfare subjectivism that addresses this dilemma with sensitivity to the diversity in welfare subjects. First, (...)
- Are the later Mohists preference-satisfaction consequentialists? A discussion of Daniel Stephens’ “Later Mohist ethics and philosophical progress in ancient China”.Bradford Jean-Hyuk Kim - 2024 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 32 (1):218-30.The Mohists may have been the first consequentialists on earth. Their most important principles are that right action is what benefits the world and that the underlying outlook for benefiting the world is inclusive care, whereby each person receives equal consideration. The early Mohists are clearly objective-list consequentialists, whereby benefiting the world amounts to promoting the most basic goods. Stephens argues that the later Mohists shift to a preference-satisfaction consequentialism whereby benefiting the world amounts to promoting what happens to please (...)
- The good life as the life in touch with the good.Adam Lovett & Stefan Riedener - 2024 - Philosophical Studies 181 (5):1141-1165.What makes your life go well for you? In this paper, we give an account of welfare. Our core idea is simple. There are impersonally good and bad things out there: things that are good or bad period, not (or not only) good or bad for someone. The life that is good for you is the life in contact with the good. We’ll understand the relevant notion of ‘contact’ here in terms of manifestation: you’re in contact with a value when (...)
- A Story of Corruption: False Pleasure and the Methodological Critique of Hedonism in Plato’s Philebus.John D. Proios - 2024 - Ancient Philosophy 44 (2):363-383.In Plato’s Philebus, Socrates’ second account of ‘false’ pleasure (41d-42c) outlines a form of illusion: pleasures that appear greater than they are. I argue that these pleasures are perceptual misrepresentations. I then show that they are the grounds for a methodological critique of hedonism. Socrates identifies hedonism as a judgment about the value of pleasure based on a perceptual misrepresentation of size, witnessed paradigmatically in the ‘greatest pleasures’.
- Are All Welfare Ranges the Same?Travis Timmerman - 2024 - In Bob Fischer, Weighing Animal Welfare. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 49-77.This chapter explores Tatjana Višak’s arguments for the claim that all animals have the same welfare ranges. It starts by defining capacity for welfare and reviews some theoretical considerations that bear on this question. Next, Višak’s empirically informed, theoretical arguments for the claim that all animals have the same welfare ranges are reviewed. Her arguments rely on the idea that relativized accounts of well-being are the most plausible accounts and appeal to a certain view about the evolutionary explanation of hedonic (...)
- Artificially sentient beings: Moral, political, and legal issues.Fırat Akova - 2023 - New Techno-Humanities 3 (1):41-48.The emergence of artificially sentient beings raises moral, political, and legal issues that deserve scrutiny. First, it may be difficult to understand the well-being elements of artificially sentient beings and theories of well-being may have to be reconsidered. For instance, as a theory of well-being, hedonism may need to expand the meaning of happiness and suffering or it may run the risk of being irrelevant. Second, we may have to compare the claims of artificially sentient beings with the claims of (...)
- Alienation, Resonance, and Experience in Theories of Well-Being.Andrew Alwood - 2023 - Philosophia 51 (4):2225-2240.Each person has a special relation to his or her own well-being. This rough thought, which can be sharpened in different ways, is supposed to substantially count against objectivist theories on which one can intrinsically benefit from, or be harmed by, factors that are independent of one’s desires, beliefs, and other attitudes. It is often claimed, contra objectivism, that one cannot be _alienated_ from one’s own interests, or that improvements in a person’s well-being must _resonate_ with that person. However, I (...)
- Barthes's hedonism.Jeffrey R. Di Leo - 2023 - In Jeffrey R. Di Leo & Zahi Anbra Zalloua, Understanding Žižek, understanding modernism. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.Remove from this listExport citation Bookmark
- Barthes's hedonism.Jeffrey R. Di Leo - 2023 - In Jeffrey R. Di Leo & Zahi Anbra Zalloua, Understanding Žižek, understanding modernism. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.Remove from this listExport citation Bookmark
- Hedonism and Its (Negative) Impact on Tourism.Maja Ferenec Kuća - 2023 - In Marie-Élise Zovko & John Dillon, Tourism and Culture in Philosophical Perspective. Springer Verlag. pp. 223-236.This paper analyses and evaluates human actions and examples of behaviourism in tourism from an ethical perspective. Defining the concept of values in tourism as a concept of what is desirable to the tourist together with its motivation, we differentiate four hierarchical levels with respect to the foundation of those values. My aim here is to analyse all of these levels, but with a stronger emphasis on the tradition of teleological ethics within which hedonism arises and which later becomes the (...)
- Self-esteem and competition.Pablo Gilabert - 2023 - Philosophy and Social Criticism 49 (6):711-742.This paper explores the relations between self-esteem and competition. Self-esteem is a very important good and competition is a widespread phenomenon. They are commonly linked, as people often seek self-esteem through success in competition. Although competition in fact generates valuable consequences and can to some extent foster self-esteem, empirical research suggests that competition has a strong tendency to undermine self-esteem. To be sure, competition is not the source of all problematic deficits in self-esteem, and it can arise for, or undercut (...)
- Beyond Hedonism about Aesthetic Value.James Shelley - 2023 - In Larissa Berger, Disinterested Pleasure and Beauty: Perspectives from Kantian and Contemporary Aesthetics. Boston: De Gruyter. pp. 257-274.In its simplest form, hedonism about aesthetic value, the standard account of aesthetic normativity, holds that an object’s aesthetic value is the value it possesses in virtue of its capacity to provide aesthetic pleasure. I argue that hedonism cannot be true because it cannot reconcile itself with our concern to make true aesthetic judgments. Then I argue for an alternative account of aesthetic normativity that is not only consistent with that concern but the very expression of it. The argument for (...)$233.69 used (collection) View on Amazon.comRemove from this list Direct downloadExport citation Bookmark 1 citation
- Re-Thinking Cultural Hedonism.Aivaras Stepukonis - 2023 - Dialogue and Universalism 33 (1):181-194.Hedonism, driven by mass culture and widespread consumerism, is a salient factor in the modus vivendi of contemporary Western civilization. This general psychological and behavioral backdrop is exploited in the article as an opportunity to both reinvigorate and re-appraise the theoretical underpinnings of modern hedonism as developed by John Stuart Mill in his Utilitarianism. The article proceeds in two steps: Firstly, a detailed exposition of Mill’s arguments for the principle of utility is undertaken, with an accompanying elucidation of the core (...)
- The Experience Machine Thought Experiment and Hedonism. 김일수 - 2023 - Journal of the Daedong Philosophical Association 104:87-107.1974년 로버트 노직이 고안한 경험 기계의 사고 실험은 쾌락주의를 효과적으로 반박하 는 논증으로 인정받아 왔다. 하지만 2010년경부터 노직의 경험 기계 반론이 쾌락주의를 완전히 무너뜨릴 힘이 있는지에 대한 의심이 시작되었다. 경험 기계와 연결되지 않으려는 대다수 사람들의 선택을 가장 잘 설명해주는 것은 쾌락주의의 거짓이 아니라 그 사고 실험 에 포함된 몇 가지 문제점이라는 것이다. 이러한 문제 제기는 크게 쾌락주의적 편향, 상상 의 실패, 현상 유지 편향으로 구분할 수 있다. 경험 기계의 사고 실험에 포함된 문제적 요소를 제거한 두 삶을 직접적으로 비교하는 논증에 따르면, (...)
- Passé Pains.Ben Bramble - 2022 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 46:21-32.Why are pains bad for us? A natural answer is that it is just because of how they feel (or their felt-qualities). But this answer is cast into doubt by cases of people who are unbothered by certain pains of theirs. These pains retain their felt-qualities, but do not seem bad for the people in question. In this paper, I offer a new response to this problem. I argue that in such cases, the pains in question have become “just more (...)
- Une défense de l'hédonisme axiologique.Antonin Broi - 2022 - Dialogue 61 (2):325-346.L'hédonisme axiologique a une longue histoire en philosophie. Pourtant, il garde une mauvaise réputation qui lui vaut d’être parfois écarté sans ménagement de la discussion philosophique. Cet article se propose de défendre l'hédonisme axiologique en exposant les principaux arguments en sa faveur et en répondant aux principales critiques et confusions dont il fait l'objet. Une attention particulière sera portée aux arguments établissant la spécificité du plaisir et du déplaisir par rapport à toutes les autres choses — amitié, savoir, justice, etc. (...)
- Paradox of Hedonism.Lorenzo Buscicchi - 2022 - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.Paradox of Hedonism Varieties of hedonism have been criticized from ancient to modern times. Along the way, philosophers have also considered the paradox of hedonism. The paradox is a common objection to hedonism, even if they often do not give that specific name to the objection. According to the paradox of hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure … Continue reading Paradox of Hedonism →.
- Robert Nozick’s Metaverse Machine.Lorenzo Buscicchi - 2022 - Philosophy Now 149:26-28.
- The Experience Machine.Lorenzo Buscicchi - 2022 - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.The Experience Machine The experience machine is a thought experiment first devised by Robert Nozick in the 1970s. In the last decades of the 20th century, an argument based on this thought experiment has been considered a knock-down objection to hedonism about well-being, the thesis that our well-being—that is, the goodness or badness of our … Continue reading The Experience Machine →.
- (1 other version)Social Media Hedonism and the Case of ’Fitspiration’: A Nietzschean Critique.Aurélien Daudi - 2022 - Sport, Ethics and Philosophy 17 (2):127-142.Though the rise of social media has provided countless advantages and possibilities, both within and without the domain of sports, recent years have also seen some more detrimental aspects of these technologies come to light. In particular, the widespread social media culture surrounding fitness – ‘fitspiration’ – warrants attention for the way it encourages self-sexualization and -objectification, thereby epitomizing a wider issue with photo-based social media in general. Though the negative impact of fitspiration has been well documented, what is less (...)
- The Hedonist’s Emotions.Julien Deonna & Fabrice Teroni - 2022 - Les Ateliers de l'Éthique / the Ethics Forum 17 (1-2):176-191.Julien Deonna et Fabrice Teroni Cet article explore l’intuition hédoniste convaincante selon laquelle les émotions affectent le bonheur parce qu’elles sont des états de plaisir et de déplaisir. La discussion s’intéresse à deux contraintes sur une version plausible de l’hédonisme et explique quels récits des émotions satisfont ces contraintes. La section 1 s’articule autour de la contrainte de non-aliénation : les constituants du bonheur d’un sujet doivent l’engager. Nous soutenons que l’intuition selon laquelle les émotions ont une valeur prudentielle présuppose (...)
- Well-Being and Moral Constraints: A Modified Subjectivist Account.Megan Fritts - 2022 - Philosophia 50 (4):1809-1824.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 (...)
- Structuring Wellbeing.Christopher Frugé - 2022 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 105 (3):564-580.Many questions about wellbeing involve metaphysical dependence. Does wellbeing depend on minds? Is wellbeing determined by distinct sorts of things? Is it determined differently for different subjects? However, we should distinguish two axes of dependence. First, there are the grounds that generate value. Second, there are the connections between the grounds and value which make it so that those grounds generate that value. Given these distinct axes of dependence, there are distinct dimensions to questions about the dependence of wellbeing. In (...)
- Well-Being and Experience.Alan H. Goldman - 2022 - The Journal of Ethics 26 (2):175-192.Robert Nozick argued that we would not plug into his machine that could give us any experiences we chose. More recently Richard Kraut has argued that it would be prudentially rational to plug into the machine, since only experiences count for personal welfare. I argue that both are wrong, that either choice can be rational or not, depending on the central desires of the subjects choosing. This claim is supported by the empirical evidence, which shows an almost even split between (...)
- Subjectivists Should Say Pain Is Bad Because of How It Feels.Jennifer Hawkins - 2022 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 46:137-164.What is the best way to account for the badness of pain and what sort of theory of welfare is best suited to accommodate this view? I argue that unpleasant sensory experiences are prudentially bad in the absence of contrary attitudes, but good when the object of positive attitudes. Pain is bad unless it is liked, enjoyed, valued etc. Interestingly, this view is incompatible with either pure objectivist or pure subjectivist understandings of welfare. However, there is a kind of welfare (...)
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