FILA 9 Theories of Well-Being
October 2–5, 2017
Course Description and Syllabus
September 5, 2017
Antti Kauppinen ([email protected])
Philosophy, University of Tampere
Many things, such as money or exercise or insurance, seem to be good for us and worth pursuing, because they are a means to something else. But what is ultimately good for us – what is worth pursuing for its own sake, insofar as we’re looking to make our own lives as good as possible? This is the question that theories of well-being (or prudential value or self-interest, to use a couple of common synonyms) try to answer. Some hold that it is only pleasure or happiness that is ultimately good for us, while others think it is getting what we want or leading the kind of life that meets our own standards. Yet others argue that the best things in life are independent of our opinions concerning them, so that we can be benefited by something we don’t appreciate.
The answer we give to the question concerning the nature of well-being makes a difference in many contexts. If I have to make a big self-interested life choice – say, who to spend the rest of my life with, or what to study – what it makes sense for me to focus on depends on what really matters. If I have children, I will at least implicitly rely on some conception of well-being in trying to steer them in a direction that is best for them. If I’m a social scientist trying to figure out how well people of a certain group do in a society, or a politician trying to improve the lot of citizens, or an official trying to assess the human costs and benefits of a policy intervention, I need to make use of the right kind of criteria and measures, or I’ll get it wrong.
Philosophers are thus far from the only people who think about well-being, but they do so in a systematic and argumentative manner. The aim of this course is to examine and evaluate the answers they have offered. Our focus will be on the contemporary debate, but we will also make reference to historical views.
All readings are or will be made available on the course website (Moodle). The main readings on each topic come with a list of questions (see bottom of this page). Please try to find answers to them before each meeting, so that we can have a good conversation. There is a lot to read, and the course is intensive, so it is best to get started right away. Read at least the starred texts in advance. The additional readings may also be discussed in class to some extent, but I don’t expect students to have read them. They are good additional starting points for those who want to write an essay on one of the topics.
Timetable Topics (roughly)
Mon 02-Oct-2017 at 12-16, *** The Concept of Well-Being, Hedonism
Tue 03-Oct-2017 at 12-16, *** Subjectivism, Perfectionism
Wed 04-Oct-2017 at 12-16, *** Pluralism, Lifetime Well-Being
Thu 05-Oct-2017 at 12-16, *** Science and Politics of Well-Being
Syllabus
Note: several readings are from Guy Fletcher (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Well-Being (London: Routledge, 2016).
0. The Concept of Well-Being
Additional readings:
1. Hedonism
Additional readings:
2. Subjectivism: Desires, Values, and Authentic Happiness
Additional readings:
3. Perfectionism and Eudaimonism
Additional readings:
4. Pluralist Objectivism
Additional readings:
5. Well-Being Over a Lifetime
Additional readings:
6. The Science of Happiness and Well-Being
Additional readings:
7. Well-Being and Public Policy
Additional readings:
Background Reading
I can recommend the following volumes as background reading:
FILA9 Theories of Well-Being
Questions About Readings
Antti Kauppinen
Updated September 21, 2017
0. The Concept of Well-Being
*Stephen Campbell, ‘The Concept of Well-Being’. In Fletcher (ed.) 2016.
1. What are some of the synonyms for ‘well-being’?
2. How is well-being different from what is good (simpliciter)? In what different ways can a life be good?
3. How is well-being related to emotions and attitudes?
4. Why does Campbell think we need a more detailed understanding of well-being?
5. What are the rational care, locative, positional, and suitability analyses of well-being?
6. What reasons are there to think that there are multiple concepts of well-being?
1. Hedonism
Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (excerpt).
1. What is the double role of pleasure and pain for Bentham?
2. What is ‘utility’, according to Bentham?
3. How does Bentham propose to calculate the total value of a pleasure or pain for an individual?
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (excerpt).
1. Why does Mill distinguish between higher and lower pleasures?
2. What is Mill’s criterion for distinguishing between the two? Why is it not an objection that lower pleasures are sometimes pursued?
Robert Nozick, ‘The Experience Machine’ (excerpts from Anarchy, State and Utopia and The Examined Life).
1. What is Nozick’s thought experiment?
2. What matters to us beyond our experiences, according to Nozick?
3. What does considering transformation and result machines tell us?
4. When it comes to happiness, why isn’t the total amount the only thing that matters, according to Nozick?
*Ben Bramble, ‘A New Defense of Hedonism About Well-Being’. Ergo 3 (4), 2016.
1. How does Bramble define hedonism, benefiting, and harming?
2. What is the Experience Requirement, and why should we think it’s true?
3. What are the felt quality and attitudinal theories of pleasure? Why does Bramble think the former is superior?
4. What is the Philosophy of the Swine objection? How does Bramble respond to it?
5. How does Bramble respond to the Experience Machine challenge?
6. How can pleasure be good for people who don’t care for it?
*Fred Feldman (2002), ‘The Good Life: A Defense of Attitudinal Hedonism’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65, 604–628.
1. How does Feldman distinguish between feelings and enjoyment (sensory and attitudinal pleasure)?
2. Why does Feldman think sensory hedonism is false?
3. How does intrinsic attitudinal hedonism arrive at the value of a person’s life?
4. How does Feldman propose to deal with pleasures based on falsehoods?
5. How does Feldman modify attitudinal hedonism to avoid the problem of worthless pleasures?
6. What is Double Desert Adjusted Hedonism, and what reason is there to adopt it? Is it a theory of well-being?
2. Subjectivism: Desires, Values, and Authentic Happiness
*Chris Heathwood (2005), ‘The Problem of Defective Desires’. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 83 (4), 487–504.
1. When does it appear to be bad for a person to get what she wants?
2. What are the characteristics of an actual desire satisfaction theory?
3. What is the distinction between intrinsically bad and all-things-considered bad states of affairs, and how does it help actualist desire-satisfactionism? When is the concurrence requirement important?
4. How does distinguishing between different kinds of evaluation help an actualist desire-satisfaction theory?
5. How does Heathwood try to avoid the paradox of desiring to be badly off?
*Jason Raibley (2013), ‘Values, Agency, and Welfare’. Philosophical Topics 41 (1), 187–214.
1. What is the basic idea of a values-based theory of well-being? What is valuing?
2. What advantages does Raibley claim for a values-based theory?
3. Are disinterested values a problem for a value-based theory?
4. Why is self-sacrifice a challenge to a values-based theory, and how does Raibley try to get around it?
5. Are self-destructive values paradoxical?
6. Why does Raibley think there must be more to well-being than realizing consciously held values?
7. How does Raibley propose to modify the value-based theory to address the preceding concerns?
8. Why is a mismatch between conscious values and non-deliberate attitudes a problem for Raibley, and how does he solve it?
Wayne Sumner (1996), ‘Welfare and Happiness’, from Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press), 138–183.
1. How does Sumner distinguish between pleasure and pain, on the one hand, and enjoyment and suffering, on the other?
2. What are the cognitive and affective aspects of happiness, according to Sumner?
3. What’s the problem with economic and social indicators of welfare from Sumner’s perspective? What challenges does he identify for subjective measures?
4. Why must a person’s endorsement of her life be informed to be authentic?
5. How does Sumner address the problem of adaptive preferences?
6. In what sense is the view of well-being as authentic happiness between hedonism and desire-satisfaction theories? How does it meet the desiderata for a theory of well-being, according to Sumner?
3. Perfectionism and Eudaimonism
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (excerpts).
1. What is the relationship between ends and goods, according to Aristotle? What is the significance of the fact that our ends are hierarchically structured?
2. Why do we need to be well-brought up to study the good?
3. Why is happiness complete and self-sufficient?
4. What is the link between the function of something and being good? What is the function (the job to do) of human beings?
5. Why is virtue good? What is the connection between virtue and pleasure?
6. What is the significance of external goods for happiness?
7. What are virtues of character? How do we acquire them, and what makes them virtues?
8. Why is theoretical study the highest good?
*Gwen Bradford, ‘The Value of Achievements’. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 94 (2), 204–224.
1. What are the key features of an achievement, according to Bradford?
2. What is the Simple Product view, and why does it fail?
3. Why doesn’t valuing difficulty mean that we should try to make things as difficult as possible for ourselves?
4. How does Bradford define perfectionism? What is the epistemic guide she proposes?
5. Why should we understand difficulty in terms of effort rather than complexity, according to Bradford? What does this mean for virtuoso performances?
6. What’s good about difficulty, according to Bradford’s perfectionism?
*Dan Haybron (2008), ‘Happiness, the Self, and Human Flourishing’. Utilitas 20 (1), 21–49.
1. What do the cases of Henry and Claudia show us about self-fulfilment, according to Haybron?
2. What’s wrong with the hedonistic theory of happiness (as opposed to hedonism about well-being)? What is Haybron’s alternative emotional condition account?
3. In what sense are central affective states aspects of the self?
4. What does Haybron mean by authenticity, and why is it important?
5. Why doesn’t the value of pleasure suffice to explain the phenomena?
6. How does Haybron’s version of nature-fulfilment theory differ from an Aristotelian one? What else, besides happiness, matters for well-being according to his account?
4. Pluralist Objectivism
*Richard Arneson (1999), ‘Human Flourishing Versus Desire Satisfaction’. Social Philosophy and Policy 16 (1), 113–142.
1. What makes a theory of well-being objectivist, according to Arneson? What are the defining features of an Objective List Theory? What makes it a theory?
2. Why does Arneson reject perfectionism?
3. Why does Arneson reject hybrid views that try to accommodate the experience requirement?
4. What does Arneson think are the best objections against an informed desire view?
5. What are the two forms of the endorsement constraint that Arneson considers? On what grounds does he reject them? Why doesn’t weakening the constraint help?
Guy Fletcher (2013), ‘A Fresh Start for an Objective List Theory of Well-Being’. Utilitas 25 (2), 206–220.
1. What is the distinction between enumerative and explanatory theories of well-being?
2. Why are hedonism and objective list theory in the same boat, according to Fletcher?
3. What’s on Fletcher’s objective list?
4. How does an objective list theory meet the resonance constraint?
5. How can we determine whether an enumerative theory is adequate, according to Fletcher?
*Susan Wolf (1997), ‘Happiness and Meaning: Two Aspects of the Good Life’. Social Philosophy and Policy 14 (1), 207–225.
1. What criteria does Wolf suggest for an account of meaning in life?
2. What is active engagement?
3. Why must one’s projects be of worth? Why are both subjective attraction and objective attractiveness needed?
4. Why doesn’t meaning in life require God or cosmic significance, according to Wolf?
5. Why don’t feelings of fulfillment suffice for meaning in life, contrary to some subjectivists?
6. Why can’t hedonistic or subjectivist theories of well-being capture the significance of meaning in life?
7. How does Wolf’s conception of meaningfulness ‘deconstruct’ the notion of self-interest?
5. Well-Being Over a Lifetime
*Thomas Hurka, ‘The Well-Rounded Life’. Journal of Philosophy 84 (12), 727–746.
1. Hurka’s use of ‘perfectionism’ is somewhat unusual. What does he mean by it?
2. What are the characteristics of Hurka’s Aristotelian perfectionism?
3. Why are lexical and constant trade-off comparisons of perfections problematic?
4. How does balancing work?
5. Why and when are there disadvantages of dilettantism and costs of concentration? Why does the M-shape of achievement lines show that well-rounded lives aren’t doomed to mediocrity?
6. Why does it make most sense to balance within a single life?
David Velleman, ‘Well-Being and Time’. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 72 (1), 48–77.
1. What is it for well-being over time to be additive?
2. Why does Velleman reject additivism?
3. What is Slote’s explanation of non-additivity, and why does Velleman disagree with it?
4. What is the lesson of the cases of learning from misfortune and remarriage?
5. Why does Velleman reject the possibility of retroactive change in momentary value?
6. What does Velleman mean in saying that the value of a life is an irreducible second-order good? Why is diachronic value strongly irreducible?
7. What does the distinction between diachronic and momentary well-being mean for prudence and the badness of death?
8. What does Velleman mean in saying that we have both synchronic and diachronic identity? How is that relevant to the division of self-interest? How are value and a point of view related, according to Velleman?
9. What does Velleman’s view imply for the lifetime well-being of an animal like a cow? What does this mean for the morality of killing animals?
*Dale Dorsey (2014), ‘The Significance of a Life’s Shape’. Ethics 125 (2), 303–330.
1. What are the Shape of a Life Hypothesis and Intra-Life Aggregation, and why do some think SLA implies the denial of ILA?
2. What are the competing explanations of why Nopsmis is better off than Simpson?
3. What do the hedonist and preferentist explanations of the shape intuition mean for ILA? Why does Dorsey reject them?
4. How does Dorsey argue against the intrinsic significance of temporal ordering of momentary goods? Why is the narrativist explanation the best one?
5. Why and how is the narrativist interpretation of SLH compatible with ILA?
6. The Science of Happiness and Well-Being
*Daniel Kahneman and Alan Krueger, ‘Developments in the Measurement of Subjective Well-Being’. Journal of Economic Perspectives 20 (1), 3–24.
1. What is the distinction between experienced and remembered utility? How are they related to each other, according to experimental studies? Which is the basis for future choices?
2. What strengths and weaknesses with life satisfaction surveys do Kahneman and Krueger point out?
3. How can measures of subjective well-being be validated? What is high measured life satisfaction correlated with?
4. What are the Experience Sampling Method and the Day Reconstruction Method? How is net affect calculated, and what are the results of the Texas pilot study? How do they contrast with life satisfaction results?
5. What evidence is there for hedonic adaptation and the hedonic treadmill?
6. What is the U-index? How does it get around the problem of calibrating scales across persons?
Richard Ryan, Veronika Huta, and Edward Deci (2008), ‘Living Well: A Self-Determination Theory Perspective on Eudaimonia’. Journal of Happiness Studies 9, 139–170
1. How do Ryan, Huta, and Deci characterize the distinction between hedonic and eudaimonistic approaches?
2. What do Ryan et al. take away from Aristotle?
3. What is self-determination theory (SDT)? What are intrinsic and extrinsic motivation?
4. What is Deci et al.’s formal theory of eudaimonia? How is eudaimonia related to ‘first-order values’?
5. What empirical results have SDT proponents found regarding intrinsic and extrinsic goals?
6. What basic needs do people have, according to Deci at al.?
7. What do Deci et al. mean by autonomy, and why is it necessary for eudaimonia, according to them?
8. How is eudaimonia related to SWB, PWB, and prosocial behavior?
*Anna Alexandrova, ‘The Science of Well-Being’. In Fletcher (ed.) 2016.
1. What are the methodological commitments of the science of well-being, according to Alexandrova?
2. How are different psychological and economical constructs of well-being related to philosophical theories?
3. What special challenges arise for a science that purports to measure well-being, according to Alexandrova? How does she conceive of the relation between science and philosophy?
7. Well-Being and Public Policy
Paul Dolan and Mathew White (2007), ‘How Can Measures of Subjective Well-Being Be Used to Inform Public Policy?’ Perspectives on Psychological Science 2 (1), 71–85.
1. How do Dolan and White define SWB? Why do adaptation and changing standards pose a normative problem, and when can it be avoided?
2. What do reliability, sensitivity, and validity mean in the context of psychological measures? What should we think that SWB has these features?
3. What are the upsides and downsides of objective list accounts in a policy context, according to Dolan and White? How about preference satisfaction views?
4. How can SWB measures be used to complement other well-being measures in a policy context?
5. How can SWB measures function as a new kind of policy tool, according to Dolan and White?
*Martha Nussbaum (2011), ‘The Central Capabilities’, in Creating Capabilities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
1. What are the questions that the Capabilities Approach aims to answer?
2. What is the relationship between capability and freedom?
3. What are the key differences between combined, internal, and basic capabilities?
4. What is functioning? Why focus on capabilities rather than functioning?
5. What is the role of dignity in identifying central capabilities? Which capabilities are central, according to Nussbaum?
6. What is Nussbaum’s account of social justice?
7. Why are affiliation and practical reason special?
8. What do Wolff and De-Shalit mean by capability security and fertile functioning? What is the importance of these notions?
*Dan Haybron and Valerie Tiberius (2012), ‘Well-Being Policy: What Standard of Well-Being’. Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (4), 712–733.
1. What is pragmatic subjectivism?
2. Why must welfarism be weak and person-respecting? Why isn’t it inherently paternalistic?
3. How does agent sovereignty lead to pragmatic subjectivism? Why doesn’t pragmatic subjectivism amount to endorsing substantive subjectivism? And how does it relate to liberal neutrality?
4. What epistemic considerations favour pragmatic subjectivism, according to Haybron and Tiberius?
5. Why is it people’s values rather than preferences that should guide well-being policy? Which values count?
6. Why doesn’t pragmatic subjectivism reduce to a preferentist view in practice?
7. What does pragmatic subjectivism look like in practice, according to Haybron and Tiberius?
October 2–5, 2017
Course Description and Syllabus
September 5, 2017
Antti Kauppinen ([email protected])
Philosophy, University of Tampere
Many things, such as money or exercise or insurance, seem to be good for us and worth pursuing, because they are a means to something else. But what is ultimately good for us – what is worth pursuing for its own sake, insofar as we’re looking to make our own lives as good as possible? This is the question that theories of well-being (or prudential value or self-interest, to use a couple of common synonyms) try to answer. Some hold that it is only pleasure or happiness that is ultimately good for us, while others think it is getting what we want or leading the kind of life that meets our own standards. Yet others argue that the best things in life are independent of our opinions concerning them, so that we can be benefited by something we don’t appreciate.
The answer we give to the question concerning the nature of well-being makes a difference in many contexts. If I have to make a big self-interested life choice – say, who to spend the rest of my life with, or what to study – what it makes sense for me to focus on depends on what really matters. If I have children, I will at least implicitly rely on some conception of well-being in trying to steer them in a direction that is best for them. If I’m a social scientist trying to figure out how well people of a certain group do in a society, or a politician trying to improve the lot of citizens, or an official trying to assess the human costs and benefits of a policy intervention, I need to make use of the right kind of criteria and measures, or I’ll get it wrong.
Philosophers are thus far from the only people who think about well-being, but they do so in a systematic and argumentative manner. The aim of this course is to examine and evaluate the answers they have offered. Our focus will be on the contemporary debate, but we will also make reference to historical views.
All readings are or will be made available on the course website (Moodle). The main readings on each topic come with a list of questions (see bottom of this page). Please try to find answers to them before each meeting, so that we can have a good conversation. There is a lot to read, and the course is intensive, so it is best to get started right away. Read at least the starred texts in advance. The additional readings may also be discussed in class to some extent, but I don’t expect students to have read them. They are good additional starting points for those who want to write an essay on one of the topics.
Timetable Topics (roughly)
Mon 02-Oct-2017 at 12-16, *** The Concept of Well-Being, Hedonism
Tue 03-Oct-2017 at 12-16, *** Subjectivism, Perfectionism
Wed 04-Oct-2017 at 12-16, *** Pluralism, Lifetime Well-Being
Thu 05-Oct-2017 at 12-16, *** Science and Politics of Well-Being
Syllabus
Note: several readings are from Guy Fletcher (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Well-Being (London: Routledge, 2016).
0. The Concept of Well-Being
- *Stephen M. Campbell, ‘The Concept of Well-Being’. In Fletcher (ed.) 2016.
Additional readings:
- Stephen Darwall (1997), ‘Self-Interest and Self-Concern’. Social Philosophy and Policy 14 (1).
- Connie Rosati (1996), ‘Internalism and the Good for a Person’. Ethics 106, 297–326.
- Guy Fletcher (2012), ‘The Locative Analysis of ‘Good For’ Formulated and Defended’. Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 6 (1), 1–26.
1. Hedonism
- Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (excerpt).
- John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (excerpt).
- Robert Nozick, ‘The Experience Machine’ (excerpts from Anarchy, State and Utopia and The Examined Life).
- *Ben Bramble, ‘A New Defense of Hedonism About Well-Being’. Ergo 3 (4), 2016.
- Fred Feldman (2002), ‘The Good Life: A Defense of Attitudinal Hedonism’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65, 604–628.
Additional readings:
- Roger Crisp (2006), ‘Hedonism Reconsided’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 73 (3): 619–645.
- Bennett Helm (2002), ‘Felt Evaluations: A Theory of Pleasure and Pain’. American Philosophical Quarterly 39 (1), 13–30.
- Guy Kahane, ‘Pain, Dislike, and Experience’. Utilitas 21 (3), 327–336.
2. Subjectivism: Desires, Values, and Authentic Happiness
- *Chris Heathwood (2005), ‘The Problem of Defective Desires’. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 83 (4), 487–504.
- Jason Raibley (2013), ‘Values, Agency, and Welfare’. Philosophical Topics 41 (1), 187–214.
- Wayne Sumner (1996), ‘Welfare and Happiness’, from Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press), 138–183.
Additional readings:
- Peter Railton (1986), ‘Facts and Values’. Philosophical Topics 14 (2), 5–31.
- David Sobel (1994), ‘Full Information Accounts of Well-Being’. Ethics 104 (4), 784–810.
- Valerie Tiberius and Alexandra Plakias (2010), ‘Well-Being’. In John Doris (ed.), The Moral Psychology Handbook (New York: Oxford University Press), 402–432.
- Fred Feldman (2008), ‘Whole Life Satisfaction Concepts of Happiness’. Theoria 74 (3), 219–238.
- Eden Lin (2017), ‘Against Welfare Subjectivism’. Noûs 51 (2), 354–377.
3. Perfectionism and Eudaimonism
- Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (excerpts).
- *Gwen Bradford, ‘The Value of Achievements’. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 94 (2), 204–224.
- Dan Haybron (2008), ‘Happiness, the Self, and Human Flourishing’. Utilitas 20 (1), 21–49.
Additional readings:
- Richard Kraut (2007), ‘Prolegomenon to Flourishing’. Excerpt from What Is Good and Why: The Ethics of Well-Being (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
- Elizabeth Barnes (2014), ‘Valuing Disability, Causing Disability’. Ethics 125 (1), 88–113.
- Mauro Rossi and Christine Tappolet (2016), ‘Virtue, Happiness, and Well-Being’. The Monist 99 (2), 112–127.
- Richard Kim (2016), ‘Well-Being and Confucianism’. In Fletcher (ed.) 2016.
4. Pluralist Objectivism
- *Richard Arneson (1999), ‘Human Flourishing Versus Desire Satisfaction’. Social Philosophy and Policy 16 (1), 113–142.
- Guy Fletcher (2013), ‘A Fresh Start for an Objective List Theory of Well-Being’. Utilitas 25 (2), 206–220.
- *Susan Wolf (1997), ‘Happiness and Meaning: Two Aspects of the Good Life’. Social Philosophy and Policy 14 (1), 207–225.
Additional readings:
- Robert Adams (2006), ‘Well-Being and Excellence’. From A Theory of Virtue: Excellence in Being for the Good (New York: Oxford University Press).
- Antti Kauppinen (2012), ‘Meaningfulness and Time’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 84 (2), 345–377.
5. Well-Being Over a Lifetime
- Thomas Hurka, ‘The Well-Rounded Life’. Journal of Philosophy 84 (12), 727–746.
- David Velleman, ‘Well-Being and Time’. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 72 (1), 48–77.
- *Dale Dorsey (2014), ‘The Significance of a Life’s Shape’. Ethics 125 (2), 303–330.
Additional readings:
- Ben Bradley (2011), ‘Narrativity, Freedom, and Redeeming the Past’. Social Theory and Practice 37 (1), 47–62.
- Connie Rosati (2013), ’The Story of a Life’. Social Philosophy and Policy 30 (1–2), 21–50.
- Joshua Glasgow (2013), ‘The Shape of a Life and the Value of Loss and Gain’. Philosophical Studies 162: 665–682.
- Jennifer Hawkins (2014), ‘Well-Being, Time, and Dementia’. Ethics 124 (3), 507–542.
- Galen Strawson (2004), ‘Against Narrativity’. Ratio 17 (4), 428–452.
6. The Science of Happiness and Well-Being
- *Daniel Kahneman and Alan Krueger, ‘Developments in the Measurement of Subjective Well-Being’. Journal of Economic Perspectives 20 (1), 3–24.
- Richard Ryan, Veronika Huta, and Edward Deci (2008), ‘Living Well: A Self-Determination Theory Perspective on Eudaimonia’. Journal of Happiness Studies 9, 139–170
- Anna Alexandrova, ‘The Science of Well-Being’. In Fletcher (ed.) 2016.
Additional readings:
- Erik Angner (2011), ‘The evolution of eupathics: The historical roots of subjective measures of wellbeing’. International Journal of Wellbeing, 1(1), 4-41.
- Ed Diener, Eunkook Suh, Richard Lucas, and Heidi Smith (1999), ‘Subjective Well-Being: Three Decades of Progress’. Psychological Bulletin 125(2), 276–302.
- Carol Ryff and Burton Singer (2008), ‘Know Thyself and Become What You Are: A Eudaimonic Approach to Psychological Well-Being’. Journal of Happiness Studies 9, 13–39.
- Michael Bishop (2012), ‘The Network Theory of Well-Being: An Introduction’. The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication 7, 1–29.
- Peter Railton, ‘Subjective Well-Being as Information and Guidance’ (ms).
7. Well-Being and Public Policy
- Paul Dolan and Mathew White (2007), ‘How Can Measures of Subjective Well-Being Be Used to Inform Public Policy?’ Perspectives on Psychological Science 2 (1), 71–85.
- Martha Nussbaum (2011), ‘The Central Capabilities’, in Creating Capabilities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
- *Dan Haybron and Valerie Tiberius (2012), ‘Well-Being Policy: What Standard of Well-Being’. Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (4), 712–733.
Additional readings:
- Ed Diener and Martin Seligman, ‘Beyond Money: Toward and Economy of Well-Being’. Psychological Science in the Public Interest 5 (1), 1–31.
- Amartya Sen (1985), ‘Well-Being, Agency, and Freedom’. Journal of Philosophy 82(4), 169–221.
- Dan Hausman and Michael McPherson, ‘Preference Satisfaction and Welfare Economics’. Economics and Philosophy.
- Cass Sunstein (forthcoming), ‘Nudging and Choice Architecture: Ethical Considerations’. Yale Journal on Regulation.
Background Reading
I can recommend the following volumes as background reading:
- The recent Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Well-Being (2016), edited by Guy Fletcher, contains accessible, state-of-the-art chapters on the central issues. Unfortunately, it is only available in paperback next year, and the hardback is very costly.
- Thomas Hurka’s The Best Things in Life (Oxford University Press, 2011) is an original and opinionated survey of what makes life good – but a reader must think carefully about when Hurka is talking about something that is good, period, and when he’s talking something good for someone.
- Guy Fletcher’s The Philosophy of Well-Being: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 2016) and Ben Bradley’s Well-Being: Key Concepts (Wiley, 2015) are introductory textbooks by leading contemporary theorists.
FILA9 Theories of Well-Being
Questions About Readings
Antti Kauppinen
Updated September 21, 2017
0. The Concept of Well-Being
*Stephen Campbell, ‘The Concept of Well-Being’. In Fletcher (ed.) 2016.
1. What are some of the synonyms for ‘well-being’?
2. How is well-being different from what is good (simpliciter)? In what different ways can a life be good?
3. How is well-being related to emotions and attitudes?
4. Why does Campbell think we need a more detailed understanding of well-being?
5. What are the rational care, locative, positional, and suitability analyses of well-being?
6. What reasons are there to think that there are multiple concepts of well-being?
1. Hedonism
Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (excerpt).
1. What is the double role of pleasure and pain for Bentham?
2. What is ‘utility’, according to Bentham?
3. How does Bentham propose to calculate the total value of a pleasure or pain for an individual?
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (excerpt).
1. Why does Mill distinguish between higher and lower pleasures?
2. What is Mill’s criterion for distinguishing between the two? Why is it not an objection that lower pleasures are sometimes pursued?
Robert Nozick, ‘The Experience Machine’ (excerpts from Anarchy, State and Utopia and The Examined Life).
1. What is Nozick’s thought experiment?
2. What matters to us beyond our experiences, according to Nozick?
3. What does considering transformation and result machines tell us?
4. When it comes to happiness, why isn’t the total amount the only thing that matters, according to Nozick?
*Ben Bramble, ‘A New Defense of Hedonism About Well-Being’. Ergo 3 (4), 2016.
1. How does Bramble define hedonism, benefiting, and harming?
2. What is the Experience Requirement, and why should we think it’s true?
3. What are the felt quality and attitudinal theories of pleasure? Why does Bramble think the former is superior?
4. What is the Philosophy of the Swine objection? How does Bramble respond to it?
5. How does Bramble respond to the Experience Machine challenge?
6. How can pleasure be good for people who don’t care for it?
*Fred Feldman (2002), ‘The Good Life: A Defense of Attitudinal Hedonism’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65, 604–628.
1. How does Feldman distinguish between feelings and enjoyment (sensory and attitudinal pleasure)?
2. Why does Feldman think sensory hedonism is false?
3. How does intrinsic attitudinal hedonism arrive at the value of a person’s life?
4. How does Feldman propose to deal with pleasures based on falsehoods?
5. How does Feldman modify attitudinal hedonism to avoid the problem of worthless pleasures?
6. What is Double Desert Adjusted Hedonism, and what reason is there to adopt it? Is it a theory of well-being?
2. Subjectivism: Desires, Values, and Authentic Happiness
*Chris Heathwood (2005), ‘The Problem of Defective Desires’. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 83 (4), 487–504.
1. When does it appear to be bad for a person to get what she wants?
2. What are the characteristics of an actual desire satisfaction theory?
3. What is the distinction between intrinsically bad and all-things-considered bad states of affairs, and how does it help actualist desire-satisfactionism? When is the concurrence requirement important?
4. How does distinguishing between different kinds of evaluation help an actualist desire-satisfaction theory?
5. How does Heathwood try to avoid the paradox of desiring to be badly off?
*Jason Raibley (2013), ‘Values, Agency, and Welfare’. Philosophical Topics 41 (1), 187–214.
1. What is the basic idea of a values-based theory of well-being? What is valuing?
2. What advantages does Raibley claim for a values-based theory?
3. Are disinterested values a problem for a value-based theory?
4. Why is self-sacrifice a challenge to a values-based theory, and how does Raibley try to get around it?
5. Are self-destructive values paradoxical?
6. Why does Raibley think there must be more to well-being than realizing consciously held values?
7. How does Raibley propose to modify the value-based theory to address the preceding concerns?
8. Why is a mismatch between conscious values and non-deliberate attitudes a problem for Raibley, and how does he solve it?
Wayne Sumner (1996), ‘Welfare and Happiness’, from Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press), 138–183.
1. How does Sumner distinguish between pleasure and pain, on the one hand, and enjoyment and suffering, on the other?
2. What are the cognitive and affective aspects of happiness, according to Sumner?
3. What’s the problem with economic and social indicators of welfare from Sumner’s perspective? What challenges does he identify for subjective measures?
4. Why must a person’s endorsement of her life be informed to be authentic?
5. How does Sumner address the problem of adaptive preferences?
6. In what sense is the view of well-being as authentic happiness between hedonism and desire-satisfaction theories? How does it meet the desiderata for a theory of well-being, according to Sumner?
3. Perfectionism and Eudaimonism
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (excerpts).
1. What is the relationship between ends and goods, according to Aristotle? What is the significance of the fact that our ends are hierarchically structured?
2. Why do we need to be well-brought up to study the good?
3. Why is happiness complete and self-sufficient?
4. What is the link between the function of something and being good? What is the function (the job to do) of human beings?
5. Why is virtue good? What is the connection between virtue and pleasure?
6. What is the significance of external goods for happiness?
7. What are virtues of character? How do we acquire them, and what makes them virtues?
8. Why is theoretical study the highest good?
*Gwen Bradford, ‘The Value of Achievements’. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 94 (2), 204–224.
1. What are the key features of an achievement, according to Bradford?
2. What is the Simple Product view, and why does it fail?
3. Why doesn’t valuing difficulty mean that we should try to make things as difficult as possible for ourselves?
4. How does Bradford define perfectionism? What is the epistemic guide she proposes?
5. Why should we understand difficulty in terms of effort rather than complexity, according to Bradford? What does this mean for virtuoso performances?
6. What’s good about difficulty, according to Bradford’s perfectionism?
*Dan Haybron (2008), ‘Happiness, the Self, and Human Flourishing’. Utilitas 20 (1), 21–49.
1. What do the cases of Henry and Claudia show us about self-fulfilment, according to Haybron?
2. What’s wrong with the hedonistic theory of happiness (as opposed to hedonism about well-being)? What is Haybron’s alternative emotional condition account?
3. In what sense are central affective states aspects of the self?
4. What does Haybron mean by authenticity, and why is it important?
5. Why doesn’t the value of pleasure suffice to explain the phenomena?
6. How does Haybron’s version of nature-fulfilment theory differ from an Aristotelian one? What else, besides happiness, matters for well-being according to his account?
4. Pluralist Objectivism
*Richard Arneson (1999), ‘Human Flourishing Versus Desire Satisfaction’. Social Philosophy and Policy 16 (1), 113–142.
1. What makes a theory of well-being objectivist, according to Arneson? What are the defining features of an Objective List Theory? What makes it a theory?
2. Why does Arneson reject perfectionism?
3. Why does Arneson reject hybrid views that try to accommodate the experience requirement?
4. What does Arneson think are the best objections against an informed desire view?
5. What are the two forms of the endorsement constraint that Arneson considers? On what grounds does he reject them? Why doesn’t weakening the constraint help?
Guy Fletcher (2013), ‘A Fresh Start for an Objective List Theory of Well-Being’. Utilitas 25 (2), 206–220.
1. What is the distinction between enumerative and explanatory theories of well-being?
2. Why are hedonism and objective list theory in the same boat, according to Fletcher?
3. What’s on Fletcher’s objective list?
4. How does an objective list theory meet the resonance constraint?
5. How can we determine whether an enumerative theory is adequate, according to Fletcher?
*Susan Wolf (1997), ‘Happiness and Meaning: Two Aspects of the Good Life’. Social Philosophy and Policy 14 (1), 207–225.
1. What criteria does Wolf suggest for an account of meaning in life?
2. What is active engagement?
3. Why must one’s projects be of worth? Why are both subjective attraction and objective attractiveness needed?
4. Why doesn’t meaning in life require God or cosmic significance, according to Wolf?
5. Why don’t feelings of fulfillment suffice for meaning in life, contrary to some subjectivists?
6. Why can’t hedonistic or subjectivist theories of well-being capture the significance of meaning in life?
7. How does Wolf’s conception of meaningfulness ‘deconstruct’ the notion of self-interest?
5. Well-Being Over a Lifetime
*Thomas Hurka, ‘The Well-Rounded Life’. Journal of Philosophy 84 (12), 727–746.
1. Hurka’s use of ‘perfectionism’ is somewhat unusual. What does he mean by it?
2. What are the characteristics of Hurka’s Aristotelian perfectionism?
3. Why are lexical and constant trade-off comparisons of perfections problematic?
4. How does balancing work?
5. Why and when are there disadvantages of dilettantism and costs of concentration? Why does the M-shape of achievement lines show that well-rounded lives aren’t doomed to mediocrity?
6. Why does it make most sense to balance within a single life?
David Velleman, ‘Well-Being and Time’. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 72 (1), 48–77.
1. What is it for well-being over time to be additive?
2. Why does Velleman reject additivism?
3. What is Slote’s explanation of non-additivity, and why does Velleman disagree with it?
4. What is the lesson of the cases of learning from misfortune and remarriage?
5. Why does Velleman reject the possibility of retroactive change in momentary value?
6. What does Velleman mean in saying that the value of a life is an irreducible second-order good? Why is diachronic value strongly irreducible?
7. What does the distinction between diachronic and momentary well-being mean for prudence and the badness of death?
8. What does Velleman mean in saying that we have both synchronic and diachronic identity? How is that relevant to the division of self-interest? How are value and a point of view related, according to Velleman?
9. What does Velleman’s view imply for the lifetime well-being of an animal like a cow? What does this mean for the morality of killing animals?
*Dale Dorsey (2014), ‘The Significance of a Life’s Shape’. Ethics 125 (2), 303–330.
1. What are the Shape of a Life Hypothesis and Intra-Life Aggregation, and why do some think SLA implies the denial of ILA?
2. What are the competing explanations of why Nopsmis is better off than Simpson?
3. What do the hedonist and preferentist explanations of the shape intuition mean for ILA? Why does Dorsey reject them?
4. How does Dorsey argue against the intrinsic significance of temporal ordering of momentary goods? Why is the narrativist explanation the best one?
5. Why and how is the narrativist interpretation of SLH compatible with ILA?
6. The Science of Happiness and Well-Being
*Daniel Kahneman and Alan Krueger, ‘Developments in the Measurement of Subjective Well-Being’. Journal of Economic Perspectives 20 (1), 3–24.
1. What is the distinction between experienced and remembered utility? How are they related to each other, according to experimental studies? Which is the basis for future choices?
2. What strengths and weaknesses with life satisfaction surveys do Kahneman and Krueger point out?
3. How can measures of subjective well-being be validated? What is high measured life satisfaction correlated with?
4. What are the Experience Sampling Method and the Day Reconstruction Method? How is net affect calculated, and what are the results of the Texas pilot study? How do they contrast with life satisfaction results?
5. What evidence is there for hedonic adaptation and the hedonic treadmill?
6. What is the U-index? How does it get around the problem of calibrating scales across persons?
Richard Ryan, Veronika Huta, and Edward Deci (2008), ‘Living Well: A Self-Determination Theory Perspective on Eudaimonia’. Journal of Happiness Studies 9, 139–170
1. How do Ryan, Huta, and Deci characterize the distinction between hedonic and eudaimonistic approaches?
2. What do Ryan et al. take away from Aristotle?
3. What is self-determination theory (SDT)? What are intrinsic and extrinsic motivation?
4. What is Deci et al.’s formal theory of eudaimonia? How is eudaimonia related to ‘first-order values’?
5. What empirical results have SDT proponents found regarding intrinsic and extrinsic goals?
6. What basic needs do people have, according to Deci at al.?
7. What do Deci et al. mean by autonomy, and why is it necessary for eudaimonia, according to them?
8. How is eudaimonia related to SWB, PWB, and prosocial behavior?
*Anna Alexandrova, ‘The Science of Well-Being’. In Fletcher (ed.) 2016.
1. What are the methodological commitments of the science of well-being, according to Alexandrova?
2. How are different psychological and economical constructs of well-being related to philosophical theories?
3. What special challenges arise for a science that purports to measure well-being, according to Alexandrova? How does she conceive of the relation between science and philosophy?
7. Well-Being and Public Policy
Paul Dolan and Mathew White (2007), ‘How Can Measures of Subjective Well-Being Be Used to Inform Public Policy?’ Perspectives on Psychological Science 2 (1), 71–85.
1. How do Dolan and White define SWB? Why do adaptation and changing standards pose a normative problem, and when can it be avoided?
2. What do reliability, sensitivity, and validity mean in the context of psychological measures? What should we think that SWB has these features?
3. What are the upsides and downsides of objective list accounts in a policy context, according to Dolan and White? How about preference satisfaction views?
4. How can SWB measures be used to complement other well-being measures in a policy context?
5. How can SWB measures function as a new kind of policy tool, according to Dolan and White?
*Martha Nussbaum (2011), ‘The Central Capabilities’, in Creating Capabilities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
1. What are the questions that the Capabilities Approach aims to answer?
2. What is the relationship between capability and freedom?
3. What are the key differences between combined, internal, and basic capabilities?
4. What is functioning? Why focus on capabilities rather than functioning?
5. What is the role of dignity in identifying central capabilities? Which capabilities are central, according to Nussbaum?
6. What is Nussbaum’s account of social justice?
7. Why are affiliation and practical reason special?
8. What do Wolff and De-Shalit mean by capability security and fertile functioning? What is the importance of these notions?
*Dan Haybron and Valerie Tiberius (2012), ‘Well-Being Policy: What Standard of Well-Being’. Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (4), 712–733.
1. What is pragmatic subjectivism?
2. Why must welfarism be weak and person-respecting? Why isn’t it inherently paternalistic?
3. How does agent sovereignty lead to pragmatic subjectivism? Why doesn’t pragmatic subjectivism amount to endorsing substantive subjectivism? And how does it relate to liberal neutrality?
4. What epistemic considerations favour pragmatic subjectivism, according to Haybron and Tiberius?
5. Why is it people’s values rather than preferences that should guide well-being policy? Which values count?
6. Why doesn’t pragmatic subjectivism reduce to a preferentist view in practice?
7. What does pragmatic subjectivism look like in practice, according to Haybron and Tiberius?