Abstract
In earlier work I defended Intrinsic Attitudinal Hedonism—a view about what makes for individual personal welfare. On this view, a person’s level of welfare is entirely determined by the amounts of intrinsic attitudinal pleasure and pain he or she takes in things. The view seems to run into trouble in cases involving individuals who take their pleasure in disgusting, immoral things; and in cases involving individuals who take their pleasure in things that really don’t actually happen; and in cases involving individuals who enjoy pleasures but who lead meaningless lives; and in cases involving individuals whose lives fail to manifest an attractive narrative structure. After sharpening up the objections, I introduce a distinction between Pure Welfare Narrowly Conceived and Enriched Welfare Broadly Conceived. I go on to claim that if this distinction is recognized, we will be able to say that each of the objections rests on the fallacy of equivocation. If, years ago, I had been more sensitive to the distinction between Pure Welfare and Enriched Welfare I would have been able to respond to the objections in a more coherent and effective way. I present that response here. In an appendix, I compare my current view with a related view defended by Shelly Kagan in ‘Me and My Life’.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Perhaps the clearest statement of the view appears in Section 4.3 of (Feldman 2004). The main point is that the level of a person’s welfare during a period of time (even a whole life) is determined by the amounts of intrinsic attitudinal pleasure and pain that the person takes in things during that period. I did not use the term ‘welfare’ when I first stated the theory. But later, on p. 199, I made it clear that the theory has been offered as an answer to the question ‘what makes for individual welfare?’.
Although it must be admitted that in several places I was moved by certain objections; I proceeded to introduce complexities into the theory in order to deal with alleged difficulties. I discuss this further in the present paper.
Others have imagined cases involving the counting of blades of grass, or the rolling of a stone up a hill.
See ch. III, sect 56 of (Moore 1903).
I discussed this case in Sect 5.3 of (Feldman 2004).
In Chapter 3 of (Nozick 1974) in the section entitled ‘The Experience Machine’.
I discussed Nozick’s argument in (Feldman 2011).
Velleman is perhaps the best known recent defender of this view. His presentation can be found in (Velleman 1991). Discussions of substantially the same point can be found in (Slote 1982). In a section entitled ‘The Importance of Order’ pp. 70–73 of (Chisholm 1986), Chisholm goes into some detail explaining Brentano’s presentation of the same point. I discussed this in Section 6.1, pp. 124–8, ‘The Shape of a Life’ in (Feldman 2004).
Slote, pp. 23–24.
Whether many, or most, or some, or any people would agree to plug into an experience machine is an empirical matter. Since there are no experience machines, no one has ever been offered an actual opportunity to plug into one. In the absence of such machines, and the presence of a multitude of regulations governing the treatment of human subjects in research, I don’t know how this premise could be established. Surely it could not be established merely by asking a bunch of undergraduates what they think they would do if they were given the opportunity to plug in.
This critical point has been made by many commentators. For a catalog, see the footnotes scattered through Section 5 of (Feldman 2011).
I presented my views on the connections between the concept of welfare and these other concepts of moral philosophy in Section 8.2, pp. 160–170 of (Feldman 2010).
The example of the civil rights hero is not original. Several others have discussed it. For an extended detailed discussion, see (Kaupinnen 2012).
For an outstanding recent discussion, see (Smuts 2017). Smuts presents a number of examples to drive home his view that welfare and meaningfulness are two distinct values. A life can be high in either without being high in the other.
There are many familiar cases of individuals who have lives that seem to rate high with respect to moral excellence, but low with respect to welfare. If the reports in the relevant encyclopedias are correct, Mother Teresa would be a good example. She allegedly suffered throughout her adult life from painful pangs of religious doubt and uncertainty, but she carried on with her work on behalf of the poor and downtrodden. (I discussed this example at greater length on pp. 10–11 (Feldman 2004). For an excellent and detailed account of her suffering, see https://blog.franciscanmedia.org/franciscan-spirit/mother-teresa-a-saint-who-conquered-darkness.) Examples like this, as well as the example of the Dishonorable Man should make it clear that evaluation in terms of Pure Welfare narrowly conceived is distinct from evaluation in terms of moral excellence.
For a detailed and very interesting discussion of one version of this idea, see Section 4.3 of (Kaupinnen 2012). Kaupinnen introduces and explains a value concept that he calls ‘coherence’ on p. 368.
Although Hurka has given an account of these perfections he is clear in his rejection of the idea that a person’s individual welfare is simply a matter of the manifestation of the perfections. For an extended discussion, see (Hurka 1993) especially on p. 17 where he says ‘In my view, perfectionism should never be expressed in terms of well-being.’
Thanks to Noah Lemos for encouraging me to clarify my view here.
A clear example of this is provided by Stephen Campbell. In (Campbell 2013) he defends the idea that a good mark, or criterion of welfare is what he calls ‘appealworthiness’. On p. 334 Campbell says ‘What then, is a prudentially good life, or a life that goes well for the one living it? It is an appealing life. More precisely, it is a life such that having it is worthy of appeal, in and of itself.’ In his commentary on this, Campbell makes it clear that he intends his criterion to be a mark of what I have in mind when I speak of Enriched Welfare. Campbell’s criterion targets a concept that includes Pure Welfare but also includes meaningfulness, moral worth, human perfection and anything else that can help to make a life appealworthy. As Campbell remarks, ‘… virtually any aspect of a life, broadly construed, can be thought to affect the appeal of being in one’s shoes…’ When I first read Campbell’s paper I assumed that he was attempting to formulate a criterion for Pure Welfare. Of course, I thought his criterion failed because it was too broad. Eventually I came to see that he intended all along to be formulating a criterion for Enriched Welfare. Others who formulate proposed criteria of welfare seem to do the same thing. In some cases, the criterion may succeed in targeting Enriched Welfare. I view this as only a modest success, since I think that the concept of Pure Welfare is better suited to serve the roles needed for a precise concept of welfare for moral philosophy.
In (Rawls 1971) Rawls drew a distinction between concepts and conceptions (pp. 9–10). His idea, as I understand it, and as it applies to the case under consideration here, would be that a theory about the concept of welfare would be a theory about the very nature, or essence of welfare. A view about the concept of welfare might be formulated as a definition, or analysis. A conception of welfare would be a view about what makes for welfare; it might be formulated as a biconditional, but not proposed as an analysis. Philosophers could agree about the concept of welfare, but disagree about which conception of welfare they want to defend. So while Heathwood and I seem to agree about the concept of welfare (we take it to be Pure Welfare Narrowly Conceived), we disagree about conceptions (I prefer attitudinal hedonism; he takes it to be subjective desire satisfaction).
Some who have written on this topic would say, in this case, that the other values are “constituents” of welfare. I first noticed this use of ‘constituent’ in an unpublished paper by Richard Kim. Subsequently, I found the term used in this way more than fifty times by various contributors to (Fletcher 2016).
Obviously, the Broad Vision presupposes a pluralistic theory of Enriched Welfare. There are several distinct factors each of which directly enhances Enriched Welfare. In order for the theory to yield determinate results in fully specified cases, there would have to be some unified system for measuring each of the allegedly valuable components of Enriched Welfare. I allude to some such system when I suggest that the second person has 100 units of Pure Welfare, and 25 units of each of the other alleged constituents of Enriched Welfare. There are immense problems associated with this assumption. Since I do not accept the Broad Vision, I do not feel that it is incumbent upon me to spell out the details.
It may seem that I am here making use of a version of the Resonance Constraint. Some well-known discussions of this constraint include (Railton 1986) and (Rosati1996). I think there is something very attractive about the Resonance Constraint, but I am not prepared to endorse a full-fledged version of that condition. For an outstanding critical discussion, see (Lin 2017) Chris Heathwood’s currently unpublished paper ‘What is the Resonance Constraint?’ contains probing insights concerning the formulation of the Constraint.
More specifically, I think the adjustments for desert, truth, and perhaps other factors would play a role in the evaluation of worlds.
(Kagan 1994), pp. 309–324.
Moore famously said that intrinsic value depends upon intrinsic features. It might be thought, then, that since welfare value is a kind of intrinsic value, it must depend upon intrinsic features of the thing that has it. But it strikes me that there might be some confusion here. When we say that welfare is a kind of value that is good in itself for a person, perhaps what we mean is that it is good for the person but not merely as a means to other things that are good for that person. Maybe ‘good in itself’ in this context means ‘ultimately, finally, non-derivatively good’ rather than Mooreanly, supervening upon intrinsic features good. Not being deceived might be finally good for a person without depending entirely on intrinsic features of the person. (The Kagan of 2019 would probably be among the first to recognize this point.)
And if, like the Feldman of years ago, you have not clearly distinguished between Pure Welfare and Enriched Welfare, you may find that you have wobbly and conflicting intuitions—sometimes you will want to say that the machinist led a life of high welfare and sometimes you will want to say that he led a life of low welfare; and sometimes you will be conflicted.
Many thanks to Noah Lemos, Chris Heathwood, Eden Lin, Aaron Smuts, Miles Tucker, Owen McLeod and two anonymous referees for The Journal of Ethics for extensive critical comments, suggestions, and encouragement. This paper evolved from ‘Targeting Welfare: What Are We Talking about When We Talk about Welfare?’ which was presented at the Princeton Workshop on Well-Being, May 11, 2013. I am grateful to Eden Lin and others who offered comments and suggestions at that time.
References
Bradley, Ben. 2009. Well-Being and Death. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Campbell, Stephen. 2013. An Analysis of Prudential Value. Utilitas 25: 334–354.
Campbell, Stephen. 2016. The Concept of Well-Being. In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Well-Being, ed. Guy Fletcher, 402–414. London: Routledge.
Crisp, Roger. 2006. Reasons and the Good. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Darwall, Stephen. 2002. Welfare and Rational Care. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Feldman, Fred. 2004. Pleasure and the Good Life: On the Nature, Varieties, and Plausibility of Hedonism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Feldman, Fred. 2010. What is This Thing Called Happiness?. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Feldman, Fred. 2011. What We Learn from the Experience Machine. In The Cambridge Companion to Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia, ed. Ralf Bader and John Meadowcroft, 59–86. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fletcher, Guy (ed.). 2016. Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Well-Being. Abington: Routledge.
Heathwood, Chris. 2005. Defective Desires. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 83: 487–504.
Heathwood, Chris. 2006. Desire Satisfactionism and Hedonism. Philosophical Studies 128: 539–563.
Heathwood, Chris. 2007. The Reduction of Sensory Pleasure to Desire. Philosophical Studies 133: 23–44.
Heathwood, Chris. 2010. Welfare. In The Routledge Companion to Ethics, ed. John Skorupski, 645–655. New York: Routledge.
Heathwood, Chris. 2014a. Subjective Theories of Well-Being. In The Cambridge Companion to Utilitarianism, ed. Ben Eggleston and Dale Miller, 199–219. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Heathwood, Chris. 2014b. Faring Well and Getting What You Want. In The Ethical Life: Fundamental Readings in Ethics and Moral Problems, ed. Russ Shafer-Landau, 31–42. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Heathwood, Chris. 2019. What is the Resonance Constraint?
Hurka, Thomas. 1993. Perfectionism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kagan, Shelly. 1994. Me and My Life. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society New Series 94: 309–324.
Kaupinnen, Antti. 2012. Meaningfulness and Time. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LXXXIV: 2.
Kim, Richard. 2019. What Is This Thing Called Well-Being?
Lin, Eden. 2016. How to Use the Experience Machine. Utilitas 28: 314–332.
Lin, Eden. 2017. Against Welfare Subjectivism. Nous 51: 354–377.
Moore, George Edward. 1903. Principia Ethica. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nagel, Thomas. 2012. Death. Essay 4 in Mortal Questions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nozick, Robert. 1974. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books.
Railton, Peter. 1986. Facts and Values. Philosophical Topics 14: 5–31.
Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Rosati, Connie. 1996. Internalism and the Good for a Person. Ethics 106: 297–326.
Slote, Michael. 1982. Goods and Virtues. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 63: 311–326.
Smuts, Aaron. 2017. Welfare, Meaning, and Worth. London and New York: Routledge.
Tannsjo, Torbjorn. 2007. Narrow Hedonism. The Journal of Happiness Studies 8: 79–98.
Velleman, David. 1991. Well-being and Time. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 12: 48–77.
Wolf, Susan. 1997. Happiness and Meaning: Two Aspects of the Good Life. Social Philosophy and Policy 14: 207–225.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Appendix on Kagan’s ‘Me and My Life’
Appendix on Kagan’s ‘Me and My Life’
In an important and widely cited paperFootnote 29 Shelly Kagan discusses a puzzle very closely related to the puzzle I address in the body of this paper. He confronts several of the examples that I confront here, and he proposes—somewhat hesitantly—a solution that is in some ways similar to the solution that I propose here. It may be interesting to see how Kagan’s view in that paper compares to the view I now want to defend.
Kagan is attracted to the idea that a person’s well-being depends upon changes that occur within, or to, the person himself. If a person is some sort of combination of a mind and a body, then his well-being would naturally be thought to depend upon intrinsic features of his mind or (to a lesser extent) of his body.Footnote 30 This natural view seems to run into trouble in cases such as the case of the Deceived Businessman. His life, as Kagan says, is ‘not all a life could be’. (311) Something has gone wrong in that life. But since he is blissfully ignorant of the deceitfulness of his family and colleagues at work, it’s hard to see how the unfortunate features of his situation could affect the intrinsic characteristics of his mind or body.
Kagan proposes to sort this out by emphasizing the distinction between the Deceived Businessman himself, and the life of the Deceived Businessman. Kagan points out the obvious metaphysical difference between these two items. The businessman is a person; presumably some sort of object involving a mind and a body. The businessman’s life is not a person; it is a complex event composed of all the events that (in some important way) involve the businessman. Recognition of this metaphysical difference opens the door to the possibility that the evaluation of the person’s well-being might be distinct from the evaluation of how well the person’s life is going. Maybe the person is enjoying high well-being, but his life has a somewhat lower rating. Kagan seems to be saying something like this when he says ‘… it is one thing for a person to be well-off, and another thing for that person’s life to go well.’ (Kagan 1994: 318)
Kagan’s suggestion is roughly this: if we focus exclusively on the businessman himself, we notice that he is happy, and contented, and takes himself to be getting things that he wants. Since he remains ignorant of the deceit and contempt that his family and colleagues have for him, these things do not make any change to the intrinsic properties of his mind or body. His personal well-being must be determined by appeal to a relatively narrow class of factors; and since the businessman is doing well with respect to these factors, his level of well-being is quite high. But if we focus instead on the businessman’s life, we notice that the life contains distressing relational, or external, facts. It is a life in which there is deceit and deception; it is a life in which the one who lives it never realizes the sad situation he is actually in. Since the life is to be evaluated by a broader collection of factors that includes these relational facts, the life gets a lower rating.
Kagan seems to be saying something quite like this when he says
… in thinking about the Deceived Businessman the judgment that I am myself most confident about is that his life is not going well. In contrast, when I ask myself whether he is well-off or not, I find myself much less confident, and I find myself with some sympathy for the thought that the deception doesn’t affect his level of well-being. (Kagan 1994) p. 321; emphasis added)
As I understand it, the essential features of Kagan’s approach can be summarized as follows:
-
K1. There is one central form of welfare value that applies to people and to their lives. There are a couple of different terms that can be used to refer to this form of value. Kagan seems to choose ‘well-being’ and cognates most often.
-
K2. Well-being is a kind of intrinsic value; so it must supervene upon intrinsic features of the things that have it.
-
K3. There is a metaphysical difference between people and their lives. A person’s life intrinsically encompasses more facts than does the person. As a result, when we evaluate a person for well-being we get one amount; when we evaluate the person’s life, we are considering an entity that encompasses more factors and so we can get another amount. However, both amounts are amounts of the same sort of value.
But my view is different:
-
F1: There are two distinct conceptions of welfare (or well-being). There is
-
Pure Welfare and there is Enriched Welfare.
-
F2: In my view, the only thing that makes for Pure Welfare is net intrinsic attitudinal pleasure; in Heathwood’s view, it is net subjective desire satisfaction. In other views it might be sensory pleasure, or some other feature.
-
F3: On many popular views, a number of factors can make for Enriched Welfare. Typically, these might include meaningfulness, moral excellence, human perfection, contact with reality, and narrative unity.
-
F4: A person’s level of welfare can be evaluated in two ways—either in terms of Pure Welfare or in terms of Enriched Welfare. This helps to explain why some think that the Deceived Businessman enjoys high welfare while others rate his welfare as considerably lower.
-
F5: The welfare level of a person’s life can also be evaluated in two ways—either in terms of Pure Welfare or in terms of Enriched Welfare. This helps to explain why some think that the Deceived Businessman has a life of high welfare while others rate his life as having considerably lower welfare.
Let us consider one of the hardest of hard cases. Recall the man in the experience machine. Imagine that the machinist lived his whole life in the machine; imagine that it seemed to him that he wrote a novel, made many friends, and had a large collection of mental states that he desired and enjoyed. Suppose at the end he was satisfied with his life (not realizing it was all a fake). Now suppose that we are asked to evaluate the life of the machinist. The question is whether he led a life of high welfare or of low welfare.
It seems to me that the Kagan of ‘Me and My Life’ has to say that there is an unequivocal answer to our question: the machinist led a life of low welfare. After all, he was deceived from beginning to end; he actually accomplished nothing of value; he struck out with respect to practical knowledge and personal relationships. But as I see it, talk of welfare is ambiguous. In my view, there are two possible ways of understanding the question about the amount of welfare value in machinist’s life. If we think (as I am inclined to do) that questions of welfare are best taken as questions about Pure Welfare, we should say that the machinist enjoyed a life of high welfare. But if we think that questions of welfare are best taken as questions about Enriched Welfare then we should say that the machinist led a stunted life of low welfare (though like the Deceived Businessman) he did not realize how stunted his life was. Thus, if we focus on his life we are given two possible ways of evaluating that life for welfare. The fact that these two ways are easily confused sheds light on the unease that many of us feel when asked for a ‘yes or no’ answer to the question about whether the machinist led a life of high welfare. Kagan seems driven to say that if we are focusing on his life, then there is only one answer. He led a life of low welfare. But I can say that there are two possible answers; it all depends upon what concept of welfare you mean to be employing.Footnote 31
A similar thing happens if we focus instead on the machinist himself—the person. Imagine again that the machinist’s life is over; we are asked this time whether the machinist himself—the person—had high welfare or low. It seems to me again that Kagan has to say that there is only one answer to this question. If Kagan’s 1994 view is true, since the intrinsic features of the machinist himself are the same whether his experiences are veridical or fraudulent, the Kagan of ‘Me and My Life’ has to say that the machinist himself had high welfare. If the subject of our enquiry is the person himself, there should be no confusion. But as I see it, since talk of welfare is ambiguous, there are two possible ways of understanding the question about the amount of welfare to be attributed to the machinist. If we think (as I am inclined to do) that questions of welfare are best taken as question about Pure Welfare, we should say that the machinist enjoyed a pretty high level of welfare. But if we think (as many contributors to the literature on welfare seem to think) that questions of welfare are best taken as questions about Enriched Welfare, then we should say that the welfare level of the machinist was low. Again, the fact that these two ways of evaluating people for welfare are easily confused may shed light on the fact that many of us are uneasy when asked to pass judgment on the amount of welfare that the machinist enjoyed. It may seem to be a case in which we want to say both that he enjoyed high welfare, and that he enjoyed low welfare. In my view, this perplexity is easily explained: there are two concepts of welfare uncomfortably vying for attention. Best to keep them apart.Footnote 32
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Feldman, F. Two Visions of Welfare. J Ethics 23, 99–118 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-019-09287-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-019-09287-1