The Objectivity of Wellbeing

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 93 (4):472-492 (2012)
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Abstract

Subjective theories of wellbeing place authority concerning what benefits a person with that person herself, or limit wellbeing to psychological states. But how well off we are seems to depend on two different concerns, how well we are doing and how well things are going for us. I argue that two powerful subjective theories fail to adequately account for this and that principled arguments favoring subjectivism are unsound and poorly motivated. In the absence of more compelling evidence that how things go for us cannot directly constitute our wellbeing, I conclude that wellbeing is objective

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Matt Ferkany
Michigan State University

Citations of this work

Against Welfare Subjectivism.Eden Lin - 2017 - Noûs 51 (2):354-377.
Pluralism about Well‐Being.Eden Lin - 2014 - Philosophical Perspectives 28 (1):127-154.
Why Be a Subjectivist about Wellbeing?Peter Königs - 2022 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 52 (2):165-179.

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What we owe to each other.Thomas Scanlon - 1998 - Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics.Peter Strawson - 1959 - London, England: Routledge. Edited by Wenfang Wang.
Mortal questions.Thomas Nagel - 1979 - New York: Cambridge University Press.

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