Online research in philosophy

One kind of philosophical question about welfare is about the nature of the concept itself. We seek elucidation of the concept, perhaps by relating it to the concept of goodness or the concept of rationality. We do not seek to determine which lives have the property of a high degree of welfare, or why; we seek only to clarify what it means to ascribe this property to a life. Call this sort of question formal. There are also substantive questions about welfare. These too are abstract questions, but they seek a description or explanation of some sort—a description of the features of lives which constitute a high degree of welfare, or an explanation of why lives with those features have that property. These questions are logically downstream of the formal question: they presuppose some understanding of the nature of the concept, and pursue matters of its extension. This paper focuses on substantive questions, but I had better provide some answer, even if stipulative, to the formal question. I shall understand a person’s welfare as consisting of those things that are final goods for her. This formula combines two ideas: the idea that some things are ‘final goods’, and the idea that some things are ‘good for’ someone. Something is a final good just in case it is good for its own sake.1 Not everything that is good is a final good; some things are good merely as means. I assume that we should count only final goods as constituents of a person’s welfare—so that, for example, wealth is not properly a constituent of welfare. Second, I shall take the orthodox view that welfare is what is ‘good for’ a person. This expresses an admittedly imprecise and elusive idea, to the effect that welfare is goodness relative to each subject.2 What’s good for me may not be good for you. Turn now to substantive questions. Roger Crisp has drawn a helpful distinction between two such questions about welfare. On one hand is the enumerative question. This asks for a list of the constituents of a life with a high degree of welfare (‘constituents of welfare’ hereafter, for short)..

Can events that take place after an individual’s death affect that person’s weIl-being? Aristotle apparently thought that they could, but Mark Overvold disagrees. Like other contemporary moral theorists, Overvold analyzes the notion of a person’s utility or welfare in terms of the fulfillment of the individual’s desires, but he adds the important qualification that the desites must be for states-of-affairs in which the agent is an essential constituent. The clear implication of such a view is that our welfare cannot be affected by the post-mortem satisfaction of any of the interests which we had while alive.I shall defend Overvold against his critics who insist that at least some posthumous satisfactions can contribute to a person’s welfare. I shall also argue against Brad Hooker’s proposal that we revise Overvold’s theory in order to account for such cases.

The issue of care work has become a burning issue in western capitalist welfare states because of the greater proportion of women in the workforce and the growth of alternative forms of family arrangement outside of the traditional male breadwinner model. This article addresses equity and welfare states with respect to social entitlements around care. It asks how new theoretical concepts can be applied to understand welfare states and their evolving employment-related family policies, using Nancy Fraser's utopian universal caregiver approach as a model for evaluation. It focuses on carers and evaluates how a modern citizen is expected to be financially self-sufficient and yet also perform care duties at home. The term 'carer-commodification' captures the extent to which the state expects carers to engage in the labour market and how non-carer earners are engaged in care duties. The term 'carer-stratification' incorporates the extent to which the state creates differences between carers. Policies from selective welfare states (Sweden, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States) are evaluated speculatively with these tools, and how they fare with equitable social entitlements is illustrated.

000000001. Introduction One of the standard objections to traditional act utilitarianism is that it is insensitive to issues of justice and desert. Traditional act utilitarianism holds, for example, that it is morally obligatory to torture or kill an innocent person, when doing so increases the happiness of others more than it decreases the happiness of the innocent person. Utilitarianism is, of course, sensitive to what people believe about justice (for example, people might riot, if they believe a gross injustice has been done), but it is not sensitive to justice itself. In response to this problem, Fred Feldman has recently developed a version of consequentialism designed to deal more adequately with issues of justice.1 He does this by developing a theory of the good that is sensitive both to individual welfare and to what people deserve. On his theory, the goodness of states of affairs is determined by the total amount of desertadjusted welfare. I agree with Feldman that the permissibility of actions, and the moral desirability of worlds, depends both on people's welfare and on issues of justice. Feldman's work in this area is important, because it explores terrain that has been largely ignored by consequentialists.1 I shall argue, however, that his theory is implausible because it doesn't take welfare promotion seriously enough. In his article in this issue2, Feldman argues that his theory has the resources to block the..

In a welfare states, no typical user of health care services isonly a patient; and no typical provider of these services is simply a doctor, nurse or paramedic. Occupiers of these rolesalso have distinctive relations and responsibilities – as citizens– to medical services, responsibilities that are widely acknowledgedby those who live in welfare states. Outside welfare states, thisfusion of civic consciousness with involvement in health care isless pronounced or missing altogether. But the globalisation of avery comprehensive understanding of human rights, including rightsto state-provided health care, will make welfare state thinking –for better or worse – more of an orthodoxy worldwide than it isnow. Medical ethics needs to reflect this.

It is commonly asserted that “death is not a welfare issue” and this has been reflected in welfare legislation and policy in many countries. However, this creates a conflict for many who consider animal welfare to be an appropriate basis for decision-making in animal ethics but also consider that an animal’s death is ethically significant. To reconcile these viewpoints, this paper attempts to formulate an account of death as a welfare issue. Welfare issues are issues that refer to evaluations concerning an animal’s interests. This includes evaluations that refer only to comparisons between the presence and absence of states, including positive states. This means that an animal’s death may be a welfare issue insofar as it leads to the exclusion of relevant positive states. This allows us to deny that death is necessarily not a welfare issue.

A critical survey of the major philosophical arguments that have been used to justify the institutions and policies of contemporary welfare states considers the claims of rights theory, egalitarianism, and citizenship and communitarian doctrines. It finds that these arguments are both internally confused and inconsistent with conventional welfare policies. It is argued that the welfare state itself has serious ambiguities: it claims to cater for the needy, as part of its ?public good?; obligations, yet in practice it delivers a range of private goods, e.g., health, housing, education and pensions, often irrespective of need. Yet classical liberal theories of state welfare, which favor simple cash payments, are flawed in theory and potentially costly in practice, while neocon?servative theories, by imposing ?values?; on welfare recipients, undermine liberal pluralism. The author concludes that welfare philosophy should be concerned with two neglected areas: the possibility that welfare be provided outside the familiar market and state categories, and the construction of constitutional rules to prevent the middle?class ?capture?; of existing welfare states.

When we speak of a “good life” there are several different things we might mean. We might mean a morally good life. We might mean a life good for others, or good for the world in general. We might mean a life good in itself for the one who lives it. This last may also be described as the life high in individual welfare.