Transmission views of testimony hold that a speaker's knowledge or justification can become the audience's knowledge or justification. We argue that transmission views are incompatible with the hypothesis that one's epistemic state, together with one's practical circumstances, determines what actions are rationally permissible for an agent. We argue that there are cases where, if the speaker's epistemic state were transmitted to the audience, then the audience would be warranted in acting in particular ways. Yet, the audience in these cases is (...) not so warranted, as their strength of justification does not come close to the speaker's. (shrink)

The perspectives of the dominant Western ethical theories, have dominated the concepts of autonomy and informed consent for many years. Recently this dominant understanding has been challenged by ethics of care which, although, also emanates from the West presents a more nuanced concept: relational autonomy, which is more faithful to our human experience. By paying particular attention to relational autonomy, particularity and Process approach to ethical deliberations in ethics of care, this paper seeks to construct a concept of informed consent (...) from the perspective of ethics of care which is here called relational autonomy-in-informed consent. Thus, providing a broader theoretical basis for informed consent beyond the usual theoretical perspectives that are particularly Western. Care ethics provides such a broader basis because it appeals to a global perspective that encompasses lessons from other cultures, and this will help to enrich the current ideas of bioethics principles of autonomy and informed consent. This objective will be achieved by exploring the ethics of care emphasis on relationships based on a universal experience of caring; and by contrasting its concept of autonomy as relational with the understanding of autonomy in the approaches of the dominant moral theories that reflect rational, individualistic, and rights-oriented autonomy of the American liberalism. (shrink)

I argue that all rights exist by convention. According to my definition, a right exists by convention just in case its justification appeals to the rules of a socially shared pattern of acting. I show that our usual justifications for rights are circular, that a right fulfills my criterion if all possible justifications for it are circular, and that all existing philosophical justifications for rights are circular or fail. We find three non-circular alternatives in the literature, viz. justifications of rights (...) by consequences, by autonomy or by divine commands. I show that all three alternatives fail, and I conclude that all rights exist by convention. This ontological result has a surprising and beneficial consequence. A common argument against conventionalism is that it implies cultural relativism. I finish by showing that the suggested conventionalism is incompatible with cultural relativism. (shrink)

In this paper, I criticize the view that non-conscious entities—such as plants and bacteria—have well-being. Plausible sources of well-being include pleasure, the satisfaction of consciously held desires, and achievement. Since nonconscious entities cannot obtain well-being from these sources, the most plausible source of well-being for them is the exercise of natural capacities. Plants and bacteria, for example, certainly do exercise natural capacities. But I argue that exercising natural capacities does not in fact contribute (in a non-instrumental way) to well-being. I (...) do so by presenting cases in which human beings exercise natural capacities that they do not enjoy exercising and that they do not desire (non-instrumentally) to exercise. I also argue that plausible views about fortune—how one’s well-being ranks on an appropriate scale—do not support the claim that exercising natural capacities contributes to well-being. (shrink)

Normativism holds that there is a close conceptual link between disease and disvalue. We challenge normativism by advancing an argument against a popular normativist theory, Jerome Wakefield’s harmful dysfunction account. Wakefield maintains that medical disorders are breakdowns in evolved mechanisms that cause significant harm to the organism. We argue that Wakefield’s account is not a promising way to distinguish between disease and health because being harmful is neither necessary nor sufficient for a dysfunction to be a disorder. Counterexamples to the (...) harmful dysfunction account are considered, such as mild infections, perceptual deficits, and beneficial illnesses. Then we consider two ways of amending the harmful dysfunction account to address these cases and argue that the proposed amendments raise even more serious problems for this account. These problems apply generally to any normativist theory and raise doubts about the entire normative approach to the philosophy of health and disease. (shrink)

This article outlines an objective list theory of animal and alien well-being. Responding to three sorts of perfectionist criticism of such OLT, it argues that OLT is actually superior on each count. This is significant, because perfectionism is much discussed yet OLT is little discussed in philosophy of animal well-being, and because perfectionism can reasonably be expected to do comparatively well on the points where it is criticizing OLT.

This paper explores what is meant by ‘loss and damage’ within the area of climate policy focused on loss and damage. I present two possible understandings of loss and damage, one of which connects it to harm and one of which connects it to value. In both cases, I argue that the best contemporary philosophical understandings of these concepts suggest a much broader range of losses and damages than is currently being considered within the usual discussions in this area. I (...) argue that a broader understanding of loss and damage would allow a more complete assessment of potential climate impacts. I conclude by offering recommendations for evaluating loss and damage according to this broader understanding. (shrink)

Most ethicists agree that at least some nonhumans have interests that are of direct moral importance. Yet with very few exceptions, both climate ethics and climate policy have operated as though only human interests should be considered in formulating and evaluating climate policy. In this paper I argue that the anthropocentrism of current climate ethics and policy cannot be justified. I first describe the ethical claims upon which my analysis rests, arguing that they are no longer controversial within contemporary ethics. (...) Next, I review work in climate ethics and policy, demonstrating the absence of consideration of nonhuman interests in both domains. Finally, I consider five possible justifications for omitting nonhuman interests in the evaluation climate policy options, arguing that none of these arguments succeeds. (shrink)

This paper considers a new problem for desire theories of well-being. The problem claims that these theories are implausible because they misvalue the effects of fleeting desires, long-standing desires, and fluctuations in desire strength on well-being. I begin by investigating a version of the desire theory of well-being, simple concurrentism, that fails to capture intuitions in these cases. I then argue that desire theories of well-being that are suitably stability-adjusted can avoid this problem. These theories claim that the average strength (...) of a desire, and the length of time that it is held, both influence the extent to which its fulfilment or frustration affects well-being. I end by considering whether value-fulfilment theories of well-being have a more attractive response to this problem. I find that these theories have significant downsides that make them unappealing alternatives. (shrink)

Schools often aim at creating opportunities for good life and at promoting a good society. Liberal theorization on schooling is premised on a functioning liberal democracy with a capitalist economy. However, postcolonial societies are characterized by poverty and inequality, cultural diversity, and an ongoing project of state and nation building. This challenges some of the foundational assumptions of liberal conceptions of schooling aimed at promoting good life and good society in postcolonial societies. Realization of good life through schools is shaped (...) both by shaping of ‘consciousness, identities, and desires’ [Bernstein ] and through imparting knowledge and skills that help realize these desires in particular contexts. These schooling practices have different influences on opportunities for good life in short, medium, and long terms in these societies. A conceptual model of schooling that addresses these complexities is key to understanding the processes that influence the opportunities for a pursuit of good life through schooling in postcolonial societies. Such a model could draw upon the existing theories of liberal schooling but would have to adapt them to respond to the contexts of postcolonial societies. (shrink)

This article takes a critical look at the classic couplet of theories on the justification of rights, namely, the choice theory and the interest or benefit theory, where the two are understood to be in conflict. The argument is made that this couplet is best replaced with a new one, namely, a sophisticated rendering of the benefit theory coupled with the autonomy theory, such that any conflict is resolved. The latter two theories take different cases in justifying the attribution of (...) rights: The autonomy theory is concerned with justifying the attribution of rights to adult, rational, and competent subjects, arguing that this attribution requires a sufficiently autonomous claim by such subjects, while the benefit theory seeks to justify the attribution of rights to subjects who lack any of these three properties, meaning that they cannot be considered adult, rational, or competent. (shrink)

This article explores the possibility that there is a parental duty to use preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) for the medical benefit of future children. Using one genetic disorder as a paradigmatic example, we find that such a duty can be supported in some situations on both ethical and legal grounds. Our analysis shows that an ethical case in favor of this position can be made when potential parents are aware that a possible future child is at substantial risk of inheriting (...) a serious genetic condition. We further argue that a legal case for a duty to use PGD for medical benefit can be made in situations in which potential parents have chosen to conceive through in vitro fertilization and know that any children conceived are at substantial risk of having a serious genetic condition. (shrink)

An important objection to many utilitarian theories is that their conceptions of utility may count as morally relevant contributions to individual well-being items which are morally or rationally suspect. For example, if the conception of utility is pleasure, or alternatively, the fulfilment of actual desire or satisfaction of preferences, then greater individual utility may be produced by whatever increases pleasure, fulfils desire, or satisfies someone's preferences. This is true no matter how disgusting or vile we may think such pleasures are, (...) or how irrational or distasteful we find the fulfilment of a desire or the satisfaction of some preference. (shrink)

Deep ethical interpretivism has been the standard view of the nature of sport in the philosophy of sport for the past seventeen years or so. On this account excellence assumes the role of the foundational, ethical goal that justice assumes in Ronald Dworkin’s interpretivist model of law. However, since excellence in sports is not an ethical value, and since it should not be regarded as an ultimate goal, the case for the traditional account fails. It should be replaced by the (...) shallow interpretivist model that I begin to sketch out and defend here. (shrink)

The value of health states is often understood to depend on their impact on the goodness of people's lives. As such, prominent health states metrics are grounded in particular conceptions of wellbeing – e.g. hedonism or preference satisfaction. In this paper, I consider how liberals committed to the public justification requirement – the requirement that public officials choose laws and policies that are justifiable to their citizens – should evaluate health states. Since the public justification requirement prohibits public officials from (...) appealing to controversial conceptions of the good life, liberals committed to this principle face a significant puzzle. (shrink)

This essay examines the classical Confucian perspective on the topic of happiness through the lens of three Western theories: hedonism, desire satisfaction theory, and objective list theory. My analysis of the two classical texts—the Analects and the Mencius —reveals that three salient aspects of the Confucian conception of happiness, namely ethical pleasure, ethical desire, and moral innocence, play the fundamental role in the guidance and evaluation of an individual’s life. According to Confucius and Mencius, happiness consists primarily not in pleasure, (...) but in ethical pleasure; the good life is not a life in which all or most of one’s desires are fulfilled, but a life in which the satisfaction of prudential desires is subject to the constraint of ethical desire; the source of the greatest happiness lies not in the attainment of the greatest political power, but rather in the cognizance of one’s moral innocence. For classical Confucian thinkers, the relationship between happiness and the good life is that happiness is a critically important constituent of the good life. However, happiness—defined in terms of pleasure, desire satisfaction, or a list of goods—needs to be tempered by moral constraints. In light of their views on happiness and the good life, I conclude that Confucius and Mencius each lived a good life that exemplified the three salient features of happiness, and to that extent they were happy. (shrink)

It is widely held that the Experience Machine is the basis of a serious objection to Hedonistic theories of welfare. It is also widely held that Desire Satisfactionist theories of welfare can readily avoid problems stemming from the Experience Machine. But in this paper, we argue that if the Experience Machine poses a serious problem for Hedonism, it also poses a serious problem for Desire Satisfactionism. We raise two objections to Desire Satisfactionism, each of which relies on the Experience Machine. (...) The first is very much like the well-known Experience Machine objection to Hedonism. The second asks whether someone who accepts Desire Satisfactionism should want to form a desire to plug into the Experience Machine. (shrink)

Clients may feel trapped into sharing their private digital data with insurance companies to get a desired insurance product or premium. However, private insurance must collect some data to offer products and premiums appropriate to the client’s level of risk. This situation creates tension between the value of privacy and common insurance business practice. We argue for three main claims: first, coercion to share private data with insurers is pro tanto wrong because it violates the autonomous choice of a privacy-valuing (...) client. Second, we maintain that irrespective of being coerced, the choice of accepting digital surveillance by insurers makes it harder for the client to protect his or her autonomy. The violation of autonomy also makes coercing customers into digital surveillance pro tanto morally wrong. Third, having identified an economically plausible process involving no direct coercion by insurers, leading to the adoption of digital surveillance, we argue that such an outcome generates further threats against autonomy. This threat provides individuals with a pro tanto reason to prevent this process. We highlight the freedom dilemma faced by regulators who aim to prevent this outcome by constraining market freedoms and argue for the need for further moral and empirical research on this question. (shrink)

1. This paper concerns equality of education. It takes as its starting point that the state, through the system of education, can act in ways that cause injustice between children, if it brings abo...

1. Brian Hedden, in this impressively learned and ingenious, if somewhat maddening book,1 1 defends a view he calls Time-slice Rationality, a view comprising two central claims. They are: Synchronicity : All requirements of rationality are synchronic. Impartiality : In determining how you rationally ought to be at a time, your beliefs about what attitudes you have at other times play the same role as your beliefs about what attitudes other people have.

This paper provides a philosophical critique of social choice theory insofar as it deals with the normative evaluation of voting and voting rules. I will argue that the very method of evaluating voting rules in terms of whether they satisfy various conditions is deeply problematic because introducing strategic behaviour leads to a violation of any condition that makes a difference between voting rules. I also argue that it is legitimate to make interpersonal comparisons of utilities in voting theory. Combining a (...) realistic account of voters’ behaviour with a utilitarian evaluation of the outcomes then leads to the judgment that strategic voting is beneficial. If it is, then Arrow's theorem does not have far-reaching consequences for democracy because one of its conditions is not normatively acceptable. (shrink)

In this paper, I ask how – and whether – the rectification of injury at which corrective justice aims is possible, and by whom it must be performed. I split the injury up into components of harm and wrong, and consider their rectification separately. First, I show that pecuniary compensation for the harm is practically plausible, because money acts as a mediator between the damaged interest and other interests. I then argue that this is also a morally plausible approach, because (...) it does not claim too much for compensation: neither can all harms be compensated, nor can it be said when compensation is paid that the status quo ante has been restored. I argue that there is no conceptual reason for any particular agent paying this compensation. I then turn to the wrong, and reject three proposed methods of rectification. The first aims to rectify the wrong by rectifying the harm; the second deploys punitive damages; the third, punishment. After undermining each proposal, I argue that the wrong can only be rectified by a full apology, which I disaggregate into the admission of causal and moral responsibility, repudiation of the act, reform, and, in some cases, disgorgement and reparations, which I define as a good faith effort to share the burden of the victim’s harm. I argue, further, that only the injurer herself can make a full apology, and it is not something that can be coerced by other members of society. As such, whether rectification of the wrong can be a matter of corrective justice is left an open question. (shrink)

Consider the following claim: given the choice between saving a life and preventing any number of people from temporarily experiencing a mild headache, you should always save the life. Many moral theorists accept this claim. In doing so, they commit themselves to some form of ‘moral absolutism’: the view that there are some moral considerations that cannot be outweighed by any number of lesser moral considerations. In contexts of certainty, it is clear what moral absolutism requires of you. However, what (...) does it require of you when deciding under risk? What ought you to do when there is a chance that, say, you will not succeed in saving the life? In recent years, various critics have argued that moral absolutism cannot satisfactorily deal with risk and should, therefore, be abandoned. In this paper, we show that moral absolutism can answer its critics by drawing on—of all things—orthodox expected utility theory. (shrink)

Many philosophers have claimed that we might do well to adopt a hybrid theory of well-being: a theory that incorporates both an objective-value constraint and a pro-attitude constraint. Hybrid theories are attractive for two main reasons. First, unlike desire theories of well-being, hybrid theories need not worry about the problem of defective desires. This is so because, unlike desire theories, hybrid theories place an objective-value constraint on well-being. Second, unlike objectivist theories of well-being, hybrid theories need not worry about being (...) overly alienating. This is so because, unlike objectivist theories, hybrid theories place a pro-attitude constraint on well-being. However, from the point of view of objectivists, hybrid theories are not objectivist enough, and this can be seen clearly in missing-desires cases. For instance, hybrid theories entail that, if someone lacks the desire for health, then health is not a component of her well-being. This, objectivists say, is implausible. It is obvious, objectivists say, that someone’s life goes better for herself inasmuch as she is healthy, and hence that health is a component of her welfare. This paper focuses on the missing-desires objection (as leveled by objectivists) to hybrid theories of well-being. My argument is that the missing-desires objection can be answered in a way that is generally convincing and, in particular, in a way that pays a good deal of respect to objectivist intuitions about well-being. My hope, then, is that this paper will help to persuade objectivists about well-being to become hybrid theorists. (shrink)

This paper raises an objection to two important arguments for reductive ethical naturalism. Reductive ethical naturalism is the view that ethical properties reduce to the properties countenanced by the natural and social sciences. The main arguments for reductionism in the literature hold that ethical properties reduce to natural properties by supervening on them, either because supervenience is alleged to guarantee identity via mutual entailment, or because non-reductive supervenience relations render the supervenient properties superfluous. After carefully characterizing naturalism and reductionism, we (...) will present, explain, and raise objections against each of the main reductionist arguments: that supervenience does not support the claim that ethical properties and their subvenient natural properties are mutually entailing; that reductive views undermine the claim that ethical properties yield resemblance; and that supervenience does not entail that non-descriptive ethical properties are superfluous in the most fundamental sense. (shrink)

This article argues that a person’s well-being at a time and the goodness of her life are two distinct values. It is commonly accepted as platitudinous that well-being is what makes a life good for the person who lives it. Even philosophers who distinguish between well-being at a time and the goodness of a life still typically assume that increasing a person’s well-being at some particular moment, all else equal, necessarily improves her life on the whole. I develop a precise (...) statement of this standard assumption, and then show that it is subject to counterexamples. The possibility of such counterexamples depends only on premises similar to those sometimes invoked to argue that a person’s well-being over a long period is not simply the aggregate well-being of the shorter periods that compose the long period. The refutation of the standard assumption linking well-being and life-goodness entails that these are distinct and sometimes divergent values. As an alternative to the standard assumption, it is proposed that well-being is best understood as an ingredient in a good life. (shrink)

This introduction to the special issue on well-being and health explores the ways that philosophical inquiry into well-being can play a productive role in understanding health and medicine. We offer an explanation of the concept of well-being, central theories of well-being, and how these key topics, along with other cutting-edge issues such as disability and cross-cultural reflections, can contribute to the discourse on the nature of health and medicine. We also provide brief overviews of the essays in this special issue (...) and highlight the significant philosophical implications they have for understanding both well-being and health. (shrink)

In the paper, I aim to reconstruct a charitable interpretation of Durkheimian utilitarianism, a normative theory of public morality proposed by well-recognised American moral psychologist – Jonathan Haidt, which might provide reasons to justify particular legal regulations and public policies. The reconstruction contains a coherent theory that includes elements of rule-utilitarianism, value pluralism, objective list theory and perfectionism, as well as references to Emile’s Durkheim views on human nature. I also compare Durkheimian utilitarianism with two similar theories – Brad Hooker’s (...) rule consequentialism and Krzysztof Saja’s institutional function consequentialism. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Employing utilitarian criteria, Jones and Felps, in “Shareholder Wealth Maximization and Social Welfare: A Utilitarian Critique” (Business Ethics Quarterly23[2]: 207–38), examined the sequential logic leading from shareholder wealth maximization to maximal social welfare and uncovered several serious empirical and conceptual shortcomings. After rendering shareholder wealth maximization seriously compromised as an objective for corporate operations, they provided a set of criteria regarding what a replacement corporate objective would look like, but do not offer a specific alternative. In this article, we draw (...) on neo-utilitarian thought to advance a refined version of normative stakeholder theory that we believe addresses a major remaining criticism of extant versions, their lack of specificity. More particularly, we provide a single-valued objective function for the corporation—stakeholder happiness enhancement—that would allow managers to make principled choices between/among policy options when stakeholder interests conflict. (shrink)

Although anxiety is frequently seen as a predominantly negative phenomenon, some recent researchers have argued that it plays an important positive function, serving as an alert to warn agents of possible problems or threats. I argue that not only can one’s own, first-personal anxiety perform this function; because it is possible for others—in particular, one’s friends—to feel anxious on one’s behalf, their anxious feelings can sometimes play the same role in our functioning, and make similar contributions to our well-being. I (...) distinguish between a number of kinds of cases in which what I call proxy anxiety serves a positive function, including Anxiety Avoidance (where there is good reason for an agent to avoid becoming anxious herself, but can benefit from a friend’s anxiety on her behalf), Anxiety Omission (where an agent fails to become anxious due to a malfunctioning anxiety-generating system), long-term commitments involving dispositions to feel other-directed proxy anxiety, and cases in which proxy anxiety can help reduce or relieve excessive anxiety. A person’s friends, it is argued, are particularly well positioned to help regulate deficient and/or excessive anxieties, precisely because friends are close enough to care for and identify with the agent, but at the same time distant enough to maintain a relatively objective perspective. I conclude by examining connections between proxy anxiety and theories of well-being. (shrink)

Adaptation to illness, and its relevance for distribution in health care, has been the subject of vigorous debate. In this paper I examine an aspect of this discussion that seems so far to have been overlooked: that some illnesses are difficult, or even impossible, to adapt to. This matters because adaptation reduces suffering. Illness severity is a priority setting criterion in several countries. When considering severity, we are interested in the extent to which an illness makes a person worse-off. I (...) argue that no plausible theory of well-being can disregard suffering when determining to what extent someone is worse-off in terms of health. We should accept, all else equal, that adapting to an illness makes the illness less severe by reducing suffering. Accepting a pluralist theory of well-being allows us to accept my argument, while still making room for the possibility that adaptation is sometimes, all things considered, bad. Finally, I argue that we should conceptualize adaptability as a feature of illness, and thereby account for adaptation on a group level for the purposes of priority setting. (shrink)

Orthodox Humeans about normative reasons for action believe that there are no rational principles governing the substantive content of desire. But they also believe that desires with misinformed content should be rejected and cannot be the proper subjective sources of normative reasons for action. These two ideas, I argue, in fact stand in tension with each other: The Humean rejection of misinformed desire actually has to invoke a feasibility principle for desire, a semi-substantive rational principle that is already built into (...) the very conceptions of rationality and desire that underlie orthodox Humeanism. This rational principle then provides a new account of the substantive rationality of desire, which in turn has some interesting implications in metaethics and first-order normative theories. (shrink)

Derek Parfit defends the Imprecise Lexical View as a way to avoid the Repugnant Conclusion. Allowing for ‘imprecise equality’, Parfit argues, makes it possible to avoid some well-known problems for the Lexical View. It is demonstrated that the Lexical View has stronger implications than envisaged by Parfit; moreover, his assumption of Non-diminishing Marginal Value makes the Lexical View collapse into a much stronger view, which lets the two appear incompatible. Introducing imprecise equality does not address the latter problem. But it (...) does makes it possible for the Imprecise Lexical View to soften the discontinuities it would otherwise face, at the cost of blurring the difference between options.However, if Non-diminishing Marginal Value is rejected, the remaining complications for the resulting most plausible version of the Imprecise Lexical View, including a confrontation with Arrhenius’ Non-Elitism Condition, may be within a range where the view largely remains defensible. (shrink)

Do neurosurgical procedures ever result in the patient prior to the procedure not being identical with the individual who wakes up postsurgery in the hospital bed? We address this question by offering an analysis of the persistence of persons that emphasizes narrative, rather than numerical, identity. We argue that a narrative analysis carries the advantage of highlighting what matters to patients in their ordinary lives, explaining the varying degrees of persistence of personal identity, and enhancing our understanding of patients' experiences. (...) We illustrate these points in cases involving temporal lobectomy for treatment of refractory epilepsy and deep brain stimulation for refractory Parkinson's disease. (shrink)

As behavioural economics reveals, human decision-making deviates from neoclassical assumptions about human behaviour and people (often) fail to make the ‘right’ welfare-enhancing choice. The purpose of Sunstein and Thaler’s concept of ‘nudge’ is to improve individual welfare. To provide normative justification, they argue that the only relevant normative criterion is whether the individual is ‘better off as judged by themselves’, so that the direction in which people are to be nudged is defined by their own preferences. In light of behavioural (...) findings, however, people’s choices do not provide a sound basis for eliciting preferences and thus for assessing welfare. In this paper, I aim to challenge Sunstein and Thaler’s normative view, arguing that it is unreasonable to rely on conventional welfare economics, particularly considering the given context. Sunstein and Thaler depend on an approach of ‘preference purification’ which assumes informed, latent, and true preferences: As a result they face crucial methodological, epistemological, and practical objections, and cannot show how their approach enhances individual welfare. By building on the concepts of R. Sugden and C. Schubert, I develop an alternative normative framework for behavioural public policy, based on a contractualist perspective in which people may consent to collective choice rules in order to align future behaviour with values, to achieve particular goals or to preserve personal integrity. Individual consent and citizens’ participation and deliberation are crucial to this approach. This contractualist approach may provide a normative justification for behavioural public policy, and help to reconcile behavioural and normative economics. (shrink)

Is there any number of people you should save from paralysis rather than saving one person from death? Is there any number of people you should save from a migraine rather than saving one person from death? Many people answer ‘yes’ and ‘no’, respectively. The aim of partially aggregative moral views is to capture and justify combinations of intuitions like these. These views contrast with fully aggregative moral views, which imply that the answer to both questions is ‘yes’, and with (...) non-aggregative moral views, which imply that the answer to both questions is ‘no’. In this paper, I review the most natural and influential ways of developing partially aggregative views and explain the main problems they face. (shrink)

This article presents an approach to how to make reasonable social choices when independent criteria (e.g., prioritarianism, religious freedom) fail to fully determine what to do. The article outlines different explanations of why independent criteria sometimes fail to fully determine what to do and illustrates how they can still be used to eliminate ineligible alternatives, but it is argued that the independent criteria cannot ground a reasonable social choice in these situations. To complement independent criteria when they fail to fully (...) determine what to do, it is suggested that society must engage in public deliberation by way of generating new reasons that can determine how to rank the alternatives. It is suggested that the approach to social choice presented here reveals a way of accepting the relevance of independent criteria for social choice without letting go of the idea that the attitudes of affected parties matter. (shrink)

This paper addresses how to think about the permissibility of introducing deadweight costs on candidate recipients of goods in order to attain better outcomes. The paper introduces some distinctions between different kinds of value dimensions that should be taken into account when such judgements are made and draws from the literature on comparisons across different value dimensions in order to canvas what sort of situations one might arguably face when evaluating ordeals. In light of the distinctions drawn and the possibilities (...) canvassed, the paper proceeds to outline what circumstances indicate which of the possible situations one is in. (shrink)

Generating an account that can sidestep the disagreement among substantive theories of well-being, while at the same time still providing useful guidance for well-being public policy, would be a significant achievement. Unfortunately, the various attempts to remain agnostic regarding what constitutes well-being fail to either be an account of well-being, provide useful guidance for well-being policy, or avoid relying on a substantive well-being theory. There are no theory-free lunches in well-being policy. Instead, I propose an intermediate account, according to which (...) well-being is constituted by endorsed veridical experiences. This account refers back to theories of well-being but does so as agnostically as possible. An intermediate account of well-being is meant as a policy guiding compromise between the different theories of well-being that make claims regarding what constitutes well-being. An intermediate account does as well as can be hoped for in providing a basis for well-being policy. (shrink)

The harms of climate change are deeply uncertain. Though climate change will render most individuals more vulnerable to harm, many individuals will not actually suffer climate-related harms. In this paper, I argue that vulnerability to harms is itself a harm, because it undermines our enjoyment of the good of security. After some brief remarks on the concept of security, I give three reasons for thinking that depriving an individual of the security of basic goods harms them: it has a strong (...) contingent connection to fear and anxiety, it directly undermines their ability to make reasonable plans, and security may reasonably be valued as an end in itself. This suggests that one of our goals in determining climate policy ought to be mechanisms which ensure the security of basic goods. (shrink)

How should one understand comparisons in which neither of two alternatives is at least as good as the other? Much recent literature on comparability problems focuses on what the appropriate explanation of the phenomenon is. Is it due to vagueness or the possibility of non-conventional comparative relations such as parity? This paper argues that the discussions on how to best explain comparability problems has reached an impasse at which it is hard to make any progress. To advance the discussion we (...) suggest a new classification of comparability problems that focuses on the problems they cause for practical reasoning. (shrink)

Value pluralists believe in multiple dimensions of value. What does betterness along a dimension have to do with being better overall? Any systematic answer begins with the Strong Pareto principle: one thing is overall better than another if it is better along one dimension and at least as good along all others. We defend Strong Pareto from recent counterexamples and use our discussion to develop a novel view of dimensions of value, one which puts Strong Pareto on firmer footing. We (...) conclude by defending Dimensionalism, the hypothesis that overall value relations are determined solely by how things compare along value dimensions. These are first steps towards a more systematic value pluralism. (shrink)

The desire-satisfaction theory of welfare says, roughly, that one's life goes well to the extent that one's desires are satisfied. On standard 'actualist' versions of the theory, it doesn't matter what you desire. So long as you are getting what you actually want – whatever it is – things are going well for you. There is widespread agreement that these standard versions are incorrect, because we can desire things that are bad for us -– in other words, because there are (...) 'defective desires'. The aim of this paper is to defend the actualist desire-satisfaction theory against the problem of defective desires. I aim to show how the theory can accommodate the obvious fact that we can desire things that are bad for us. Admittedly, there are kinds of allegedly defective desire the theory cannot accommodate, but these desires, I argue, turn out not to be defective in the relevant way. (shrink)

I defend a methodology for theorizing about happiness. I reject three methods: conceptual analysis; scientific naturalism; and the “pure normative adequacy” approach, where the best conception of happiness is the one that best fills a role in moral theory. The concept of happiness is a folk notion employed by laypersons who have various practical interests in the matter, and theories of happiness should respect this fact. I identify four such interests in broad terms and then argue for a set of (...) desiderata that theories of happiness ought to satisfy. The theory of happiness falls within the province of ethics. It should, however, be viewed as autonomous and not merely secondary to moral theory. (shrink)

The psychological condition of being happy is best understood as a matter of a person's emotional condition. I elucidate the notion of an emotional condition by introducing two distinctions concerning affect, and argue that this “emotional state” view is probably superior on intuitive and substantive grounds to theories that identify happiness with pleasure or life satisfaction. Life satisfaction views, for example, appear to have deflationary consequences for happiness’ value. This would make happiness an unpromising candidate for the central element in (...) a theory of well-being, as it is in L. W. Sumner's work. Yet on an emotional state conception, happiness may prove to be a key constituent of well-being. the emotional state view also makes happiness less vulnerable to common doubts about the importance of happiness, and indicates that mood states are more important for well-being than is generally recognized.Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.Ernest Hemingway. (shrink)

It may even be held that [the intellect] is the true self of each, inasmuch as it is the dominant and better part; and therefore it would be a strange thing if a man should choose to live not his own life but the life of some other than himself. Moreover . . . that which is best and most pleasant for each creature is that which is proper to the nature of each; accordingly the life of the intellect is (...) the best and the pleasantest life for man, inasmuch as the intellect more than anything else is man. (shrink)