Abstract
There is disagreement among contemporary theorists regarding human well-being. On one hand there are “substantive good” views, according to which the most important elements of a person’s well-being result from her nature as a human, rational, and/or sentient being. On the other hand there are “agent-constituted” views, which contend that a person’s well-being is constituted by her particular aims, desires, and/or preferences. Each approach captures important features of human well-being, but neither can provide a complete account: agent-constituted theories have difficulty accounting for the normativity of their claims, and substantive good theories have difficulty accounting for how a person’s actually adopted aims shape what is good for her and hence what she has reason to do. I articulate and defend a hybrid view that equals these approaches in systematicity and completeness of explanation yet seeks to surpass them in coherence with our ordinary judgments about what human well-being consists in. This hybrid view maintains, with agent-constituted theories, that a person’s well-being is (1) significantly constituted by her actually adopted aims; (2) deeply contingent; (3) agent-relative; (4) significantly dependent on spatially and temporally remote events; and (5) significantly independent of her experiences. The hybrid view also maintains, with substantive good theories, that a person’s well-being is (6) in part determined by facts independent of her aims, desires, and preferences; (7) such that all her aims are subject to critical evaluation and revision; and (8) constituted by her aims only if these aims are choiceworthy.
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Notes
Scanlon (1998), 113. Scanlon’s taxonomy is adapted from Derek Parfit’s; see Parfit (1984), 2, and see note 3 below for Parfit’s classification of hedonism as a third approach. In this essay I make no distinction among the terms “a person’s well-being”, “the good for a person”, “a person’s good”, and “how well a person’s life goes”. For a discussion of the variety of uses of the term “good”, see Richard Kraut (2007); also relevant is Kraut (1989), especially Chapter Two. Gavin Lawrence maintains that these locutions should be distinguished; see Lawrence (1993).
For a paradigm of this sort of view, see Kraut (2007). Scanlon uses “substantive good” very broadly, to pick out any account of the good—his own included—that does not reduce all claims about a person’s good to claims about his actual desires or preferences. I use the term slightly less broadly, counting as non-substantive (and hence as agent-constituted, to use a term I gloss shortly) views like that of John Rawls (1971) which reduce claims about a person’s good to claims about what it would be rational for him to desire; I do this is in order to underscore features these views share with desire-fulfillment and preference-fulfillment theories.
Here I follow Scanlon in assimilating hedonism to substantive good theory; see Scanlon (1998), 100–103. Parfit, by contrast, distinguishes hedonism from both substantive and (to use a term I gloss in the following paragraph) agent-constituted theories; see Parfit (1984), 493–502. I think hedonism can be assimilated in either direction, depending on whether it understands the value of pleasure purely experientially or as consisting in part in the objects a subject takes pleasure in. If the former, then hedonism is a substantive thesis about human well-being, according to which a person fares better the more pleasure he experiences. If the latter, then hedonism is an agent-constituted theory, since what a person takes pleasure in affects what is good for him. This latter sort of view is these days more aptly labeled “preference-satisfaction” theory, which is why I stipulate that hedonism is a substantive good theory. But however we understand hedonism, I believe it fails to mark out a “third way” distinct from both substantive good theory and agent-constituted theory.
In conversation, Tad Brennan characterized modern theories of well-being this way.
For an example of this approach, see Rawls (1971), especially Chapter VII.
The aim of grass-counting is (notoriously) discussed in Rawls (1971), 432–433.
Raz (1986), 298. Raz continues with what I regard as an implausible claim: “What if the value of one person’s goals and pursuits is less than that of another’s, but neither of them is guilty of any mistake about their true value? If it turns out that each spent his life in activities which were are valuable as anything he could have done then, other things being equal, their lives are equally successful.” See Raz (1986), 299. I do not present a detailed account of what I believe should be saved and what I believe should be abandoned in Raz’s view, but I would note my dissent from this Razian commitment.
Scanlon’s discussion focuses on the extent to which overarching, all-things-considered claims about well-being are significant in the theory of well-being or to individual’s deliberations, and his view is that they are rarely significant. See Scanlon (1998), 127–133. While it follows from my view that a person can deliberate with respect to overarching claims about her well-being, I leave open how frequently this deliberation is significant. My focus is on a different issue: how aims constitute and organize—“structure”, in a technical sense I explain below in “Structuring Ends”—a person’s well-being. Scanlon has relatively little to say about this; it is not clear whether he thinks the achievement of rational aims is another good that could be placed alongside health and freedom from pain on an objective list, or whether the adoption and pursuit of aims plays a more significant organizing role. I should flag also how my account differs in emphasis from Scanlon’s. Since Scanlon argues against a significant role for overarching claims about well-being, he does not emphasize how general features like rationality, humanity, and sentience help constitute well-being. But no theory of well-being would be complete without an account of how the lifespan and emotional constitution of humans, for example, helps explain the value for us of projects with scope and duration of careers and the value for us of receiving emotional support from friends. The value of careers and friendships is not brute; substantive considerations more general than these aims help explain their value.
I would like to thank Julie Tannenbaum for suggesting this formulation of what I seek to accomplish in this paper.
Many decision theorists, for example, are attracted to the view that well-being consists in the fulfillment of preferences, since this claim putatively obviates the need to make controversial claims about what is objectively good and since ordinally ranked preferences lend themselves to mathematical manipulation. Another variety of agent-constituted theorist follows David Hume in proceeding (too quickly, in my view) from an internalist premise about the connection between reasons and motivations to the claim that only intrinsically motivating entities like desires could be sources of value. See Hume (1739), especially Part III of Book II; and for a heroic effort to vindicate Humeanism of this sort, see Valerie Tiberius (2000). Finally, followers of Immanuel Kant sometimes conclude from the shortcomings of ancient metaphysical systems that value is constructed by agents, and hence generated from nothing, when persons exercise their rational capacities by adopting aims. The most interesting and important example of this is the work of Christine Korsgaard, who writes that “reason … isn’t in the world, but is something we impose upon it”. See Korsgaard (1996), 5. Korsgaard may be guilty of hyperbole here, but that does not entail that her core claim—that a person’s particular aims help constitute his good because their value is in part sustained by the exercise of his rational capacities—is mistaken; I defend that view in this essay. I do believe, however, that some features of Korsgaard’s account of value should be amended. The account of value I offer here differs from hers in at least three ways: it incorporates agent-independent substantive values, it makes no use of agents’ practical self-conceptions, and it is not supported by an argument that is addressed to morally skeptical egoists.
I should note, however, that the argument I give in “The Scrabble Argument” owes much in inspiration to an argument articulated by Korsgaard (1996). Korsgaard’s argument is itself inspired by an argument found in Immanuel Kant (1785), 34–36.
This is a claim about what it is to be an end, not a claim about what we ought to have as an end. It could be that contingent social circumstances obligate us to adopt ends; family relationships are paradigms of this, but are not the only examples, since we reach adulthood in the debt of many persons and groups. Still, even if I am obligated to adopt some of my family relationships as ends, the fact remains that they are ends of mine only if I choose them or tacitly accept them.
Henry Richardson uses “means” to pick out both instrumental ends and, to use a term I explicate below in “A Taxonomy of Ends”, constitutive ends. Despite the utility of a term that picks out both these ways of having ends, I reserve the label “means” for instrumental ends only, since I believe this is more in keeping with standard use. Structuring ends, which I introduce below in “Structuring Ends”, are usefully understood as an elaboration of Richardson’s account of the specification of ends within a theory of well-being. See Richardson (1997), especially Chapter IV; and see also note 34 below.
Not all ends are chosen, but “adoption-worthiness” is an awfully cumbersome term. I adapt the notion of choiceworthiness from Scanlon, although he does not develop it in detail; see Scanlon (1998), 131–133. Scanlon and Raz both regard the distinction between self- and other-regarding considerations as blurry, and hence downplay the significance of self-regarding choiceworthiness in practical deliberation. As I indicated above in note 10, I take no stand on the frequency with which this notion is significant in deliberation, although I do believe it sometimes is.
This short account of objective goods is not exhaustive, and I say relatively little here about the extent to which objective—in this context, non-agent-constituted—considerations determine what aims a person should adopt, other than that these considerations are indeterminate enough to allow structuring ends to do significant work. I intend my account of structuring ends to be compatible with a variety of substantive theories of the good, so I seek to the extent this is possible to remain agnostic among them. For examples of substantive theories which purport to organize the various objective goods, see Thomas Hurka (1993), David Brink (2003), and Kraut (2007). I would offer one conjecture: namely, that only rational individuals can have structuring ends, and further that the values rational individuals realize in pursuit of them are systematically superior to the values (such as brute pleasure and freedom from pain) made possible by the capacity of sentience. Very briefly, this is because we routinely judge it to be rational to forgo brute pleasures for the sake of choiceworthy projects and relationships, and we equally routinely judge it irrational to sacrifice choiceworthy projects and relationships for the sake of brute pleasures. I would also reiterate that the question of which objectively good aims I should pursue is answered not only by appeal to the nature of the various goods but also by their suitability to my talents and social circumstances.
The claim I have reason to adopt this end does not entail I should consider adopting it; that issue concerns not only the choiceworthiness of the end but also the opportunity cost of deliberation.
Since this paper was written “internet” has been added to the Official Scrabble Player’s Dictionary.
Everyone may have an extremely weak reason to treat this arcane knowledge as valuable; the crucial point is that the Scrabble player has a much stronger reason to value this knowledge.
In these circumstances it might be rational for me to abandon my aim of being a philosopher, of course, and adopt the aim of being a politician; but that is a different claim.
I believe this entails that posthumous events can be good or bad for a person in the same way as other events; here I follow Thomas Nagel (1970) and George Pitcher (1984). This position may appear too controversial to be entailed by desiderata on a theory of well-being. In my view it is strongly supported, however, by two claims that are difficult to deny with plausibility: (1) that a person’s well-being is partly constituted by success in his aims, and (2) that it is rational to value awareness of success because it is rational to value the fact of success, not the other way around. These claims support the possibility of harmful or beneficial posthumous events because aims’ contents can extend beyond the duration of an agent’s life; an aim to publish a book or to provide for one’s children, for example, need not be premised on being achieved while the agent is alive. As a reviewer for Philosophia has suggested to me, an idea akin to that of structuring ends could be put to use within a more subjective account of well-being which denies the possibility of posthumous harm and benefit. On this alternative view it is belief in the success of one’s aims, rather than the fact of success in one’s aims, which contributes to a person’s well-being, but the belief that one has had a successful career or friendship can contribute to a person’s well-being only if she also believes her particular career or friendship is valuable for its own sake. Such belief is impossible after death, of course, which is why this view can deny the possibility of posthumous harm and benefit. I do not endorse this alternative view, so I will not pursue it further here.
All-purpose means like money and power are not counterexamples to the claim that the two-place relation of having an instrumental end is grounded in a further three-place relation. It may be rational to value these things instrumentally without knowing which final ends they can or will be used to realize.
I take this example from Schmidtz (1994).
For a defense of this view, see Nagel (1998).
The use to which I put structuring ends was inspired by Schmidtz’s notion of a “maieutic end”; see Schmidtz (1994). In ““Structuring” Instrumental Ends and Maieutic Ends” below I explain my departures from his approach, including in particular why I believe that structuring ends capture the phenomena he theorizes better than his own notion of a maieutic end.
Structuring ends thus provide resources to help explain the so-called “paradox of happiness”, which observes that happiness can typically be achieved only by aiming at other values, rather than by aiming directly to achieve happiness itself. I am grateful to a reviewer for Philosophia for calling my attention to this application of the idea of structuring ends.
I do not suggest that this is the typical reason for participating in religious and cultural practices; those reasons are numerous and various.
Kant famously makes the moral analog to this observation in Kant (1788).
While I do not believe there are any maieutic ends, I do not take these observations to constitute a conclusive argument for that view. As a reviewer for Philosophia has suggested to me, one may believe that both structuring ends and maieutic ends are significant to human well-being. The crucial claim for my present purposes is that central cases like having a meaningful life, having a marriage, and having a career are better understood on the structuring ends model than on the maieutic ends model.
Health and freedom from pain are noteworthy exceptions; and it is no coincidence that these are constituents of our good by virtue of our sentience, and not by virtue of our rationality.
Note that Schmidtz makes the analogous claim with respect to his notion of maieutic ends; see Schmidtz (1994).
The term “eudaimonia”, widely used in ancient Greek philosophy, has been variously translated as “flourishing”, “well-being”, and “happiness”. Aristotle offers a famous analysis of it in Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics; see Aristotle (c.350 B.C.E.). It is worth briefly comparing my claims about the role of the to-be-structured final end of having a good life with Aristotle’s claims about the role of eudaimonia. Although the term “structuring ends” is novel, the concept I deploy is not original. It is used by commentators on the Ethics who try to reconcile two features of Aristotle’s ethical system which appear to stand in tension with one another: his claims that the virtues are to be valued for their own sake and that the virtues jointly constitute eudaimonia. For discussion see, for example, David Wiggins (1980). The problem is not difficult to articulate. If the virtues are valuable in themselves, why posit the notion of eudaimonia? The final value of the virtues should be a complete account of the rationality of pursuing them. And conversely: if the virtues jointly constitute eudaimonia, why do we need to value them for their own sake? It is not clear how this could supplement the fact that they constitute eudaimonia, which is the highest achievable human good. (Aristotle stipulates this; the rider “achievable” is needed to distinguish eudaimonia from the state of godlike contemplation articulated in Book X.) One solution is to claim that the virtues structure the end of eudaimonia; their achievement jointly constitutes the value of eudaimonia, that is, but only if they are valued for their own sake. I depart from Aristotle as standardly interpreted today, however, by denying there is a single value encompassing all the reasons to which I am responsible. My well-being, important though it is to what I should do, is not the only value that provides me with reasons for action. There are other sentient creatures, after all, and their status affects what I should do. I should note finally that the interpretation of Aristotle as an egoist is not uncontroversial. For a prominent example of the standard interpretation see Irwin (1988), and for an important dissent see Kraut (1989), especially Chapter Two. For more recent discussion of the role of egoism in Aristotle’s ethics, see Mark LeBar (2005, 2009).
In Plato’s Republic Thrasymachus contends that justice consists merely in the advantage of the strong over the weak. As a consequence, he maintains that having the virtue of justice is not good for the weak. See Book I of Plato (c.360 B.C.E.).
By speaking here of my “choosing” I do not imply that in general we structure our ends through conscious choice. But the end of having a career is likely to be structured in this way.
It is worth reiterating that other-regarding reasons and reasons not based on well-being are also relevant in making these choices; but the claim in the text is not threatened by this observation.
My discussion here follows Richardson’s account of an end’s “place” within a hierarchy; see Richardson (2004) and Richardson (1997), especially Part Two. He places greater emphasis on reflective endorsement of ends than I do, but my framework is otherwise similar; in particular I endorse his characterization of proximate ends as “specifications” of remote ends. I propose that structuring ends explain how remote ends transfer normativity to proximate ends.
My use of structuring ends in the theory of human well-being dovetails, I believe, with Michael Bratman’s deployment of “self-governing policies” in the theory of rational agency. See Bratman (2000a, b). This is especially true of Bratman’s view that self-governing policies arise as a response to underdetermination of value judgments; on that point, see Bratman (2003). That our good is significantly constituted by to-be-structured ends, and hence by structuring ends, helps to explain why we need the sorts of agential structures that Bratman postulates. A few caveats to the synergy I see between Bratman’s account of agency and this essay’s account of well-being: Bratman claims that self-governing policies do not affect what is valuable, while the structuring ends model asserts that the final value of choiceworthy aims can be sustained by their adoption; Bratman emphasizes the agent’s reflective value judgments, while I emphasize the adoption of aims by whatever mechanisms; and Bratman typically does not distinguish between self-governing policies that are justified instrumentally and those that are justified constitutively.
The “anchoring” of agency is defended in Harry Frankfurt (1999).
In addition, it is almost certainly a requirement of rationality that we limit our selection and pursuit of ends by the effect our choices will have on others.
An important complication here is that, in the case of humans at least, this self-constitution of the good requires help from others; this is because it is constitutive of most of our choiceworthy aims that others cooperate with us in pursuing them.
It is worth reiterating that this is not typically a conscious process, and that a person need not believe she has to-be-structured ends in order to successfully structure them.
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Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Louis deRosset, Kyla Ebels Duggan, Richard Kraut, Julie Tannenbaum, and Melissa Yates for providing extensive and instructive comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I would also like to thank Ben Chan, Mane Hajdin, Kenneth Westphal, and the audience at a colloquium session at the 2007 Eastern Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association for their helpful questions and comments.
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Garthoff, J. Structuring Ends. Philosophia 38, 691–713 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-010-9247-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-010-9247-8