A new well‐being atomism

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 107 (1):3-23 (2022)
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Abstract

Many philosophers reject the view that well-being over a lifetime is simply an aggregation of well-being at every moment of one's life, and thus they reject theories of well-being like hedonism and concurrentist desire satisfactionism. They raise concerns that such a view misses the importance of the relationships between moments in a person's life or the role narratives play in a person's well-being. In this article, we develop an atomist meta-theory of well-being, according to which the prudential value of a life depends solely on the prudential value of each moment of that life. This is a general account of momentary well-being that can capture different features of well-being that standard atomistic accounts fail to capture, thus allowing for the possibility of an atomism that is compatible with a variety of well-being theories. Contrary to many criticisms leveled against momentary well-being, this well-being atomism captures all of the important features of well-being.

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Author Profiles

Gil Hersch
Virginia Tech
Daniel Weltman
Ashoka University

Citations of this work

The usefulness of well-being temporalism.Gil Hersch - 2022 - Journal of Economic Methodology 30 (4):322-336.
Prudential Redemption and Its Significance.Ying Liu - forthcoming - Philosophers' Imprint.

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References found in this work

Weighing lives.John Broome - 2004 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Well-being and death.Ben Bradley - 2009 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Well‐Being And Time.J. David Velleman - 1991 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 72 (1):48-77.

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