What If Well-Being Measurements Are Non-Linear?

Australasian Journal of Philosophy 97 (1):29-45 (2019)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Well-being measurements are frequently used to support conclusions about a range of philosophically important issues. This is a problem, because we know too little about the intervals of the relevant scales. I argue that it is plausible that well-being measurements are non-linear, and that common beliefs that they are linear are not truth-tracking, so we are not justified in believing that well-being scales are linear. I then argue that this undermines common appeals to both hypothetical and actual well-being measurements; I first focus on the philosophical literature on prioritarianism and then discuss Kahneman’s Peak-End Rule as a systematic bias. Finally, I discuss general implications for research on well-being, and suggest a better way of representing scales.

Other Versions

No versions found

Similar books and articles

How successfully can we measure well-being through measuring happiness?Sam Wren-Lewis - 2014 - South African Journal of Philosophy 33 (4):417-432.
Are Measures of Well-Being Philosophically Adequate?Willem van der Deijl - 2017 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 47 (3):209-234.
Utils and Shmutils.Jacob M. Nebel - 2021 - Ethics 131 (3):571-599.
Philosophy and animal welfare science.Donald W. Bruckner - 2019 - Philosophy Compass 14 (10):e12626.
A New Counterexample to Prioritarianism.Toby Ord - 2015 - Utilitas 27 (3):298-302.
The Challenge of Measuring Well-Being as Philosophers Conceive of It.Anne Baril - 2021 - In Matthew T. Lee, Laura D. Kubzansky & Tyler J. VanderWeele (eds.), Measuring Well-Being. Oxford University Press. pp. 257-282.
The role of well-being in ethics.Raffaele Rodogno - 2003 - Dissertation, St. Andrews
The role of well‐being.Joseph Raz - 2004 - Philosophical Perspectives 18 (1):269–294.

Analytics

Added to PP
2018-03-08

Downloads
873 (#21,594)

6 months
157 (#25,044)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Daniel Wodak
University of Pennsylvania

References found in this work

Thinking, Fast and Slow.Daniel Kahneman - 2011 - New York: New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Philosophical explanations.Robert Nozick - 1981 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Naming and Necessity.Saul Kripke - 1980 - Critica 17 (49):69-71.
.Daniel Kahneman & Shane Frederick - 2002 - Cambridge University Press.

View all 39 references / Add more references