Khader offers a deliberative perfectionist approach to identifying and responding to adaptivepreferences-- deprived people's preferences that perpetuate their deprivation.
I argue, first, that the deprived individuals whose predicaments Nussbaum cites as examples of "adaptive preference" do not in fact prefer the conditions of their lives to what we should regard as more desirable alternatives, indeed that we believe they are badly off precisely because they are not living the lives they would prefer to live if they had other options and were aware of them. Secondly, I argue that even where individuals in deprived circumstances acquire tastes for conditions (...) that we regard as bad, they are typically better off having their acquired preferences satisfied. If they are badly off it is because they cannot get what we and they, would regard as more desirable alternatives. Preference utilitarianism explains why individuals in such circumstances are badly off whether they have adapted to their deprived circumstances or not. Even if they prefer the conditions of their lives to all other available alternatives, most would prefer alternatives that are not available to them which would, on the preferentist account, make them better off. And that, on the preferentist account, is the basis for a radical critique of unjust institutions that limit people's options and prevent them from getting what they want. (shrink)
An important question confronting feminist philosophers is why women are sometimes complicit in their own subordination. The dominant view holds that complicity is best understood in terms of adaptivepreferences. This view assumes that agents will naturally gravitate away from subordination and towards flourishing, as long as they do not have things imposed on them that disrupt this trajectory. However, there is reason to believe that ‘impositions’ do not explain all of the ways in which complicity can arise. (...) This paper defends a phenomenological account of complicity which offers an alternative explanation. (shrink)
While the concept of adaptivepreferences is an important tool for criticizing injustice, it is often claimed that using the concept involves showing disrespect for persons judged to have adaptivepreferences. In this paper, I propose an account of adaptivepreferences that does the relevant political work while still showing persons two centrally important kinds of respect. My account is based in what I call an indirect substantive account of autonomy, which places substantive requirements (...) on the options available to a person, rather than on the option that she ultimately prefers. This allows us to pinpoint cases in which a person's circumstances have rendered her insufficiently autonomous, without saying that any conception of the good must be non-autonomous tout court. (shrink)
In this paper, I argue for the counter-intuitive conclusion that the same adaptive preference can be both prudentially good and prudentially bad for its holder: that is, it can be prudentially objectionable from one temporal perspective, but prudentially unobjectionable from another. Given the possibility of transformative experiences, there is an important sense in which even worrisome adaptivepreferences can be prudentially good for us. That is, if transformative experiences lead us to develop adaptivepreferences, then (...) their objects can become prudentially better for our actual selves than the objects of their non-adaptive alternatives would now be. I also argue, however, that the same worrisome adaptivepreferences might still be prospectively prudentially objectionable: that is, our pre-transformation selves might be prudentially better off undergoing a non-adaptive alternative transformative experience instead. I argue that both claims hold across the range of the most broadly-defended accounts of well-being in the literature. (shrink)
People who have not experienced diseases and health conditions tend to judge them to be worse than they are reported to be by people who have experienced them. This phenomenon, known as the disability paradox, presents a challenge for health policy, and in particular, healthcare resource distribution. This divergence between patient and public preferences is most plausibly explained as a result of hedonic adaptation, a widespread phenomenon in which people tend to adapt fairly quickly to the state they are (...) in, good or bad, and adjust their baseline utility accordingly.If patient utilities can be shown to be inappropriate for use in public policy decision making, the disability paradox fades away. This paper offers a critique of one such attempt: the idea that adaptation leads to adaptivepreferences. I argue that none of the main accounts of adaptivepreferences in fact characterise adapted patient preferences as irrational. Adapted preferences should not, therefore, be treated as synonymous with adaptivepreferences. I suggest that much patient adaptation should be understood as a form of the ubiquitous human ability to respond to environmental change. Consequently, we ought not to discount patient preferences. (shrink)
Adaptive preference formation is the unconscious altering of our preferences in light of the options we have available. Jon Elster has argued that this is bad because it undermines our autonomy. I agree, but think that Elster's explanation of why is lacking. So, I draw on a richer account of autonomy to give the following answer. Preferences formed through adaptation are characterized by covert influence (that is, explanations of which an agent herself is necessarily unaware), and covert (...) influence undermines our autonomy because it undermines the extent to which an agent's preferences are ones that she has decided upon for herself. This answer fills the lacuna in Elster's argument. It also allows us to draw a principled distinction between adaptive preference formation and the closely related phenomenon of character planning. (shrink)
An important question confronting feminist philosophers is why women are sometimes complicit in their own subordination. The dominant view holds that complicity is best understood in terms of adaptivepreferences. This view assumes that agents will naturally gravitate away from subordination and towards flourishing, as long as they do not have things imposed on them that disrupt this trajectory. However, there is reason to believe that ‘impositions’ do not explain all of the ways in which complicity can arise. (...) This paper defends a phenomenological account of complicity which offers an alternative explanation. (shrink)
An adaptive preference is a preference that is regimented in response to an agent’s set of feasible options. The fabled fox in the sour grapes story undergoes an adaptive preference change. I consider adaptivepreferences more broadly, to include adaptive preference formation as well. I argue that many adaptivepreferences that other philosophers have cast out as irrational sour-grapes-like preferences are actually fully rational preferences worthy of pursuit. I offer a means (...) of distinguishing rational and worthy adaptivepreferences from irrational and unworthy ones. The distinction is based on the agent’s own appraisal of the adaptive preference. (shrink)
I argue that postcolonial feminist critiques draw our attention to four phenomena that are easily confused with what I call ?paradigmatic adaptive preference? ? and that the ability to distinguish these phenomena can improve the quality of development interventions. An individual has paradigmatic adaptivepreferences (APs) if she perpetuates injustice against herself because her normative worldview is nearly completely distorted. The four look-alike phenomena postcolonial feminist critics help us identify are (a) APs caused by selective value distortion (...) (SAPs), (b) APs caused by forced tradeoffs (TAPs), (c) APs caused by misperceptions of the facts (MAPs), and (d) wellbeing-compatible preferences that are misunderstood because of a lack of cultural or contextual knowledge. The first three, I argue, are non-paradigmatic forms of AP that have gone previously unrecognized and that we need to expand our conceptual vocabulary to describe; the last is not a form of AP at all. Development practitioners can grapple more seriously with the real-world complexities of moral psychology and cross-cultural moral judgments if they are capable of distinguishing paradigmatic AP from the look-alike phenomena. (shrink)
Cultures of low aspirations, and more particularly young people's adaptation to them, are often presented as the major obstacle to an economic development agenda which requires more higher-level skills and a social agenda which is about enabling people from ‘non-traditional’ backgrounds to go to university. The article analyses and discusses some of the different sorts of constraints on the choices which we make and which may become unconsciously internalised and so constitute our adaptive preference. It argues, however, that all (...) choice is significantly adaptive and has its roots in a self which neither in its development nor in its current agency is detached from the social context in which it has been constructed, with which it identifies and from which that identity itself derives many of its features. Finally the article discusses briefly the grounds on which intervention in the life of such a chooser might be justified and some implications for interventionist strategies which are sensitive to such a socially embedded view of the self. (shrink)
Accounts of adaptivepreferences are of two kinds: well-being accounts fully theorized for their own sake and political accounts theorized to facilitate the political project of reducing oppression and marginalization. Given their practical role, the latter are often less fully theorized, and are therefore less robust to theoretical criticism. In this paper, I first draw on well-being accounts to identify the well-theorized elements that political accounts should want to adopt in order to strengthen their project and avoid common (...) criticisms. Second, I appeal to the political project to show the shortcomings of the well-being accounts on which I draw. (shrink)
Adaptivepreferences are preferences formed in response to circumstances and opportunities – paradigmatically, they occur when we scale back our desires so they accord with what is probable or at least possible. While few commentators are willing to wholly reject the normative significance of such preferences, adaptivepreferences have nevertheless attracted substantial criticism in recent political theory. The groundbreaking analysis of Jon Elster charged that such preferences are not autonomous, and several other commentators (...) have since followed Elster’s lead. On a second front, Capacity Theorists Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen have objected that adaptivepreferences lead people away from objective goods and constitute an impediment to progressive change in developing countries. In this paper I argue that the criticisms of Elster, Sen and Nussbaum fail on the one hand to take into account what may be positively said in favour of this type of preference formation, and fail on the other hand to distinguish between different types of psychological changes – with the result that many of the critiques offered have a narrower purview than is currently allowed. My analysis of adaptivepreferences, even in their most ideal form, is however not entirely positive; I adduce reasons why we can be cautious about allowing adaptivepreferences to play certain types of roles in political processes, even as we accept those very preferences as normative and autonomous for the agent holding them. [International scholars without access to the AJPAE are invited to email [email protected] for a pdf copy of this article.]. (shrink)
Feminists have long been aware of the pathology and the dangers of what are now termed “adaptivepreferences.” Adaptivepreferences are preferences formed in unconscious response to oppression. Thinkers from each wave of feminism continue to confront the problem of women's internalization of their own oppression, that is, the problem of women forming their preferences within the confining and deforming space that patriarchy provides. All preferences are, in fact, formed in response to a (...) limited set of options, but not all preferences are unconscious, pathological responses to oppression. Feminist theory therefore requires a method for distinguishing all preferences from adaptive or deformed preferences. Social contract theory provides such a tool. Social contract theory models autonomous preference-acquisition and retention at both the external level of causation and the internal level of justification. In doing so, social contract theory exposes preferences that do not meet those standards, acting as both a conceptual test that identifies adaptivepreferences and as a practical tool for personal and social clarification. A social contract approach helps persons and societies to identify and to confront preferences rooted in unconscious response to oppression. (shrink)
I argue that a gendered division of labor is often the result of choices by women that count as fully voluntary because they are an expression of preferences and commitments that reflect women's understanding of their own good. Since liberalism has a commitment to respecting fully voluntary choices, it has a commitment to respecting these gendered choices. I suggest that justified political action may require that we fail to respect some people's considered choices.
Subjectivism about well-being holds that an object contributes to one's well-being to the extent that one has a pro-attitude toward this object under certain conditions. Most subjectivists have contended that these conditions should be ideal. One reason in favor of this idea is that when people adapt their pro-attitudes to situations of oppression, the levels of well-being they may attain is diminished. Nevertheless, I first argue that appealing to idealized conditions of autonomy or any other condition to erase or replace (...)adaptive pro-attitudes is mistaken. Second, I show that the most natural version of subjectivism that does not appeal to any such idealizing condition can explain why the well-being of people having adaptive pro-attitudes should not be restricted to the fulfillment of these pro-attitudes. In sum, the existence of adaptivepreferences does not militate in favor of the introduction of conditions of idealization but against it. (shrink)
Critics argue that adaptive preference theorists misrepresent oppressed people's reasons for perpetuating their oppression. According to critics, AP theorists assume that people who adapt their preferences to unjust conditions lack the psychic capacities that would allow them to develop their own normative perspectives and/or form appropriate values. The misrepresentation is morally problematic, because it promotes unjustified paternalism and perpetuates colonial stereotypes of third‐world women. I argue that we can imagine a conception of AP that is consistent with acknowledging (...) agency in people who perpetuate their oppression. I offer a weak perfectionist conception of AP that is consistent with recognising agentic capacities in the oppressed. On my conception, APs are preferences incompatible with an agent's basic wellbeing that formed under unjust conditions — and that an agent would reverse upon exposure to better conditions. My conception encourages respectful treatment of the oppressed without requiring us to abandon the feminist political goals the notion of AP is meant to serve. It helps us identify real‐world preferences that are problematically adapted to oppressive conditions and offers an account of why they seem not to be women's ‘true preferences’. (shrink)
Both mainstream and disability bioethics sometimes contend that the self-assessment of disabled people about their own well-being is distorted by adaptivepreferences that are only held because other, better options are unavailable. I will argue that both of the most common ways of understanding adaptivepreferences—the autonomy-based account and the well-being account—would reject blanket claims that disabled people’s QOL self-assessment has been distorted, whether those claims come from mainstream bioethicists or from disability bioethicists. However, rejecting these (...) generalizations for a more nuanced view still has dramatic implications for the status quo in both health policy and clinical ethics. (shrink)
It is a longstanding problem for theorists of justice that many victims of injustice seem to prefer mistreatment, and perpetuate their own oppression. One possible response is to simply ignore such preferences as unreliable ‘adaptivepreferences’. Capability theorists have taken this approach, arguing that individuals should be entitled to certain capabilities regardless of their satisfaction without them. Although this initially seems plausible, worries have been raised that undermining the reliability of individuals' strongly-held preferences impugns their rationality, (...) and further excludes already marginalised groups. I argue that such criticisms trade on an ambiguity between two uses of the term ‘adaptive preference’. An adaptive preference is often assumed to be irrational, and an unreliable guide to its possessor's best interests. However, I suggest a preference may also be adaptive in the sense that it is an unreliable guide to our distributive entitlements, and that this does not require an assessment of individuals' rationality. I consider this distinction in relation to disability, arguing that this clarification allows us to justifiably ignore some disabled individuals' preferences, in the context of theorising about distributive justice, without disrespecting or undermining their rationality or culture. (shrink)
: I argue that a gendered division of labor is often the result of choices by women that count as fully voluntary because they are an expression of preferences and commitments that reflect women's understanding of their own good. Since liberalism has a commitment to respecting fully voluntary choices, it has a commitment to respecting these gendered choices. I suggest that justified political action may require that we fail to respect some people's considered choices.
I argue that a gendered division of labor is often the result of choices by women that count as fully voluntary because they are an expression of preferences and commitments that reflect women's understanding of their own good. Since liberalism has a commitment to respecting fully voluntary choices, it has a commitment to respecting these gendered choices. I suggest that justified political action may require that we fail to respect some people's considered choices.
Many economists and social theorists hypothesize that most societies could soon face a ‘post-work’ future, one in which employment and productive labor have a dramatically reduced place in human affairs. Given the centrality of employment to individual identity and its pivotal role as the primary provider of economic and other goods, transitioning to a ‘post-work’ future could prove traumatic and disorienting to many. Policymakers are thus likely to face the difficult choice of the extent to which they ought to satisfy (...) individual citizens’ desires to work in a socioeconomic environment in which work is in permanent decline. Here I argue that policymakers confronting a post-work economy should discount, or at least consider problematic, the desire to work because it is very likely that this desire is an adaptive preference. An adaptive preference is a preference for some state of affairs within a limited set of options formed under unjust conditions. The widespread desire for work has been formed under unjust labor conditions to which individuals are compelled to submit in order to meet material and ethical needs. Furthermore, the prevalence of the ‘work dogma’ in contemporary societies precludes nearly all individuals from seeing alternatives to work as live options. (shrink)
Resumen La renta básica proporciona a la ciudadanía una autonomía económica que se traduce en una libertad real para conducir sus vidas. Sin embargo, en este artículo defiendo que la renta básica no sería efectiva en situaciones de pobreza donde se generan preferencias adaptativas en las personas. Para mostrarlo analizaré las bases psicológicas del comportamiento de personas con preferencias adaptativas. A continuación, abordaré qué estrategias son las indicadas para revertir la situación de preferencias adaptativas. Implementar estas políticas permitirá que la (...) renta básica pueda empoderar también a los más pobres.Basic income provides citizenship an economic autonomy which is translated in a real liberty to drive their lives. However, in this article I aim to analyze why basic income would not be effective in situations of poverty in which people have “adaptivepreferences”. I will analyze the psychological bases of the behavior of persons with adaptivepreferences. Then, I will study which strategies are more proper to reverse that situation. This would allow understanding how basic income could empower to the poorest too. (shrink)
A number of scholars have recently defended the claim that there is a close connection between the evolutionary biological notion of fitness and the economic notion of utility: both are said to refer to an organism’s success in dealing with its environment, and both are said to play the same theoretical roles in their respective sciences. However, an analysis of two seemingly disparate but in fact structurally related phenomena—‘niche construction’ (the case where organisms change their environment to make it fit (...) to their needs) and ‘adaptivepreferences’ (the case where agents change their wants to make them fit to what the world has given them)—shows that one needs to be very careful about the postulation of this sort of fitness–utility connection. Specifically, I here use the analysis of these two phenomena to establish when connecting fitness and utility is and is not possible. (shrink)
The starting point regarding consent has to be that it is both extremely important, and that it is often suspicious. In this article, the author tries to make sense of both of these claims, from a largely liberal perspective, tying consent, predictably, to the value of autonomy and distinguishing between autonomy as sovereignty and autonomy as nonalienation. The author then discusses adaptivepreferences, claiming that they suffer from a rationality flaw but that it's not clear that this flaw (...) matters morally or politically. What matters is whether they suffer from an autonomy flaw. To answer this question, the author develops an account of autonomy failure, according to which a preference is nonautonomous if an injustice played an appropriate role in its causal history. The author then discusses the moral implications—and in an initial way, the political ones as well—of proclaiming a preference, or consent based on it, nonautonomous in this way. (shrink)
Consider a case of a patient receiving life-supporting treatment. With appropriate care the patient could be kept alive for several years. Yet his latest prognosis also indicates that his mental abilities will deteriorate significantly and that ultimately he will become incapable of understanding what happens around and to him. Despite his illness, the patient has been eager to live. However, he finds the prospect that he is now faced with devastating. He undergoes an unconscious process that results in his finding (...) himself with a preference to die. Consequently, he requests his doctor to stop the treatment that she is providing. Other things being equal, standard medical ethics and the legislations of most Western countries allow the doctor to adhere to the patient’s request if it is autonomous. While its origins can be traced back to at least J.S. Mill’s work on women’s rights, unconscious alteration of one’s preferences in light of the options available for one has figured, for example, in recent discussion on female oppression and social choice theory. Yet the topic has not received attention in the debate on voluntary euthanasia. The inattention is unfortunate because the central problem with such adaptation has been taken to be that it undermines personal autonomy. This motivates the main question examined in this chapter, i.e. the problem of whether a request for euthanasia based on an adaptive preference is autonomous. (shrink)
Respect for patient autonomy is a central principle of medical ethics. However, there are important unresolved questions about the characteristics of an autonomous decision, and whether some autonomous preferences should be subject to more scrutiny than others.In this paper, we consider whether inappropriately adaptivepreferences—preferences that are based on and that may perpetuate social injustice—should be categorised as autonomous in a way that gives them normative authority. Some philosophers have argued that inappropriately adaptivepreferences (...) do not have normative authority, because they are only a reflection of a person’s social context and not of their true self. Under this view, medical professionals who refuse to carry out actions which are based on inappropriately adaptivepreferences are not in fact violating their patient’s autonomy. However, we argue that it is very difficult to articulate a systematic and principled distinction between normal autonomous preferences and inappropriately adaptivepreferences, especially if this distinction needs to be useful for clinicians in real-life situations. This makes it difficult to argue that inappropriately adaptivepreferences are straightforwardly non-autonomous.Given this problem, we argue that there are significant theoretical issues with contemporary understandings of autonomy in bioethics. We discuss what this might mean for the practice of medicine and for medical ethics education. (shrink)
There is little agreement among moral and political philosophers when it comes to determining what it is that makes adaptivepreferences problematic. The large number of competing explanations offered by philosophers illustrates the absence of any consensus. The most prominent versions of these explanations have recently come under attack by Dale Dorsey, who argues that adaptivepreferences are a red herring: the problematic nature of adaptivepreferences is not explained by the fact of adaptation (...) but by an appeal to some other normative consideration. In this article I offer an account of adaptivepreferences that both accommodates the thought that only some of our adaptivepreferences are problematic and responds to the skeptical challenge pressed by Dorsey. I argue that some adaptivepreferences are prima facie irrational as they exhibit a peculiar error in reasoning where individuals change the semantic content of the reasons underpinning the new preference. (shrink)
Political philosophers working on ideal and non-ideal theory sometimes seem to be stuck in a bind: while ideal theory risks being too ideal to be useful in the real world, non-ideal theory risks being so non-ideal that it stops far short of justice. In this paper, I highlight a third – and equally unappealing – possibility: that non-ideal theory, precisely because of its obvious engagement with real-world problems, might fail to recognize the unacceptable ways in which it is itself problematically (...) idealized. I highlight this problem through the case-study of adaptivepreferences. Although work in adaptivepreferences obviously fits into non-ideal theory, the actual work being done in the literature is idealized in that it takes only the circumstances and needs of adults into account. In the best case, this means that the needs of one of our most vulnerable populations – that is, children – are ignored. In the worst case, where the needs of children and adults conflict, the needs of children will be actively frustrated. In this way, non-ideal theory can fail to approximate justice precisely because it fails to recognize the idealizations that it itself employs. (shrink)
This volume gathers together previously unpublished articles focusing on the relationship between preference adaptation and autonomy in connection with human enhancement and in the end-of-life context.
Adaptivepreferences are both a central justification and continuing problem for the use of the capability approach. They are illustrated here with reference to a project examining the choices of young people who had rejected higher education. Jon Elster, Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum have all criticised utilitarianism on the grounds that a focus on preference-satisfaction fails to acknowledge the human tendency to adapt preferences under unfavourable circumstances and that self-assessments of well-being are therefore likely to be (...) distorted by deprivation. Elster’s addresses preference deformation through the sour grapes phenomenon and retroactive rationalisation. Sen and Nussbaum are more concerned with adaptation as self-abnegation. The capability approach developed by Sen and Nussbaum seeks to address the problem of adaptivepreferences by taking into account not only what individuals value but what they have reason to value. However, clear distinctions need to be made between adaptations to the means of achieving well-being and adaptations to its ends. If Elster’s formulations are to be used in capability assessments, they need to articulate with the relative weightings given to relevant functionings and freedoms. This enables a more nuanced understanding of adaptivepreferences that can account for the subtleties of the constraints they place upon individual freedoms. (shrink)
Any defense of universal norms involves drawing distinctions among the many things people actually desire. If it is to have any content at all, it will say that some objects of desire are more central than others for political purposes, more indispensable to a human being's quality of life. Any wise such approach will go even further, holding that some existing preferences are actually bad bases for social policy. The list of Central Human Capabilities that forms the core of (...) my political project contains many functions that many people over the ages have preferred not to grant to women, either not at all, or not on a basis of equality. To insist on their centrality is thus to go against preferences that have considerable depth and breadth in traditions of male power. Moreover, the list contains many items that women over the ages have not wanted for themselves, and some that even today many women do not pursue – so in putting the list at the center of a normative political project aimed at providing the philosophical underpinning for basic political principles, we are going against not just other people's preferences about women, but, more controversially, against many preferences (or so it seems) of women about themselves and their lives. To some extent, my approach, like Sen's, avoids these problems of paternalism by insisting that the political goal is capability, not actual functioning, and by dwelling on the central importance of choice as a good. But the notion of choice and practical reason used in the list is a normative notion, emphasizing the critical activity of reason in a way that does not reflect the actual use of reason in many lives. (shrink)
This essay proposes recognition theory as a preferred approach to explaining poor women’s puzzling preference for patriarchal subordination even after they have accessed an ostensibly empowering asset: microfinance. Neither the standard account of adaptive preference offered by Martha Nussbaum nor the competing account of constrained rational choice offered by Harriet Baber satisfactorily explains an important variation of what Serene Khader, in discussing microfinance, dubs the self-subordination social recognition paradox. The variation in question involves women who, refusing to reject the (...) combined socio-economic benefits of patriarchal recognition and empowering microfinance, dissemble their subordination to men. In this situation, women experience a genuine form of divided consciousness which recognition theory frames as an identity crisis. Understanding the pathological nature of deceit as a way of life that blurs the boundaries between rational choice and rationalization, recognition theory shows how dissemblance itself is constrained by conflicting recognition orders in ways that prevent women who live such a life from successfully emancipating themselves. In this respect, recognition theory provides an important ---albeit, from the standpoint of recent feminist and intersectional research on identity and autonomy, inadequately qualified---norm of personal integrity and genuine agency requisite for conceptualizing adaptivepreferences. (shrink)
Although the problem of adaptiveness plays an important motivating role in her work on human capabilities, Martha Nussbaum never gives a clear account of the controversial concept of adaptivepreferences on which she relies. In this paper, I aim both to reconstruct the most plausible account of the concept that may be attributed to Nussbaum and to provide a critical appraisal of that account. Although her broader work on the capabilities approach moves progressively towards political liberalism as time (...) passes, I aim to show that her account of adaptivepreferences continues to maintain her earlier commitment to perfectionism about the good. I then distinguish between two obligatory kinds of respect for persons, which I call, respectively, primary and secondary recognition respect. This distinction allows us to see that her perfectionist account of adaptivepreferences allows her to show persons primary but not secondary recognition respect. Ultimately, I claim that an acceptable account of adaptive prefer.. (shrink)
In a series of important papers published roughly twenty years ago, Professor Robert Cooter developed a comprehensive economic theory of moral norms. He explained the value of those norms, described the process by which norms are adopted, and offered a set of predictions regarding the circumstances under which an individual will choose to adopt a particular moral norm. This brief Article applies behavioral law and economics and hedonic psychology to expand upon Professor Cooter’s path-breaking theory. In particular, understanding welfare in (...) hedonic terms — rather than preference-satisfaction terms — suggests a multitude of further situations in which individuals will justifiably seek to internalize moral norms. The hedonic approach to welfare then further suggests an enhanced role for the government to play in encouraging the adoption of welfare-enhancing norms. Cooter’s theory, combined with modern understandings of welfare and human behavior, thus offers powerful predictive and prescriptive possibilities. (shrink)
In a recent article, Amartya Sen writes that one important influence on his theory of adaptivepreferences is Wollstonecraft's account of how some women, though clearly oppressed, are apparently satisfied with their lot. Wollstonecraft's arguments have received little attention so far from contemporary political philosophers, and one might be tempted to dismiss Sen's acknowledgment as a form of gallantry. That would be wrong. Wollstonecraft does have a lot of interest to say on the topic of why her contemporaries (...) appeared to choose what struck her as oppression, and her views can still help us reflect on contemporary problems such as the ones identified and discussed by Amartya Sen. In this article I will argue that a close look at Wollstonecraft's arguments may lead us to rethink some aspects of Sen's discussion of the phenomenon of adaptivepreferences. (shrink)
Feminist philosophers have questioned whether liberal theory can account for the phenomenon of adaptivepreferences, specifically women’s preferences that are formed under conditions of sexist oppression. In this paper, I examine the argument of one feminist who addresses the problem of women’s “deformed desires” by relying on a liberal framework. Assessing her argument, I conclude that liberalism provides inadequate resources for responding to this issue since it errs in understanding adaptivepreferences as exceptional, provides little (...) explanation of how changes in individual preferences are motivated, and often fails to identify the adaptive nature of such preferences. I illustrate my arguments through a brief discussion of women’s choices around motherhood and sexuality, and I conclude by offering several suggestions of how an alternative theory might better address the problems raised by preference adaptation in the context of oppression. (shrink)