Addiction: I shall inject you with an addictive drug. From now on, you will wake each morning with an extremely strong desire to have another injection of this drug. Having this desire will be in itself neither pleasant nor painful, but if the desire is not fulfilled within an hour it will then become very painful. This is no cause for concern, since I shall give you ample supplies of this drug. Every morning, you will be able at once to fulfil this desire. The injection, and its after‐effects, would also be neither pleasant nor painful. You will spend the rest of your days as you do now.
A local desire theory, where only local desire counts is, in fact, objectivist—it will claim that I am better off in Addiction even if I strenuously protest that it’s my life and I don’t think that I’m better off.
(Personally, though, I don’t think creating a desire and satisfying it makes an individual better off on the basis of that desire, assuming a desire theory. I think antifrustrationism and preference-affecting views or mixtures of them are far more plausible. More on this here.)
Ah, from the paper:
(Personally, though, I don’t think creating a desire and satisfying it makes an individual better off on the basis of that desire, assuming a desire theory. I think antifrustrationism and preference-affecting views or mixtures of them are far more plausible. More on this here.)