Does this have implications for preference utilitarianism?
I’m fine with external measures of health, income etc. My concern about most wellbeing and life satisfaction theories would be a failure to distinguish between specific desires/wants and universal needs/values. Work in psychology by Abraham Maslow and Marshall Rosenberg points to positive wellbeing coming from satisfying a rather limited but universal list of needs or values. Economist Manfred-Max Neef has assembled these into a list of just 9 needs.
This seems to me much better than a single hedonic scale or global desire rating, and it also avoids the problem of how to deal with long term issues like climate change.
Does this have implications for preference utilitarianism?
Yes, very probably. There are many different types of preference/desire theories (‘preference’ and ‘desire’ are generally used interchangeably), depending on which sorts of desires count—I say a bit about this in the paper and provide some links to further reading. If, as I argue, life satisfaction theories of well-being are really a type of desire theory going by another name, that the concerns apply to those life satisfaction/desire theories. I note that my objections are to a particular class of desire theory, so someone attracted to desire theories in general might just switch to a different one (e.g. from a global to a summative desire theory).
Re Maslow and Rosenberg, whether well-being comes from those things depends on what you think well-being is, which is the substantive topic at hand. If the best theory of well-being is that it consists in life satisfaction then whether hypothesised ‘universal needs’ are, in fact, determinants of well-being is a factual question—we need to go ask people about their life satisfaction, collect some data, and crunch the results. Maybe, in fact, the proposed need for “identity” makes very little difference to life satisfaction. However, if one argues that well-being literally consists in the fulfillment of universal needs, e.g having your need for “identity” met is intrinsically good for you, then that well-being “comes from” those things is true by your definition.
This seems to me much better than a single hedonic scale or global desire rating,
It’s not all obvious to me that a pluralistic conception of well-being is theoretically preferable (that is, one where more than one thing is instrinically good for us). As I mention right at the end of the paper, one awkward issue is how to combine different seemingly incommensurable goods—how does one trade-off units of ‘identity’ vs ‘affection’ if one wants to have high well-being ? Another challenge is providing a compelling story for why, whatever goods are chosen, it is those, and only those, that are good for us.
Does this have implications for preference utilitarianism?
I’m fine with external measures of health, income etc. My concern about most wellbeing and life satisfaction theories would be a failure to distinguish between specific desires/wants and universal needs/values. Work in psychology by Abraham Maslow and Marshall Rosenberg points to positive wellbeing coming from satisfying a rather limited but universal list of needs or values. Economist Manfred-Max Neef has assembled these into a list of just 9 needs.
This seems to me much better than a single hedonic scale or global desire rating, and it also avoids the problem of how to deal with long term issues like climate change.
the matrix of the Neef model is pretty cool.
Yes, very probably. There are many different types of preference/desire theories (‘preference’ and ‘desire’ are generally used interchangeably), depending on which sorts of desires count—I say a bit about this in the paper and provide some links to further reading. If, as I argue, life satisfaction theories of well-being are really a type of desire theory going by another name, that the concerns apply to those life satisfaction/desire theories. I note that my objections are to a particular class of desire theory, so someone attracted to desire theories in general might just switch to a different one (e.g. from a global to a summative desire theory).
Re Maslow and Rosenberg, whether well-being comes from those things depends on what you think well-being is, which is the substantive topic at hand. If the best theory of well-being is that it consists in life satisfaction then whether hypothesised ‘universal needs’ are, in fact, determinants of well-being is a factual question—we need to go ask people about their life satisfaction, collect some data, and crunch the results. Maybe, in fact, the proposed need for “identity” makes very little difference to life satisfaction. However, if one argues that well-being literally consists in the fulfillment of universal needs, e.g having your need for “identity” met is intrinsically good for you, then that well-being “comes from” those things is true by your definition.
It’s not all obvious to me that a pluralistic conception of well-being is theoretically preferable (that is, one where more than one thing is instrinically good for us). As I mention right at the end of the paper, one awkward issue is how to combine different seemingly incommensurable goods—how does one trade-off units of ‘identity’ vs ‘affection’ if one wants to have high well-being ? Another challenge is providing a compelling story for why, whatever goods are chosen, it is those, and only those, that are good for us.