PY 4826, Life and Death
1. Hedonism: well-being consists in pleasure / happiness.
Bentham: pleasure is a single, homogeneous mental state. All pleasures instantiate that mental state, and differ from each other only in intensity and duration.
Other versions: there is an irreducible plurality of pleasures. Mill: they are different in kind, as well as intensity. What they all have in common is that they are all desirable mental states.
Objection: Nozick’s pleasure machine, which suggests that well-being may consist in more than pleasurable mental states.
2. Desire-fulfilment view: well-being consists in the fulfilment of desires (including the desire not to be deluded, etc.)
1st problem: if I want something, but only because I am misinformed about it, getting it may not be good for me.
Response: the desires must be informed about all the relevant empirical details of the choice.
2nd problem: some desires seem too unrelated to the person’s own life for their fulfilment to contribute to the person’s well-being.
Response: the desires must concern the person’s own life.
3rd problem: Parfit’s addict example.
Response: Well-being consists in the satisfaction only of global desires – desires to live a certain way.
Objection: mistaken or pointless desires.
3. Objective list view: well-being consists in a list of substantive goods, such as enjoyment, deep personal relationships, accomplishment, etc, which are objectively good for us whether we recognise them or not.
On this view, we desire things because they are good, not vice versa.
Objection: implausible that, for example, accomplishment could contribute to a person’s well-being if the person did not themselves enjoy and appreciate their accomplishment
4. Mixed view (Parfit): well-being is an organic whole, consisting in a composite of objective goods and the enjoyment of them.