Abstract
Empirical research on questions pertaining to individual well-being is informed by the researchers’ philosophical conception of the nature of well-being and, consequently, the adequacy of such research is partly determined by the plausibility of this conception. Philosophical theories of human well-being divide into subjective and objective. Subjective theories make our well-being dependent on our attitudes of favour and disfavour. Objective theories deny this dependency. This article discusses objective theories of individual well-being from the point of view of their explanatory power and argues that these theories are unable to provide an acceptable account of the prudential goodness of what they consider to be good for human beings. The article concludes by discussing some implications of its main argument to empirical research on questions pertaining to individual well-being.
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Notes
- 1.
Otherwise we could determine the objective good of a particular agent on the basis of the irrational opinions of any other individual. It is thus clear that there must be something more to an objective theory of well-being than mere independence of the desires of the agent whose well-being is being assessed.
- 2.
Here I thus understand ‘realism’ in the traditional way which maintains that something has real existence only if it exists independently of peoples' mental states. It may be that there is no stronger sense of objectivity than intersubjectivity in the evaluative sphere. Whether this is the case is a question I will not now go into.
- 3.
It has been pointed out that not all objective theories are list theories, nor are all list theories necessarily objective theories. I will not now go into such questions as whether a list with only one entry is really a list or whether desire theories can sometimes properly be called list theories.
- 4.
Although the precise meanings given to this concept differ from each other significantly, they seem to have this reference to the agent's subjective experiences and evaluations in common.
- 5.
It is perhaps useful to point out that the reference to the subject's own experience and evaluation in the above definition of happiness does not imply that what enhances a person's happiness is necessarily determined by her attitudes and desires in the sense that subjective theories of well-being see prudential value as being determined. If objectivism about happiness is accepted, then what promotes a person's happiness is not determined by her desires and attitudes of favour and disfavour, but her own experience of how well she is faring would, of course, be subjective in the sense used in this definition of happiness. For an objective conception of happiness see, e.g., Kraut (1979).
- 6.
I think that it would be counter-intuitive to maintain that things that do not enter an agent's experience could have an effect on that agent's well-being. However, it has been suggested to me that, e.g., a person's losing a substantial amount of money may have an effect on her well-being even if she is unaware of this loss and that a posthumous dishonour may have an effect on how well the dishonoured person's life went in prudential terms. I leave discussion on these points for another occasion.
- 7.
In the history of philosophy such prominent figures as Aristotle and J.S. Mill have equated, or at least have usually been interpreted as equating, happiness and well-being with each other. A modern equation of happiness with well-being is found, e.g., in Den Uyl and Machan (1983).
- 8.
Usually objective list theories of well-being provide a list of things which they consider to be prudentially good for all persons. There could however be objective theories which provided different lists for different individuals. The latter kind of theories qualify as objective theories of well-being if what they claim to be good for a particular individual is objectively recognisable as such. I thus presuppose that there are no objective or real values that are recognisable for one person only. An objective list theorist committed to the existence of these kind of prudential values could only come up with one objective list theory of well-being that is applicable to one person only.
- 9.
However, at the end of his discussion on knowledge and its prudential value he presents an argument, according to which it would be self-refuting to deny that knowledge is in itself necessarily good for us. If it is self-evident that some proposition is true, then it is not necessary to provide an argument to show it to be true. Thus, the fact that Finnis provides an argument for his claim that knowledge is a prudential good suggests that he does not after all believe this claim to be self-evidently true. I do not consider this to be a problem, for I think it is not self-evident that knowledge has intrinsic prudential value. But for a view which holds there to be self-evidently prudentially valuable things, this kind of lack of self-evidence is a problem. Finnis' argument proceeds as follows: “… one who makes such an assertion (that knowledge is not a prudential good), intending it as a serious contribution to rational discussion, is implicitly committed to the proposition that he believes his assertion is worth making, and worth making qua true; he thus is committed to the proposition that he believes that truth is a good worth pursuing or knowing. But the sense of his original assertion was precisely that truth is not a good worth pursuing or knowing. Thus he is implicitly committed to formally contradictory beliefs.” (Finnis 1980, pp. 74–75) The argument Finnis presents here is implausible. One who makes the kind of assertion Finnis talks about does not logically commit herself to the proposition that all knowledge is intrinsically good, but only to the instrumental goodness of this particular assertion. See also Goldsworthy (1992, pp. 13–14).
- 10.
By the intrinsic value of an entity I understand the value that that entity has independently of its value as an instrument in attaining some other value or its consequences.
- 11.
It could be maintained that to hold that we are able to see the self-evidence of something only after we have been given reasons and arguments for it is nonsensical. For if seeing or understanding something is impossible without these reasons and arguments, then this something is not self-evident. I will now ignore this problem.
- 12.
Some of them are found in discussions on moral value without explicit claims concerning whether they are purported to apply to other kinds of value as well or not. However, it seems that many of these background stories could mutatis mutandis be used in discussions on prudential value, if they are not purported to apply to the case of prudential value to begin with.
- 13.
I have here assumed that the realist does not hold values to be recognisable from some epistemically privileged value-laden point of view only. However, what I will say below applies to these views as well.
- 14.
It could be objected that there are straightforward cases of deriving value judgements from facts or purely descriptive statements. For example, from the fact that a shopkeeper has provided me with some goods (which cost money and which I have asked for, etc.), it follows that I owe the shopkeeper some money. And from the fact that I owe the shopkeeper money, follows the value judgement that I ought to give the shopkeeper money. Cases like this, it has been claimed, demonstrate that we can derive judgements of value from purely factual statements. Hare has provided a plausible criticism of this kind of arguments that make use of what have been called ‘institutional facts’. Without now going more deeply in this issue, I will just quote a passage of Hare's criticism. Hare writes: “Talking about ‘institutional facts’, though it can be illuminating, can also be a peculiarly insidious way of committing the ‘naturalistic fallacy’…. There are moral and other principles, accepted by most of us, such that, if they were not generally accepted, certain institutions like property and promising could not exist. And if the institutions do exist, we are in a position to affirm certain ‘institutional facts’ (for example, that a certain piece of land is my property), on the ground that certain ‘brute facts’ are the case (for example, that my ancestors have occupied it form the time immemorial). But from the ‘institutional facts’, certain obviously prescriptive conclusions can be drawn (for example, that nobody ought to deprive me of the land). Thus it looks as if there could be a straight deduction, in two steps, from brute facts to prescriptive conclusions via institutional facts. But the deduction is a fraud. For the brute fact is a ground for the prescriptive conclusion only if the prescriptive principle which is the constitutive rule of the institution be accepted; and this prescriptive principle is not a tautology. For someone (a communist for example) who does not accept this non-tautologous prescriptive principle, the deduction collapses like a house of cards—though this does not prevent him from continuing to use the word ‘property’ (with his tongue in his cheek).” Hare (1964).
- 15.
For a discussion on this principle in connection with questions pertaining to values see, e.g., Brink (1989).
- 16.
For a good discussion on the kind of sensitivity realists usually talk about, see Norman (1997).
- 17.
A possible way for a realist to answer this kind of criticism is to claim that her filler is not that mysterious after all since similar fillers are presupposed by our knowledge about many other things, such as inertia, identity, necessity and possibility in general, causation, etc. (see Mackie 1977). In order to evaluate this reply, we would have to examine the presuppositions of knowledge about inertia, identity, etc. and find out whether they are in this respect relevantly similar to the case of evaluative knowledge. This cannot be done here. And further, even if it were the case—which need not be—that similar fillers were presupposed in other areas as well as in the evaluative sphere, we do not have to conclude from this that we have evaluative knowledge. Perhaps the more reasonable conclusion to draw is that, contrary to what we may have believed, we do not have knowledge in these other areas.
- 18.
These kinds of arguments for objective views and against subjective ones are of course not the only ways in which the objectivist can argue for her stance (and against the subjectivist). In a recent article, Ronald Dworkin attacks in an original way views that deny the possibility of objectivity and truth for evaluative judgements. Since subjective theories of well-being hold judgements of prudential value to be subjective and—at least in the sense I have defined them—not capable of being true in the sense in which factual judgements are, I take it that Dworkin is also attacking subjective theories of well-being. Dworkin sees the subjectivists as purporting to establish the view that first-order substantial moral judgements such as ‘Abortion is wrong’, ‘It is not right to torture babies for fun’, etc., are neither objective nor capable of being true from points of departure that are neutral and austere. According to Dworkin, subjectivists claim neutrality about the substance of ordinary positive moral convictions, since they take no sides in questions such as whether terrorism is immoral or not. By subjectivist austerity Dworkin means that she purports to rely on nonmoral—and presumably also nonprudential in the realm of prudential value—arguments to defeat the objectivist stance. The main point of Dworkin's lengthy argument can be, I think, recapitulated as follows. Consider the following sentences:
-
1.
Abortion is wrong.
-
2.
What 1. says is true.
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3.
What 1. and 2. say is really and objectively so.
According to Dworkin, there is no plausible interpretation of either 2. or 3. that would not make them restatements or clarifications of 1. And thus neutrality and austerity is not compatible with denying such statements as 2. and 3. (see Dworkin 1996, pp. 87–139).
As a criticism of subjectivism as I have defined it, Dworkin’s argument is clearly a nonstarter. A subjectivist need not purport to be either austere or neutral, at least in Dworkin’s sense of these terms. Subjectivists hold that the grounds for evaluative judgements are different from what objectivists think them to be. But a subjectivist need not accept that everything goes in prudential and moral life and that no rational answer can be given to prudential or moral questions. According to subjectivists, what is good for a person is determined—in one way or another—by this person’s attitudes, and when the requirements of a subjective theory are obeyed in this determination, it is rational according to that theory. As the case of Hare’s theory shows, an anti-realist—or prescriptivist to use Hare’s own term—need not accept that rationality has no place in morality (see, e.g., Hare 1981).
Even if Hare did not succeed in showing moral rationality to have a morally neutral basis in moral language this would not of course mean that anti-realists could not show morality to be rational. Thus, although Dworkin is directing his criticism against all views that deny the possibility of truth and objectivity in evaluative contexts, it does not succeed in refuting subjective theories of well-being, for subjectivists need not accept the points of departure Dworkin claims they accept. And it is of course not clear that Dworkin’s argument succeeds even if subjectivists did accept neutrality and/or austerity.
-
1.
- 19.
Roughly, in the moral and prudential spheres, such theories as foundationalism and coherentism purport to provide answers to problems of moral and prudential epistemology: most importantly, perhaps, to the question concerning the epistemic status of moral and prudential judgements. But the epistemic status of moral and prudential judgements is clearly dependent on the mode of existence of the referents of these judgements. We cannot decide that we know some evaluative judgement to be true or justified in some particular way without adopting a view concerning the existence of what that judgement is about (see also Hare 1985, p. 95). It might be claimed that subjectivists can adopt coherentism as readily as objectivists, and that for this reason the move proposed by Kitcher is a legitimate one for an objectivist to make. However, if subjectivists can be coherentists or foundationalists, they cannot be this in the same sense as objectivists, for the former deny the possibility of evaluative knowledge and justification in the sense the latter try to establish it. When anti-realists or subjectivists present theories of evaluative knowledge these theories and their aims look quite dissimilar compared to those put forward by objectivists (see, e.g., Hare 1996).
- 20.
I here assume the common distinction between such normative and practical questions as what things and activities are good and what should be done to attain these goods, etc. and the metaquestions pertaining to the nature of the property of good, the logical character of normative discourse, etc. The branch of moral philosophy that deals with these kind of metaquestions as they arise in connection with moral values is called metaethics. In connection with prudential value, I will call these metaquestions metaprudential problems.
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Varelius, J. (2013). Objective Explanations of Individual Well-Being. In: Delle Fave, A. (eds) The Exploration of Happiness. Happiness Studies Book Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5702-8_2
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