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513The reduction of sensory pleasure to desirePhilosophical Studies 133 (1): 23-44. 2007.One of the leading approaches to the nature of sensory pleasure reduces it to desire: roughly, a sensation qualifies as a sensation of pleasure just in case its subject wants to be feeling it. This approach is, in my view, correct, but it has never been formulated quite right; and it needs to be defended against some compelling arguments. Thus the purpose of this paper is to discover the most defensible formulation of this rough idea, and to defend it against the most interesting objections.
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275Fitting attitudes and welfareOxford Studies in Metaethics 3 47-73. 2008.The purpose of this paper is to present a new argument against so-called fitting attitude analyses of intrinsic value, according to which, roughly, for something to be intrinsically good is for there to be reasons to want it for its own sake. The argument is indirect. First, I submit that advocates of a fitting-attitude analysis of value should, for the sake of theoretical unity, also endorse a fitting-attitude analysis of a closely related but distinct concept: the concept of intrinsic value fo…Read more
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63Review of Stephen Darwall, Welfare and Rational Care (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 81 (4): 615-617. 2003.Book Information Welfare and Rational Care. Welfare and Rational Care Stephen Darwall, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003, pp. xi + 135, US$24.95 (cloth). By Stephen Darwall. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Pp. xi + 135. US$24.95 (cloth:)
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231Preferentism and Self‐SacrificePacific Philosophical Quarterly 92 (1): 18-38. 2011.According to the argument from self-sacrifice, standard, unrestricted desire-based theories of welfare fail because they have the absurd implication that self-sacrifice is conceptually impossible. I attempt to show that, in fact, the simplest imaginable, completely unrestricted desire-based theory of well-being is perfectly compatible with the phenomenon of self-sacrifice – so long as the theory takes the right form. I go on to consider a new argument from self-sacrifice against this simple theo…Read more
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942Desire satisfactionism and hedonismPhilosophical Studies 128 (3): 539-563. 2006.Hedonism and the desire-satisfaction theory of welfare are typically seen as archrivals in the contest over identifying what makes one's life go best. It is surprising, then, that the most plausible form of hedonism just is the most plausible form of desire satisfactionism. How can a single theory of welfare be a version of both hedonism and desire satisfactionism? The answer lies in what pleasure is: pleasure is, in my view, the subjective satisfaction of desire. This thesis about pleasure is c…Read more
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173Irreducibly Normative PropertiesOxford Studies in Metaethics 10. 2015.Metaethical non-naturalists maintain that normative or evaluative properties cannot be reduced to, or otherwise explained in terms of, natural properties. They thus have difficulty explaining what these irreducibly normative properties are supposed to be, other than by saying what they are not. I offer a partial, positive characterization of irreducible normativity in naturalistic terms. At a first pass, it is this: that to attribute a normative property to something is necessarily to commend or…Read more
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The Value of Pleasure |
Hedonist Accounts of Well-Being |
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