Jason R. Raibley

Adequate theories of well-being must also explain ill-being. While it is formally possible to explain ill-being without postulating robust bads, certain experiential states do qualify as robust bads and thus require theoretical recognition. Experiential bads are recognized by some hedonists, experientialists, and pluralists, but these theories face well-known difficulties. This paper considers whether perfectionist and value-fulfillment accounts of well-being can accommodate such bads. Perfectionists might propose that we all have the avoidance of negative experiential states as a standing end, so that failure to avoid them is robustly bad. This view is unacceptable. A version of the value-fulfillment theory can instead say that such experiential states are intrinsically aversive, so that enduring them represents diminished agential functioning. After explaining this version of the value-fulfillment theory, this paper considers possible objections to it relating to “hurts so good” experiences, appropriate negative emotions, and the aggregative value of experiential goods.

Inspired by Aristotle, Paul Bloomfield holds that all genuine reasons for action are explained in terms of one basic goal: to live a Good Life. But living morally—choosing and performing brave, temperate, just, and wise actions—is necessary for the Good Life. Using ideas from Kant and Sidgwick, Bloomfield argues that immorality is inherently self-defeating: in disrespecting others, one disrespects oneself. Moreover, immoralists—who believe that immoral action often conduces to self-interest—operate with a self-defeating conception of happiness. Bloomfield succeeds in explaining why moral virtue and personal well-being are not completely opposed to one another. However, his main arguments against immoralism are unconvincing, because they require controversial claims about essential properties and the logic of attitudes taken towards them. Other arguments against immoralism attribute inessential views to immoralists, or else require controversial assumptions about the relation between valuing and believing good.

This dissertation develops a theory of personal well-being---i.e., a theory of what is it for a person's life to go well for them. The proposed theory is called "the successful activity view of well-being." It is an end-neutral account of individual welfare that primarily values the pursuit, achievement, and enjoyment of ends that are important to a person. The parts of this process---e.g., the pursuit of ends, the achievement of ends, the enjoyment of activities and situations, and even the satisfaction of desires for situations---are also of some significance for a person's level of well-being when actualized separately. I argue that previous end-neutral accounts of well-being, such as hedonism and desire-satisfactionism, are open to damaging objections because pleasures and desires can fail to coincide with a person's values. I also argue that the successful activity view has greater unity, explanatory power, and ontological economy than any form of perfectionism or any hybridized theory of wellbeing currently on offer.^

Abstract Theories of personal well-being are typically developed so that they render verdicts on (a) how well-off a person is at a moment, (b) how well-off a person is over an interval of time, and (c) how good a whole life is for the person who lives it. Conative theories of welfare posit welfare-atoms that consist, e.g., in episodes of desire-satisfaction, aim-achievement, or values-realisation. Most extant conative theories are additive: they compute well-being over time - up to and including the value of a whole life - by adding up the values of these welfare atoms. Here, it is shown that such atomistic, additive conative theories do not always generate plausible verdicts on (b) and (c) above. They imply that lives featuring incoherent plans and rapidly changing projects go surprisingly well for those who lived them. Holistic theories of well-being are often thought to provide a solution to problems like these. However, one of the best-known versions of welfare holism within the conative family, Rawls? rational life-preferentism, is based on the problematic assumption that there is one ideal life plan for each person. This paper presents a new form of paradigm-resemblance based conative holism that does not make this assumption and that explains the limits of additivity

Eudaimonistic theorists of welfare have recently attacked conative accounts of welfare. Such accounts, it is claimed, are unable to classify states normally associated with physical and emotional health as non-instrumentally good and states associated with physical and psychological damage as non-instrumentally bad. However, leading eudaimonistic theories such as the self-fulfillment theory and developmentalism have problems of their own. Furthermore, conative theorists can respond to this challenge by dispositionalizing their theories, i.e., by saying that it is not merely the realization of one’s values that is non-instrumentally good for one, but that the disposition to realize one’s values is also non-instrumentally good for one. This approach, properly elaborated, can accommodate the idea that, in many cases, states normally associated with physical and psychological health (or unhealth) are non-instrumentally good (or bad). It also preserves the many well-known advantages of conative theories

The values-based approach to welfare holds that it is good for one to realize goals, activities, and relationships with which one strongly (and stably) identifies. This approach preserves the subjectivity of welfare while affirming that a life well lived must be active, engaged, and subjectively meaningful. As opposed to more objective theories, it is unified, naturalistic, and ontologically parsimonious. However, it faces objections concerning the possibility of self-sacrifice, disinterested and paradoxical values, and values that are out of sync with physical and emotional needs. This paper revises the values-based approach, emphasizing the important—but limited—role consciously held values play in human agency. The additional components of human agency in turn explain why it is important for one’s values to cohere with one’s fixed drives, hard-wired emotional responses, and nonvolitionally guided cognitive pro- cesses. This affords promising responses to the objections above.

This paper attempts to explain the conceptual connections between happiness and well-being. It first distinguishes episodic happiness from happiness in the personal attribute sense. It then evaluates two recent proposals about the connection between happiness and well-being: (1) the idea that episodic happiness and well-being both have the same fundamental determinants, so that a person is well-off to a particular degree in virtue of the fact that they are happy to that degree, and (2) the idea that happiness in the personal attribute sense can serve as a ‘‘proxy’’ for well-being, i.e., that a person’s degree of deep or robust happiness approximates their degree of well-being. It is argued that happiness in both these senses is conceptually, metaphysically, and empirically distinct from well- being. A new analysis of welfare, well-being as agential flourishing, can explain welfare’s real connection to happiness in both the episodic and personal attribute senses. It predicts that such happiness is only directly beneficial when it is valued, when it is a form of valuing, or when it underwrites (i.e., serves as the causal basis for) the disposition to realize one’s values. It is therefore a necessary—but not sufficient—condition for especially high levels of well-being. This analysis of welfare integrates many insights from the eudaimonic tradition of welfare and happiness research in psychology, and also addresses common criticisms of these eudaimonic models.

Leading versions of hedonism generate implausible results about the welfare value of very intense or unwanted pleasures, while recent versions of desire satisfactionism overvalue the fulfillment of desires associated with compulsions and addictions. Consequently, both these theories fail to satisfy a plausible condition of adequacy for theories of well-being proposed by L.W. Sumner: they do not make one’s well-being depend on one’s own cares or concerns. But Sumner’s own life-satisfaction theory cannot easily be extended to explain welfare over time, and it makes mistaken (autonomous, informed) self-assessment impossible. A new account of well-being based on the stable realization of personal values enjoys the advantages claimed for these subjective theories while avoiding these problems.