•  197
    Is pleasure all that is good about experience?
    Philosophical Studies 176 (7): 1-19. 2019.
    Experientialist accounts of wellbeing are those accounts of wellbeing that subscribe to the experience requirement. Typically, these accounts are hedonistic. In this article I present the claim that hedonism is not the most plausible experientialist account of wellbeing. The value of experience should not be understood as being limited to pleasure, and as such, the most plausible experientialist account of wellbeing is pluralistic, not hedonistic. In support of this claim, I argue first that ple…Read more
  •  135
    Why Fly? Prudential Value, Climate Change, and the Ethics of Long-distance Leisure Travel
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 26 (5): 689-707. 2023.
    We argue that the prudential benefits of long-distance leisure travel can justify such trips even though there are strong and important reasons against long-distance flying. This is because prudential benefits can render otherwise impermissible actions permissible, and because, according to dominant theories about wellbeing, long-distance leisure travel provides significant prudential benefits. However, this ‘wellbeing argument’ for long-distance leisure travel must be qualified in two ways. Fir…Read more
  •  55
    Can desire-satisfaction alienate our good?
    Journal of Value Inquiry 57 (4): 687-700. 2023.
  •  52
    Can welfare be measured with a preference-satisfaction index?
    Journal of Economic Methodology 25 (2): 126-142. 2018.
    Welfare in economics is generally conceived of in terms of the satisfaction of preferences, but a general, comparable index measure of welfare is generally not taken to be possible. In recent years, in response to the usage of measures of subjective well-being as indices of welfare in economics, a number of economists have started to develop measures of welfare based on preference-satisfaction. In order to evaluate the success of such measures, I formulate criteria of policy-relevance and theore…Read more
  •  51
    Are Measures of Well-Being Philosophically Adequate?
    Philosophy of the Social Sciences 47 (3): 209-234. 2017.
    The concept of well-being is increasingly gaining acceptance as an object of science, and many different types of well-being measures have been developed. A debate has emerged about which measures are able to capture well-being successfully. An important underlying problem is that there is no unified conceptual framework about the nature of well-being—a hotly debated topic of philosophical discussion. I argue that while there is little agreement about the nature of well-being in philosophy, ther…Read more
  •  38
    Which Problem of Adaptation?
    Utilitas 29 (4): 474-492. 2017.
    One widespread argument against the efficacy of subjective well-being as a measure of well-being is the adaptation problem as formulated by Sen and Nussbaum: the phenomenon that people may adapt to deprivation and find satisfaction or happiness in objectively bad circumstances. It is not generally noticed that there are two distinct arguments for why the phenomenon of adaptation is a problem for subjective well-being as a measure of well-being. The Axiological Adaptation Argument is a counter-ex…Read more
  •  33
    Two Concepts of Meaningful Work
    Journal of Applied Philosophy. forthcoming.
    The concept of meaningful work is used to evaluate the quality of work. Typical cases of meaningless work that have been used to clarify this concept are assembly line work, and work involving other types of mindless tasks, but also David Graeber's ‘bullshit jobs’. I argue that there are at least two fundamental reasons to care about meaningful work: reasons from the wellbeing of the worker and reasons pertaining to meaningfulness of the worker's life. I first argue that a concept of meaningful …Read more
  •  26
    The Measurement of Wellbeing in Economics
    Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 11 (1): 125-129. 2018.
  •  19
    Clearing our Minds for Hedonic Phenomenalism
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1-16. forthcoming.
    What constitutes the nature of pleasure? According to hedonic phenomenalism, pleasant experiences are pleasant in virtue of some phenomenological features. According to hedonic attitudinalism, pleasure involves an attitude—a class of mental states that necessarily have an object. Consequently, pleasures are always _about_ something. We argue that hedonic attitudinalism is not able to accommodate pleasant moods. We first consider this argument more generally, and then consider what we call _the g…Read more
  •  7
    Meaningful Work
    In Wim Dubbink & Willem van der Deijl (eds.), Business Ethics: A Philosophical Introduction, Springer Nature Switzerland. pp. 235-244. 2023.
    We hold an ambivalent attitude towards work. On the one hand, we see job creation as a good thing, as a way in which companies can contribute to society. On the other hand, work is often seen as something undesirable in itself. This chapter surveys a number of important philosophical questions related to the value of work in the context of business ethics: what is good work, and what is dignified work? What is exploitation? And should our general attitude towards automation be positive, negative…Read more
  •  5
    Is Critical Naturalism Necessary?
    Krisis | Journal for Contemporary Philosophy 43 (1): 106-109. 2023.
    The prior issue of Krisis (42:1) published Critical Naturalism: A Manifesto, with the aim to instigate a debate of the issues raised in this manifesto – the necessary re-thinking of the role (and the concept) of nature in critical theory in relation to questions of ecology, health, and inequality. Since Krisis considers itself a place for philosophical debates that take contemporary struggles as starting point, it issued an open call and solicited responses to the manifesto. This is one of the s…Read more
  •  4
    Corporate Responsibility and the Morality of the Market
    with Wim Dubbink
    In Wim Dubbink & Willem van der Deijl (eds.), Business Ethics: A Philosophical Introduction, Springer Nature Switzerland. pp. 87-110. 2023.
    This chapter deals with the question to what extent market participants can have moral responsibilities. It starts with a discussion on the nature of responsibility, and then raises the question whether organizations, such as companies can bear responsibility (at all). While some philosophers have been skeptical, we list some reasons to think that companies can be moral agents. Subsequently, we discuss whether companies actually should assume moral responsibilities. There are a number of commonl…Read more
  •  3
    Different Views on the Social Responsibility of Corporations
    with Wim Dubbink
    In Wim Dubbink & Willem van der Deijl (eds.), Business Ethics: A Philosophical Introduction, Springer Nature Switzerland. pp. 111-133. 2023.
    This chapter describes the concept Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in detail. We define CSR as the moral responsibility that companies have that goes beyond the bare minimum (abiding by minimal market morality), but that is nevertheless morally required. Because CSR is required, and not optional, it is different from philanthropy. The first part of this chapter presents the position of the proponents of CSR but also a view that denies that corporations are morally required to do more than …Read more
  •  2
    What happiness science can learn from John Stuart Mill
    International Journal of Wellbeing 1 (6): 164-179. 2016.
    Many researchers studying subjective wellbeing (SWB) understand SWB as a concept that is close to Bentham’s notion of happiness. This conception of happiness is philosophically controversial, because it treats pleasure as a homogenous experience. I analyze an important deviation from Bentham in John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism and its relevance for SWB research: qualitative differences in pleasurable experiences. I argue that in cases where lives involving qualitatively different experiences ar…Read more
  •  2
    Moral Reasons
    In Wim Dubbink & Willem van der Deijl (eds.), Business Ethics: A Philosophical Introduction, Springer Nature Switzerland. pp. 67-86. 2023.
    Normative ethics is concerned with reflection on moral problems. It does so through the analysis of moral reasons. In this chapter we explain what a moral problem is, why some moral problems should be classified as problems of will, some as cognitive problems, and describe the difference between motivations and reasons. The chapter then provides an overview of three types of moral reasons: (1) reasons that derive from the consequences of our actions, (2) reasons that concern the acts themselves …Read more