2013 Carnegie-Uehiro-Oxford Ethics Conference: Happiness and Well-Being
Oxford University
8 episodes
1 month ago
Standard forms of desire-based theories of well-being claim that what is better for you is what you prefer. But how shall we decide whether one life is better for you than another when your preferences change across these lives? Standard forms of desire-based theories of well-being claim that what is better for you is what you prefer. But how shall we decide whether one life is better for you than another when your preferences change across these lives? Perhaps you will prefer a life as a parent to a childless life,if you become a parent, but prefer a childless life to a life as a parent, if you remain childless. Which preferences should determine the comparative well-being of the two lives? In my talk, I shall argue that an innocent-looking answer to this question will generate an inconsistency. I shall also show that this negative result applies to many of the happiness theories of well-being that have become popular in recent years. Finally, I shall argue that the solution is to deny that what is better for you is what you prefer but maintain that what is good for you is what you favour and what is bad for you is what you disfavour. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/
All content for 2013 Carnegie-Uehiro-Oxford Ethics Conference: Happiness and Well-Being is the property of Oxford University and is served directly from their servers
with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
Standard forms of desire-based theories of well-being claim that what is better for you is what you prefer. But how shall we decide whether one life is better for you than another when your preferences change across these lives? Standard forms of desire-based theories of well-being claim that what is better for you is what you prefer. But how shall we decide whether one life is better for you than another when your preferences change across these lives? Perhaps you will prefer a life as a parent to a childless life,if you become a parent, but prefer a childless life to a life as a parent, if you remain childless. Which preferences should determine the comparative well-being of the two lives? In my talk, I shall argue that an innocent-looking answer to this question will generate an inconsistency. I shall also show that this negative result applies to many of the happiness theories of well-being that have become popular in recent years. Finally, I shall argue that the solution is to deny that what is better for you is what you prefer but maintain that what is good for you is what you favour and what is bad for you is what you disfavour. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/
Benefitting Friends and Idealized Theories of Well-Being
2013 Carnegie-Uehiro-Oxford Ethics Conference: Happiness and Well-Being
32 minutes
12 years ago
Benefitting Friends and Idealized Theories of Well-Being
In this paper I give an overview of the kind of idealized theory I endorse and describe the conditions under which a person can appropriately discount, ignore or override a friend's own conception of what's good for him or her. Idealized theories of well-being take what is good for a person to depend in some way on that person's ideal self (her ideal values or preferences, for example) rather than her actual self. There are good reasons to favor theories of well-being that include idealization in this way, but idealization also creates some problems. One problem is that it is difficult to know how to help people, because these theories imply that benefitting people might require ignoring their own views about what's good for them and treating people in ways that go against their own preferences, values or thoughts about their good is tricky. For one thing, we don't necessarily have better information about a beneficiary's ideal self than he or she does. For another thing, acting against a person's preferences, etc. can itself cause various kinds of harm. In this paper I explore this problem in the context of friendship and I describe the conditions under which a person can appropriately discount, ignore or override a friend's own conception of what's good for him or her. I proceed by first giving an overview of the kind of idealized theory I endorse and then turning to the question of how to think about helping our friends. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/
2013 Carnegie-Uehiro-Oxford Ethics Conference: Happiness and Well-Being
Standard forms of desire-based theories of well-being claim that what is better for you is what you prefer. But how shall we decide whether one life is better for you than another when your preferences change across these lives? Standard forms of desire-based theories of well-being claim that what is better for you is what you prefer. But how shall we decide whether one life is better for you than another when your preferences change across these lives? Perhaps you will prefer a life as a parent to a childless life,if you become a parent, but prefer a childless life to a life as a parent, if you remain childless. Which preferences should determine the comparative well-being of the two lives? In my talk, I shall argue that an innocent-looking answer to this question will generate an inconsistency. I shall also show that this negative result applies to many of the happiness theories of well-being that have become popular in recent years. Finally, I shall argue that the solution is to deny that what is better for you is what you prefer but maintain that what is good for you is what you favour and what is bad for you is what you disfavour. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/
