The Philosophy of Well-Being

An Introduction

Guy Fletcher

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317594833
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Geschichte & Theorie der Philosophie

Well-being occupies a central role in ethics and political philosophy, including in major theories such as utilitarianism. It also extends far beyond philosophy: recent studies into the science and psychology of well-being have propelled the topic to centre stage, and governments spend millions on promoting it. We are encouraged to adopt modes of thinking and behaviour that support individual well-being or 'wellness'.

What is well-being? Which theories of well-being are most plausible? In this rigorous and comprehensive introduction to the topic, Guy Fletcher unpacks and assesses these questions and many more, including:

• Are pleasure and pain the only things that affect well-being?
• Is desire-fulfilment the only thing that makes our lives go well?
• Can something be good for someone who does not desire it?
• Is well-being fundamentally connected to a distinctive human nature?
• Is happiness all that makes our lives go well?
• Is death necessarily bad for us?
• How is the well-being of a whole life related to well-being at particular times?

Annotated further reading and study and comprehension questions follow each chapter, and a glossary of key terms is also included, making The Philosophy of Well-Being essential reading for students of ethics and political philosophy. This title is also suitable for those in related disciplines such as psychology, politics and sociology.

1 Hedonism

1.1 Introduction

The simplest theory of well-being is hedonism.¹ This is the view that pleasure is the only thing with prudential value and pain the only thing with prudential disvalue. In more everyday terms, the hedonist thinks that all and only pleasure is good for you and that all and only pain is bad for you.

To avoid confusion, it is important to be clear that the hedonist makes these claims solely about what is non-instrumentally good for you and bad for you. The hedonist allows that things other than pleasure can be good for us instrumentally, things such as money, friendship, a nice house, and painkillers. But the hedonist will say that these things are good for us in a non-fundamental way because they are simply means to pleasure (or the avoidance of pain).

It is easy to see the appeal of hedonism. When we think about lives that are high in well-being, lives that seem to have gone well for the person who lives them, it is difficult to imagine them either lacking pleasure or being full of painful episodes. The paradigm cases of people whose lives are going well for them all experience great joy and pleasure in a wide range of things and experience little serious pain. Furthermore, when explaining why something would be good for someone the claim that they would enjoy it, that it would be pleasurable, seems obviously to be good evidence that it is good for them. Thus the pre-theoretical appeal of hedonism is clear.

It will be useful now to think a bit more precisely about hedonism and about the arguments for it. Here, first, is a more precise formulation of hedonism about well-being:

Hedonism:

1 All and only pleasure is (non-instrumentally) good for us.

2 All and only pain is (non-instrumentally) bad for us.

3 A person’s overall level of well-being is determined solely by the balance of pleasure and pain they experience.²

(Henceforth I often omit the ‘non-instrumentally’, for the sake of readability. All claims about what is good for should be taken to be about what is non-instrumentally good for, unless otherwise specified.)

Questions left open

This formulation of hedonism is sufficiently precise for our purposes but it leaves open some questions. First, it says nothing about what pleasure or pain are. ³ Second, it does not tell us how to get precise answers about a person’s well-being. It does not say exactly how the degree of prudential value of a pleasure is determined. It does not tell us, for example, how the intensity of a pleasure and its duration serve to determine its prudential value (and vice versa for pain). Although hedonists have assumed, reasonably, that increases in either duration or intensity make pleasures more prudentially valuable (and pains more prudentially disvaluable) hedonists have not much considered exactly how these factors interact. More than one view is possible here (one might give priority to intensity, or to duration, or endorse some complicated function of both).

Hedonic levels

It will be useful to talk about a person’s hedonic level. By this I mean their overall balance of pleasure and pain. To get the idea, imagine that you are celebrating a recent success (a new job, finishing your degree, etc.), enjoying exquisite food and drink in the company of those you love. However, at the same time you have the painful soreness of a recently injured knee and your chair is rather uncomfortable. Thus whilst you experience pleasure from some aspects of your situation (the success, the food and drink, the company) you experience pain from others (your knee, the uncomfortable chair). The balance of the pleasure and pain that you experience is your hedonic level at that time.

If hedonism is true then it would follow that a person’s hedonic level is perfectly correlated with their well-being. Any increase, or decrease, in the one would necessarily accompany an increase, or decrease, in the other. To put this less abstractly, if hedonism is true then all of the following are true:

1 If someone’s hedonic level increases (they experience more pleasure and/or less pain) then it must be the case that their level of well-being increases.

2 If someone’s hedonic level decreases then it must be the case that their level of well-being decreases.

3 If someone’s well-being increases then it must be the case that their hedonic level increases (they experience more pleasure and/or less pain).

4 If someone’s well-being decreases then it must be the case that their hedonic level decreases.

Call the combination of claims (1)–(4) the Perfect Hedonic Correlation thesis.

1.2 Arguments for hedonism

Paradigm cases and correlation arguments

One kind of evidence that a hedonist can appeal to in support of the view is the correlation between a person’s well-being and their hedonic level. For example:

Raj on the Rollercoaster: Raj is enjoying a rollercoaster ride. Suddenly, a bird flies into his face, which is very painful. After getting off the ride Raj is given some painkillers which numb the area and he feels no pain. His friend then buys him candy floss, which he loves, and pleasurably eats.

The hedonist might ask us to observe that in this case it seems plausible both that

i Raj’s hedonic level starts off fairly high, decreases suddenly, and then increases again a little later.

ii Raj’s well-being level starts off fairly high, decreases suddenly, and then increases again a little later.

They might then argue that the best explanation of this correlation between Raj’s hedonic level and his level of well-being is that Raj’s well-being is exclusively determined by his hedonic level. Put another way, this correlation occurs because only his hedonic level affects his well-being level.

This argument is overly ambitious. The case of Raj gives us evidence that pleasure and pain contribute to well-being. But it does not show that only pleasure and pain contribute to well-being. The correlation between hedonic level and well-being level observed does not show that other things could not have also contributed to (or detracted from) Raj’s well-being.

To see this, imagine a variation of the case where we keep Raj’s hedonic level the same but add to Raj’s life that he has extra friendships, or that he is successful in his major life goals, that he is more self-confident, or that he has more knowledge. It seems at least plausible that for some such cases Raj has a higher level of well-being than in the original, even though his hedonic level is the same in both cases.

There is a second weakness in the argument from correlation. It will be easier to see the problem with that argument by finding the same fault in a related argument for hedonism, the argument from paradigm cases. This is the hedonist’s claim that their view is supported by paradigm cases of people whose lives are going well. To put the argument formally, suppose the hedonist argues:

1 Paradigm cases of lives high in well-being all have high hedonic levels.

2 If the paradigm cases of lives high in well-being all have high hedonic levels then hedonism is true.

Therefore,

3 Hedonism is true.

This argument is valid. If the premises are true then the conclusion must be true. So if there is a problem with the argument it must be that one or more of the premises is false.

Though one might have doubts about premise (1) let us grant it for the sake of argument. The trouble comes from premise (2). The fact that paradigmatic cases of lives with high levels of well-being also have high hedonic levels is not sufficient to show that hedonism is true. Paradigm cases of lives high in well-being may have other, non-hedonic, features that explain their high levels of well-being. So whilst there might be a correlation between hedonic levels and high levels of well-being, a person’s hedonic level may not determine their level of well-being. This is because we cannot always conclude from a correlation between two variables that one of them explains the other.

Here is an example of how correlation between two variables does not allow us to safely conclude that one explains the other. My thermometer says ‘23 degrees’ and it is 23 degrees. Later it says ‘21 degrees’ and it is 21 degrees. There is thus a correlation between (i) the reading on my thermometer and (ii) the temperature. But we cannot conclude from this that the thermometer reading determines the temperature. That would be a mistake.

Sometimes we observe a correlation between two variables where we should conclude that neither explains the other. For example, consider the apparent correlation between (a) the rate of drownings in outdoor swimming pools and (b) ice-cream sales.⁴ Increases and decreases in (a) correlate with increases and decreases in (b). Should we therefore conclude that drownings determine ice-cream sales (or vice versa)? Definitely not. So why are these two things correlated? Because a third variable – temperature – determines both the rate of drownings and ice cream sales. As temperatures go up more people eat ice cream and more people use, and get into difficulties in, outdoor swimming pools. So whilst there is a correlation between (a) and (b) neither explains the other. They are instead both explained by some third factor.

How can we use this idea of spurious (non-explanatory) correlations against the argument above? The answer is that we can use this observation to undermine premise (2) from the argument by pointing out that even if there is a correlation between hedonic level and well-being level (i.e. premise (1) is true) this may be explained by some third factor. (We will see an example of a candidate third factor in the next chapter, on desire-fulfilment theory.)

For now we can conclude two things. First, the case of Raj does not rule out things other than pleasure or pain from affecting well-being. Second, whilst the correlation between paradigmatic cases of lives high in well-being and lives with a high hedonic level provide some evidence for hedonism it does not by itself entitle us to conclude that hedonism is true. This is because the correlation in question might be explained by some third variable.

Welfare subjects and pleasure and pain

Another kind of evidence that hedonists could appeal to in support of hedonism is the clear overlap between (i) things that can have a level of well-being (‘welfare subjects’) and (ii) things that experience pleasure and pain. Whilst it is implausible that pencils, telephones and lampshades have levels of well-being, it is extremely plausible that gorillas, dolphins and dogs are welfare subjects, that they have levels of well-being. Given that the former set of things cannot experience pleasure and pain but that the latter can, this is some evidence for hedonism.

One reply that non-hedonists will make is that the sets of things that do and do not plausibly have levels of well-being have other features that explain the division between them. For example, pencils, telephones and lampshades are also incapable of desire, friendship, knowledge and achievement, whereas gorillas, dolphins and dogs plausibly are capable of at least a number of these things, if not all. Thus, it is not clear that this division (between things that are plausibly capable of well-being and things that are not) tracks only whether the relevant things can experience pleasure and pain. Nonetheless, because it is relatively uncontroversial that the kinds of things that can have a level of well-being are also the kinds of things that can experience pleasure and pain, hedonism has a very clear, plausible, answer to the question of why some things are welfare subjects and some are not. This is some evidence in favour of hedonism.

Motivational arguments

A third kind of argument that might be given for hedonism relies upon two claims about motivation. The first is that all action maximises self-interest (or at least aims to maximise self-interest). The second is that pleasure and pain are the only things capable of motivating us to act.

1 All human action aims to maximise well-being.

2 The agent’s pleasure and pain are the only things capable of motivating them.

Therefore,

3 Hedonism is true.

Various responses are possible here. One is that (1) and (2) do not straightforwardly enta...