Introduction
I recently posted on “Well-Being as Happiness” by Jonathan Bronsteen, Christopher Buccafusco, and John Masur (BB&M). It is a paper that I very much liked, and indeed, I recommend it as the Download of the Week. One of the things that I like most about the paper is that it suggests some powerful reasons for questioning preference-satisfaction based conceptions of utility, welfare, or well-being. If you haven’t already read this deeply interesting paper and you are interested in the foundations of normative legal theory, I urge you to take a look.
Nonetheless, I suggested that BB&M’s argument for a subjective-experience conception of well-being moved too quickly, and that they had not established the case that “a person’s well-being is defined entirely by her subjective experience.” Frequent readers of LTB were hardly surprised by my skepticism. My own view of well being is objectivist, and objectivist conceptions of well being or happiness have dominated the western intellectual tradition for two millennia.
It would have been quite surprising if BB&M had actually delivered what they promise—a knock down argument in a one of the great ongoing disputes in moral philosophy. The discovery of a new knock-down argument in disputes about the fundamental nature of the good or the right is very rare indeed, and it is even rarer that a position that is generally thought to be implausible turns out to be obviously true.
Bronsteen, Buccafusco, and Masur’s Reply
Bronsteen, Buccafusco, and Masur (BB&M) have very generously replied to my questions and criticisms of their draft. In this post, I will present their remarks and then present some further reflections of my own. Here is their reply to my remarks:
We’d like to thank Lawrence Solum for taking an interest in our work and for being willing to engage in a public dialogue with us. It’s a wonderful opportunity to discuss these ideas with someone who has thought so deeply about them.
Before taking up the discussion, we wish to point attention to the fact that Solum has expressed disagreement only with one part of our article — the part claiming that subjective accounts of well-being are superior to objective accounts. Our other major claims are independent of this current dialogue. Specifically, we argue that happiness is a better gauge of well-being than is the dominant economic standard of preference satisfaction, and for this reason we propose replacing cost-benefit analysis with well-being analysis as policymakers’ core analytical tool. None of that rises or falls with what we say below about virtue ethics.
In addressing Solum’s points, the first step is to clarify what we’re arguing about. The issue is simply what well-being means: what does it mean to say that a person has well-being, or that she benefits from something, or that her life is going well for her? All we claim is that a person’s well-being is defined entirely by her subjective experience — how she feels. Because we do not argue that policymakers should maximize well-being, many of the standard arguments made against utilitarianism or law and economics are inapplicable to us. (Solum already knows this, but we say it here for the benefit of those who haven’t read our paper.)
The second step is to consider what counts as a meaningful argument toward answering the question. That is, by what standard do we decide what constitutes well-being? In Solum’s original post, he refers to the “very great importance that many humans place” on objective considerations. He also uses the formulations “many people have the sense” and “many people believe.” At another point, he refers to “considered judgment.” We think that this last term, used also by John Rawls, better captures the form of argument in which we are engaged. The issue isn’t just what people’s initial intuitions are, but also whether those intuitions hold up to rational argument. The question is which view makes most sense after the arguments on both sides have been weighed, not before. In all likelihood, we are still on the same page with Solum so far.
Here is where we differ. Our core argument (which, we would very gently like to point out, Solum omits when he characterizes us as making “no argument” and accuses us of “question begging”) is that a person experiences life solely through her sensory perceptions and their resulting internal states: each of us has a veil of experience, and anything that happens outside that veil of experience and never affects it (even indirectly) has no effect on our lives. Anything that happens after one’s death cannot affect one’s life, and anything that lacks any direct or indirect effects on one’s experience of life cannot affect one’s life. In the paper, we give the example of Sheila, an American environmentalist who cares about the survival of the endangered Sri Lankan squirrel. If Sheila never learns whether the squirrel survives, then her well-being cannot be affected by its survival. The squirrel’s actual fate cannot change her life at all because it simply does not interact with her veil of experience. (This example is drawn from the work of Matt Adler and Eric Posner.)
Perhaps Solum believes that the squirrel’s survival does affect Sheila’s well-being (more on that in this post’s penultimate paragraph), but that seems like a very difficult claim to support, and it is one that other philosophers do not seem inclined to endorse. Once it is granted that the squirrel’s existence doesn’t affect Sheila’s well-being, what difference is there between that case and the examples Solum uses? With respect to the hypothetical in his post about Life A and Life B, we have no trouble biting the bullet and stating that the two lives are equivalent in terms of the individuals’ welfare. There are only two things that could, according to an objectivist, make Life B have greater welfare: (i) that A is made happy by harming others whereas B is made happy by helping others, and (ii) that A is deceived whereas B sees things as they are. Neither one is relevant to well-being, for the following reasons. Most human beings might disapprove of A’s values, but the question of how good A’s life is for A is independent of those value judgments. Solum’s argument here is that “it is important to us that we be the kinds of creatures who are made happy by the right things.” But important to whom? By hypothesis, A isn’t troubled by her values and probably believes they are the “right things.” Solum would have to explain why one person’s welfare depends on living up to other people’s values, even if the person whose welfare is in question does not subscribe to those values. Solum’s view does not take seriously enough the point that an individual’s well-being is hers. She, not an outsider, lives her life. As Solum himself frames the question, welfare is defined from the individual’s own perspective: “Life A goes very badly for you and Life B goes very well” (our emphasis).
With respect to being deceived, Solum’s example stipulates that this deception does not affect A’s experience of life at all. What this means is that the objective approach contradicts the idea that a person’s life is defined (at least with respect to that person herself) by her experience of the world and therefore that her well-being can be affected only by things that affect that experience. Solum is committed to denying that core point, and we see this as a decisive problem for his objective approach. We pose these questions to Solum: is a person’s life comprised of anything other than that which she experiences? If not, then how would it make sense to say that her well-being (how well her life is going for her) can be affected by things wholly outside her veil of experience? And if such extraneous things are said to affect her well-being, then where does it end? Is Sheila affected by the squirrel? Are all people affected by events that never impact their lives in any respect, even indirectly, including events that occur after their deaths? Our strong sense is that most people, after considered judgment, would reject such expansive definitions of an individual’s well-being.
As with the other hypotheticals, we embrace the view that life on the experience machine is identical to life off it in terms of welfare. Crucially, we have more than appeals to intuition on our side: we have the argument that one’s experience of life comes solely through one’s sensory perception and mental states, so life on the machine is equivalent to life off it, at least from the point of view of the person on the machine. (This is no more a mere assertion than is the objectivist’s claim to the contrary, especially because we can explain — via the “yuckiness” point Solum mentions, as well as others we make in the paper — why people would intuitively resist the machine.) It is far from intuitive to believe that any point of view other than hers could be relevant to that person’s well-being (i.e., relevant to how well her life is going for her). The objectivist, not us, is in need of an argument — one that explains how things that don’t affect a person’s experience of life can nonetheless affect how good that person’s life is for them. What meaning could “for them” have if it includes things wholly disconnected from their experience of life?
Solum’s final hypothetical about the magician who changes a person’s values invites a similar response. The hypothetical misses the point by asking the “good” person to evaluate her counterfactual life and thus to import her own current values into that evaluation. (That exercise is thus clouded by the same sorts of extraneous considerations that thwart a fair assessment of the experience machine: a “good” person cannot bring herself to believe that she could be just as happy if her value system were replaced by one she abhors.) The proper comparison is not between this “good” person and her ruminations of herself as “bad”; it is between this “good” person and a person who has become bad without knowing it and who, per the hypothetical, now has greater subjective satisfaction. This “bad” person would not see herself as bad, nor would she view herself as badly off. She would view her life as positive, more positive than the life of the good person. And indeed her welfare would be higher. Even if Solum were right that many people have the intuition, at least initially, that the hypothesized change would decrease their well-being, this intuition does not stand up to argument and would be discarded upon reflection.
Hypothetical examples like the experience machine or the magician can be valuable if they isolate the distinction between two answers to a question (e.g., objective vs. subjective). But their value is undermined when there is more than one plausible explanation for people’s intuitive reactions to them. For this reason, the hypotheticals in question are not convincing arguments against our position. And those hypotheticals are the entire basis of the objectivist’s case against the subjective view, or at least the entire basis that has yet been addressed to us.
The consistency and persuasiveness of the subjectivist position can hold up, upon reflection, even to ingenious thought experiments designed to unravel it. But no such ingenuity is required to unravel the objectivist position. One simple question lays bare its insuperable flaw: Can anything that happens after one’s death affect one’s welfare? (People, while alive, may well care about what will happen after they die, just as they may be altruists and care about squirrels’ survival and other things that are independent of their own welfare. But acknowledging that fact is far different from saying that an event occurring after they die can retroactively affect their well-being.) If Solum answers yes, then he must explain how to draw the line between what does and does not affect welfare, and the epicycles required by that exercise in line-drawing will contrast starkly with the straightforward nature of the subjectivist theory. Even more importantly, the mere answer of “yes” to the question will make the objectivist theory irredeemably inconsistent with the considered judgments of many people; and unlike the reaction that many people would allegedly have to Solum’s hypotheticals, these considered judgments cannot plausibly be explained away. And if Solum answers no, then he needs to articulate how the reason for that answer could be consistent with his view that pre-death events can affect welfare even if those events do not influence a person’s life. The reason many people believe that post-death events cannot affect welfare is that such events cannot possibly change one’s life; it is too late for them to do so, and time runs only one way. If a pre-death event does not change or affect one’s life at all, then how is it relevantly different from a post-death event?
Solum’s objective view of well-being asks us to accept that something can be good for a person even if that person never experiences it — if it never affects her life in the least. Solum would also ask us to believe that something can be good for a person on the basis of a set of third-party value judgments to which that person does not subscribe. Our subjective approach, by contrast, defines a person’s well-being with reference only to the actual events and experiences of that person’s life. Described in these terms, we submit that it is the subjective view of welfare that holds the greater intuitive appeal and the far stronger position as a matter of considered judgment. Who among us would think it right to judge how well our lives are going by an outsider’s standard, or by reference to things we never experience?
There are many assumptions packed into BB&M’s reply, and it will take considerable work to excavate and reconstruct even the important ones. But before I begin, I want to thank them for the care, generosity, and inquiring spirit that characterizes their response. I will endeavor emulate their model of civility and thoughtful scholarship that they have provided.
Methodological Agreement
There is an important point upon which BB&M and I seem to agree. My comments on their paper suggested that we proceed via the method of reflective equilibrium. There are, of course, alternative ways of arguing about our conceptions of the fundamental concepts of normative theory. We might try to begin with a set of axioms (consisting of self-evident truths) and then deduce the answer to the question, “What constitutes well-being?,” from these axioms. Like Rawls, BB&M and I reject the method of geometry in favor of an approach that begins with out intuitions and pre-existing beliefs about particular cases and general principles, along with facts about the natural world established by science (and other relevant facts). Some intuitions and beliefs may be internally inconsistent. Others may not cohere with one another. As we refine our beliefs and intuitions, we will begin to reach considered judgments—beliefs that have been tested for consistency and coherence. Applying the method of reflective equilibrium, we are seeking the conception of well-being that best coheres with our considered judgments.
There is another point upon which I agree with BB&M—it is a cautionary note about the use of thought experiments, especially those that involve what we might call “wild cases”—cases that involve possible worlds that are distant from the actual world. Our intuitions about wild cases should be carefully examined for coherence with the intuitions are elicited with the kinds of cases that arise in the actually world. (By the way, if you are interested in this question, you might want to read Daniel Dennett’s monograph, Elbow Room, which has an extraordinarily lucid critique of what he calls “intuition pumps.” I will be using a variety of thought experiments in what follows, but I will endeavor to be cautious about the intuitions they pump.
Well, so much for agreement. Let’s get to the fun stuff!
A Fundamental Disagreement About the Nature of the Inquiry
The first thing we need to get clear about is what the topic is—what is the precise question upon which we disagree. If BB&M’s statement of the issue is right, then it would turn out that I misunderstood something fundamental about BB&M’s argument, and that this misunderstanding would entail that BB&M’s argument was much weaker than I had thought. Here is BB&M’s statement of the issue:
The issue is simply what well-being means: what does it mean to say that a person has well-being, or that she benefits from something, or that her life is going well for her? All we claim is that a person’s well-being is defined entirely by her subjective experience — how she feels.
If BB&M were correct and the issue were entirely one of definition, then three things would follow. First, there would be no clash between objectivist and subjectivist conceptions of well-being: the debate between subjectivists and objectivists would simply be a misunderstanding. Second, none of their arguments would support their conclusion—instead it would turn out that their arguments rested on a category mistake. Third, to the extent that the issue was definitional and the phrase “well-being” had only one sense, BB&F’s claim would be contrary to the great weight of the evidence. I’ll explain each of these points, but before I do, let me preview my next move—which will be to suggest that that the correct understanding of the issue will both preserve the competition between objectivist and subjectivist conceptions of welfare and save BB&M from making a category mistake. Quickly then, the three points:
First, Debates about competing conceptions of fundamental moral ideas (like “justice,” “the good,” or “well-being” are not disagreements about definitions. This point was famously made famous in W. B. Gallie’s classic paper, “Essentially Contested Concepts.” (56 Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 167, 1955-56). If the debate between well-being objectivists and well-being subjectivists were merely about the definition of the phrase “well being,” then it would be a pseudo debate. Since the phrase is actually used by subjectivists to refer what they call (subjective) “well-being” and by objectivists to refer to they call (objective) “well-being,” the proper conclusion to draw is that the phrase “well-being” is ambiguous: objectivists and subjectivists would simply be talking past one another: there are two ways to use the phrase “well-being.”
Second, if BB&M were really making a claim about the definition of “well-being,” then none of their arguments would establish their conclusions. In disputes about the linguistic meaning of a term or phrase, the relevant evidence consists entirely of linguistic facts—facts about patterns of usage. BB&M’s appeals to the nature of subjective experience would simply be inapposite—the whole structure of their argument would rest upon a category mistake.
Third, if we were to assume that the debate were definitional and that usage only permits a single sense of the phrase “well being,” that sense would not be subjective. Most actual usage of the phrase involves health—and whatever the outer parameters of the ordinary concept of well being, it seems clearly to be primarily objective in nature. For example, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry entitled “Well Being” begins: “Popular use of the term ‘well-being’ usually relates to health. A doctor's surgery may run a ‘Women's Well-being Clinic’, for example.” Whatever, the doctor is doing, his practice concerns medicine and not psychology. Likewise, a common use of “well being” is in the longer phrase: “sense of well-being”—which is indeed a subjective state or sense of an objective state, e.g., of health. Usage of that phrase would be inexplicable if its meaning were “a subjective experience of the subjective experience of well-being”—the “sense of” would either add no meaning or it would add a very odd meaning.
But there is a real debate between subjectivists and objectivists, and BB&M’s arguments do not rest on a category mistake—nor can BB&M be refuted by evidence of the primary sense of the phrase well-being in ordinary usage. And this leads naturally to the question, what is the true nature of the issue? That question is a deep one. A full and complete answer to the question would take us far afield from discussion of well being. But we can say enough to illuminate the nature of the disagreement between BB&M and objectivists.
Well-Being as a Contested Concept
There are two characteristic ways of avoiding the collapse of philosophical disputes over the correct account of notions like well-being into definitional disagreements. The first strategy resorts to Gallie’s idea of an essentially contested concept: this is the strategy that Rawls employs in “A Theory of Justice” and also the strategy that I employed in my original post. The idea of the first strategy is that debates about “well being” are real debates (and not pseudo disagreements) because all of the various senses of phrases like “well being” or terms like “justice” are competing conceptions of the same concept. Simplifying, BB&M are arguing for a subjective conception of well-being, and I am claiming that they have not established their case. (My post does not claim that the objective conception is correct—the points that I made in that post and the ones that I am making in this one show only that BB&M’s arguments are not sufficient. In fact, I have not offered any particular objective conception of well-being—although I do offer such a conception in my work on virtue jurisprudence.)
The Natural Kind Version: Well-Being as a Natural or Functional Kind
The second strategy for avoiding the definitional understanding of the well-being debate would involves a move to what me might call “naturalism.” There are at least two versions of that move. The first version begins with Saul Kripke’s idea of a natural kind--although “well being” might be a functional kind (a functional state of humans) rather than a natural kind like gold. If we pursued the first strategy, our inquiry into the nature of well-being would be essentially scientific in character. We would want to know what scientific theory provides the best account of the phenomena that folk wisdom calls “well being.” This first version of the second strategy is deeply interesting, but I will not pursue it further here. Instead, I will simply note that this strategy does not appear to be a promising one for BB&M—whatever account science offers of the functional state of human creates that we call “well-being,” it seems unlikely that it will be a purely subjective account. Instead, it seems likely that the fundamental nature of the functional state will involve bodily systems (e.g., a well-functioning heart), including the brain. It seems most unlikely that a scientific theory of well-being would be characterized in purely subjective terms. Indeed, I am tempted to say that no purely subjective theory could possible be a scientific theory. In any event, the burden is on BB&M to offer a purely subjective scientific theory of human well-being if they wish to rely on a natural kind or functional kind account.
The Natural Goodness Version: Human Well Being and Natural Human Flourishing
The second version of the second strategy is also naturalistic in the sense that it involves an appeal to human nature. The version of the strategy is strongly associated with Aristotle among ancient philosophers and contemporary versions appear in the work of Philippa Foot and Michael Thompson. The core idea is that human well being is not unlike well being for other living organisms.
We can get clear on this idea by starting with another species: I will use Eagles as an example. For an Eagle to live a flourishing Eagle sort of life, two broad conditions must be satisfied. First, objective circumstances must be such that it can fare well: Eagles well being can be undermined by misfortune of various kinds, e.g., a natural disaster that kills off all of the Eagle prey. Second, the Eagle itself must have the characteristics required for a well-functioning Eagle life—keen vision, sharp talons, strong wings, and so forth. Eagle well being consists in the conjunction of objective circumstances and characteristics that enable Eagles to flourish. Ethologists think of Eagle well being in purely objective terms—subjective Eagle experiences may play some role, but no one would think that Eagle well being reduces to subjective experience.
Humans are animals, but a flourishing human life is quite different from a flourishing Eagle life. Humans are social and rational creatures; so a flourishing human life must involve social interactions with other humans and reason-involving activities. Of course, human flourishing may involve subjective aspects as well—humans are characterized by complex subjectivity of various forms, imagination, planning, and so forth. So a flourishing human life will include a range of good subjective experiences. But this fact about humans does not entail the subjective view of well-being in the version articulated by BB&M—because their version of the subjective view is reductive. Objective theories of human well-being can and should admit that well-being includes subjective elements.
As with the first version of the second strategy, it seems unlikely that BB&M will be able to make out a purely subjective naturalistic account of human well-being that is grounded in human nature. From a naturalistic perspective, human well being has an objective and external component. Natural flourishing for humans involves more than good subjective experiences.
From the Question to the Answer
Where does all this discussion of methodology and the nature of the dispute leave us? I have argued that BB&M have only one viable argumentative strategy. They must argue that well-being is a contested concept, and that the subjective conception of well-being best coheres our considered judgments about particular cases and relevant general principles. Of course, even if they were right about this, it would not settle matters. Instead, advocates of an objective account could contest their methodological assumption and argue that either the natural kinds strategy or the natural goodness strategy are superior to the concept-conception/reflective equilibrium strategy. That argument and BB&M’s possible replies would be deeply interesting, but I shall simply put that possibility to the side for now.
All of the discussion so far has been preliminary to the main show—an evaluation of BB&M’s substantive argument for the subjective theory of well-being. Let’s go to it!
The “Subjective Experiences” Argument
Recall BB&M’s characterization of what they call their “core argument”:
Our core argument (which, we would very gently like to point out, Solum omits when he characterizes us as making “no argument” and accuses us of “question begging”) is that a person experiences life solely through her sensory perceptions and their resulting internal states: each of us has a veil of experience, and anything that happens outside that veil of experience and never affects it (even indirectly) has no effect on our lives.
It is true that I did not engage in discussion of this portion of their paper in my prior post. There was a reason for this deliberate omission: BB&M’s “core argument” is either no argument at all (the most charitable interpretation) or (if construed in a less charitable way), the “core argument” is either obviously false or metaphysically extravagant. To avoid any possible misunderstanding, we need to go through all of these possibilities. We can begin by saying a bit more about BB&M’s claims.
Three Claims About the “Veil of Experience”
BB&M’s core argument actually consists of three (or more) distinct claims. The first part is the assertion that “a person experiences life solely through her sensory perceptions and their resulting internal states.” The second part is that “each of us has a veil of experience.” The third part is that “anything that happens outside that veil of experience and never affects it (even indirectly) has no effect on our lives.” Let’s start by examining these three claims separately: we can then examine them together.
Claim One: Persons Experience Life Solely Through Sensory Perceptions and Inner States
We need to get clear about each of these three claims before we can evaluate the core argument. Let’s begin with the first claim—that persons experience life solely through sensory perceptions and resulting inner states. This claim might be construed in various ways. One possibility is that the BB&M intend to deny what has been called “the extended mind thesis”: roughly, the claim (originally made by Andy Clark and David Chalmers) that the physical environment is part of the mind. If this is what they mean, I would need to know more about the particular features of the Clark and Chalmer’s thesis that they intend to deny and how that supports the subject conception of well-being. For now, let us simply set aside this possibility.
It seems more likely that BB&M might be trying to make an analytic claim about what it means to “experience life.” They might be saying something like—“experience” just is sensory perception and inner states. If that is all they are claiming, then their “core argument” actually is no argument at all. Recall that BB&M are trying to establish that the method of reflective equilibrium will show us that the subjective conception of well-being does a better job of accounting for our considered judgments than does an objective conception. But the claim that all experiences are sensory perceptions or inner states cannot do the necessary work. All that claim can establish is that things that are experiences are either sensory perceptions or inner states. Of course, with two more premises, that would establish something like BB&M’s claim. Here is how the argument would go:
Premise One: Well-being is an experience.
Premise Two: All experiences are either sensory perceptions or inner states.
Premise Three: All sensory perceptions or inner states are subjective.
Conclusion: Well-being is subjective.
This argument is valid. If the premises were true, the conclusion would follow. The problem is that Premise One is question begging. Objective theorists deny that well-being is an experience. Premise one assumes what objective theorists deny.
So BB&M need an argument for something like Premise One. Is that supplied by the rest of their “core argument”?
Claim Two: Each of Us Has a Veil of Experience
The second part of the core argument is the claim that “each of us has a “veil of experience.” I must confess that I find this part of the core argument to be obscure. What is a “veil of experience”? There are many ways in which this metaphor could be cashed out. The most extravagant interpretation would have BB&M endorsing some version of idealism: like Bishop Berkeley they might be asserting that reality just is “the veil of experience.” Less extravagant is the possibility that they are endorsing some version of Kantian transcendental idealism: the real (noumenal) self is on one side of the veil of experience and the world is on the other side—all that noumenal beings can know is the veil. Or perhaps they are advancing a theory of consciousness similar to the one that Daniel Dennett dubs “the Cartesian theater”—imaging the that consciousness is like a little person in our head that watches the images that dance on a gossamer screen (the veil of experience).
Notice that the metaphysically extravagant interpretations of the veil of experience might well be sufficient to establish BB&M’s conclusions. If subjective experience is the only thing that exists or the only thing that we can know, then it would follow that subjective experience is the only kind of thing that can be valuable or known to be valuable. Nonetheless, charity in interpretation requires us to reject these metaphysically extravagant interpretations of BB&M’s notion of a “veil of experience.” First, these claims in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind are deeply controversial—hardly the kinds of claims that could be established by two or three sentences. Second, these claims are even more controversial than is the subjectivist theory of well-being: they could hardly serve as considered judgments that serve as provisionally fixed point for the method of reflective equilibrium. Third, it seems most likely that each of these three claims is actually false—although (for obvious reasons) we would do well to leave those topics to the many millions of words that have already been expended upon them.
So if the BB&M’s claim about the veil of experience is not a metaphysically extravagant claim about the ultimate nature of reality or human consciousness, how might we reasonable construe it? We need an interpretation that makes the veil of experience both true and noncontroversial. One possibility is that they are simply pointing out the fact that our subjective experiences are a complex product of our sensory apparatus and complex processes in the brain that produce consciousness. Another possibility is that they are pointing to an analytic truth: our experiences are all subjective in the sense that they are somehow present to consciousness. Perhaps they mean something else.
But whatever BB&M mean by “veil of experience,” it is difficult to see how a noncontroversial fact or analytic truth about subjective experience can possibly be decisive in the debate between objective and subjective conceptions of well being. The argument--which BB&M have yet to produce--would have to show that the fact that persons have a veil of experience is inconsistent with an objective account of well-being. But no one who affirms an objective account is unaware of the role of sensory apparatus or the brain. And no one who affirms an objective account is ignorant of the nature of subjective experience. Of course, there would be a contradiction if the claim were that subjective well-being is objective well-being, but no one claims that.
Claim Three: Anything that Happens Outside that Veil of Experience and Never Affects (Directly or Indirectly) the Veil of Experience Has No Effect on our Lives.
Once again, it is difficult to know what BB&M mean by their claim. There is some ambiguity in the notion of a “life” and I can see at least three distinct ideas of a human life. The first idea of a “life” is biological: my life in the biological sense is consists in all of the actions and events that are connected (in the right way) to my body. The second idea of a “life” is narrative: my life in the narrative sense is the story or history of my life—the actions or events that are part of that narrative. The third idea of a “life” is subjective: my life in the subjective sense consists in all of my subjective experiences.
Once this ambiguity is exposed, it becomes clear that BB&M’s third claim is either false or question begging. If life is interpreted in its biological or narrative sense, then BB&M’s claim is false. Things can happen to my body without my being aware of them: so things outside the veil of experience can affect my life in the biological sense. Things that happen to my projects and concerns can be part of my history (the story of my life): so things outside the veil of experience can affect my life in the narrative sense. Examples abound. I am injured or have an illness that does not affect my conscious experience: my biological life has been affected but not my consciousness. Someone destroys my life work (e.g., my greatest painting), but I do not learn of this fact. My life story is changed, although my subjective experience is not affected.
If BB&M’s claim is interpreted as making a claim about life in the subjective sense, then their argument is question begging. Of course, it is true that nothing that happens outside the veil of experience affects my life in the subjective sense: that statement is tautological. Advocates of objective conceptions of experience do not accept that the relevant idea of human life is given by the subjective sense: objectivists believe that the relevant sense of “life” is an objective sense, e.g., the biological or narrative senses. If the idea of “life” is going to do any work for BB&M, then they need to produce arguments that the relevant sense of “life” is the subjective sense, but the arguments that they need to make out this claim will be exactly the same sorts of arguments that they would need to make out their main claim—that well-being should be understood as an objective conception.
The Conjunction of the Three Claims
I have been examining each of the three claims in isolation. Does an argument emerge if the three claims are conjoined? Recall the full passage:
Our core argument . . . is that a person experiences life solely through her sensory perceptions and their resulting internal states: each of us has a veil of experience, and anything that happens outside that veil of experience and never affects it (even indirectly) has no effect on our lives.
It is obvious that this passage does not constitute a formally valid argument. It would come close if we added a premise—something like, “Well-being is a property of our lives.” It is possible that BB&M can offer a gloss on this passage that is formally valid, but so far as I can tell, the only plausible construals of this passage are question begging or play off an ambiguity in the meaning of the word “lives.” There are metaphysically extravagant construals of the argument that could be reconstructed as a valid argument, but those construals are both (1) unsound (because the metaphysics are wrong), or (2) inappropriate as an application of the method of reflective equilibrium (because the metaphysics are even more controversial than the subjective conception of well-being).
Well-Being and Events that Occur After Death
Immediately following the passage that we have been discussing, BB&M offer another argument:
Anything that happens after one’s death cannot affect one’s life, and anything that lacks any direct or indirect effects on one’s experience of life cannot affect one’s life. In the paper, we give the example of Sheila, an American environmentalist who cares about the survival of the endangered Sri Lankan squirrel. If Sheila never learns whether the squirrel survives, then her well-being cannot be affected by its survival. The squirrel’s actual fate cannot change her life at all because it simply does not interact with her veil of experience.
Embedded in this passage is an assertion—“ anything that lacks any direct or indirect effects on one’s experience of life cannot affect one’s life”—which is simply a restatement of the argument considered above. But this passage also contains a new argument—that things that happen after one’s death cannot affect one’s life. Of course, this is trivially true if by “life” BB&M mean “life in the subjective sense.” And their argument is also valid if we understand life in the biological sense: once I’m dead my life is over and absent backwards causation, any event that occurs after my death cannot affect my life.
It is not so clear that events after my death cannot affect my life in the narrative sense. A complete and well-told narrative of Sheila’s life would include the eventual fate of the endangered Sri Lankan squirrel. Objective well-being theorists (including preference-satisfaction theorists) might believe that the relevant notion of life is given by the narrative sense. Of course, BB&M could deny this, but they would need to produce a sound argument—something they have yet to do.
But there is an even more fundamental flaw with BB&M’s discussion of the relevance of events that occur after life to well-being. Suppose we stipulate that well-being is a property of life in a sense in which one’s life terminates at death. That stipulation is consistent with both objectivist and subjectivist conceptions of well-being. For example, preference-satisfaction theorists could stipulate that satisfactions of preferences only count during life (however defined) of individuals. Aristotle’s objective theory is usually stated as assessing well-being from the point of view of the end of the individual’s life. That is, even if it were the case that events after life do not affect well-being, nothing follows for the question whether the objective or subjective conception of well-being is the best conception.
Revisiting the Causes-of-Happiness-Matter Hypothetical
BB&M have an extended discussion of a hypothetical that was designed to illustrate the idea that connection between happiness and well-being is contingent on what makes us subjectively happy. Here is the hypo:
Life A: Your mental constitution is such that you are made happy by doing evil. You like injuring others, cruelty to animals, and destroying beauty. You live a life in which you (mistakenly) believe that you are in fact doing great evil. Without your being aware of it, every seeming success is actually a failure. When you kick the dog, you actually dislodge a bone and end its great discomfort. When you believe you are torturing a child, you are actually saving its life by cauterizing a wound. You are subjectively happy and never realize that your beliefs about what you have done in the world are always wrong.
Life B: Is similar to life A except that you have your actual values. You like helping others, being kind to animals, and creating beauty. You live a life in which you (correctly) believe you are doing good. Unlike life A, you correctly understand that your acts are in accord with your values. You are subjectively happy, and your subjective happiness is based on true beliefs about the world.
Life A and Life B are exactly the same in terms of subjective happiness and in terms of objective effects, but they differ in with respect to what makes the life subjectively happy. In life A, subjective happiness is caused by objectively bad values. In life B, subjective happiness is caused by objectively good values.
BB&M begin their discussion by stating, “With respect to the hypothetical in his post about Life A and Life B, we have no trouble biting the bullet and stating that the two lives are equivalent in terms of the individuals’ welfare.” I am going to assume that in this context they are assuming that “welfare” and “well-being” are equivalent—although sometimes these terms are used to mark a distinction. BB&M then note that there are only two difference between the two lives: (1) what makes one happy (evil or good), and (2) whether one’s beliefs are true or false. Arguendo, let us assume that with respect to this hypo objectivists are focused entirely on the first difference—and testing that assumption is the point of this hypo. (There was a prior hypo—the experience machine thought experiment—that was designed to test the question whether well-being is influenced by whether one’s subjective experiences match reality.)
So what do BB&M have to say about the idea that one’s well-being is affected by having objectively good values. Here are their remarks:
Most human beings might disapprove of A’s values, but the question of how good A’s life is for A is independent of those value judgments. Solum’s argument here is that “it is important to us that we be the kinds of creatures who are made happy by the right things.” But important to whom? By hypothesis, A isn’t troubled by her values and probably believes they are the “right things.” Solum would have to explain why one person’s welfare depends on living up to other people’s values, even if the person whose welfare is in question does not subscribe to those values. Solum’s view does not take seriously enough the point that an individual’s well-being is hers. She, not an outsider, lives her life. As Solum himself frames the question, welfare is defined from the individual’s own perspective: “Life A goes very badly for you and Life B goes very well”.
Before I go further, I want to be clear about my own position, which is subtly mischaracterized by BB&M. I agree that “an individual’s well-being is hers,” but this is not equivalent to the “welfare is defined from the individual’s own perspective.” That a life “goes very badly for you” does not imply that “going badly for you” is constituted by the subjective perspective. That involves a logical slide—an additional premise or argument would be required to establish the connection. My formulation was quite careful, and BB&M’s characterization of the formulation is both inaccurate and misleading.
Similarly, my position is not that “one person’s welfare depends on living up to other people’s values, even if the person whose welfare is in question does not subscribe to those values.” Indeed, my position is quite the contrary. What matters deeply is that I have the right values—that the right values be my values. In other words, objectivists can (and in my opinion) should endorse the idea that the connection of values to the person matters to welfare. The question is whether objectivists or subjectivism have the right account of the valuable connection between the individuals and her values. Subjectivism says that so far as well-being is concerned, the only thing that matters about the values that you have is that they make you subjectively happy: my basic point is that BB&M have not yet established that this is so.
With my position clarified, let’s turn to BB&M’s analysis of the hypo. I am going to show that their analysis is based on a mistake—that they have fundamentally misunderstood the way in which this kind of thought experiment works. Recall their question: “But important to whom?” And their proposed answers: either to the individual in the hypothetical or to “other people” in the hypothetical. But that isn’t the point of the thought experiment. The answer to the question “to whom?” is “to the person conducting the thought experiment?” One might imagine that BB&M might respond to this in the following way:
Why should the individual living Life A care about the values of the person conducting the thought experiment?
But this move merely repeats the conceptual mistake that prompted the clarification. The thought experiment is not designed to elicit an answer from the imaginary individuals who might lead Life A or Life B. The thought experiment is designed to elicit intuitions from us (from you and me and anyone else who conducts the thought experiment). If your intuition is that Life B (good values cause subjective happiness) goes better than Life A (bad values cause equivalent subjective happiness) then you have an intuition that coheres well with an objective conception of well being and that is discordant with a subjective conception. What matters is what you think. You are performing the thought experiment. Of course, BB&M themselves believe that the two lives go equally well. Indeed, they must take this position (bite the bullet). But the question is not whether a committed subjectivist is willing to bite the bullet, the question is whether you (and others who conduct the thought experiment) share their intuition is that the two lives go equally well.
BB&M’s Questions
The next section of BB&M’s discussion poses a set of questions to me. I’m going to take each question separately—quoting the question and then giving a quick reply:
Question One: “Is a person’s life comprised of anything other than that which she experiences?” Answer: This depends on what you mean by “a person’s life.” If you mean “subjectively experienced life,” the question answers itself. If you mean mean life in the biological and narrative sense, the answer is “No.”
Question Two: If not, then how would it make sense to say that her well-being (how well her life is going for her) can be affected by things wholly outside her veil of experience? Answer: No, it would literally make no “sense” because a “No” answer to Question One assumes that life is composed entirely of subjective experience. Objectivists deny that this is so.
Questions Three and Four: And if such extraneous things are said to affect her well-being, then where does it end? Is Sheila affected by the squirrel? Answer: These questions is not decisive for the dispute between objectivists and subjectivists. Objectivists can answer Question Three, “At death,” and Question Four, “No,” without conceding anything to the subjectivist. In the biological sense of life, those would be the correct answers. Some objectivists might answer Question Three, “When the individual’s life story ends,” and Question Four, “Yes.” But the dispute over when life ends is collateral to the main issue between subjectivists and objectivists.
Question Five: Are all people affected by events that never impact their lives in any respect, even indirectly, including events that occur after their deaths? Answer: The reference in this question to death raises issues covered in connection with Questions Three and Four. The remainder of the question is ambiguous. If life is understood in the subjective sense, the answer is “No.” Objectivists deny that the subjective sense of life is the relevant sense, and would “Yes” (putting the death question to the side.”
The Experience Machine Hypothetical Revisited
BB&M then take up the famous Experience Machine thought experiment. Here was my version:
Life One: You live in "the experience machine"--which creates a perfect illusion of a happy life. In this life, you are subjectively satisfied in every way. For example, you eat illusory but delicious gourmet meals prepared by the most inventive chefs, you have illusory success in your career, and an illusory relationship with an attractive, emotionally compatible, and caring partner. You actual body is in fact receiving nutrition through tubes, atrophied, pale and pasty: but you never know this.
Life Two: You live in the actual world. In this life, you have ups and downs. Some good meals, some bad, some success, some failure, some good relationships, and some bad.
The point of thought experiment to elicit the judgments (or intuitions) of the person performing the thought experiment (you, me, and anyone else) on the question, which life has gone better, Life One or Life Two. Life One involves more subjective happiness, but most people who engage in the thought experiment have the strong intuition that Life Two is the better life for the individual. Here is what BB&M have to say about this thought experiment:
As with the other hypotheticals, we embrace the view that life on the experience machine is identical to life off it in terms of welfare. Crucially, we have more than appeals to intuition on our side: we have the argument that one’s experience of life comes solely through one’s sensory perception and mental states, so life on the machine is equivalent to life off it, at least from the point of view of the person on the machine. (This is no more a mere assertion than is the objectivist’s claim to the contrary, especially because we can explain — via the “yuckiness” point Solum mentions, as well as others we make in the paper — why people would intuitively resist the machine.) It is far from intuitive to believe that any point of view other than hers could be relevant to that person’s well-being (i.e., relevant to how well her life is going for her). The objectivist, not us, is in need of an argument — one that explains how things that don’t affect a person’s experience of life can nonetheless affect how good that person’s life is for them. What meaning could “for them” have if it includes things wholly disconnected from their experience of life?
I hope that is is clear that all of the arguments made in this reply have already been covered: (1) the “veil of experience” argument was discussed in detail above, (2) the possibility that the thought experiment is biased by morally irrelevant “yuckiness” was discussed in my original post: persons performing the thought experiment are asked to carefully consider whether their intuitions are produced by this feature of the thought experiment, (3) the appeal to how the life is going (subjectively) for the person in the thought experiment is question begging and/or a misunderstanding of the point of the thought experiment, (4) the question whether the value is “for them” has already been discussed: from the objectivist perspective, the “them” of “for them” is more than subjective experience.
The Magician Thought Experiment Revisited
BB&M then take up my final thought experiment, which I stated as follows:
A powerful being (alien, magician, or evil demon) can point a magic wand at you that will give you inverted values. Things you now think are good, you will think are bad. Things you now think are wrong, you will think are right. The wand will also guarantee that your level of subjective satisfaction will actually increase--you will experience greater subjective feelings of well being and joy once you become evil.
The point of the example was to show elicit the intuition that an injury (or harm to well-being) occurs. Of course, becoming evil might be bad for reasons other than the injury to well-being: your being evil would likely result in harms to other persons as well. But if you believe that you would be harmed by the magician, then your belief is not consistent with a subjective-conception of well-being. Here is BB&M’s analysis:
Solum’s final hypothetical about the magician who changes a person’s values invites a similar response. The hypothetical misses the point by asking the “good” person to evaluate her counterfactual life and thus to import her own current values into that evaluation. (That exercise is thus clouded by the same sorts of extraneous considerations that thwart a fair assessment of the experience machine: a “good” person cannot bring herself to believe that she could be just as happy if her value system were replaced by one she abhors.) The proper comparison is not between this “good” person and her ruminations of herself as “bad”; it is between this “good” person and a person who has become bad without knowing it and who, per the hypothetical, now has greater subjective satisfaction. This “bad” person would not see herself as bad, nor would she view herself as badly off. She would view her life as positive, more positive than the life of the good person. And indeed her welfare would be higher. Even if Solum were right that many people have the intuition, at least initially, that the hypothesized change would decrease their well-being, this intuition does not stand up to argument and would be discarded upon reflection.
What is remarkable about this answer is the candor with which it confesses that that the thought experiment does indeed elicit the intuition that an injury does occur. BB&M attempt to avoid the implications of this confession with the following move: “The hypothetical misses the point by asking the “good” person to evaluate her counterfactual life and thus to import her own current values into that evaluation.” There is a tiny inaccuracy here. The thought experiment can be performed by anyone--not just a "good" person. The thought experiment was framed in a value neutral fashion: read it again carefully will see that this is so. And the person is not asked to “import” her values into the thought experiment: she is asked to evaluate the thought experiment, given her beliefs about what constitutes harm.
This leads to a very important point: BB&M cannot object to the use of our beliefs about the nature of well-being when we reason about the question whether well-being is objective or subjective. In particular, their position will collapse into absurdity if they maintain that our beliefs about the nature of well-being are not relevant, and that the beliefs of individuals about the question whether well-being is objective or subjective are the only beliefs that count. In other words, BB&M cannot possibly think that the truth or falsity of metaethical beliefs (like “well-being is subjective”) is relative to the subjective beliefs of the individual who believes or disbelieves them.
This last point is of profound importance, and (absent a change in position by BB&M) provides a decisive argument against their position on this issue (not to the subjectivism as a whole). To see why this is so, we can return to the Magician thought experiment, but with a twist. Here is the new version:
Some individual, Alice, learns that a powerful being (alien, magician, or evil demon) waved his magic wand some time ago, and that as a consequence her current values are the mirror opposite of the values she once had. Things she now thinks are good, she formerly thought were bad. Things she now thinks are wrong, she formerly thought were right. The wand did not otherwise affect her subjective level of happiness. Alice knows all of this: she knows that her values were inverted and that her subjective feelings of happiness.
Let us take BB&M’s objections seriously. Once again, the hypothetical is value neutral—it states there was an inversion, but does not make any statement about whether Alice’s old values or new values are like our values. And following BB&M’s lead, let’s ask the following question: what would Alice think? In other words, we will look at the hypothetical from Alice’s perspective. And we are going to ask Alice the question whether the Magician has either harmed or benefitted her. We are asking her to answer this specific question, and not the question whether the Magician committed a wrong by doing this without her consent. Of course, BB&M are right, Alice can only answer this question from her own perspective. Suppose that Alice gives the following answer:
Of course, I haven't been harmed. In fact, this is the best thing anyone has ever done for me. Now I have the right values--and that is a great good for my life.
We might disagree with Alice, but that is not the point of the thought experiment—that will depend on our evaluation of whether her values changed for the better or the worse. The point of the thought experiment is that Alice could see herself as benefited by the Magician—even though her subjective feelings of happiness were not increased. If you think that Alice could have this belief, then you believe in the conceptual possibility of an objective theory of well-being. This is very important, but it is somewhat subtle. The coherence of Alice’s belief shows that an objective conception of well-being is conceptually possible. From that fact, it follows that BB&M’s core argument—their veil-of-experience argument—cannot be correct. What is crucial in the hypothetical is not that Alice has a subjective experience of her own subjective experience of happiness—that is either redundant or irrelevant. What matters is that Alice coherently believes that her well-being has been affected despite the fact that her subjective happiness remains the same.
Of course, the fact that Alice could coherently believe in an objective conception of well-being does not show or provide affirmative evidence that the objective conception is correct. And I am not claiming that it does. But the original version of the magician thought experiment does provide such evidence. That is because the original version of the thought experiment does not involve stipulated reactions by Alice. The original version of the thought experiment elicits the metaethical intuitions of the person (you, me, or anyone else) that who performs it. If you believe that you would be injured by the Magician who pointed the wand at you and changed all your values (but without any affect on your subjective happiness), then you have a metaethical belief that is not consistent with the subjective conception of well-being.
Of course, BB&M can once again bite the bullet. They can state that after due reflection, they believe that no injury has occurred. Of course, their reaction to the thought experiment is not decisive. And they can argue that your reaction is incorrect: that your metaethical intuitions have been polluted by your subjective abhorrence of a change in your values. But you do not have to take their word for it. If after due reflection, taking their argument into account, you still believe you would be injured by the magician, then you disagree with BB&M about the import of the Magician Thought Experiment.
The Value of Thought Experiments and the State of Play
BB&M have an additional remark that addresses the three Thought Experiments that are deployed in my initial post:
Hypothetical examples like the experience machine or the magician can be valuable if they isolate the distinction between two answers to a question (e.g., objective vs. subjective). But their value is undermined when there is more than one plausible explanation for people’s intuitive reactions to them. For this reason, the hypotheticals in question are not convincing arguments against our position. And those hypotheticals are the entire basis of the objectivist’s case against the subjective view, or at least the entire basis that has yet been addressed to us.
I agree with the main thrust of this remark. We do need to be careful about the intuitions pumped by wild cases, and we certainly should be attentive to the possibility that there is another plausible explanation for those intuitions. I’ve been very careful about that, and you should be careful as well.
But I also want to sound a dissenting note about BB&M’s claim that these thought experiments are “the entire basis of the objectivist’s case against the subjective view.” That is obviously false. As BB&M are surely aware, there is a vast literature on this question, and objectivists do not rest their case solely on thought experiments. It is true that my prior post emphasized these thought experiments, but my blog post is not “entire basis that has yet been addressed to” proponents of the subjectivist conception of well-being. Of course, my blog post and these remarks may well constitute the whole universe of criticisms that are specifically addressed to BB&M, but by making claims on a topic that is already addressed by an extensive literature (with two-thousand years of western thought and a lively contemporary philosophical literature), they have assumed the obligation to read the relevant literature and address the issues given the current state of play. For example, they would want to address the arguments made by James Griffin in 1986 Oxford University Press book “Well-being” and by Richard Kraut in his 2007 Harvard University Press book “What is Good and Why.” My goal in these blog posts was not to establish that the objective conception is the best one, but instead has been to suggest that BB&M have not made out the case for the subjectivist conception.
One Simple Question
In the following paragraph, BB&M take another shot at the objectivist conception of well-being:
The consistency and persuasiveness of the subjectivist position can hold up, upon reflection, even to ingenious thought experiments designed to unravel it. But no such ingenuity is required to unravel the objectivist position. One simple question lays bare its insuperable flaw: Can anything that happens after one’s death affect one’s welfare? (People, while alive, may well care about what will happen after they die, just as they may be altruists and care about squirrels’ survival and other things that are independent of their own welfare. But acknowledging that fact is far different from saying that an event occurring after they die can retroactively affect their well-being.) If Solum answers yes, then he must explain how to draw the line between what does and does not affect welfare, and the epicycles required by that exercise in line-drawing will contrast starkly with the straightforward nature of the subjectivist theory. Even more importantly, the mere answer of “yes” to the question will make the objectivist theory irredeemably inconsistent with the considered judgments of many people; and unlike the reaction that many people would allegedly have to Solum’s hypotheticals, these considered judgments cannot plausibly be explained away. And if Solum answers no, then he needs to articulate how the reason for that answer could be consistent with his view that pre-death events can affect welfare even if those events do not influence a person’s life. The reason many people believe that post-death events cannot affect welfare is that such events cannot possibly change one’s life; it is too late for them to do so, and time runs only one way. If a pre-death event does not change or affect one’s life at all, then how is it relevantly different from a post-death event?
Before taking up this challenge, an observation about tone seems appropriate. BB&M seem to believe that they have discovered a knock-down argument that makes it completely obvious that the subjectivist conception of welfare is the not only the better one, but instead is the only coherent or sensible conception. Of course, such arguments occasionally do emerge, but I should think that on this topic, more intellectual modesty and scholarly caution would be appropriate. For that reason, I have attempted to be quite modest and cautious in this small intervention in the debate. I am not claiming that I have established the superiority of the objectivist position. My claims are instead limited to a consideration of the particular arguments made by BB&M: there are many arguments both for and against subjectivist and objectivist conceptions of well-being. I have alluded to some of these, but responsible engagement with them would (in my opinion) require years of careful study and a long monograph. Even if I thought that I had a new knock-down argument, I would refrain from advancing the claim that it was decisive until I had done due diligence and acquired reasonable confidence that the claim was correct.
The argument that BB&M advance in the paragraph quoted above is a repetition of an argument that they made in their main paper and earlier in their reply. My main reply to their claim is already clear. Objectivists (of whatever stripe) can take the position that one’s (objective) life ends at death, and that (objective) well-being is a property of one’s (objective) life. This view flows naturally if “life” is understood in its biological sense. In the passage quoted above, BB&M suggest that further problems ensue for objectivists who adopt this line:
And if Solum answers no, then he needs to articulate how the reason for that answer could be consistent with his view that pre-death events can affect welfare even if those events do not influence a person’s life. The reason many people believe that post-death events cannot affect welfare is that such events cannot possibly change one’s life; it is too late for them to do so, and time runs only one way. If a pre-death event does not change or affect one’s life at all, then how is it relevantly different from a post-death event?
I hope that it is absolutely clear that I have already provided the requested articulation. Rather than repeat those points, let me add an example. For purposes of argument, let us assume that “health” is a component of objective well-being. Can one explain why health is relevant to objective well-being during life, but that nothing after one’s death can affect one’s health? The question almost answers itself. Once you are dead, nothing more can affect your health, because health is a property of living organisms. Health is just one example of an objective aspect of well-being that is consistent with the notion that events that occur after death do not affect well-being.
I should make it clear that I do not believe that BB&M have established their case with respect to the other horn of the dilemma. Objective theorists with a narrative conception of life could take up BB&M’s challenge to draw the line between those events after death that are part of one’s life story and those that aren’t. The hypothetical they borrow from Posner and Adler—about Sheila and the endangered parrots actually demonstrates that after-death events can form an essential part of the narrative. And it easy to provide examples of events that are not part of Sheila’s narrative—before birth, during her life, and after her death. Of course, there will be borderline cases: events that are neither clearly part of her narrative or outside it, but this is a familiar phenomenon (especially to lawyers). Vague concepts are vague, and vagueness is not identical to incoherence. It seems likely that criteria could be provided—for example, relevance to one’s projects and interests. The internal shape of those projects and interests would then define the outer boundaries of relevance—doing the functional work that “proximate cause” does in the law.
The Role of Subjective Experience in an Objective Conception of Welfare
I would like to return to the final point that I made in my initial remarks on BB&F’s paper:
BB&M passed over these remarks, but I should like to say a few more words about their implications. BB&M rely heavily on their argument that objectivist conceptions of well being ask us “to accept that something can be good for a person even if that person never experiences it — if it never affects her life in the least.” That characterization is potentially misleading, and some of the hypotheticals used by objectivists actually add to the confusion. On the kind of objectivist conception of well-being to which I am attracted, the right kinds of subjective experiences are constitutive of an objectively valuable life. For example, my preferred version of a NeoAristotelian conception of Eudaimonia (flourishing or happiness) would be a life of objectively valuable activities (rational and social action in accord with the human excellences) and of the good experiences (joy, delight, pride, pleasure, and so forth) caused by doing these activities well. For this kind of objectivist, a life that consistent only in the external aspects of well-being and utterly lacked the valuable feelings would be a radically defective life.
But this is not the aspect of objectivism that comes to the fore in the dispute between objectivists and subjectivists. If objectivists simply said, we agree with you—positive subjective feelings can be (and under normal circumstances for well-functioning humans almost always are) a component of well being, the nature of the disagreement would remain obscure. Illuminating the disagreement requires that we examine cases in which the objective and subjective components of well-being come apart—and those cases are either thought experiments (like the Experience Machine or the Magician) or real-world cases in which subjective pleasure causes objective harm (like drug addiction). Subjectivists can handle the real world cases by appealing to the idea that they involve short-term pleasure but long-term misery. Objectivists then respond with wild cases—in which objective dysfunction is accompanied by enduring long term pleasure. In the real world, such cases may be rare or nonexistent—although it is possible that there are rare forms of mental illness that might satisfy these conditions. But when objectivists raise these cases, they should not be claiming that this shows that the external is all that matters. They should be claiming that objective circumstances—things like one’s actual health and the reality of one’s accomplishments—matter as well. This difference is crucial, and when it is obscured, we lose sight of the big picture—the real stakes in the debate between objective and subjective conceptions of well being.
Conclusion
Once again, let me emphasize that my posts on “Welfare as Happiness” are directed at a small part of a paper that I greatly admire. If you are interested in the issues raised by their paper and my remarks, there will be a great panel on that will deal with this topic and others at the Law & Society meeting in Denver. 10:15am to 12:00pm on Friday, May 29: the session number is 2220 & the title is "Roundtable -- Happiness and the Law"
