Hedonism and Objective List Theory May be Climbing the Mountain from Two Sides

Don't worry -- I'm not abandoning hedonism

The tragically recently deceased Aaron Smuts has, in his book Welfare, Meaning, and Worth defended a fascinating view. Smuts distinguishes welfare from worth. He argues that, even if a life was bad for the person who lived it, it can still have been worth living, independently of effects on other people. Smuts provides the following test for a life worth living

The Pre-Existence Test holds that a life worth living is one that a benevolent caretaker with foreknowledge would allow one to be born into

To be clear, this is only talking about the life being worth existing in for one’s own sake. One might think that it was good that a life was lived even if the life was not worth living if it had positive effects on others.

Smuts thus provides an objective list theory of worth, wherein virtue, knowledge, and friendship can make one’s life more worth living, but hedonism about well-being, wherein only pleasure is good for a person. It’s a confusing view.

For the record, I reject such a view. I think that welfare and worth don’t come apart — I believe this because I accept welfarism. One’s life going well is the thing that makes their life worth living.

Throughout his book, Smuts uses an objective list theory of worth to defend hedonism about well-being. For example, in responding to the experience machine, he claims that the life would be less worth living, though it wouldn’t be worse for the person. It being less worth living explains away our intuitions about it being worse for the person.

While I don’t agree with Smuts, I think there’s a similar concept that can fill in and explain away our surrounding cluster of intuitions. Consider the concept of wantworthiness. The thing that is wantworthy is the thing that you should try to want, non-instrumentally.

One might assume that, if we accept hedonism about well-being, we should accept hedonism about wantworthiness. But this isn’t true. Because of the paradox of hedonism, often we’ll do better at achieving pleasure for ourselves and others when we aim at other things non-instrumentally, even if the ultimate reason why it matters is instrumental.

We can see this clearly with the example of friendship. Friendship is, I think, good only because it promotes people’s general happiness. But happiness will be far greater if you value your friends non-instrumentally. This is why a good utilitarian with solid motivations will not be willing to replace their friends with slightly better friends. That’s also why one who saves their friend instead of two strangers wouldn’t be blameworthy — it’s a case of blameless wrongdoing: it’s blameless because they had decisive reason to adopt a disposition that would cause them to value their friend more than two strangers.

Thus, it seems like an objective list theory of wantworthiness is very plausible. While it will depend on the agent — if a demon would infinitely torture people if you value your friends, for example, then you shouldn’t value your friends — for most of us, we should value our friends non-instrumentally.

I’ve already provided an account of how this allows us to address the experience machine. A reasonable hedonist could value things other than pleasure intrinsically and thus avoid plugging into the experience machine. The same is true for nearly all other objections to hedonism — if we accept an objective list theory about wantworthiness, then a reasonable account of hedonism can capture all of the benefits of objective list theory.

This account seems to have all the benefits and none of the costs. It avoids lopsided lives worries, for example, is simpler, and has all of the general virtues of hedonism. It also explains how we come to acquire non-hedonistic intuitions about various things — our intuitions in, for example, the experience machine are picking up on whether we should want to plug in, rather than whether plugging in detracts from our well-being.

And it also explains the plausibility of various versions of objective list theory. The view that says that friendship is on the objective list is more plausible than the view that says that knowledge is on the objective list. But friendship is more wantworthy than knowledge! If you only learn things when you think it will bring you pleasure, that would be bad — but it would be far worse to only value your friends instrumentally. Achievements being on the objective list also seems more plausible than knowledge — but things go much better when you value achievements than when you see them as just conduits of pleasure. If you don’t care about an achievement for its own sake, it won’t bring as much pleasure when you achieve it!

And I think desire theory can also be climbing the mountain. If we have reason to care non-instrumentally about other people, given practical limitations, we have reason to care non-instrumentally about them getting what they want. You’ll be a better friend if you care about your friends getting what they want, rather than just what you think is best for them.