Utilitarianism Wins Outright Part 41: Well-Being From the Shoulders of Giants
Some objections to desire theory and objective list theory I've found scouring the philosophical archives
Introduction
It may be slightly misleading to have utilitarianism wins outright part 41 not defend utilitarianism at all and merely defend hedonism — a belief that need not be possessed to be utilitarian, and which can indeed be possessed alongside non-utilitarianism. However, this article series really is not just defending utilitarianism — it’s defending hedonistic utilitarianism; thus, defenses of hedonism are on topic. This article will present various considerations that favor hedonism mostly by criticizing its rivals. There are lots of articles that criticize alternatives to hedonism but that have yet to have significant spotlight.
For some brief terminological clarification, desire satisfaction theory says that getting what you want makes you better off, while pluralism/objective list theory say that there are a list of things like happiness, knowledge, and friendship that make you well off. Hedonism says only happiness makes people well off.
1 Bradley’s Paradox
Bradley (2009, p.31) explains the paradox.
I begin by formulating the paradox for each correspondence theory. To get a paradox for desire satisfactionism, we need a case where someone whose life is close to the threshold between good and bad desires his life to go badly. Suppose desire satisfactionism is true, and suppose Epimenides has just two desires. His first desire, Da, is a desire of intensity +5 for an apple. He does not get the apple, so his life includes a desire frustration with a value of −5. His second desire, Db, is a desire of intensity +10 that his life goes badly for him. Is Db satisfied? If it is, then Epimenides’ life contains a desire satisfaction of value +10, in which case his life has an overall value of +5 (it goes well for him), in which case Db is not satisfied after all. If Db is not satisfied, then his life contains a desire frustration of value −10, in which case his life has an overall value of −15 (it goes badly for him), in which case Db is satisfied. Thus if desire satisfactionism is true, Db is satisfied if and only if it is not satisfied, and Epimenides’ life goes well if and only if it does not go well.61 Desire satisfactionism is paradoxical.”
Thus, if you desire for your life to go badly, and whether your life goes badly or not depends on whether or not that desire is fulfilled, desire theory generates a paradox. The same applies to truth adjusted hedonism which says that pleasures derived from true things are better than false pleasures, as Bradley explains.
Next consider truth-adjusted hedonism. Recall that according to truth-adjusted hedonism, the value of a pleasure is a function of its intensity and the truth-value of its object. Just to make things precise, suppose that pleasures taken in truths (‘true pleasures’) are twice as valuable as pleasures of similar intensity taken in falsehoods (‘false pleasures’), so that a degree 10 pleasure has intrinsic value of +10 when it is taken in a false proposition, but +20 when it is taken in a true proposition. Suppose that Epimenides takes pleasure to degree 10 in the fact that his life is, on the whole, a bad one. Call this pleasure P. Suppose that there is only one other hedonic or doloric episode in Epimenides’ life: an experience of pain with intrinsic value of −15. Is P a true pleasure or a false pleasure? If it is a true pleasure, then its intrinsic value is +20, which means his life has intrinsic value of +5, which means P is not a true pleasure after all. If P is a false pleasure, then P has intrinsic value of +10, which means his life has intrinsic value of −5, which means P was in fact a true pleasure. If truth-adjusted hedonism is true, then P is a true pleasure if and only if it is a false pleasure, and Epimenides’ life is good if and only if it is bad. Truth-adjusted hedonism is paradoxical. (2009, p.31)
Bradley finally explains how the paradox applies to the view that says having true beliefs is good (true beliefism) and the view that achievements are intrinsically good.
The paradoxes for true beliefism and achievementism work the same way. To get a paradox for achievementism, we just imagine a person whose achievement or project involves having his life go badly for him. Sometimes, that project or goal will be completed or achieved if and only if it is not completed or achieved. To get a paradox for true beliefism, we just imagine a person who believes that his life is going badly. Sometimes, his belief is true if and only if it is false, and his life is going badly if and only if it is not.
(2009, p.32)
2 Hedonism Explains Timed Benefits
The desire theorist has a big problem on their hands — figuring out when having desires fulfilled makes a person better off. There are three options yet they all face hurdles. First, they might say that a desire makes you better off if its fulfilled while you have the desire. However, this has several problems.
First, as Bradley (2009, p.24) notes
But this strategy disguises what is really going on when a desire is satisfied. When Cathy now desires that she see a concert next week, it may be true now that she will see a concert next week; but it is true in virtue of what happens next week, not in virtue of anything happening right now. Given Cathy’s desires, and given the truth of desire satisfactionism, the features of the world that make the world good for Cathy include her current mental state and concert-related events occurring next week. Thus, we do not say that Cathy’s desire has already been satisfied in virtue of the future being the way it is. We say it has not yet been satisfied, but will be satisfied (or frustrated) next week. So we must take the time P obtains to be the time when P’s truthmaker happens, rather than the time(s) at which P is true. Since desires about the past and future have past and future truthmakers, they cannot be concurrent with their objects in the sense that matters.52”
Second, Bradley (2009, p.24) states
Some cases of desire satisfactions, such as the desire that π be irrational, do not involve a datable truthmaking event. Furthermore, in most cases of desire frustration, there will not be a datable event to serve as the falsifier of the propositional object of the desire. If I desire to climb Mount Everest before I die, but never do, there will probably not be an event to identify as the event in virtue of which my desire is frustrated (unless, for example, I am hit by a falling rock on my way up). This merely introduces further complications for the desire satisfactionist in accounting for momentary well-being. Similarly, it seems, for all correspondence theories.
Third, Bradley states
There is another worry about concurrentism. Suppose that, as Einstein suggested, there is no such thing as ‘absolute simultaneity’— that is, suppose that concerning events occurring at different spatial locations, there is no absolute fact of the matter about whether they occur at the same time.53 If this were so, a person’s well-being level at a time would be relative to a reference frame. For example, if I have a desire that some event take place on the sun, and it does take place, there would be no absolute fact of the matter about whether this affected my well-being or not, because there would be no fact of the matter about whether my desire and the solar event were simultaneous. This is a very odd result. I am not qualified to pass judgment on controversial issues in relativity theory. But I would not want to be in the position of endorsing a theory of well-being whose plausibility depends on deep scientific truths that are hotly contested. For even if there is actually such a thing as absolute simultaneity, surely there is some possible world where there is not. A theory of well-being should be necessarily true if true at all. So it does not matter which side is actually right about absolute simultaneity; the mere fact that things might have been the way apparently suggested by Einstein undermines concurrentism. The concurrence view should be rejected.54 (2009, p.25)
Fourth, on this account, if one desires something for all of their life except the moments when it happens, and derives great happiness from it, that thing wouldn’t make them better off; a necessary condition for some event being good for a person is them desiring it when it happens.
Bradley argues that there are a few remaining options for the desire theorist. First, they can think that if you have a desire for something, it increases your well-being when you get the object of your desire. This view is called objectualism. He explains that it’s implausible.
The resulting views are compatible with internalism. However, they should be rejected. Let us begin with objectualism. Objectualism has some very odd consequences concerning momentary well-being. For example, suppose that Abraham Lincoln desired that an African-American be elected President of the United States one day, and suppose Barack Obama wins the 2008 election. If objectualism is true, then Obama’s winning the election in 2008 is a positive value atom for Lincoln. And if internalism is true, it follows that Lincoln has a positive well-being level in 2008. But this is absurd. Even worse, suppose John McCain is conducting a genealogical investigation, and desires that his ancestors did not own slaves. Objectualism entails that McCain was well-off or badly-off (depending on facts about his ancestors) hundreds of years before he even came into existence. This is sufficient reason to reject objectualism. (Bradley, 2009, p.27)
Before arguing against the second view, according to which desires make a person better off when they’re had, iff they will be met in the future, Bradley argues for the following requirements of well-being
Internalism. The intrinsic value of a time for a person is determined entirely by the value atoms obtaining at that time.
As John Broome puts it, ‘how well off a person is at a time depends only on how things are for her at that time.’42 Why accept internalism? Internalism follows from a more general supervenience principle closely related to one endorsed by G. E. Moore:43
SUP. The intrinsic value of something depends solely on its intrinsic properties.
If SUP is true, the intrinsic value of a time is determined by its intrinsic nature—not by anything happening at any other time.
Nowadays, it is common to reject SUP.44 But SUP is a requirement of any acceptable theory of well-being. This is because, as noted above, the value atoms should be instantiations of the fundamental good- or bad-making properties— the properties that are fundamentally and completely responsible for how well a world (or a life, or …) goes. Suppose SUP were false. Then there could be two properties, F and G, such that the only intrinsically good states of affairs are those involving the instantiation of F alone, but whose values are determined by whether there are any instantiations of G. But if that were true, F would fail to be a fundamental good- or bad-making property, for instantiations of F would fail to completely determine what value there is. The fundamental good- or bad-making property would involve both F and G, contrary to our assumption. Once we are committed to the project of finding the fundamental good- and bad-making properties— the fundamental project of axiology, and of the theory of well-being—we are immediately committed to SUP, and therefore to internalism. (Bradley, 2009, p.18-19)
Next, Bradley (2009, p.27-28) explains how attitudinalism violates this axiom.
However, attitudinalism entails that the value of a state of affairs may depend on the obtaining of a wholly distinct state of affairs. For example, according to the attitudinalist version of true beliefism, the value of my current belief that the sun will rise tomorrow depends on whether the sun rises tomorrow. Thus attitudinalism is incompatible with SUP, which I have argued is a non-negotiable axiological principle. One way to see the problem is this: If attitudinalism were true, it would be possible for two lives to contain exactly the same value atoms, yet have different values. That should not happen if we’ve determined the value atoms correctly and completely. To further clarify: the problem with attitudinalism is that it shifts the goodmaking properties out of the value atoms themselves and into other states that determine the values of the atoms. Whatever we choose to call the ‘value atoms,’ the attitude itself is not the fundamental goodor bad-making property. The fundamental good-making property includes both the attitude and its object. So what is at issue is no longer when the value atom obtains, but when the fundamental goodmaking property is instantiated. It is not at the time of the attitude (except in cases of concurrence). Keeping the object of the attitude out of the value atom does not change the answer to the question at hand—it merely disguises the answer. Attitudinalism must be rejected. This point applies to objectualism as well, since according to objectualism, whether P’s obtaining is intrinsically good for S depends on whether S has the relevant attitude towards P.
Objectualism also does not avoid problems of fading desires. Suppose one desires to go to Paris for many years, before they stop having that desire. Then they go to Paris. It seems that that desire wouldn’t make them better off, because the desire went away. However, on this account, going to Paris would make it so that they were better off whenever in the past they wanted to go to Paris.
3 Lin and Babies
Eden Lin has argued that desire satisfactionism has trouble when it comes to newborn babies. After all, there are no current desires newborns have -- their world model is too simple to want anything — but they can still clearly be harmed and have their life go well. Thus, desire theory has unacceptable implication when it comes to newborns. Lin replies to a host of objections to this idea.
Lin’s problem about newborns also applies to idealized desire theory. Lin (2014, p.365) explains “The problem is simple. Ideal World Subjectivism is a genuinely subjectivist view only if the following claim is true: Assumption Your personality at I at least largely resembles your personality at W.”
In this case, I is the ideal world and W is the actual world. In order for idealized desire theory to maintain genuinely subjectivist, wherein you in some sense decide what goes well for you, there has to be some relationship between your idealized self and your actual, current self. However, for newborn babies this assumption doesn’t hold -- newborns have little personality and they become very different over time.
Lin (2014, p.366) goes on to explain why desire theory is only plausible if the previous assumption holds.
Why is Ideal World Subjectivism a plausible view only if the Assumption is true? Because if the Assumption is false, the view implies that we cannot have as many justified beliefs about people’s welfare as we actually can. Given a sufficiently detailed description of someone’s personality and circumstances, we can arrive at many justified beliefs about her welfare. If we know that Jane is a thrill-seeker and an avid skydiver, for example, we are justified in believing that going skydiving would benefit her. According to Ideal World Subjectivism, this belief is justified only if we are justified in believing that Jane’s idealized self (Jane+) has a favorable attitude toward skydiving or things associated with it (e.g., thrilling experiences). If the Assumption is true, then we are justified in believing this, since we are justified in believing that Jane+is, like Jane, a thrill-seeker. But if the Assumption is false, we cannot assume that Jane+is also a thrill-seeker: for all we know, she is a risk-averse homebody who has no favorable attitudes toward any thrilling activities. So if Ideal World Subjectivism is true but the Assumption is false, fewer of our beliefs about people’s welfare are justified than actually are.43