¹ See, in particular, his Value Judgement: Improving Our Ethical Beliefs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).Google Scholar

² See Griffin, James P., Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement and Moral Importance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 1–39.Google Scholar

³ I set aside well-known problems relating to whether the desire account should focus on a person's ‘self-regarding’ desires as well as those that relate to the prospective nature of desires. The problems I discuss arise even if those problems could, somehow, be solved.

⁴ While weakness of will is very pertinent to human limitations in the context of accounts of well-being, I do not discuss it here since it is already much discussed in the literature. See, for example, my ‘The Concept of Well-Being,’ Economics and Philosophy, 14, No. 1, (04, 1998), 58–61.Google Scholar

⁵ Sidgwick, Henry, The Method of Ethics (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981), 111–112.Google Scholar

⁶ Brandt, Richard B., Morality, Utilitarianism and Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 40.Google Scholar

⁷ A Theory of the Good and the Right, 113.Google Scholar

⁸ Ibid., 113.

⁹ Ibid., 116–120 and 122–126.

¹⁰ See for example, GriffinJames, P. James, P., Value Judgement: Improving Our Ethical Beliefs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 21Google Scholar and Gibbard, Allan, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 18.Google Scholar

¹¹ Well-Being, 14.Google Scholar

¹² Ibid., 12–14.

¹³ Ibid., 13.

¹⁴ Ibid., 17.

¹⁵ Wayne Sumner also notes the shift in Griffin's thought in Sumner, L.W., ‘Something in Between’, Well-Being and Morality: Essays in Honour of James Griffin Crisp, R. and Hooker, B. (eds.) (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2000), 2–4.Google Scholar

¹⁶ I am grateful to James Griffin for pointing this out to me.

¹⁷ Railton, Peter, ‘Moral Realism’, The Philosophical Review, XCV, No. 2 (04 1986), 173.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Ibid., 174.

¹⁹ Rosati, Connie, ‘Persons, Perspectives and Full Information Accounts of the Good’, Ethics, 105, No. 2 (01 1995), 310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁰ Ibid., 315

²¹ Richard Arneson suggests this response, in Arneson, Richard, ‘Human Flourishing Versus Desire Satisfaction’, Human Flourishing Frankel, E. F., Miller, F. D. Jr, Paul, J. (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 129–130.Google Scholar

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²³ Parfit, Derek, Reasons and Persons (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1984), 493.Google Scholar

²⁴ ‘Human Flourishing Versus Desire Satisfaction’, 133.Google Scholar

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²⁶ Ibid., 34.

²⁷ Sumner, L.W., Welfare, Happiness and Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 172.Google Scholar

²⁸ Ibid., 145.

²⁹ Ibid., 160.

³⁰ Ibid., 161.

³¹ Ibid., 162.

³² Sen, Amartya K., On Ethics and Economics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), 45–6Google Scholar. For a discussion of Sen's examples see Miriam Teschl and Flavio Comim ‘Adaptive Preferences and Capabilities’, Paper presented at a conference on Capability and Happiness, St. Edmund's College, Cambridge, March 2004.

³³ Welfare, Happiness and Ethics, 166Google Scholar

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³⁵ Indeed, the case of the hardened unemployed may be better understood in terms of ‘social exclusion’ rather than socialization.

³⁶ Ibid., 109.

³⁷ Ibid., 115–7.

³⁸ Ibid., 116.

³⁹ Ibid., 131.

⁴⁰ Mill, John Stuart, Utilitarianism, On Liberty, Essay on Bentham (ed.) Warnock, M., (Glasgow: William Collins Sons & Co.), 261.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Ibid., 113.

⁴² Ibid., 113.

⁴³ Ibid., 114.

⁴⁴ Brannmark, Johan, ‘Leading a Life of One's Own: On Weil-Being and Narrative Autonomy,’Google Scholar this volume.

⁴⁵ ‘Leading a Life of One's Own,’ 77.Google Scholar

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⁴⁷ Well-Being, 34.Google Scholar

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⁴⁹ Harsanyi, John C., ‘Utilities, Preferences and Substantive Goods’, Social Choice and Welfare 14, (1997), 129–145Google Scholar. For a comparison of Harsanyi's and Griffin's positions see my, ‘Griffin, Harsanyi and Others at the Fuzzy Borderline Between Economics and Philosophy’, Telos, X, No. 1, (2001), 99–119.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ ‘Utilities, Preferences and Substantive Goods,’ 141.Google Scholar

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⁵⁴ Ibid., 57–9.

⁵⁵ Ibid., 58.

⁵⁶ Ibid., 58.

⁵⁷ See my ‘The Concept of Well-Being’, 69–70.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Indeed, if an informed desire account only requires sufficient information to individuate such values (which are seen as the objects of informed desires), it would not ask much of human capacities. Yet, as we have seen, informed desire accounts often go beyond merely listing such values, and involve comparisons between, and information about, various lives a person might lead.

⁵⁹ ‘Against the Taste Model’, 65.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ See Rosati, 's ‘Persons, Perspectives and Full Information Accounts of the Good’Google Scholar, and Sobel, David, ‘Full Information Accounts of Weil-Being,’ Ethics 104, (07 1995), 784–810.Google Scholar

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⁶² Griffin's account is nonetheless not best seen as an objective-list theory because he rejects standard versions of the objective/subjective dualism in this context. See Well-Being, 33Google Scholar and Value Judgement, 35–6.Google Scholar

⁶³ I develop a longer list of prudential values—which includes a basic amount of rest and hope or aspiration in my ‘The Concept of Well-Being’, 67.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Value Judgement, 30.Google Scholar

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⁶⁶ See Clark, David's Visions of DevelopmentGoogle Scholar and Okin, Susan Moller's ‘Poverty, Weil-Being and Gender: Who Counts, Who's Heard?’Google Scholar for arguments with this flavour.

⁶⁷ See Sen, Amartya K., ‘Capability and Well-Being,’ The Quality of Life, Nussbaum, M. and Sen, A. K. (eds.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 31.Google ScholarPubMed

⁶⁸ ‘Capability and Well-Being,’ 40–1.Google Scholar

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⁷⁰ Nussbaum, Martha C., ‘Nature, Function and Capability: Aristotle on Political Distribution’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 6 Supplementary Vol., (1988), 145–184.Google Scholar

⁷¹ The relevant contributions include Nussbaum, Martha C., ‘Aristotelian Social Democracy’, Liberalism and the Good, Douglass, B., Mara, G. and Richardson, H. (eds.) (London: Routledge, 1990), 203–252Google Scholar; and ‘Human Functioning and Social Justice. In Defence of Aristotelian Essentialism’, Political Theory, 20, (1992) 202–246.Google Scholar

⁷² Nussbaum, Martha C., Sex and Social Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar and Women and Human Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).Google Scholar

⁷³ Women and Human Development, 35.Google Scholar

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⁷⁵ See, in particular, Nussbaum, Martha C., ‘Aristotle on Human Nature and the Foundation of Ethics’, World, Mind and Ethics: Essays on the Ethical Philosophy of Bernard Williams Altham, J. E. J. and Harrison, R. (eds.), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 86–131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷⁶ See Nussbaum, Martha C., The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 373–78.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ ‘Nature, Function and Capability: Aristotle on Political Distribution,’ 176.Google Scholar

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⁸⁰ ‘Capability and Well-Being’, 31.Google Scholar

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⁸² Sabina Alkire develops such a list influenced by Finnis, John' work in her Valuing Freedoms: Sen's Capability Approach and Poverty Reduction.Google Scholar

⁸³ Women and Human Development, 119–148.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ Ibid., 138.

⁸⁵ Ibid., 139.

⁸⁶ Ibid., 116–7.

⁸⁷ Ibid., 117.

⁸⁸ Her discussion focusses on Scanlon, Thomas's ‘Value, Desire and the Quality of Life’, The Quality of Life Nussbaum, M.C. and Sen, A.K. (eds.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 185–200.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

⁸⁹ Ibid., 152.

⁹⁰ Ibid., 153.

⁹¹ Ibid., 157–8.

⁹² Ibid., 160

⁹³ Ibid., 155–6.

⁹⁴ Nussbaum, Martha C., ‘On Hearing Women's Voices: A Reply to Susan Okin,’ Philosophy and Public Affairs, 32, No. 2, (2004), 193–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁹⁵ Ibid., 161.

⁹⁶ Ibid., 165.

⁹⁷ Nussbaum inevitably discusses ‘consciousness-raising’ in this context, though her discussion is restricted to the experiences of Indian women in self-help groups. See ibid., 161–2.

⁹⁸ Mill, John Stuart, The Subjection of Women, Okin, S.M. (ed.), (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett, 1988), 22Google Scholar. On a related issue see my ‘A Weakness of the Capability Approach with Respect to Gender Justice’, Journal of International Development, 9 (09–04 1997) 251–263.Google Scholar