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Full Information, Well-Being, and Reasonable Desires
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 May 2011
Abstract
According to Railton: x is good for me iff my Fully Informed Self (FIS) while contemplating my situation would want me to want x. I offer four interpretations of this view. The first three are inadequate. Their inadequacy rests on the following two facts: (a) my FIS cannot want me to want what would be irrational for me to want, (b) when contemplating what is rational for me to want we must specify a particular way in which I could rationally acquire the recommended desire. As a result, what my FIS could reasonably want me to want is limited by what information my FIS could reliably convey to me. And therefore what my FIS could reasonably want me to want cannot be grounded in changes in desires that my FIS cannot publicly justify. The fourth interpretation limits the scope of what my FIS could want me to want in a way that avoids these problems, but conflicts with standard intuitions about what is a non-moral good.
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References
1 Griffin, James, Well-Being (Oxford, 1986), p. 27Google Scholar.
2 I am not sure this criticism is cogent, but this is a topic for another article.
3 For such a requirement see Falk, W. D., ‘On Learning About Reasons’, in Ought, Reasons, and Morality (Ithaca, NY, 1986), pp. 67–81Google Scholar.
4 Railton, Peter, ‘Facts and Values’, Philosophical Topics 14.2 (1986), pp. 5–31 (16)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Railton, Peter, ‘Moral Realism’, Philosophical Review 95 (1986), pp. 163–207 (173–4)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Rosati, Connie, ‘Persons, Perspectives, and Full Information Accounts of the Good’, Ethics 105.2 (1995), pp. 296–325CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sobel, David, ‘Full Information Accounts of Well-Being’, Ethics 104.4 (1994), pp. 784–810CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 At least with all the forms of life and personalities available to me.
7 Rosati and Sobel's objection is much more nuanced and detailed – but I take it that this is the gist of it.
8 What I will come to see as the only coherent version of Railton's view can avoid Sobel and Rosati's argument. I will not, however, discuss this here.
9 Rosati, ‘Persons’, p. 303.
10 Rosati, ‘Persons’, p. 301.
11 Rosati, ‘Persons’, p. 311.
12 Rosati, ‘Persons’, p. 311.
13 Rosati (‘Persons’, p. 312) proceeds to argue that there are other problems with the normative authority of our fully informed self. The process that makes the actual self fully informed introduces so many changes to her personality that we cannot be sure that character traits that are normatively repugnant are not introduced into her personality.
14 For other criticisms of full information views see Gibbard, Allan, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgment (Oxford, 1990)Google Scholar and Velleman, David, ‘Brandt's Definition of ‘Good’, The Philosophical Review 97.3 (1988), pp. 353–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
15 The worry here is similar to a worry discussed by Rosati as part of her argument from internalism. See Rosati, ‘Persons’, p. 312.
16 The problem is that the initial impetus for a fully informed desires view of well-being was the thought that by appealing to the desires of my FIS we are replicating the desires that someone like me would have with regard to a certain object but under improved epistemic conditions. It now turns out that we are appealing to a different process altogether – one that presupposes independent normative standards.
17 Thanks to Elijah Millgram for pressing me on that point.
18 There may be some cases in which there is more than one state of affairs that could be part of one's well-being. There is no reason to expect the theory to select between these good states of affairs.
19 This is of course a less dramatic version of Williams's gin and petrol example in ‘Internal and External Reasons’, reprinted in Moral Luck (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 101–13 (102).
20 Whenever I talk of the FIS as seen from the perspective of the AS I will qualify the term with the word ‘purported’. As we will see shortly, unless the AS has good reason to think that a piece of advice he gets is indeed reasonable he has reason to doubt that this advice originates from the FIS.
21 In the sense described above.
22 When I want A and my experience teaches me that the best way to achieve A is by doing B then my experience (given my previous desires) exerts normative pressure on me.
23 Or so we would think if we adopted a desire-based view of well-being.
24 See n. 23.
25 For simplicity's sake let us assume that we consider the preferences of the FIS for his AS at a specific point of the AS's life.
26 I take it that Railton's view is the best-developed analysis of well-being in terms of fully informed desires currently on the market. I therefore tentatively suggest that our investigation teaches us something general about the relation between well-being and what could reasonably be desired by a fully informed agent.
27 The question of how an agent should change intrinsic desires in light of pressure from other intrinsic desires and new information is an extremely complicated question and deserves a discussion of its own. My formulation in the text is not intended to support any specific view about norms for changing intrinsic desires. It is merely intended to indicate that some such changes could be reasonably demanded. For examples of cases in which changes in intrinsic desires would be justified see my ‘Desiring at Will and Humeanism in Practical Reason’, Philosophical Studies 119.3 (2004), pp. 265–94.