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A Working Test for Well-being

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2017

TOBIAS A. FUCHS Open the ORCID record for TOBIAS A. FUCHS [Opens in a new window]
TOBIAS A. FUCHS*
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Brown [email protected]
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Abstract

In order to make progress in the welfare debate, we need a way to decide whether certain cases depict changes in well-being or not. I argue that an intuitive idea by Nagel has received insufficient attention in the literature and can be developed into a test to that purpose. I discuss a version of such a test proposed by Brad Hooker, and argue that it is unsuccessful. I then present my own test, which relies on the claim that if compassion is fitting towards a person due to her having (or lacking) certain properties, then we know that having (or lacking) those properties affect the person's well-being. I show how my test yields results in cases of deception, which have implications for central questions in the literature on well-being, such as whether what you do not experience can affect your well-being (the so-called Experience Requirement).

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Article
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Utilitas , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , June 2018 , pp. 129 - 142
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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References

1 See e.g. Hawkins, J., ‘What Matters Beyond the Mental?’, Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, vol. 4, ed. Timmons, M. (Oxford, 2015), pp. 210–35Google Scholar; Campbell, S. M., ‘The Concept of Well-Being’, The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Well-Being, ed. Fletcher, G. (Florence, US, 2015), pp. 402–13Google Scholar.

2 Feldman, F., Pleasure and the Good Life (Oxford, 2004), p. 42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Kagan, S., ‘The Limits of Well-being’, Social Philosophy and Policy 9.2 (1992), pp. 169–89, at 187CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 See e.g. Bradley, B., Well-being and Death (Oxford, 2009), p. 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Donnelly, J., ‘The Misfortunate Dead: A Problem for Materialism’, Language, Metaphysics, and Death, ed. Donnelly, J. (New York, 1994), pp. 153–69, at 157–8Google Scholar; Feldman, Good Life, pp. 41–3, 110–11; Glannon, Walter, ‘Persons, Lives and Posthumous Harms’, Journal of Social Philosophy 32.2 (2001), pp. 127–42, at 132–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kagan, ‘Limits’, p. 186.

5 Griffin, J., Well-being: Its Meaning, Measurement and Moral Importance (Oxford, 1986), p. 13Google Scholar. The Experience Requirement is endorsed by, e.g., Bradley, Death; Bramble, B., ‘A New Defense of Hedonism about Well-Being’, Ergo, an Open Access Journal of Philosophy 3.4 (2016), pp. 85–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Donnelly, ‘Misfortunate Dead’; Glannon, ‘Persons’; Kagan, ‘Limits’; Sidgwick, H., The Methods of Ethics, 7th edn. (London, 1907)Google Scholar; Sumner, L. W., Welfare, Happiness and Ethics (Oxford, 1996)Google Scholar.

6 Nagel, Thomas, ‘Death’, Noûs 4.1 (1970), pp. 73–80, at 77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 See e.g. Campbell, ‘Concept’, p. 404.

8 When Nagel's influential discussion is mentioned, his point about ‘pity’ usually falls by the wayside. See e.g. Kagan, ‘Limits’. An exception perhaps is Darwall, who incorporates a similar idea in his account of welfare as rational care. He proposes an analysis of welfare, which goes beyond the aim of this article. See Darwall, S., Welfare and Rational Care (Princeton, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Hooker, B., ‘Does Moral Virtue Constitute a Benefit to the Agent?’, How Should One Live?, ed. Crisp, R. (Oxford, 1996), pp. 141–55, at 149–55Google Scholar. See also Hooker, B., ‘The Elements of Well-being’, Journal of Practical Ethics 3.1 (2015), pp. 15–35, at 25–7Google Scholar.

10 Note that I am not making any claim about whether virtue is a constituent of welfare or not. My aim is simply to develop a workable test for certain cases relevant in the well-being debate.

11 Hooker, ‘Virtue’, p. 150. He later refers to it as his ‘sympathy test’. See Hooker, ‘Elements’, p. 25.

12 One problem that he does not handle satisfactorily has to do with competing emotions. I will discuss it in more detail below.

13 Again, I am not taking a stand on the issue of virtue being a constituent of welfare or not. I am merely interested in the test Hooker proposes, and in developing my own.

14 For a brief summary of general worries about emotions playing an epistemological role, see Brun, G. and Kuenzle, D., ‘Introduction: A New Role for Emotions in Epistemology?’, Epistemology and Emotions, ed. Kuenzle, D., Doğuoğlu, U. and Brun, G. (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 1–31, at 13–15Google Scholar.

15 Hoffmann, M. L., Empathy and Moral Development: Implications for Caring and Justice (Cambridge, 2000), p. 19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Prinz, J. J., ‘Against Empathy’, Southern Journal of Philosophy 49.1 (2011), pp. 214–33, at 224Google Scholar. Prinz discusses empathy instead of sympathy, but he seems to take his points to generalize, since he also speaks of ‘us[ing] emotion as an epistemic guide’ more generally.

17 See e.g. Deonna, J. A. and Teroni, F., The Emotions: A Philosophical Introduction (New York, 2012), p. 9Google Scholar; C. Z. Elgin, ‘Emotion and Understanding’, Epistemology, ed. Kuenzle et al., pp. 33–49, at 38–9.

18 Hooker, ‘Elements’, p. 26.

19 Kant, I., Gregor, M. J. and Timmermann, J., Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, rev. edn. (Cambridge, 2012), p. 4:398Google Scholar.

20 Furthermore, several writers think that sympathy is possible for even minor inconveniences, while compassion seems to apply only to more serious negative conditions. If this is right, using sympathy raises the danger of false positives, flagging trifles that do not really affect well-being. See e.g. Blum, L., ‘Compassion’, Explaining Emotions, ed. Rorty, A. O. (Los Angeles, 1980), pp. 507–17, at 508Google Scholar; Nussbaum, M. C., Upheavals of Thought; the Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 302, 308 n. 21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 See e.g. Solomon, R. C., In Defense of Sentimentality (Oxford, 2004), p. 53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nussbaum, Upheavals, p. 301; Blum, ‘Compassion’, p. 512; Mercer, P., Sympathy and Ethics: A Study of the Relationship between Sympathy and Morality with Special Reference to Hume's Treatise (Oxford, 1972), p. 19Google Scholar.

22 Roger Crisp uses ‘compassion’ as an umbrella term for all the concepts in the neighbourhood. See Crisp, R., ‘Compassion and Beyond’, Ethical theory and Moral Practice 11.3 (2008), pp. 233–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 See e.g. McHugh, C. and Way, J., ‘Fittingness First’, Ethics 126.3 (2016), pp. 575–606, at 595–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 See e.g. Deonna and Teroni, Emotions; The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion, ed. Goldie, P. (Oxford, 2010)Google Scholar.

25 Foot, P., ‘Moral Beliefs’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 59 (1958), pp. 83–104, at 86–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 The term goes back to Anthony Kenny, who adopted it from scholastic philosophy. See Kenny, A., Action, Emotion and Will (New York, 1964), pp. 132–5Google Scholar. See also Deonna and Teroni, Emotions, p. 41.

27 Psychologists speak of the tiger being appraised as threatening. See e.g. Moors, A., Ellsworth, P. C., Scherer, K. R. and Frijda, N. H., ‘Appraisal Theories of Emotion: State of the Art and Future Development’, Emotion Review 5.2 (2013), pp. 119–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 See e.g. D'Arms, J. and Jacobson, D., ‘The Moralistic Fallacy: On the “Appropriateness” of Emotions’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 61.1 (2000), pp. 65–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Deonna and Teroni, Emotions; Goldie, Handbook; Roberts, Emotions.

29 D'Arms and Jacobson, ‘Fallacy’.

30 D'Arms and Jacobson, ‘Fallacy’.

31 See for example Aristotle, Rhetoric, trans. Roberts, W. R., The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. McKeon, R. (New York, 2001 [1941]), pp. 1325–1454, at 1385b12–15Google Scholar; Descartes, R., ‘The Passions of the Soul’, The Passions of the Soul and Other Late Philosophical Writings, trans. M. Moriarty (New York, 2015 [1649]), pp. 191–280, at 270–1Google Scholar; A. Schopenhauer, On the Basis of Morality (Providence, 1995 [1841]), p. 210; Blum, ‘Compassion’, pp. 507–8.

32 Nussbaum, Upheavals, p. 303.

33 For example, some hold that compassion is only fitting when the target's ill fortune is undeserved. See e.g. Nussbaum, Upheavals, p. 314. This and other such restrictions are controversial, however (Hooker, for example, disagrees; see Hooker, ‘Virtue’, p. 153), and I will leave these issues aside.

34 A similar idea is briefly mentioned in Lin, E., ‘How to Use the Experience Machine’, Utilitas 28.3 (2016), pp. 314–22, at 321CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 I am not discussing whether or not it is morally (or prudentially, or culturally, etc.) appropriate to have more compassion for friends and other loved ones than for strangers. All I am interested in here is compassion's fittingness.

36 Kagan tries to escape this verdict by separating well-being from the notion of a good life. See Kagan, S., ‘Me and My Life’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 94 (1994), pp. 309–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I do not think his move succeeds, and it raises issues beyond the scope of this article. I engage with these in further work in development. For some recent discussion of his arguments, see Hawkins, ‘What Matters’, pp. 214–17.

37 Fred Feldman suggests a form of hedonism which can account for such cases; see Feldman, F., Pleasure and the Good Life (Oxford, 2004), p. 111CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It is not clear, however, that his suggestion still qualifies as hedonism. For an argument that it does not, see Zimmerman, M. J., ‘Feldman on the Nature and Value of Pleasure’, Philosophical Studies 138.3 (2007), pp. 425–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 For examples of this kind of response, see e.g. Bramble, ‘New Defense’, p. 106; Donnelly, ‘Misfortunate Dead’, pp. 158–9; Glannon, ‘Persons’, p. 133.

39 Adapted from an example given by Rosalind Hursthouse. See Hursthouse, R., On Virtue Ethics (Oxford, 1999), pp. 185–6Google Scholar.

40 See Elgin, C. Z., Considered Judgment (Princeton, 1996), p. 160Google Scholar; Elster, J., ‘Rationality and the Emotions’, Economic Journal 106.438 (1996), pp. 1386–97, at 1393–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hooker, ‘Virtue’, p. 150; Brun and Kuenzle, ‘Introduction’, p. 19.

41 I am grateful to Zach Barnett, David Christensen, Jamie Dreier and Leo Yan for patient discussions of this material and for helpful suggestions and comments. I owe special thanks to Nomy Arpaly and Joshua Schechter for reading and discussing earlier drafts. Further thanks go to the philosophy departments at Brown University and at SUNY Buffalo, where I presented earlier versions of this article. I am grateful to the audiences for their valuable feedback. I also thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.