This paper argues that, in light of Dead Sea apple cases, we should reject desire-fulfillment welfare theories (DF theories). Dead Sea apples are apples that look attractive while hanging on the tree, but which dissolve into smoke or ashes once plucked. Accordingly, Dead Sea apple cases are cases where an agent desires something and then gets it, only to find herself disappointed by what she has gotten. This paper covers both actual DF theories and hypothetical (or (...) idealized) DF theories. On actual DF theories the agent’s well-being is determined by her actual desires, while on hypothetical DF theories the agent’s well-being is determined by the desires that she would have if she were fully and vividly informed with respect to non-evaluative information. Various actual and hypothetical DF theory responses to Dead Sea apple objections are considered, and all such responses are argued to be inadequate. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.1 (2003) 99-102 [Access article in PDF] Living with Contested Knowledge and Partial Jennifer Clegg and Richard Lansdall-Welfare THESE CAREFUL AND CONSTRUCTIVE comments bring grist to our mill. Before responding to them, we observe first that they offer no substantive challenge to our thesis: ambiguities associated with meaning in the disabled life make it more likely that professional service providers will make dogmatic responses (...) to bereavement, and perhaps other essentially contested topics, responses that are defended by isolationism.Some welcome ideas came from left field to refresh our thinking, such as Colman's observations on the gendered nature of care. She reminded us that although the audit from which these cases came was established to investigate bereavement in general among adults with intellectual disability, its rough and ready sampling failed to ensure the expected range of bereavement types. Somehow the bereavements constructed as relevant for audit all transpired to concern the death of mothers. Moreover, of the six relatives who agreed to be interviewed concerning these bereavements, two were stepfathers and four were sisters. Colman underlines the invisibility of care work usually done by female family members: how wise or less wise decisions create the conditions for bereavement reactions, and how changes to care arrangements following bereavement fall most heavily on them. Traustadottir (2002) discussed the way new care initiatives often put pressure on female family members and staff to do more unpaid work. For example, Circles of Support encourages them to include people with intellectual disability in their personal social networks, without considering the personal costs. Such observations have yet to emerge from the umbrella of feminist research. Separatism has served feminism well, but issues of women and care do need to find their place in mainstream reviews.Another useful reminder from Colman is that the person with intellectual disability is not the only concern to families, although only a few adult services manage to hold wider systemic factors in mind (Clegg and Burnham 2000). If the person may make naïve comments at a funeral that would devastate family members whose needs take priority, the person will be excluded.The potency of bereavement was discussed twice. Casenave suggests that because "disability is a loss experience" bereavement resonates with it, casting some doubt onto the suggestion that our thesis generalizes to other contested topics. Reinders criticizes clinicians for being purblind to the tragic. The anonymous reviewer who questioned [End Page 99] the relevance of our discussion of the quality of "presence," a quality Reinders considers highly relevant, illustrates the point better than we can. Recognizing the way clinicians have little "patience with the notion of the tragic" encourages reflection on what other human experiences fail to capture our attention.Although these are all potentially valuable directions, we focus here on comments that may enhance our ability to work without dogma. Since at least the 1980s, clinicians in intellectual disability have criticized the discipline for using linear and univariate rather than complex and multivariate theories, and for a naïve search for magic answers (reviewed in Clegg 1993). It is our contention that little has changed, and that uncertain meaning and normalization combine to create ideal conditions for dogma. Reinders' exposition of the various uses of meaning in our article and in different linguistic and historical traditions develops a vital but neglected topic in intellectual disability, which we consider in some detail. We conclude by arguing that developments require us to distance ourselves from the universality and commonality inherent to normalization, and create new ways to appreciate particularity and diversity.The gist of Reinders' complex argument appears to be that the problems we identify in managing bereavement in intellectual disability stem from a modernist understanding of meaning that is erroneous. Implicitly, those who eschew its pursuit demonstrate the greater wisdom, because neither dialogue nor activities such as reflection can generate meaning that is unattainable. If we understand his position correctly, he contrasts two principal understandings of meaning: comprehension and apprehension.Comprehension is the illusory modernist idea that humans are agents who make sense of themselves... (shrink)

Kant's explicit account of the state's responsibility for welfare, in the Rechtslehre, is cryptic and incomplete. Kant does suggest, however, that: provision for those unable to provide for themselves is implicit in the idea of a social contract; and the sovereign, as ‘proprietor of the land’, possesses authority to intervene in civil society to guarantee the necessary conditions for the exercise of their purposive faculties. These elements of Kant's argument seem most plausibly justified by the teleological judgement that the (...) sovereign must strive to realize a ‘rightful condition’ in which members of society are ensured equal opportunity to realize their purposive faculties. In order to secure such a condition, the Kantian sovereign must intervene to guarantee conditions assuring that agents are equal in their ability to pursue their individual ends. Such a Kantian egalitarian policy, Chapter 6 argues, should focus on the equalization of capabilities rather than of: welfare, or resources. (shrink)

The Kantian theory of private law, as Ernest Weinrib and Arthur Ripstein have developed it over the last two decades, is based on a fundamental normative truth, viz., no person is subordinate or superior to another person. Kantians construe any attempt to understand and justify the distribution of the rights-claims and rights-liberties that constitute private law in terms of aggregate welfare and/or distributive justice, as a deep category mistake. This essay outlines a ‘semi-Kantian’ theory of private law, which is (...) like Kant’s in that it understands private law as a means of instituting and protecting private freedom. Yet, semi-Kantians insist that the choice between different private law programs, which respect private freedom equally well, can at times be justified by considerations of aggregate welfare and distributive justice, as well as other considerations that concern the impact on society as a whole. (shrink)

Translator's Introduction Political Theory in the Welfare State [Politische Theorie im Wohl- fahrtsstaat] was originally published (Olzog, Munich) in. ...

It has always been an important task of economics to assess individual and social welfare. The traditional approach has assumed that the measuring rod for welfare is the satisfaction of the individual’s given and unchanging preferences, but recent work in behavioural economics has called this into question by pointing out the inconsistencies and context-dependencies of human behaviour. When preferences are no longer consistent, we have to ask whether a different measure for individual welfare can, and should, be (...) found. This book goes beyond the level of preference and instead considers whether a hedonistic view of welfare represents a viable alternative, and what its normative implications are. Offering a welfare theory with stronger behavioural and evolutionary foundations, Binder follows a naturalistic methodology to examine the foundations of welfare, connecting the concept with a dynamic theory of preference learning, and providing a more realistic account of human behaviour. This book will be of interest to researchers and those working in the fields of welfare economics, behavioural and evolutionary economics. (shrink)

“Sophisticated” theories of welfare face two potentially devastating criticisms. They are based upon two claims: that theories of welfare should be tested for what they imply about newborn infants and that even if a theory of welfare is intended to apply only to adults, we might still have sufficient reason to reject it because it implies an implausible divergence between adult and neonatal welfare. It has been argued we ought reject sophisticated theories of (...) welfare because they have significantly counterintuitive implications about neonatal welfare and because they imply an implausible divergence between the welfare of adults and that of newborns. I argue against both claims. (shrink)

This paper argues that we should replace the common classification of theories of welfare into the categories of hedonism, desire theories, and objective list theories. The tripartite classification is objectionable because it is unduly narrow and it is confusing: it excludes theories of welfare that are worthy of discussion, and it obscures important distinctions. In its place, the paper proposes two independent classifications corresponding to a distinction emphasised by Roger Crisp: a four-category classification of (...) enumerative theories (about which items constitute welfare), and a four-category classification of explanatory theories (about why these items constitute welfare). (shrink)

An overview of the feminist theory literature on welfare policy and politics is presented. This introductory essay places a particular emphasis on the works that fall within the political sociology and normative political philosophy genres. In a lengthy digression, the article offers a tribute to the work of Iris Marion Young. It examines the centrality of her thinking about distribution, cultural marginalization, the welfare state bureaucracy, transnational responsibility and solidarity, and the pitfalls of maternalist discourse for this field. (...) In the conclusion, the article makes brief remarks about each of the contributions to the special issue on Feminist Theory and Welfare. (shrink)

Establishing the aims and objectives of a welfare state is an integral part of the political, economic and cultural debate, in particular, the repercussions of a welfare state on economic systems and social institutions; the sociopsychological consequences of a welfare state; and the scope, conditions and definitions of welfare. Some discussions address a theological and religious approach to the issue, specifically the Churches’ teaching on welfare and the Churches’ influence on the birth and development of (...) the welfare state. The Evangelical Church in Germany (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland [EKD]) has also joined the global discussion. The EKD advocates the welfare institutions; moreover, it stresses the contribution of the Protestant theology and culture to the emergence of the social state in Germany. This article aims to outline the Protestant approach to welfare axiology. Following a brief sketch of the welfare theory, it examines the previous and current Protestant influences on the welfare state and system. It also presents significant attempts to distinguish crucial values and the most serious challenges of the welfare state. The primary sources of the reflection are the recently published documents of the EKD (Denkschrifts), and the source literature. Contribution: The theological proposals of the Evangelical Church in Germany contribute to the axiological and ethical debate on welfare and the social state. The research addresses the focus and scope of the journal of the promotion of multidisciplinary aspects of studies in the general theological area. (shrink)

The definition and measurement of social welfare have been a vexed issue for the past century. This book makes a constructive, easily applicable proposal and suggests how to evaluate the economic situation of a society in a way that gives priority to the worse-off and that respects each individual's preferences over his or her own consumption, work, leisure and so on. This approach resonates with the current concern to go 'beyond the GDP' in the measurement of social progress. Compared (...) to technical studies in welfare economics, this book emphasizes constructive results rather than paradoxes and impossibilities, and shows how one can start from basic principles of efficiency and fairness and end up with concrete evaluations of policies. Compared to more philosophical treatments of social justice, this book is more precise about the definition of social welfare and reaches conclusions about concrete policies and institutions only after a rigorous derivation from clearly stated principles. (shrink)

The quest for a ``theory of nonhuman minds'''' to assessclaims about the moral status of animals is misguided. Misframedquestions about animal minds facilitate the appropriation ofanimal welfare by the animal user industry. When misframed, thesequestions shift the burden of proof unreasonably to animalwelfare regulators. An illustrative instance of misframing can befound in the US National Research Council''s 1998 publication thatreports professional efforts to define the psychologicalwell-being of nonhuman primates, a condition that the US 1985animal welfare act requires users (...) of primates to promote. Thereport claims that ``psychological well-being'''' is a hypotheticalconstruct whose validity can only be determined by a theory thatdefines its properties and links it to observed data. Thisconception is used to contest common knowledge about animalwelfare by treating psychological well-being as a mentalcondition whose properties are difficult to discover. Thisframework limits regulatory efforts to treat animal subjects lessoppressively and serves the interests of the user industry.A more liberatory framework can be constructed by recognizing thecontested nature of welfare norms, where competing conceptions ofanimal welfare have implications about norm-setting authority, asit does in other regulatory contexts, e.g., food safety. Properlyconceptualized welfare should include both the avoidance ofdistressful circumstances and the relationship between ananimal''s capacities to engage in enjoyable activities and itsopportunities to exercise these capacities. This conception ofanimal welfare avoids appropriation by scientific experts. (shrink)

A trenchant critique of sexuality in an age of discipline, where bodies and pleasures have become sites of regulatory power.

One of the most important disputes in the foundations of ethics concerns the source of practical reasons. On the desire-based view, only one’s desires provide one with reasons to act. On the value-based view, reasons are instead provided by the objective evaluative facts, and never by our desires. Similarly, there are desire-based and non-desired-based theories about two other phenomena: pleasure and welfare. It has been argued, and is natural to think, that holding a desire-based theory about either pleasure (...) or welfare commits one to recognizing that desires do provide reasons for action – i.e., commits one to abandoning the value-based theory of reasons. The purpose of this paper is to show that this is not so. All of the following can be true: pleasure and welfare provide reasons; pleasure and welfare are to be understood in terms of desire; desires never provide reasons, in the relevant way. (shrink)

Sometimes people desire that their lives go badly, take pleasure in their lives going badly, or believe that their lives are going badly. As a result, some popular theories of welfare are paradoxical. I show that no attempt to defend those theories from the paradox fully succeeds.

Hausman and McPherson defend welfare economics by claiming that even if welfare does not consist in preference satisfaction, preferences still provide good, if fallible, evidence of welfare. I argue that this strategy does not yet fully solve the problems for welfare economics stemming from the preference satisfaction theory of welfare. More work is needed to show that our self-interested preferences are sufficiently reliable, or in some other sense our best, evidence of well-being. Thus, my aim (...) is to identify the challenges that remain and clarify what additional work is needed before Hausman and McPherson's defence of welfare economics succeeds. (shrink)

Feminist scholarship on the relative importance of working-class institutional strength in the economy and in the state has led to two divergent conclusions. Radical feminists argue that working-class institutions dominated by men produce male-biased outcomes; socialist feminists hold that working-class institutions promote classwide interests that benefit women as well as men. This article addresses this debate by applying generic and gendered working-class strength models of the welfare state in an examination of women's public pension quality. Quality is measured as (...) women's average pension compared with that of men, relative to women's average earnings, and compared with the average wage in the society. The authors find support for the socialist feminist view. Working-class institutions, having historically organized and represented the interests of working men, benefit women by improving the security and adequacy of their retirement incomes, but it is women's access to working-class economic and political institutions that brings greater economic equality with men in old age. (shrink)

In this paper we deal with the extension of Nash bargaining theory to nonconvex problems. By focussing on the Social Welfare Ordering associated with a bargaining solution, we characterize the symmetric Nash Bargaining Solution (NBS). Moreover, we obtain a unified method of proof of recent characterization results for the asymmetric single-valued NBS and the symmetric multivalued NBS, as well as their extensions to different domains.

Criticism of the welfare state is mostly economic and administrative, relating to the resultant national debt and state bureaucracy. Budget cuts and privatization may help but not eliminate the difficulty. Yet, the primary concern of the welfare system is neither economic nor administrative; so, the force of this criticism is limited. To restrict the discussion to the defunct free-markets and centralized economies is to distort and to obstruct clear thinking on national priorities. Criticism of any welfare system (...) should not aim at the revival of these extremist solutions, but raise cost-effectiveness. All this holds for the medical sector in particular. (shrink)

Discusses the justification for a minimal welfare state independent of political rhetoric from the right or the left.

This volume collects David Lyons' well-known essays on Mill's moral theory and includes an introduction which relates the essays to prior and subsequent philosophical developments. Like the author's Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism (Oxford, 1965), the essays apply analytical methods to issues in normative ethics. The first essay defends a refined version of the beneficiary theory of rights against H.L.A. Hart's important criticisms. The central set of essays develops new interpretations of Mill's moral theory with the aim of determining how (...) far rights can be incorporated in a utilitarian framework. They Mill's analysis of moral concepts promises to accommodate the argumentative force of rights, and also provide a significant new reading of Mill's theory of liberty. The last essay argues that the promise of Mill's theory of justice cannot be fulfilled. Utilitarianism is unable to account for crucial features of moral rights, or even for the moral force of legal rights whose existence might be justified on utilitarian grounds. (shrink)

This volume collects David Lyons' well-known essays on Mill's moral theory and includes an introduction which relates the essays to prior and subsequent philosophical developments. Like the author's Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism (Oxford, 1965), the essays apply analytical methods to issues in normative ethics. The first essay defends a refined version of the beneficiary theory of rights against H.L.A. Hart's important criticisms. The central set of essays develops new interpretations of Mill's moral theory with the aim of determining how (...) far rights can be incorporated in a utilitarian framework. They Mill's analysis of moral concepts promises to accommodate the argumentative force of rights, and also provide a significant new reading of Mill's theory of liberty. The last essay argues that the promise of Mill's theory of justice cannot be fulfilled. Utilitarianism is unable to account for crucial features of moral rights, or even for the moral force of legal rights whose existence might be justified on utilitarian grounds. (shrink)

Over the past decade the welfare state has come under sustained attack not only from quarters which never approved of its policies, but also from political theorists who used to support it. With the collapse of communism, the policy of comprehensive welfare provision came under renewed scrutiny. It was argued that its impact on work incentives is most detrimental. Examining in detail current unemployment debates within Western welfare states, this book seeks to verify or refute the view (...) that non-work is increasingly chosen by work shy individuals - the 'pathological' theory of unemployment. Drawing from a range of disciplinary perspectives - from social philosophy and the history of philosophy, to occupational psychology and feminist economics - this interdisciplinary analysis reveals that the "pathological" theory of unemployment, with its reliance on a deficient depiction of human nature and its disregard of non-pecuniary work incentives and empirical evidence on benefit fraud, cannot be upheld. (shrink)

Subjectivism about welfare is the view that something is basically good for you if and only if, and to the extent that, you have the right kind of favorable attitude toward it under the right conditions. I make a presumptive case for the falsity of subjectivism by arguing against nearly every extant version of the view. My arguments share a common theme: theories of welfare should be tested for what they imply about newborn infants. Even if a (...) theory is intended to apply only to adults, the fact that it is false of newborns may give us sufficient reason to reject it. (shrink)

Welfare and the Constitution defends a largely forgotten understanding of the U.S. Constitution: the positive or "welfarist" view of Abraham Lincoln and the Federalist Papers. Sotirios Barber challenges conventional scholarship by arguing that the government has a constitutional duty to pursue the well-being of all the people. He shows that James Madison was right in saying that the "real welfare" of the people must be the "supreme object" of constitutional government. With conceptual rigor set in fluid prose, Barber (...) opposes the shared view of America's Right and Left: that the federal constitutional duties of public officials are limited to respecting negative liberties and maintaining processes of democratic choice. Barber contends that no historical, scientific, moral, or metaethical argument can favor today's negative constitutionalism over Madison's positive understanding. He urges scholars to develop a substantive account of constitutional ends for use in critiquing Supreme Court decisions, the policies of elected officials, and the attitudes of the larger public. He defends the philosophical possibility of such theories while also offering a theory of his own as a starting point for the discussion the book will provoke. This theory holds, for example, that voucher schemes which drain resources from secular public schools to schools that would train citizens to submit to religious authority are unconstitutional; First Amendment issues aside, such schemes defeat what is undeniably an element of the "real welfare" of the people, individually and collectively: the capacity to think critically for oneself. (shrink)

Two main foundations have been proposed for the side-constraints that deontologists think make it sometimes wrong to do what will have the best effects. Thomist views agree with consequentialism that the bearers of value are always states of affairs, but hold that alongside the duty to promote good states are stronger duties not to choose against them.1 Kantian views locate the relevant values in persons, saying it is respect for persons rather than for any state that makes it wrong to (...) kill, lie, and so on.2 The central innovation of Stephen Darwall’s Welfare and Rational Care is to extend this Kantian idea from side-constraints to the concept of welfare, or of what is good for a person.3 As a good-to-be-promoted, welfare is usually understood as located in states of affairs. Darwall agrees that a person’s welfare involves her being in certain states, but argues that the value in these states derives from her value as a person. More specifically, his “rational care” theory of welfare equates a person’s welfare with those states it would be rational to want for her insofar as one cared for her for her sake, so an attitude to her is primary and to her states is derivative. Whereas standard theories take the concept of welfare to come first and define care as a desire for that, Darwall reverses this ordering. (shrink)

Theories of welfare answer the ancient question, What makes a person's life go well? Prominent among these are desire-satisfaction or preferentist theories, according to which welfare has to do ultimately with desire. This dissertation aims to criticize some recent popular arguments against standard desire-satisfaction theories of welfare, to develop and defend a novel version of the desire-satisfaction theory capable of answering the better objections, to defend the thesis that pleasure is reducible to desire, and (...) to demonstrate an interesting link between preferentism and hedonism. The second chapter defends a simple "actualist" desire-satisfaction theory against the contention that such a theory cannot accommodate the fact that we can desire things that are bad for us. All the allegedly defective desires, I attempt to show, are either not genuinely defective or else can be accounted for by the theory. The third chapter criticizes the popular line that standard desire-based theories of welfare are incompatible with the conceptual possibility of self-sacrifice. I show that even the simplest imaginable, completely unrestricted desire theory is compatible with self-sacrifice, so long as it is formulated properly. The fourth chapter presents and defends a theory according to which welfare consists in the perceived satisfaction, or "subjective satisfaction," of desire. I argue that this theory is best suited to deflect the many lines of argument threatening the preferentist program. The fifth chapter defends the view that desire is what unifies the heterogeneous lot of experiences that all count as sensory pleasures. I develop and defend a desire theory of sensory pleasure. The sixth chapter argues that the most plausible form of preferentism is equivalent to the most plausible form of its main rival, hedonism. This is because what the best preferentism says---that welfare consists in subjective desire satisfaction---is the same as what the best hedonism says---that welfare consists in propositional pleasure---given a reduction of pleasure to desire along the lines of that defended above. (shrink)

It has become commonplace to distinguish enumerative theories of welfare, which tell us which things are good for us, from explanatory theories, which tell us why the things that are good for us have that status. It has also been claimed that while hedonism and objective list theories are enumerative but not explanatory, desire satisfactionism is explanatory but not enumerative. In this paper, I argue that this is mistaken. When properly understood, every major theory of (...) class='Hi'>welfare is both enumerative and explanatory. (shrink)

Current social and political theory is sceptical of the future of welfare states in the face of global markets. Their moral claims, too, have been challenged by the neo-liberal association of market capitalism and individual freedom and by an implicit acceptance of that critique - of the welfare state as bureaucratic - by left-wing commentators. This article offers a defence of the national welfare state as the guarantor of `complex freedom'. This defence is derived from the theoretical (...) contributions of Marshall, Polanyi and Myrdal and offers a reconsideration of the debate immediately after the second world war over the welfare state and its relevance today. Marshall's concept of social rights has become a familiar part of our own debate, but it is argued that Polanyi provides the rigorous critique of market relationships which is missing, and Myrdal locates gender issues as central to the understanding of welfare state development and women's rights as integral to social rights. (shrink)

The present paper argues that Rothbard’s economic case against the state is more robust than suggested by his critics. The charge that it might be anemic is based on the suggestion that we can say literally nothing about the way governmental acts bear on social utility. Contra this supposition we submit that Rothbard’s critics missed the fact that the effects of governmental interventions might be actually indeterminate in two ways: weakly or strongly. If the indeterminacy involved in his welfare (...) theory is weak, then his economic criticism of the state is more robust than envisaged by these authors. To the effect that this indeterminacy is indeed weak we advance the following reasons: Rothbard’s understanding of the Unanimity Rule; the avoidance of the contradiction allegedly committed by Rothbard over one and the same page of his famous essay; his economic criticism of interventionism being better aligned with his overall ethical anti-governmental stance; the principle of charitable reading, which cuts across all of the previously stated reasons. If our arguments count for something, then we are warranted in claiming that Rothbard is indeed able to say something about social utility under interventionism. And if so, then his criticism of interventionism should be viewed as robust rather than anemic. (shrink)

This paper tries to disclose the abstract manner in which orthodox theories of ‘welfare’ conceive of social values and the consequences of such subjective treatment of values for theory itself and for praxis. The interest here resides particularly in the demonstration that the abstract articulation of social values stems from the admission of determinate ontological tenets, which characterise a profoundly conservative worldview. As the realisation of some of the values considered by orthodox theories of ‘welfare’ demands (...) a truly transformative praxis, it is obstructed a priori. To overcome this continued frustration and finally realise social values, economists reclaim the idea of state intervention. The question then is whether the state has the capacity to radically modify social reality. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Do Buddhist philosophical commitments support a particular theory of well-being? Most authors who have examined this question argue that Buddhist ideas are compatible with multiple theories of well-being. In this paper, I contend that one tradition of Buddhist philosophy—Abhidharma—does imply a specific theory of welfare. In particular, Abhidharma supports hedonism. Most Ābhidharmikas claim that only property-particulars called dharmas ultimately exist and I argue that an Abhidharmic theory of well-being should only refer to these properties. Yet the only (...) dharmas that could plausibly be intrinsically good are phenomenal properties that are good in virtue of how they feel. Thus, the only intrinsically good things are pleasures. I defend this surprising conclusion from various interpretative objections and show that my argument can also inform contemporary philosophical debates about welfare. (shrink)

The desire-satisfaction theory of welfare says that what is basically good for a subject is the satisfaction of his desires. One challenge to this view is the existence of quirky desires, such as a desire to count blades of grass. It is hard to see why anyone would desire such things, and thus hard to believe that the satisfaction of such desires could be basically good for anyone. This suggests that only some desires are basically good when satisfied, and (...) that desire satisfactionists owe us an account of which desires these are, and why. In "Quirky Desires and Well-Being," Donald Bruckner proposes such an account: a desire is welfare-relevant (i.e., such that its satisfaction would be basically good for its subject) if and only if and because its subject could describe its object in a way that makes it comprehensible what about the object attracts him or appeals to him. We are inclined to view quirky desires as welfare-irrelevant because we assume that their objects cannot be described in such a way. But if there were a quirky desire whose object could be so described by the subject whose desire it is, then this desire would be relevant to that subject's welfare. I will argue that while Bruckner's view delivers plausible verdicts about the cases to which it is meant to apply, its account of what makes a desire welfare-relevant is unmotivated and implausible. Desire satisfactionists can retain what is plausible about his view while endorsing a better explanation of why welfare-relevant desires have that status if they accept the following account instead: a desire is welfare-relevant if and only if and because something about its object attracts, or appeals to, the subject who has the desire. (shrink)

Welfare is the measure of how well someone’s life is going for them (either at one time or over a whole life). This concept is crucial throughout practical philosophy, appearing in debates in ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of law, and beyond. -/- Philosophical discussions of welfare have centered around the extent to which welfare is purely a matter of the quality of one’s experience, the extent to which it is a matter of getting what one desires or, (...) instead, acquiring some fixed set of desire-independent goods and the extent to which it is related to one’s nature. Another set of debates concerns possible theories of welfare, questions about how many theories of welfare are needed to account for all of the facts about welfare, and whether discourse about welfare is linguistically or conceptually pluralistic in a deep and significant way. (shrink)

_Welfare, Meaning, and Worth_ argues that there is more to what makes a life worth living than welfare, and that a good life does not consist of what is merely good for the one who lives it. Smuts defends an objective list theory that states that the notion of worth captures matters of importance for which no plausible theory of welfare can account. He puts forth that lives worth living are net high in various objective goods, including pleasure, (...) meaning, knowledge, and loving relationships. The first part of the book presents a theory of worth, a mental statist account of welfare, and an objectivist theory of meaning. The second part explores the implications for moral theory, the popularity of painful art, and the viability of pessimism about the human condition. This book offers an original exploration of worth as a combination of welfare and meaning that will be of interest to philosophers and ethicists who work on issues in well-being and positive psychology. (shrink)

A traditional interpretation holds that Kant's political theory simply constitutes an account of the constraints which reason places on the state's authority to regulate external action. Alexander Kaufman argues that this traditional interpretation succeeds neither as a faithful reading of Kant's texts nor as a plausible, philosophically sound reconstruction of a `Kantian' political theory. Rather, he argues that Kant's political theory articulates a positive conception of the state's role.