The Objectivity of Wellbeing

THE OBJECTIVITY OFWELLBEING

by

MATT FERKANY

Abstract: Subjective theories of wellbeing place authority concerning whatbenefits a person with that person herself, or limit wellbeing to psychologicalstates. But how well off we are seems to depend on two different concerns, howwell we are doing and how well things are going for us. I argue that twopowerful subjective theories fail to adequately account for this and that prin-cipled arguments favoring subjectivism are unsound and poorly motivated. Inthe absence of more compelling evidence that how things go for us cannotdirectly constitute our wellbeing, I conclude that wellbeing is objective.

1. Introduction

Despite James Griffin’s recommendation to lay these categories to rest,the matter of wellbeing’s objectivity versus subjectivity persists (1996). Ingeneral, there even appears to be a widespread presumption that wellbeingis subjective in being dependent upon our attitudes or psychological states.This presumption permeates the work of at least one self-styled subjectiv-ist, L. W. Sumner, who maintains that the ‘goodness-for’ of wellbeing,what he aptly calls its subject-relativity, favors such a presumption (1992,1996, 1999). According to Sumner, when looked at squarely, we see thatobjective theories are theories of plain goodness, not goodness-for, and assuch are not even theories of wellbeing at all.

In what follows, I argue that the case favoring wellbeing’s subjectivity isweak. Whereas some prominent and otherwise plausible subjective theo-ries have difficulty accounting for widely shared intuitions favoring objec-tivity, some very plausible alternatives simply integrate subjective andobjective components. Principled arguments favoring subjectivism arealso unsound and poorly motivated. I tentatively conclude that somethings are probably good for us independently of our attitudes or psycho-logical states. Wellbeing is probably objective, not subjective.

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly •• (2012) ••–•• DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0114.2012.01435.x© 2012 The AuthorPacific Philosophical Quarterly © 2012 University of Southern California and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

1

Though it is not my goal to defend a particular theory of wellbeing, I willsuggest that wellbeing is specified by a ‘pluralistic objective list’ consistingof psychological goods, such as positive emotional dispositions, but alsonon-psychological goods like accomplishment and friendship. I will alsohighlight some previously underappreciated distinctions in theories ofwellbeing. Indeed I begin here before examining and rejecting two subjec-tive theories, then examining a more principled argument for subjectivism.I conclude with some thoughts on the constituent elements of wellbeing.

2. The subjectivity of wellbeing

There are many ways to characterize the putative subjectivity of wellbeing.In fact any single characterization will conceal important differences intheories satisfying it, so it will be useful to distinguish two senses ofsubjectivity, a voluntaristic and a psychological sense I elaborate below.

Consider first Sumner’s characterization, according to which wellbeingis subjective in that something can constitute a person’s wellbeing only ifshe takes (or would take under appropriate circumstances) a favorableattitude toward that thing (1996, p. 38). It is objective if at least one thing,accomplishment for instance, constitutes it whether or not she takes (orwould take . . . etc.) a favorable attitude toward that thing. Put differently,the contrast seems to be whether or not authority concerning what con-stitutes a person’s wellbeing should rest with that person. This in any caseis sometimes cited as a central disagreement between advocates of objec-tive theories and their critics, the latter maintaining that objective theoriesare too authoritarian and cannot adequately account individual differ-ences in what makes for a good life for us (Griffin, 1996; Sumner, 1996).

Sumner’s attitudinal characterization is at least underdeveloped since‘favorable/unfavorable attitude’ is vague. Sumner endorses a broad inter-pretation, maintaining that ‘favorable attitudes’ include any of the follow-ing: ‘Approving of something, valuing it, esteeming it; wanting something,aiming at it, seeking it; liking something, enjoying it, finding it satisfying’(1996, p. 80). This list is problematic in that some of these, such as wantsor likings, can themselves be objects of favorable or unfavorable attitudesand so are not clearly attitudes of the right sort. Sumner also complicatesmatters further by employing the distinction between mental state andstate-of-the-world theories to distinguish two sub-classes of subjectivetheory, (1) those according to which wellbeing is constituted solely bymental states and (2) those according to which it is constituted by prop-erties of persons involving some relationship to states the world (e.g. thatone’s desires are met) in addition to intrinsic mental states (1996, p. 82).Both sorts are allegedly forms of subjectivism, the first more radically thanthe second. The total resulting subjective/objective distinction is suppos-

PACIFIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY2

© 2012 The AuthorPacific Philosophical Quarterly © 2012 University of Southern California and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

edly mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive, classing all forms of welfarehedonism (wellbeing is happiness and happiness is pleasure) and actualdesire theory (wellbeing is getting what we presently want) as subjectivewhile classing all forms of list theory and perfectionism (wellbeing is theperfection of our humanity) as objective.

This construal of the subjective/objective distinction, and its relation-ship to the mental state/state-of-the-world distinction, conceals importantdifferences between theories it classes as subjective. Hedonism, forinstance, can be developed as a Sumnerian subjective theory if coupled toan analysis of pleasure as an intentional state consisting of any intrinsicallydesired consciousness, that is, any consciousness that we wish to continue.This analysis of pleasure, often attributed to Sidgwick, is controversial(Sumner, 1996, p. 89). As Timothy Sprigge has noted, it omits the pleas-urableness of pleasure so that even painful consciousness, if we desire it, ispleasurable (1988, p. 132). The alternative (and more classical) analysisconceptualizes pleasure as a distinctive, introspectively discernible qualityof all pleasurable consciousness (Kagan, 1992; Sumner, 1996). Whicheveranalysis is correct, any theory endorsing the second and maintaining thatwellbeing consists in the experience of pleasure (‘classical hedonism’) is toSumner ‘doubtfully subjective’ (1996, p. 93). This is because it identifieseveryone’s good with pleasure, whether they value it or not.

Given Sumner’s attitudinal conception of wellbeing’s subjectivity, heshould say simply that such a theory is objective. To agree with thatassessment, however, is to assume that ideals in which authority concern-ing a person’s wellbeing rests with that person are ‘the real’ subjectivetheories, all others, including some in which wellbeing is constituted bypsychological states of the subject, being mere pretenders. This is notconsistent with Sumner’s treatment of mental state theories as the mostradically subjective. It is also unclear what reason there could be for callingone sort of view ‘the real’ subjectivism since views of the latter kind havetraditionally been contrasted to objective theories (Griffin, 1986) and aresubjective inasmuch as they identify wellbeing with psychological states ofexperiencing subjects. This sense of subjectivism is also not entirely unre-lated to the other sense insofar as people experience the world in differentways, so that the best way of life might differ for different people even ifthey are all after the same goods. This seems to be Mill’s argument inOn Liberty (1978). So to clarify matters, I propose the following set ofdistinctions.1

1. Voluntarism: Final authority concerning what constitutes a person’swellbeing rests with that person in that something can constitute itonly if she would agree (or would agree in appropriate circum-stances) that it does or affirm, desire, or value it on reflection.Intellectualism is the view that at least one thing constitutes our

THE OBJECTIVITY OF WELLBEING 3


wellbeing whether or not we would agree that it does or affirm,desire, or value it on reflection.

2. Psychologism: Wellbeing is constituted solely by psychologicalstates of experiencing subjects, such as perceptual states, feelings, orattitudes. Extra-psychologism is the view that wellbeing is consti-tuted, additionally or exclusively, by one or more bodily or rela-tional properties of ourselves, such as being fit or autonomous,having got what we want, or having genuine friends.

3. Subjectivism: Either voluntarism or psychologism is true. Wellbeingis objective insofar as either is false.

These labels are not arbitrary. Although voluntarism is similar to what isoften called ‘internalism’, ‘voluntarism’ is preferable because it is lesswidely used and more precise. Psychologism is similar to mental statism,but is potentially broader and ‘extra-psychologism’ – which includesbodily states, not only states of the world or relational states – is neaterand more accurate than ‘state-of-the-world-ism.’ These distinctions couldalso be refined or elaborated to generate various sub-distinctions in kindsof theories. But this set clarifies the issues relevant for this article andfacilitates, in the absence of a higher order concept of subjectivity, the tidy(if technical) statement of the senses in which wellbeing might be subjectivejust articulated.

Table 1 illustrates the relationship between these distinctions andcommon theories of wellbeing:

The table also illustrates a couple of important details. First, thesubjective/objective distinction is orthogonal to the other distinctions.

Table 1 Common theories of wellbeing and the subjective/objectivedistinction



Classical hedonism, for instance, gets bisected by the subjective/objectiveline because it is subjective in the psychologistic sense and objective in theintellectualist sense. The second point is that the subjective/objective dis-tinction is not, contra Sumner, mutually exclusive. Many theories, like listtheory, combine subjective and objective elements and are more or lesssubjective depending on their details. Indeed it seems that most theoriesare like this and that purely subjective theories, like preference hedonism,are in the minority along with purely objective theories, like perfectionism.

The argument of this article is that wellbeing is objective insofar as bothvoluntarism and psychologism are false. Individuals do not have finalauthority concerning what promotes their own good and wellbeing is notsimply a matter of being in some psychological condition. Quite the con-trary to Sumner, objective theories, especially those combining subjectiveand objective elements, are very much live options. The next section makesan initial case for this view.

3. Two notions of wellbeing

A deep problem for subjectivism is that there is no theory-neutral generalcharacterization of wellbeing. Rather, there seem to be at least two distinctbut equally coherent general characterizations, only one of which is primafacie amenable to subjective analysis. Others have considered this possi-bility and I want to develop it here (Griffin, 1999; Scanlon, 1998; Velle-man, 1991).2

Sumner actually names these notions when he writes, ‘Common sensetells us that a person’s welfare, or wellbeing, is a matter of how well she isdoing, or how well her life is going, or how well off she is’ (1992, p. 4; seealso 1996, p. 1). There are three ideas here: how well a person is doing, howwell her life is going, and how well off she is. The last is simply one way ofreferring to her level of wellbeing, so suggests nothing substantive about it.The second, however, does suggest something substantive: wellbeing con-cerns the quality of our lives. But this idea does not clearly match the senseoften intended by the first, which seems to concern our psychologicalstate.3 These two concerns are often coextensive. If we are not doing well(we are miserable or taking things badly), our life is going in a way badlyfor us; if things are going badly (e.g. our plans are being frustrated), thisusually makes us unhappy. Nevertheless on commonsense understandingsthey can come apart. In adversity, we can make the best of it; in flush, wesometimes lose sight of how well things are going.

Neither the ‘doing well’ nor ‘going well’ sense is a priori privileged as ‘thereal’ wellbeing. But subjective theories, by making what is good for usultimately depend upon our psychology, privilege well-doing notions overwell-going ones. Wellbeing is directly constituted by how we do, in some



sense, with respect to how things are going. If so, subjective theories mustaccount for the apparent importance of the well-going goods by showinghow they contribute indirectly to how well we do. A hedonist, for example,must account for the apparent importance of genuine friendship byshowing how false friendship causes suffering. On the other hand, theexistence of two fundamental notions is no problem for pluralistic listtheories. They easily account for both simply by placing goods relevant toeach on the list, for example, happiness (as a psychological state) andaccomplishment.4 Since such views are pluralistic, there is no inconsistencyin this move. This flexibility gives them a presumptive plausibility lackingin subjective views, if indeed there are two fundamental notions ofwellbeing.

The possible existence of two notions represents a challenge for subjec-tivism. To convince skeptics, subjectivists need to show either that (a) thegoods of the going well notion can be adequately explained in terms of thegoods of the doing well notion or (b) that wellbeing does not concern howthings are going for us; if she cannot, the case favoring wellbeing’s sub-jectivity is weak. I assess below two powerful approaches to task (a),preference hedonism and Sumner’s authentic happiness theory, and findthem wanting.5 This will not show that wellbeing is not subjective sinceother subjective theories might be more compelling. But since hedonismand authentic happiness theory are powerful attempts, it is some evidencethat others will fail. Whether that is so, I also argue that considerationsfavoring (b) are not persuasive. If the argument is sound, that is furtherevidence that any subjective theory is unlikely to succeed.

4. Preference hedonism

The traditional utilitarians defined happiness as pleasure and the absenceof pain (Bentham, 1948, p. 2; Mill, 1963, p. 249). Since they did notapparently distinguish happiness from wellbeing, they can be read asclaiming that we are well off just when life is overall pleasant for us, andbetter off the more pleasant it is (Arneson, 1999; Crisp, 2008). As discussedabove, however, hedonism can be developed as either a form of intellec-tualism or voluntarism. Following Sidgwick, voluntarists have claimedthat the felt qualities of all pleasures are so diverse that they are unified bynothing but our desire for them (Alston, 1964; Brandt, 1979; Sidgwick,1981). Comparing the experience of good muter paneer to the experience ofMahler’s ‘Resurrection Symphony’, both are worth wanting yet appar-ently have nothing else in common in terms of their felt qualities. So itseems that the most plausible hedonism is preference hedonism, the viewthat what’s good for us is the experience of whatever forms of conscious-ness we desire.



Alternative analyses of pleasure are available, too. The voluntaristmight endorse Fred Feldman’s ‘attitudinal hedonism’ in which pleasure isthe propositional attitude of being pleased about something, e.g. that I ameating sushi (2002). She can then claim that wellbeing consists of a positivebalance of pleasure, so conceived, over pain, weighted solely by theirduration and intensity. On simple versions of this view (which Feldmandoes not incidentally endorse), life goes best for us when it consists of thehighest possible sum of attitudinal pleasure.6 Another option is ChrisHeathwood’s reduction of pleasure to subjective desire satisfaction, or thebelief that one is presently getting the things one wants for their own sake(2006). This analysis in hand, Heathwood claims that, ‘The intrinsic valueof a life for the one who lives it = the sum of the values of all the instancesof subjective desire satisfaction and frustration contained therein’ (p. 548).

Such variations of hedonism have their attractions. Insofar as being welloff is intrinsically appealing to us, they capture that fact by identifyingwellbeing with intrinsically appealing mental states – desired conscious-ness, being pleased, etc. They also at least appear to provide a simple wayof comparing the wellbeing of persons across different periods of time orof different persons. Just compare the sums of pleasure minus pains inthose periods or lives. But they are also riddled with defect and implausi-bility, most of which is owing to their simplicity. They contain implausibleanalyses of pleasure, are deeply counterintuitive, and what’s worse, are noteven compelling analyses of happiness let alone wellbeing.7 I defend thesecharges in turn.

A first problem is that the voluntarist analysis of pleasure is too formal,making even painful things pleasurable if we want them, take pleasure inthem, etc. Heathwood actually regards it as a virtue of the attitudinalanalysis ‘that it nicely explains the phenomenon of masochism: a person isa masochist . . . if he takes pleasure in sensations that many of us would bepained by’ (2006, p. 552). This is implausible. That someone ‘takes pleas-ure’ in being hurt does not convert pains into pleasures. Licking a 9-voltbattery does not feel like licking an ice-cream cone because one hurts andthe other delights. Of course we can want to lick the battery (and also beaverse to the ice cream), but our wanting to and the sting in virtue of whichwe want to are not the same. The analysis of pleasure in terms of desires orattitudes obliterates the distinction between pleasures and pains in a waythat makes it impossible to explain what we want or like in terms pleasureand pain.

It is also simply not clear that no adequate intellectualist analysis isforthcoming despite the diversity of pleasures. Shelley Kagan suggests thatperhaps pleasure is not a felt quality of experience, but a dimension alongwhich experiences vary and can be ranked, much the way volume is adimension along which sounds vary without being an audible componentof them (Kagan, 1992). That seems true to first-person experience and



might be supported by work in neuroscience (Katz, 2009; Layard, 2005).Some studies, for instance, uncover uniform co-variance between self-reported happiness levels and heightened electrical activity in parts of thebrain associated with positive feelings (Layard, 2005, p. 19).

But whether or not an adequate account of pleasure can be worked out,hedonism is counterintuitive. That it discounts the value of certain attrac-tive goods is well-known but bears repeating. A person hooked for life intoa machine artificially providing an overall positive balance of pleasureseems to miss out on many of the goods life has to offer (Nozick, 1974);things seem to have gone badly for a person who dies having been system-atically deceived into thinking that he is loved and esteemed (Nagel, 1979);exploited laborers or housewives achieving Stoic inner peace are not aswell off as other equally undisturbed, but not exploited people (Sen, 1987).Other than to beg the question by telling us that our intuitions are prem-ised on a confusion between the welfare value of a life and other values likeits choiceworthiness, perfection, or moral goodness (see e.g. Heathwood,2006), in identifying wellbeing with desirable consciousness, hedonistshave difficulty explaining such intuitions. This is especially true in caseslike the dead man’s where there are no contingencies to consider, nothingthat might diminish or enhance his consciousness, thus no way of account-ing indirectly for the values his life lacked. Either his life went badly forhim because he lacked genuine friends or it did not. If it did go badly,hedonism is false.8

Hedonism’s aggregative mechanism for comparing the welfare value oflives or periods of life is also counterintuitive, producing apparently inac-curate assessments. Whole periods of life have different narrative contoursand it seems to matter which shape they take. Consider the following twolives J. David Velleman describes:

One life begins in the depths but takes an upward trend: a childhood of deprivation, atroubled youth, struggles and setbacks in early adulthood, followed finally by success andsatisfaction in middle age and a peaceful retirement. Another life begins at the heights butslides downhill: a blissful youth, precocious triumphs and rewards early in adulthood,followed by a midlife strewn with disasters that lead to misery in old age (1991, p. 49).

Though we can easily imagine that the sum of pleasure (however pleasureis analyzed) in these two lives is equal, many will be strongly inclined to saythat the first life goes better than the second. It also does not matter if weswitch from summing to averaging – no quantitative mechanism thatomits to discount some of the pleasures in the second life will get it right.

It is hard to explain this assessment if lives should be evaluated in termsof their overall balance of pleasure over pain, weighted only by intensityand duration. One hedonistic strategy is ad hoc anyway. It could be arguedthat there are life-stage differences in utility intensities, so that ‘the highs



and lows encountered in maturity are more extreme than those encoun-tered in childhood’ (Velleman, 1991, p. 50). If so, the total happiness inVelleman’s two lives is not equal after all. This is ad hoc because it is hardlyobvious; it is also too easy to imagine plausible scenarios in which thispossibility is controlled for. Some lives having particularly harsh child-hoods might still be preferable to declining lives that are no more or lesspleasant on balance; some declining lives might be relatively serenebecause their owners underestimate the damage they inflict on them.

The appearance of a poor match between the balance of utility in aperson’s life and how well it goes for her is probably the clearest evidencethat hedonism lacks the power to explain life’s going well for us in termsof how we are doing. The committed hedonist could, of course, just bitethe bullet on this point. But this move looks unreasonable given at leastone alternative explanation of the mismatch, namely that hedonism mis-construes the nature of happiness, not just wellbeing. This would be arather significant embarrassment for hedonism given that it is traditionallythe default analysis of happiness.

As the hedonist understands it, happiness is simply a matter of howpleasurable life is or has been. But as Dan Haybron has argued, happinessis also forward-looking and causally deep, like a character trait, tendingpartly to determine the pleasant or unpleasant quality of our experience(2008, p. 69). So when we ask, ‘Is Jones happy?’ (or after death, ‘Was Joneshappy?’), we are not simply asking about the quality of Jones’s experi-ences, but about what kind of person he is (or was). Compare, for instance,Jones to Smith (to use really creative names). Jones is moody and brood-ing and often takes a negative attitude toward things. He is closed to thebright side and does not see the point of activities others enjoy. Whenthings aren’t going so well, he compounds his troubles by withdrawing,drinking too much, and generally failing to take care of himself. Smith isjust the opposite. She brings lightness and openness to whatever she does.The joy of others brings her joy, too. And when things fall apart, she findsways to stay engaged and get some perspective.

It is not difficult to imagine that the lives of such people will go verydifferently for them partly because of what they respectively bring to them.Moody people bring a negative attitude that tends to invite misfortune andmisery; cheery, easy-going people bring a positive one and, though theystill suffer and struggle, find effective ways to get past hardship. If so, it ispossible that people whose lives were equally pleasurable could have beenmore or less well off because the people who lived them were more or lesshappy people. Lives that get better are better partly because they are thelives happy people make.

There is insufficient space here to fully assess the meaning of Haybron’sobservations for hedonism. It could turn out that pleasure, attitudinalpleasure especially, is an essential component in the ideal. However, it



seems clear that even if it was, it could not be the only essential compo-nent. Happiness is dispositional and forward-looking, not just experientialand backward-looking, and the relevant dispositions seem patently toinclude moods and affects, states not obviously reducible to desired con-sciousness, attitudinal pleasure, or subjective desire satisfaction.9 Alto-gether hedonism is counterintuitive, relies on a controversial conception ofpleasure, and is probably mistaken about the nature of happiness. Sub-jectivists would do better with a less fraught starting point. I turn now toone lacking the difficulties attending hedonism.

5. The authentic happiness theory

According to L. W. Sumner’s authentic happiness theory, welfare consistsin the happiness of an informed and autonomous subject (1996, p. 172).Wellbeing on this view is one thing, but a complex one dividing into twomajor elements: (1) happiness, and (2) its authenticity, which further sub-divide into (1.1) life satisfaction and (2.1) sufficient information and (2.2)autonomy. This needs some unpacking.

To begin with (1.1), Sumner conceptualizes life satisfaction as ‘a positivecognitive/affective response on the part of a subject to (some or all of) theconditions or circumstances of her life’ (p. 15). This has certain advantagesover hedonism. Because it is possible for someone to be satisfied with arelatively unpleasant life, pleasure plays no essential role, so the idealavoids the sticky debate about pleasure. The ideal is also forward-lookingand accounts for how life goes for us by reference to our attitude towardour lives, hence without any sort of quantitative balancing. If we authen-tically believe that it is going well, then it is going well, however pleasantit is.

Life satisfaction is sufficient for wellbeing only if it is authentic,however, which means that it must be informed and autonomous. The ideais not that autonomy and factual awareness are good for us in themselves,but that a person’s satisfaction with her life lacks authority relative to herwellbeing if it is formed in ignorance of certain facts or in conditions thatundercut critical reflective endorsement (such as manipulation or coer-cion). Since wellbeing is what is good for me, factually uninformed orheteronymous satisfaction with my life lack authority relative to my well-being – it is not really my satisfaction with my life, so cannot be good forme. For example, if awareness of the artifice behind her experience woulddissatisfy the experience machine user, then the satisfaction she derives init is not authentic and cannot advance her wellbeing. It is not hers, there-fore cannot be good for her. In order to be authentic, satisfaction with ourlives cannot be premised on ignorance of factual information that wouldmake a difference to how we assess our lives. The satisfaction of Stoic



exploited laborers or housewives, on the other hand, may lack authoritybecause it is formed in conditions that potentially undercut their ability tocritically reflect on the merits of their life conditions. Insofar as this isnecessary for the autonomy of their satisfaction, it is not their satisfaction,so might not be good for them.

As a form of voluntarism, Sumner’s theory is a subjectivist view favor-ing a doing well over a going well notion of wellbeing. In identifyinghappiness as life satisfaction, it makes our doing well necessary for well-being. I argue in the remainder of this section that the information con-dition of the authentic happiness theory, however, is either too weak orincompatible with the voluntaristic spirit of Sumner’s theory. The authen-tic happiness theory effectively has no information condition nor could itwithout sliding into some form of intellectualism.

Consider this example of Sumner’s (1996, p. 157). A happily marriedperson discovers that her spouse has been unfaithful for the last ten years.Upon discovery of the deception, we would expect her to become dissat-isfied with her life. Generally it is good for us to know the truth about thecircumstances of our lives and generally they go badly for us when we arecheated on and deceived about it. In becoming unhappy we are respondingappropriately to these facts. For objectivists, such considerations canground a rule according to which satisfaction premised on ignorance doesnot make us well off, at least not without qualification, just because it ispremised on ignorance. Alternatively a list theorist can say simply thatblissfully ignorant people are well off to the extent that they are blissful,but not as well off as blissfully informed people, again because the latterbut not the former are informed.

Voluntarists cannot have such a rule and, as a voluntarist, Sumnerrightly rejects interpretations of the information condition committed toit. These other interpretations posit a standard of correctness for claims towellbeing independent of the subject’s pro- or con- attitudes and thuscontradict the putative subjectivity of wellbeing. So the requirement ofadequate information has to mean something different. As reviewedabove, for Sumner, the problem with endorsements premised on factualerror, deception, or illusion is that they undermine the authority of ourjudgments. So what authenticity requires in the way of information is onlyas much as ‘would make a difference to a subject’s affective response to herlife, given her priorities’ (p. 160).

Sumner supports this interpretation partly by reference to how it faresagainst reality and justification interpretations. It fares better against areality interpretation since that requirement stipulates that ‘any happinessbased on illusion can make no intrinsic contribution to our well-being’(p. 159). In saying so, it must be rejected as ‘presumptuously dogmatic.’Sumner’s criticism of the justifiability requirement is essentially the same:‘in reserving well-being exclusively for the rational it is not much less



arrogant than the stronger demand for truth.’ Reflecting on what Sumn-er’s own interpretation has to say about cases like the cuckquean seems tofurther support it. That interpretation is able to accommodate our sensethat relative to such experiences, ‘We always have the alternative availableof accepting the good times we enjoyed with little or no regret and thenmoving on with our lives’ (p. 158). Relative to faithless spouses, we mightjust say, ‘C’est la vie; at least he was charming and we had a lot of fun’(p. 161).

There are, I think, a couple of troubling things about Sumner’s versionof the information requirement. First, the list theorist can agree that wealways have the alternative of ‘accepting the good times and moving on.’But she also can add that nonetheless, the change that results in our livesamounts to ‘moving on’ rather than simply an evaluatively neutral change,since what we are doing is moving from a condition in which our lives weregoing badly for us to one in which they are going better. We move on fromthe bad, not from the ‘Ah, it was OK after all.’ This is something avoluntarist can say though only if we come to regard the earlier phase ofour lives with some significant disfavor. But then it is difficult to see howwe could at the same time put ourselves overall in an ‘accepting the goodtimes’ frame of mind. In general, voluntarist theories of wellbeing seem toface similar difficulties as voluntarist theories of moral obligation, such asdivine command theory. If what is good for us ultimately depends just onwhat we value, it is hard to see how we could rationalize our valuations sothat our choices are anything other than arbitrary.

But there is a deeper difficulty here. Sumner maintains that our claims tohappiness reflect our own priorities or values only if we are not under someillusion or deception. That’s supposed to be why our claims to happinessunder them are suspect. But this principle is false. Some claims to lifesatisfaction under some forms of deception or illusion can indeed reflectour underlying values or priorities, namely just whenever they includeprograms of self-deception or willful ignorance. If so, there are forms ofdeception and illusion not possibly controlled for by Sumner’s criterion ofadequate information (again, whatever amount ‘would make a differenceto a subject’s affective response to her life, given her priorities’). For theperson who is willfully self-deceived or ignorant, all the relevant informa-tion makes no difference, is irrelevant.

Think again of the cuckquean. After ten years of relatively unhappymarriage, her husband leaves her for another woman. After some time, shecomes clearly to see the causes of their unhappiness and her husband’sfaithlessness, and knows that there’s really no future for them now. Nev-ertheless, she is absolutely horrified by the possibility of living out the restof her life single. She suppresses the bitterness of it all and tries desperatelyfor years to get him to come back. She implores him, ‘Remember howhappy we were then and all the good times we had together?’



She is indeed accepting the good times, but is not moving on and in myopinion not better off. The way her life was going was a misfortune for her,whatever she can get herself to believe about it, and she would be better offsquarely facing this fact and getting down to the difficult work of rebuild-ing herself and her life. Sumner cannot say any of these things. Rather, ashe says in a footnote, his commitment to subjectivism forces him to claimthat, ‘the extent to which the illusoriness of experience matters for anindividual’s wellbeing . . . depends on the extent to which she decides (orwould decide) to make it matter’ (p. 161, fn. 25). But then this is noinformation requirement at all. Selective bias is just another source ofmisinformation an information requirement should control for. To dotheir job, information requirements must limit the authority of the indi-vidual’s own claims to wellbeing by setting a standard independent of theattitudes grounding those claims. Since Sumner’s information conditionleaves authority with the preferences of the subject, his view is in effect leftwith no information requirement at all.

We could fix this problem for Sumner by restating the informationrequirement to exclude willful ignorance or self-deception. But this isreally no help, since the objection strikes not at their absence in theaccount, but at the props he could use to support their inclusion. Thoseprops maintain that self-deception and so on undermine the authority ofone’s life satisfaction claims since judgments under those conditions donot reflect one’s priorities. But they can and sometimes do. In locatingauthority with the individual, Sumner’s information requirement tells usthat a person’s claims to happiness are mistaken when they are due to whatshe takes to be misinformation, not when they are due to misinformation.Such a condition cannot then control for the influence of selective bias orperverse values in our claims to happiness.

Sumner could further respond that endorsements expressed in suchconditions are either insincere or not fully considered, but in order to beauthentic, they must be sincere and considered.10 This response worksrelative to insincerity since insincere judgments indeed do not reflect ourpriorities. However, a sincerity requirement is not an information require-ment and people like the cuckquean might be dead serious when they claimto be satisfied maintaining relationships like hers. Moreover, the responsedoes not clearly work relative to less than fully considered judgments,since lack of consideration, like self-deception, may well reflect a subject’spriorities. If so, then again the possible justification for the response hasvanished.

I conclude that Sumner’s subjectivist reduction of life’s going well tohow we are doing is not very successful. To give plausible answers aboutwelfare under conditions of ignorance, it needs an information require-ment. But as Sumner himself seems to see, the strongest version compat-ible with his theory is too weak. It is still possible that Sumner’s view could



be fixed, or that some other similar view might. But even if none does, thefailure of hedonism and Sumnerian subjectivism to explain life’s going wellin terms of our doing well does not yet establish the objectivity of wellbe-ing. Even if life’s going well and our doing well were irreducibly differentfundamental concerns, it may be that only our doing well is a concern ofwellbeing. I turn now to arguments for that claim.

6. A principled argument for wellbeing’s subjectivity

It is possible that, though doing well and life’s going well are differentmatters, life’s going well is not a fundamental notion of wellbeing. ThoughSumner does not take himself to be arguing for this claim, some claims hemakes are directly relevant to it. In a few pieces of writing, he maintainsthat objective theories must not only fail, but that they are not eventheories of wellbeing at all (1992, 1996, 1999). He writes:

Welfare assessments concern . . . how well [life] is going for the individual whose life it is. Thisrelativization . . . to the proprietor of the life in question is one of the deepest features of thelanguage of welfare: however valuable something may be in itself, it can promote mywell-being only if it is also good of beneficial for me. Since an account of the nature of welfareis descriptively adequate only if it is faithful to our ordinary concept, any serious contendermust at least preserve the subject-relativity which is definitive of prudential value. If it cannotmanage this much then, though it may be a plausible rendering of some other dimension ofvalue, it is not a theory about welfare at all (1996, p. 20; emphasis original).

Sumner proceeds then to argue that various objective theories, includingbasic needs theories and perfectionist theories fail to meet this standard ofadequacy. On the other hand, since voluntarist theories maintain that athing can benefit us only if we are favorably inclined toward it, they (sup-posedly) guarantee the subject-relative character of wellbeing, how somethings are goods for us. They are good for us because they are good to us.

Sumner’s argument for this view is unconvincing. Wellbeing’s goodnessfor its possessor is central to our ordinary concept of it, and so representsa standard of descriptive adequacy. But as I have been arguing, oneordinary concept of wellbeing has it that some things just do make ourlives go well for us, and we think they do because of that fact. If so, atheory-neutral conception of its subject-relativity must not assume at theoutset that nothing can promote our wellbeing independently of our atti-tudes. Since Sumner’s argument seems to do this, we need more evidencethan common sense provides for thinking that only subjectivism couldexplain subject-relativity. As it turns out, Shelley Kagan has articulated anargument that appears to fill this need (1992, 1994).

Kagan begins by revisiting the well-known observation that desire theo-ries, which are commonly favored alternatives to hedonism, permit seem-



ingly irrelevant states of the world to partly constitute our wellbeing. Thestock example concerns a man (call him Roberts) who meets a stranger ona train whom he wishes well in his life. If having the world match our desiresfor it is good for us, it would follow that how well things go for Robertspartly depends on how well they go for the stranger. This is absurd and it istempting to conclude that no states outside of a person – supposing we candraw a metaphysical boundary separating persons from states of the world– can constitute wellbeing. A person’s wellbeing is a state of that person, soonly changes in that person, and specifically of her non-relational proper-ties, can directly affect her wellbeing. This is the conclusion Kagan is drawnto, which in turn functions as a premise in the following argument seemingto show that wellbeing does not concern how things go for us:

1. Direct, unmediated changes in wellbeing must involve changes inintrinsic (non-relational) properties of the person.

2. A person is a body and a mind.3. Therefore, changes in wellbeing must involve changes in a person’s

intrinsic physical or mental properties.4. But how things go for us, such as how successful we are, is not solely

constituted by intrinsic states of our bodily or mental states5. Therefore how well things go for us cannot directly affect or com-

prise our wellbeing.

This argument does not yet fully support subjectivism. As Kagan pointsout, since we are bodies as well as minds, it entails that bodily states bythemselves could constitute wellbeing independently of any of their psy-chological effects (1992, p. 187). Yet this leaves it open for the subjectivistto argue that, in fact, no non-mental bodily change does affect wellbeing.Though he does not argue for it, Kagan finds this a relatively plausibleclaim. To borrow an argument for it from Thomas Hurka, being well offis intrinsically valuable, but so far as the condition of our bodies is con-cerned, what seems to matter is that we are able to use them to pursue ourends, experience the world, and so on (2002). If so, Premise 2 could bereplaced with 2*, or the claim that ‘A person is a mind’, in the sense ofbeing a collection of mental states. Along with corresponding changes to3 and 4, Kagan then takes the argument to show that wellbeing is subjec-tive in a psychologistic sense – it is constituted solely by non-relationalmental states of experiencing subjects. Since that is so, it does not directlyconcern states of a person’s life.

This line of reasoning is more persuasive than Sumner’s. It is at least notobviously question begging. Nevertheless the argument is, I’ll now argue,overall unconvincing for the following reasons. First, it provides nosupport whatsoever for voluntarism. So even if sound, wellbeing is sub-jective only in the sense that it is constituted by certain mental states, and



not in the sense of being ultimately dependent upon our values. Second,Premise 2* is quite possibly false and definitely ambiguous in a waythreatening the argument’s validity. Third, Premise 1 is almost certainlyfalse. Finally, in being moved to endorse Premise 1, Kagan overlooks thefact that list theories do not suffer the problem of irrelevant desires – thewhole discussion is misconceived because it is a mistake to think that onlypsychologism is invulnerable to it.

Though it is no evidence of error in Kagan’s argument, it is notable thatit does not support the sort of voluntarism Sumner favors. Indeed Kagan’sdiscussion suggests that the authentic happiness theory suffers an analo-gous difficulty to the problem of irrelevant desires. It might well increaseRoberts’s life satisfaction 50 years later to learn that the stranger didindeed live well, but this seems irrelevant to how well off Roberts is. Or Imight be very, very dissatisfied to be a citizen of a country that I see asviolating the rights of others, but it is they, not I, who are harmed by this.In any case, because desires for states of the world or satisfaction with lifeconditions are relational mental states, they are not the sort to whichKagan’s argument reduces wellbeing. Therefore, if it is sound, wellbeing issubjective only in the psychologistic sense, and not in the sense that what’sgood for us depends finally on our concerns.

But the argument is dubiously sound anyway. Premise 2* is quite pos-sibly false because it excludes bodily states, which many thinkers, includ-ing heavyweights like Peter Strawson (1959), David Wiggins (1980), andJudith Jarvis Thomson (2008) have argued belong to personhood. There isinsufficient space here to establish who is right in this debate and I settleprimarily for flagging the controversy, with one added observation. Indiscussions of moral agency, persons are often defined in terms of qualitiesthat may or may not entail physical properties, such as a capacity forrationality (Kant, 1999). But moral agency is not the sense of personhoodrelevant here, since some humans, such as the severely cognitivelyimpaired, probably lack moral agency but have a welfare. That may ofcourse be because of other mental capacities they have, like the capacityfor pain and pleasure. But then the reasons for limiting our assessment oftheir wellbeing to our assessment of their mental states must turn on thesort of evaluative judgment Hurka deploys, not simply on an evaluativelyneutral metaphysics separating states of persons from states of the world.Anyhow it is unclear whether such a separation is possible since variousmental features, such as memories or cognitions, may in fact be partlyconstituted by states of the world (Clark and Chalmers, 1998). So even ifpersons are minds, wellbeing could possibly be constituted partly by prop-erties relating them to states of the world.

Whether any of this is correct, Premise 1, to which Kagan himselfprovides an apparent counterexample (1992), is even less obviously true.The intrinsic value of an unused, mint condition classic car, for instance,



might change precisely because of its unchanged condition. If so, changinga thing’s relationship to the world can alter its intrinsic value. Kaganmaintains that this counterexample is merely apparent, however, since itplays on ambiguity about the sense in which the car is intrinsically valu-able. If ‘intrinsically valuable’ means ‘worth wanting for its own sake’,then, since this might simply depend on our values or priorities, there is nodifficulty imaging that changes in its relational properties can producechanges in its intrinsic value. If something’s being old is valuable to us,then its getting older can enhance its desirability. On the other hand, if‘intrinsically valuable’ means ‘valuable in itself’ (call this inherent value),then for his part, Kagan finds Premise 1 entirely plausible. How could thevalue inhering in something precisely in virtue of the thing that it is changeunless the thing itself changes? If it could not, and if our wellbeing isinherently valuable, then it seems that changes in how well off we are couldbe grounded only in changes in our intrinsic properties.

But there is at least one confusion here. First, it may be true that theinherent value of something could change only if the thing itself changes.But then what seems to follow is that changes of our intrinsic propertiesground changes in our value as persons, not necessarily changes in thevalue of our wellbeing. Second, it is difficult to understand the very ideathat wellbeing is inherently valuable without conceptualizing it in terms ofsome further good, such as pleasure or genuine friendship or accomplish-ment, in which its value inheres. But then, changes in how well off we aredepend quite simply on changes in the extent to which those values arerealized in our lives. Some of these values, such as pleasure, may dependon metaphysical features of us and some may not. But arguably theirrelevance of some things to our wellbeing, such as the success or failureof a kind stranger’s life, is owing simply to the fact that either they are notvalues for us or do not enter into our lives.

And this gets us back to the worry with which Kagan is moved to openthis discussion. The worry is that theories extending the constituents ofwellbeing out beyond the metaphysical boundaries of the person willpermit irrelevant states of the world to partly constitute wellbeing. Theobjectivist can make two points in reply. First, this problem does not arisefor list theory, since it need not count things like desire satisfaction amongthe goods for us. Griffin argues that a plausible list, such as his own,simply won’t (1999, p. 284). Suppose, he argues, I have a brother I wantcured of a debilitating illness. He moves to some remote place in search ofa cure, and indeed is cured. On a plausible list account this will notenhance my wellbeing since,

As I do not hear about the cure, I can get no pleasure from it (an item on the list). As I hadno hand in it, it is no accomplishment of mine (another item on the list). And so on (Griffin,1999, p. 284).



Since not all forms of objectivism must extend the boundaries of wellbeingout to states of the world irrelevant to our condition, this worry fails tomotivate Premise 1.

Second, joining Kagan in assuming that states of our relational prop-erties cannot alter our wellbeing should provoke an opposite worry. If theborders of wellbeing are thought to encompass only the contents of ourminds, wellbeing is rendered internally invulnerable to any changes what-soever in the world outside our minds. If so, psychologism delivers not justhedonism, but stoicism. Since only states of our minds can affect wellbe-ing, all that matters for wellbeing is getting our minds in the right state,whatever the state of our bodies or our affairs. But stoicism is widelyrejected precisely because we are not invulnerable to the vicissitudes of theworld. Though Aristotle defines happiness as the soul’s activity expressingvirtue, he nonetheless maintains that a completely good life also requiresluck, ‘For life includes many reversals of fortune, good and bad, and themost prosperous person may fall into a terrible disaster’ (1985, p. 23). If wedeny the vulnerability of wellbeing to the world outside our minds, weinevitably accept a view according to which even the lowliest slave can beperfectly well off, so long as he is happy or undisturbed by his situation.This is not plausible. Even a happy slave is living a slave’s life.

I conclude that Kagan’s argument is unsuccessful. It lacks impetus andcrucial steps are not well supported. Even were it true that wellbeingsupervenes only on states of persons, it is hardly clear that it does nottherefore supervene on any physical or relational properties, includingthose constituting states of the world. And because the class of entitieshaving a welfare is wider than the class of persons, assessing these issuesreturns us to the controversial value claims, such as Hurka’s, that are atthe heart of the debate over the constitutive elements of wellbeing. I closewith some comments on this.

7. Conclusion

I have argued that there are two distinct aspects of wellbeing, doing welland life’s going well, and that two prominent subjective views do notadequately account for the goods of the second in terms of the first. I havesuggested that this is because how things go for us is fundamental andpartly constituted by non-psychological objective intrinsic goods, so nosubjective theory could be expected to adequately account for them. Thisis not to say that the goods picked out by various subjective theories arenot intrinsic goods. Happiness certainly matters and is subjective insofaras it about our psychological condition and essentially involves positiveaffective dispositions, pleasurable consciousness, or life satisfaction. Well-being might be objective, but it has subjective components, too.



But it is objective. Some things are good for us, whatever we happen tothink about them and there’s more to living well than happiness. Thoughit has not been my goal to defend any particular list of goods, I have hereand there suggested candidates for one. Let me close by compiling them.Apart from happiness, we need a minimum of autonomy, both in the senseof enjoying a liberal social environment and in the sense of generallytaking charge of our lives ourselves. But genuine and lasting intimaterelationships matter, too, along with accomplishment in the pursuit ofworthwhile goals.11 These latter two things especially, as Griffin might say,give life weight and point (1999, p. 24). Each commonly has instrumentalvalue for other goods, but this relation is far from certain in all circum-stances. It may sometimes make us happier to abandon them in favor ofmore trivial goals. But we aren’t clearly thereby better off. Because each ofthese directly enhances the quality of our lives, the trick is balancing themin our pursuits so that we can live happy and worthwhile lives.12

Teacher EducationMichigan State University

NOTES

1 Shelley Kagan articulates a similar set of distinctions in 1992, pp. 187–8.2 In fact, I borrow the term ‘fundamental notion’ from Griffin, 1999, p. 284.3 This is not to deny that there are clear contexts in which ‘doing well/badly’ is extra-

psychological. After a physical exam, a person might say to his doctor, ‘How am I doing?’and clearly he is not asking the doctor to tell him about his mental state. ‘Doing well’ alsooften refers to the quality of our actions. Nevertheless, much ‘doing well’ talk primarilyconcerns our psychology and part of the case I am trying to make is for greater clarity aboutthe relationship of this language to discourse about life’s going well, given the different rolesthey might play in wellbeing.

4 Other authors, including self-styled objectivists and subjectivists alike, have noticed thisfact about objective list theories. For subjectivist notice, see Sobel, 1997, pp. 502–3 and foran objectivist, see Arneson, 1999, pp. 140–2.

5 I omit desire theory for a few reasons. One is that recent philosophical work seems moreand more to focus on some version of hedonism or life satisfaction theory. See for instanceHaybron, 2008. Another is that Sumner, whose ideal of subjectivism is in question here,denies that desire theory can be worked out in a satisfactory way as a subjective theory (seeSumner, 1996, Chapter 5).

6 Feldman (2002) accepts that there might be some experiences sharing a common pleas-ant quality. He also claims that the contribution of attitudinal pleasures to our total wellbe-ing must be weighed depending on factors such as the worthiness of their objects, not justintensity and duration. Hence, Feldman’s preferred theory integrates objective components.

7 There are other problems, too. One is that it is unclear why the satisfaction of our desirefor anything at all should not directly promote wellbeing if what’s good for us is desiredconsciousness. See discussions in Dorsey, 2011; Griffin, 1986. I omit pursuing these difficul-ties because they are less clearly relevant to the objectivity issue.



8 But see Kawall, 1999 for an excellent extended discussion of ‘experience machine’ typearguments.

9 Haybron discusses these issues in various sections of Part II in Haybron, 2008.10 These are conditions Sumner considers separately (see 1996, pp. 153–5).11 For a similar but slightly different list, see Griffin, 1996, Chapter 2, pp. 29–30.12 I am grateful to Grant Dowell, Tamra Frei, Hilde Lindemann, Jim Nelson, and an

anonymous referee for valuable feedback on earlier drafts of this article.

REFERENCES

Alston, W. P. (1964). Pleasure,’ in P. Edwards (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. NewYork: Macmillan.

Aristotle. (1985). Nichomachean Ethics, T. Irwin, trans. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett PublishingCo.

Arneson, R. (1999). ‘Human Flourishing Versus Desire Satisfaction,’ in E. F. Paul, F. D.Miller Jr, and J. Paul (eds) Human Flourishing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bentham, J. (1948). The Principles of Morals and Legislation. New York: Hafner.Brandt, R. (1979). A Theory of the Good and the Right. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Clark, A. and Chalmers, D. J. (1998). ‘The Extended Mind,’ Analysis 58(1), pp. 7–19.Crisp, R. (2008). ‘Well-Being,’ in E. N. Zalta (ed.) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Retrieved 24 February 2012, from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/well-being/Dorsey, D. (2011). ‘The Hedonist’s Dilemma,’ Journal of Moral Philosophy: An International

Journal of Moral, Political and Legal Philosophy 8(2), pp. 173–196.Feldman, F. (2002). ‘The Good Life: A Defense of Attitudinal Hedonism,’ Philosophy and

Phenomenological Research 65, pp. 604–628.Griffin, J. (1986). Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement, and Moral Importance. Oxford:

Clarendon Press.Griffin, J. (1996). Value Judgment. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Griffin, J. (1999). ‘Replies,’ in R. Crisp and B. Hooker (eds) Well-Being and Morality: Essays

in Honor of James Griffin. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Haybron, D. M. (2008). The Pursuit of Unhappiness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Heathwood, C. (2006). ‘Desire Satisfactionism and Hedonism,’ Philosophical Studies: An

International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition 128(3), pp. 539–563.Hurka, T. (2002). ‘Capability, Functioning, and Perfectionism,’ in L. Jost (ed.) Eudaimonia

and Well-Being: Ancient and Modern Conceptions. Kenowa, BC: Academic Printing andPublishing, pp. 137–162.

Kagan, S. (1992). ‘The Limits of Well-Being,’ E. F. Paul, F. D. Miller Jr and J. Paul (eds)The Good Life and the Human Good. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kagan, S. (1994). ‘Me and My Life,’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 94, pp. 309–324.Kant, I. (1999). ‘Critique of Practical Reason,’ in M. J. Gregor (ed.) Practical Philosophy.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Katz, L. (2009). ‘Pleasure,’ in E. N. Zalta (ed.) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Retrieved 24 February from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2009/entries/pleasure/Kawall, J. (1999). ‘The Experience Machine and Mental State Theories of Well-being,’ The

Journal of Value Enquiry 33, pp. 381–387.Layard, R. (2005). Happiness: Lessons from a New Science. New York: Penguin Press.Mill, J. S. (1963). The Six Great Humanistic Essays of John Stuart Mill, W. Levy, ed. New

York: Washington Square Press.Mill, J. S. (1978). On Liberty. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.



Nagel, T. (1979). Mortal Questions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Nozick, R. (1974). Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books.Scanlon, T. (1998). What We Owe to Each Other. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Sen, A. (1987). On Ethics and Economics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Sidgwick, H. (1981). The Methods of Ethics (7th ed.). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing

Co.Sobel, D. ‘On the Subjectivity of Welfare,’ Ethics 107(3), pp. 501–508.Sprigge, T. (1988). The Rational Foundations of Ethics. New York: Routledge.Strawson, P. F. (1959). Individuals. London: Methuen.Sumner, L. W. (1992). ‘Two Theories of the Good,’ in E. F. Paul, F. D. Miller Jr and J. Paul

(eds.) The Good Life and the Human Good. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Sumner, L. W. (1996). Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Sumner, L. W. (1999). ‘Something in Between,’ in R. Crisp and B. Hooker (eds) Well-Being

and Morality: Essays in Honor of James Griffin. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Thomson, J. J. (2008). ‘People and Their Bodies,’ in T. Sider, J. Hawthorne, and D. W.

Zimmerman (eds) Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics. Oxford: Blackwell.Velleman, J. D. (1991). ‘Well-Being and Time,’ Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 72, pp. 48–77.Wiggins, D. (1980). Sameness and Substance. Oxford: Blackwell.



The Objectivity of Wellbeing

Documents