Papers by Eden Lin
Prudential value is the kind of value that something has when it is good for someone, in the sens... more Prudential value is the kind of value that something has when it is good for someone, in the sense that is conceptually tied to welfare, well-being, and self-interest. Impersonal value is the kind of value that something has when it is not (or not merely) good for someone or in relation to someone but good simply, absolutely, or “from the point of view of the universe.” Most of the philosophers who work on prudential value and well-being have long rejected G. E. Moore’s position that the concept of prudential value can be analyzed in terms of that of impersonal value and that it is unintelligible if it is not so analyzed. But perhaps because they find the objections to that position so obvious, few of them have bothered arguing against it. This leaves them vulnerable to some recent arguments from Kris McDaniel and Thomas Hurka, who attempt to answer the most natural objections to it and to provide it with a better defense than was given by Moore. My aim in this paper is to answer these arguments and to make a more comprehensive case than has thus far been made for rejecting the Moorean position.
It is plausible that if your life does not contain a sufficiently favorable balance of pleasure o... more It is plausible that if your life does not contain a sufficiently favorable balance of pleasure over pain, then you are not very high in welfare, no matter what else your life is like. It might be thought that pluralistic theories of welfare cannot accommodate this. Because any pluralistic theory will posit at least one basic good distinct from pleasure, it seems that any such theory will imply that you can be very high in welfare in virtue of having enough of this basic good, no matter how bad your life is in hedonic terms. In this paper, I defend pluralistic theories against this objection. After responding to the simplest version of the objection, I present and answer increasingly sophisticated versions of it. Along the way, I also explore some issues concerning the structure of pluralistic theories.
We commonly make judgments about people’s well-being, welfare, or quality of life: how well or ba... more We commonly make judgments about people’s well-being, welfare, or quality of life: how well or badly things are going for them, or how good or bad their lives or parts thereof are on balance—not in some impersonal or absolute sense, but for them. Many of these judgments assume that things can go well or badly for a person at particular times and get better or worse for her over time: a person’s well-being can, for example, decrease with the onset of an illness and increase when she recovers, so that things go worse for her during the illness than they do before or after. Because well-being is a temporal phenomenon, philosophical theories of it should do more than explain what makes entire lives go well for the people living them. They should also explain (i) in virtue of what people have the amounts of well-being that they do at particular times and (ii) how a person’s lifetime amount of well-being is related to how well off she is at different times. I will consider how the main theories of well-being might approach the first task before turning, near the end of the article, to the second.
Theories of well-being purport to identify the features of lives, and of intervals within lives, ... more Theories of well-being purport to identify the features of lives, and of intervals within lives, in virtue of which some people are high in well-being and others are low in well-being. They also purport to identify the properties that make some events or states of affairs good for a person and other events or states of affairs bad for a person. This article surveys some of the main theories of well-being, with an emphasis on work published since the turn of the century.
Judgments about how well things are going for people during particular periods of time, and about... more Judgments about how well things are going for people during particular periods of time, and about how well people’s entire lives have gone or will go, are ubiquitous in ordinary life. Those judgments are about well-being—or, equivalently, welfare or quality of life. This article examines the concept of well-being and the related concepts of prudential value and disvalue (i.e., goodness or badness for someone). It distinguishes these concepts from ones with which they might be conflated, exhibits some of the roles they play in ethical thought, and examines some attempts to analyze or define them.
According to the experience requirement on well-being, differences in subjects’ levels of welfare... more According to the experience requirement on well-being, differences in subjects’ levels of welfare or well-being require differences in the phenomenology of their experiences. I explain why the two existing arguments for this requirement are not successful. Then, I introduce a more promising argument for it: that unless we accept the requirement, we cannot plausibly explain why only sentient beings are welfare subjects. I argue, however, that because the right kind of theory of well-being can plausibly account for that apparent fact about welfare subjects even if the requirement is false, this argument does not succeed. I tentatively conclude that no compelling case can be made for the requirement.
On phenomenological theories of pleasure, what makes an experience a pleasure is something about ... more On phenomenological theories of pleasure, what makes an experience a pleasure is something about what it is like or the way it feels: pleasures are pleasures in virtue of possessing a certain kind of phenomenology. On attitudinal theories, what makes an experience a pleasure is something about its relationship to the favorable attitudes of the subject who is having that experience: a particular experience is a pleasure in virtue of being, say, liked or desired by the subject who is having it, or in virtue of consisting of that subject’s liking or desiring something else. I advance the debate between these theories in two ways. First, I argue that the main objection to phenomenological theories, the heterogeneity problem, is not compelling. While others have argued for this before, I identify an especially serious version of this problem that resists existing solutions, and I explain why even this version of the problem does not undermine phenomenological theories. Second, I argue that a grand reconciliation can be effected between the two types of theory: it can be true both that pleasures are pleasures in virtue of how they feel and that they are pleasures in virtue of how they are related to their subjects’ favorable attitudes, so long as the attitudes that are constitutively related to pleasures are ones that feel a certain way. Hybrid views of this sort have significant advantages over pure attitudinal or phenomenological views.
Extant discussions of subjectivism about reasons for action have concentrated on presentist versi... more Extant discussions of subjectivism about reasons for action have concentrated on presentist versions of the theory, on which reasons for present actions are grounded in present desires. In this paper, I motivate and investigate the prospects of futurist subjectivism, on which reasons for present actions are grounded in present or future desires. Futurist subjectivism promises to answer Parfit’s Agony Argument, and it is motivated by natural extensions of some of the considerations that support subjectivism in general. However, it faces a problem: because which desires I will have in the future can depend on what I do now, it must tell us which of my possible future desires give me reasons to promote their satisfaction. I argue that the most natural solutions to this problem are unsatisfactory: they either fail to answer the Agony Argument or have unacceptable implications elsewhere. Then, I propose a more promising solution. Moreover, I argue that a closely analogous problem arises for an important class of idealizing subjectivist views and that this problem admits of a similar solution.
It is commonly assumed that subjectivists about welfare must claim that the favorable attitudes w... more It is commonly assumed that subjectivists about welfare must claim that the favorable attitudes whose satisfaction is relevant to your well-being are those that you would have in idealized conditions (e.g., ones in which you are fully informed and rational). I argue that this assumption is false. I introduce a non-idealizing subjectivist view, Same World Subjectivism, and I argue that it accommodates the two main rationales for idealizing that can be found in the literature: those given by Peter Railton and David Sobel. I also explain why a recent argument from Dale Dorsey fails to show that subjectivists must idealize. Because Same World Subjectivism is a plausible, non-idealizing view that avoids the problems that idealizing is intended to circumvent, subjectivists about welfare needn’t idealize.
Many believe that normative reasons for action are necessarily connected with the promotion of ce... more Many believe that normative reasons for action are necessarily connected with the promotion of certain states of affairs: on Humean views, for example, there is a reason for you to do something if and only if it would promote the object of one of your desires. But although promotion is widely invoked in discussions of reasons, its nature is a matter of controversy. I propose a simple account: to promote a state of affairs is to make it more likely to obtain than it previously was. I argue that this view has been unfairly neglected, that it avoids serious problems faced by many other views, and that it is a contender for the correct theory of promotion.
We are not the only entities that are capable of well-being. Besides cognitively typical human ad... more We are not the only entities that are capable of well-being. Besides cognitively typical human adults, many other entities can fare well or poorly: seriously cognitively disabled adults, children, infants, non-human animals of various kinds, and perhaps even some plants. Invariabilism is the view that the same theory of welfare is true of every welfare subject. Variabilism is the view that invariabilism is false. In light of how many welfare subjects there are and how greatly they differ in their natures and capacities, it is natural to suppose that variabilism is true. I argue that these considerations do not support variabilism, and indeed, that we should accept invariabilism. As I explain, this has important implications: it eliminates many of the going theories of welfare while making some of the remaining ones more attractive.
Desire-satisfaction theories of welfare must answer the timing question: when do you benefit from... more Desire-satisfaction theories of welfare must answer the timing question: when do you benefit from the satisfaction of one of your desires? There are three existing views about this: the Time of Desire view, on which you benefit at just those times when you have the desire; the Time of Object view, on which you benefit just when the object of your desire obtains; and Concurrentism, on which you benefit just when you have the desire and its object obtains. This paper introduces a new view, Asymmetrism, on which you sometimes benefit at the time of desire and sometimes benefit at the time of object. On this view, if the time at which you have a desire is later than the time at which its object obtains, then you benefit at the time of the desire. On the other hand, if the time of object is later than the time of desire, then you benefit at the time of object. Three arguments are given for the conclusion that Asymmetrism is superior to the Time of Desire and Time of Object views. It is argued that Asymmetrism and Concurrentism are the most credible answers to the timing question.
It has become commonplace to distinguish enumerative theories of welfare (which tell us which thi... more It has become commonplace to distinguish enumerative theories of welfare (which tell us which things are good for us) from explanatory ones (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 merely enumerative (i.e., enumerative but not explanatory), desire satisfactionism is merely explanatory (i.e., explanatory but not enumerative). In this paper, I argue that this is mistaken. When properly understood, every major theory of welfare is both enumerative and explanatory. Every such theory purports to enumerate the kinds of fact that are good for us, as well as the properties in virtue of which any particular fact that is good for us has that status. Thus, every such theory purports to explain why any particular fact that is good for us has that status.
Subjectivism about welfare is the view that something is basically good (bad) for you if and only... more Subjectivism about welfare is the view that something is basically good (bad) for you if and only if, and to the extent that, you have the right kind of favorable (disfavorable) 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.
The experience machine was traditionally thought to yield a decisive refutation of hedonism about... more The experience machine was traditionally thought to yield a decisive refutation of hedonism about welfare. In recent years, however, the tide has turned: a number of philosophers have argued not merely that the experience machine doesn't decisively rule out hedonism, but that it doesn't count against it at all. I argue for a moderate position between those two extremes: although the experience machine doesn't yield a knockdown argument against hedonism, it provides us with some reason to reject it. I also argue for a particular way of using the experience machine to argue against hedonism -- one that appeals directly to intuitions about the welfare values of experientially identical lives rather than to claims about what we value or claims about whether we would, or should, plug into the machine. The two issues are connected: the conviction that the experience machine leaves hedonism unscathed is partly due to neglect of the best way to use the experience machine.
A subjective list theory of well-being is one that accepts both pluralism (the view that there is... more A subjective list theory of well-being is one that accepts both pluralism (the view that there is more than one basic good) and subjectivism (the view, roughly, that every basic good involves our favourable attitudes). Such theories have been neglected in discussions of welfare. I argue that this is a mistake. I introduce a subjective list theory called disjunctive desire satisfactionism, and I argue that it is superior to two prominent monistic subjectivist views: desire satisfactionism and subjective desire satisfactionism. In the course of making this argument, I introduce a problem for desire satisfactionism: it cannot accommodate the fact that whenever someone experiences an attitudinal pleasure, his welfare is (other things equal) higher during the pleasure. Finally, I argue that any subjectivist about welfare should find disjunctive desire satisfactionism highly attractive.
I argue that the distinction between monism and pluralism about well-being should be understood i... more I argue that the distinction between monism and pluralism about well-being should be understood in terms of explanation: the monist affirms (but the pluralist denies) that whenever two particular things are basically good for you, the explanation of their basic goodness for you is the same. I then consider a number of arguments for monism and a number of arguments for pluralism.
The Humean Theory of Reasons says that there is a reason for an agent to perform a particular act... more The Humean Theory of Reasons says that there is a reason for an agent to perform a particular action only if her doing so would promote the satisfaction of one of her desires. It has traditionally been thought that Humeans must reject the commonsensical view that if it would be morally required or prudent for an agent to perform a certain action, then there is some reason for her to perform it. However, Mark Schroeder has argued that Humeans can accommodate this view. I argue that he is mistaken, even if we assume that the desire satisfaction theory of well-being is true.
Theories of well-being purport to identify the basic goods and bads whose presence in a person's ... more Theories of well-being purport to identify the basic goods and bads whose presence in a person's life determines how well she is faring. Monism is the view that there is only one basic good and one basic bad. Pluralism is the view that there is either more than one basic good or more than one basic bad. In this paper, I give an argument for pluralism that is general in the sense that it does not purport to identify any basic goods or bads. If I am right, then even if you cannot name a single basic good or bad, you can know that pluralism is true.
Discussions & Short Entries by Eden Lin
A 3,500-word entry for the International Encyclopedia of Ethics.
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Papers by Eden Lin
Discussions & Short Entries by Eden Lin