Altruistic Eudaimonism and the Self-Absorption Objection

The Journal of Value Inquiry -     

Good Societies,Financial Inequality and Secrecy,and a Good Life: from Aristotle to Piketty

In this paper we show that for a dataset of 105 countries, four candidate objective indexes (Human Development Index (HDI), Weighted Index of Social Progress (WISP), Social Progress Index (SPI) and Sustainable Society Index (SSI)) and one subjective index (World Happiness Survey (WHS)) of at least aspects of the quality of life or human well-being have good convergent validity among themselves and expected statistically significant negative correlations with Gini measures of wealth and income, and a measure of political jurisdictions’ institutionalized financial secrecy (Financial Secrecy Scores (FSS)). A measure of offshore wealth as a fraction of GDP (FOW) showed only a couple significant correlations with one overall quality of life index (SSI). When we combined the four objective indexes to the subjective index to create overall measures of the quality of life (including Happy Life Years (HLY)), the correlations among the indexes increased. Most of the correlations increased again when we used Gini indexes to create wealth-equality overall quality of life indexes and these correlations were higher on average than those among income-equality overall quality of life indexes. Combining results using 21 quality of life/well-being indexes, we rank ordered 105 countries from best to worst. The top 10 in order were Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Australia, Finland, Netherlands, Slovakia, Belgium, Sweden and Denmark. This is the first time anyone has built the array of index options presented here based on a handful of originals. We offer them as another potential starting point for the next generation of researchers.

     

Eudaimonism,Virtue, and Self‐Sacrifice

This essay introduces some of the key topics at stake in the ongoing controversies about the place of eudaimonism in Christian ethics and theology. Whether and in what way a person should seek her or his own happiness and flourishing has been a central question in ethics for centuries. Here I summarize the contributions the essays in this focus issue make to that conversation, and conclude by briefly sketching a Neoplatonist approach to eudaimonism that may offer a way to build on the insights and concerns articulated in the focus essays.     

Happiness,Rationality, Autonomy and the Good Life

The paper starts with a general discussion of the concepts of happiness and the good life. I argue that there is a conceptual core of happiness which has to do with one’s life as a whole. I discuss affective and attitude or life satisfaction views of happiness and indicate problems faced by those views. I introduce my own view, the life plan view, which sees happiness as the ongoing realizing of global desires of the person. I argue that on such a view one’s life could be happy without a high level of rationality or a high level of autonomy; such rationality and autonomy are not built into the concept of happiness. So while happiness is a final value, and good for the person, it is not the only final value. Rationality and autonomy are also final values and, where they exist, are good as ends for the person, part of the good life.     

Christianity and Eudaimonia,Luck and Eudaimonism

I argue that Christians have at least two reasons to reject eudaimonism, interpreted as the view that attaining eudaimonia—or happiness—is what fulfills the moral life. First, I contend Christian conceptions of eudaimonia should encompass more than realized moral excellence and its requirements. Second, I claim Christians should construe the love at the heart of their moral life as fully realizable even if it is not evidently reciprocated. Both affirmations contradict eudaimonism by implying that eudaimonia depends on more than fulfilling the moral life—the former by rendering eudaimonia more subject to luck than eudaimonists can allow, the latter by depicting the moral life as less subject to luck than eudaimonists can accept. These affirmations also enable Christians to regard God’s love integral to eudaimonia apart from its role in realizing moral excellence and to deny all inability to attain eudaimonia manifests moral failure.     

The Integrity Objection,Reloaded

Abstract

Bernard Williams’ integrity objection poses a significant challenge to utilitarianism, which has largely been answered by utilitarians. This paper recasts the integrity objection to show that utilitarian agents could be committed to producing the overall best states of affairs and yet not positively act to bring them about. I introduce the ‘Moral Pinch Hitter’ – someone who performs actions at the bequest of another agent – to demonstrate that utilitarianism cannot distinguish between cases in which an agent maximizes utility by positively acting in response to her duty, and cases in which an agent fails morally by relying upon someone else to perform the obligatory act. The inability to distinguish among these cases establishes a new, reloaded integrity objection to utilitarianism: utilitarianism cannot explain why it would be wrong to have someone else make difficult moral decisions, and to act on those decisions, for me.     

Sport,Wholehearted Engagement and the Good Life

I present an account of the good life as one in which wholesale engagement in the social practices that human agents take up is the signature feature. I then argue that sport, because it is one of a select few human undertakings in which such full-blown action is the rule rather than the exception, is a paradigmatic example of such a good life. I close by claiming that equating the good life with wholehearted action is an especially promising way not only to appreciate the contribution sport makes to our lives but to legitimize that contribution to would-be detractors.     

The Standard Objection to the Standard Account

Philosophical Studies - What is the relation between a clay statue andthe lump of clay from which it is made? According to the defender of the standardaccount, the statue and the lump are...     

Actual Utility, The Objection from Impracticality, and the Move to Expected Utility

Utilitarians are attracted to the idea that an act is morally right iff it leads to the best outcome. But critics have pointed out that in many cases we cannot determine which of our alternatives in fact would lead to the best outcome. So we can’t use the classic principle to determine what we should do. It’s not “practical”; it’s not “action-guiding”. Some take this to be a serious objection to utilitarianism, since they think a moral theory ought to be practical and action-guiding. In response, some utilitarians propose to modify utilitarianism by replacing talk of actual utility with talk of expected utility. Others propose to leave the original utilitarian principle in place, but to combine it with a decision procedure involving expected utility. What all these philosophers have in common is this: they move toward expected utility in order to defend utilitarianism against the impracticality objection. My aim in this paper is to cast doubt on this way of replying to the objection. My central claim is that if utilitarians are worried about the impracticality objection, they should not turn to expected utility utilitarianism. That theory does not provide the basis for a cogent reply to the objection. Originally presented at the 2004 Bellingham Summer Philosophy Conference, Bellingham Washington, August 2, 2004, with comments by Gustaf Arrhenius and Elizabeth Harman. I am grateful to Arrhenius and Harman for their challenging criticism, as well as to Chris Heathwood, Michael Zimmerman, Owen McLeod, Elinor Mason, Eric Moore and other participants at the Bellingham Conference for comments and suggestions. In October, 2004 I discovered Mark Strasser’s ‘Actual Versus Probable Utilitarianism’. I see that in that paper Strasser anticipates a number of the points I make here.     

The Inference Objection to Evidence Cases

Philosophia - Chastain (1975) and Sawyer (2012), among others, claim that direct cognitive relations can be initiated in evidence cases. Direct cognitive relations will here include...     

The Good Life: A Defense of Attitudinal Hedonism

What makes a life go well for the one who lives it? Hedonists hold that pleasure enhances the value of a life; pain diminishes it. Hedonism has been subjected to a number of objections. Some are (a) based on the claim that hedonism is a form of “mental statism”. Others are (b) based on the claim that some pleasures are base or degrading. Yet others are (c) based on the claim that when a bad person enjoys a pleasure, his receipt of that pleasure seem not to make the world better. It is important to keep in mind that hedonism is a theory about the value of a person's life for the person who lives it, and not for the world or for others. It is also important to distinguish between sensory hedonism and attitudinal hedonism. “Desert Adjusted Intrinsic Attitudinal Hedonism” appears to be immune to objections (a) and (b). A variant appears to be immune to all of them. Perhaps it is the answer to the question about the value of a life.