Well-Being

1. Well-Being Hedonism, Preferentism, and Objective List Theories

2. Well-Being If we want people to be better off we need an account of what better off is, i.e. an account of “well-being” • “Subjective Welfarism”: de gustibus • Hedonism: Pleasure alone is intrinsically valuable. • Preferentism: Preference-satisfaction alone is intrinsically valuable. • Objective List Theories: “perfectionism” • E.g. Nussbaum’s ‘Ten Essential Human Capabilities’ • Life, health, bodily integrity, senses/imagination/thought, emotions, practical reason, affiliation, other species, play, control over one’s political and material environment.

3. The Experience Machine Nozick worries about Hedonism

5. Preferentism • Hedonism seems plausible because most people desire pleasure but • According to Preferentism pleasure is good because and only to the extent that we desire it. Questions: • Which is it: we desire pleasure because it’s good or pleasure is good because (and to the extent that) we desire it? • Can we be made better off by states of affairs that don’t figure in experience? • Or by the satisfaction of desires we no longer have--or posthumously? If so, when are we made better or worse off? • ‘Commitment’ (Sen), voluntary self-sacrifice.

6. Is the satisfaction of any pleasure good?

7. Adaptive Preference Nussbaum rejects Preferentism in favor of an Objective List Theory

8. Martha Nussbaum • Divorced from Alan Nussbaum in 1987, Nussbaum embarked on a romantic liaison with AmartyaSen, the Indian-born Harvard scholar who won the 1998 Nobel Prize in economics and later moved to Cambridge University in England. • Nussbaum's romance with Sen was the second of three major relationships that demonstrate how tightly woven are her personal and professional worlds. Nussbaum's current partner, author and U. of C. law professor Cass Sunstein, to whom she recently became engaged, is, like Alan Nussbaum and Sen, an internationally known scholar. • Nussbaum, it could be argued, rarely dates below the genius level. • Update: Sunstein has since dumped Martha for a younger woman. • https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2002-09-29-0209290310-story.html

9. Nussbaum’s List: 10 Central Capabilities • Life: Being able to live to the end of a human live of normal length. • Bodily Health: adequate food, reproductive health, etc. • Bodily Integrity: security from assault, including sexual assault, domestic violence • Senses Imagination, and Thought: includes education, literacy, freedom of speech • Emotions: ability to have attachments to others • Practical Reason: ability to form a conception of the good, liberty of conscience • Affiliation: social interaction, empathy, social bases of self-respect • Other Species: ability to live with concern for animals, plants, and nature • Play: ability to ’laugh, play, to enjoy recreational activities’ • Control over one’s Environment: political participation, material security

10. ‘Capability’ and ‘Functioning’ • Functionings are states of ‘being and doing’  such as being well-nourished, having shelter. They should be distinguished from the commodities employed to achieve them (as ‘bicycling’ is distinguishable from ‘possessing a bike’). • Capability refers to the set of valuable functionings that a person has effective access to. Thus, a person’s capability represents the effective freedom of an individual to choose between different functioning combinations – between different kinds of life – that she has reason to value. • Nussbaum’s List distinguishes those capabilities that matter for formulating policy conducive to ‘flourishing’.

11. Beyond Preferentism • The List is selective: doesn’t include the capability of satisfying any preference that anyone might have, such as • Preference for masochistic asceticism, e.g. living on a pillar • Preference for being strung out on drugs • Why are items included on the list? • Nussbaum sometimes appeals to Aristotelian teleological notion of human nature, sometimes suggests that it’s what favorably situated people choose • Purpose: to provide guidelines for social policy--developed in UN focus group

12. The Centrality of the List • The List represents ‘an enabling core of whatever else human beings choose’ • ‘A habituated preference not to have an item on the list…will not count in the social chioce function, and the equally habituated preference to have these things will count.’ • Question: does anyone have a preference not to have a capability--as distinct either (1) not having an interest in the capability or (2) not caring to exercise it. • The List ‘does justice to the intrinsic value of the items it contains, by not subordinating them to something else, such as preference satisfaction

13. Virtues of the List vis-à-vis Preferentism • Stability • ‘People who once learn and experience these capabilities do not want to go back’ • Nussbaum claims that other preferences, in particular ‘deformed’ preferences are ’unstable’ • One may choose not to exercise capabilities on the list, e.g. women may ‘choose to return to a traditional life…but notice that this is a change in their mode of functioning, no in their level of political capability as citizens’--not instability in preference for the capability as such.

14. Does Preferentism canonize the status quo? • The case for Preferentism • Preference-satisfaction is not an inner state, e.g. pleasure or the absence of felt frustration • Though most people prefer pleasure and the absence of felt frustration • Even if someone is reconciled to their lot in life and psychologically ‘satisfied’ it does not follow that their preferences are satisfied. • Even if Jayamma, Vasanti, et. al. are reconciled to their lot in life and don’t feel frustration, their preferences are not satisfied. • What is ‘preference’ in the requisite sense, s.t. well-being can plausibly be understood as preference-satisfaction? And what isn’t it?...

15. Nussbaum’s Critique of Preferentism • Principle of Preference Autonomy: ‘in deciding what is good and what is bad for a given individual, the ultimate criterion can only be his own wants and his own preferences’. (Harsanyi) • Adaptive (‘Deformed’) Preference: preferences of individuals in deprived circumstances that are formed in response to their restricted options. • Nussbaum: ‘Embraced as a normative position subjective welfarism makes it impossible to conduct a radical critique of unjust institutions’.

16. ‘Deformed’ Preferences • Nussbaum describes poor women in the Global South who put up with lousy conditions. • Claims that they prefer these conditions because • They have low self-regard and ’deformed’ preferences as a consequence of adverse circumstances: their problem is psychological. • Against preferentism: they aren’t better off satisfying those deformed preferences. • Solution: preference improvement through consciousness raising.

17. Nussbaum’s Conclusion • Preference utilitarianism is politically reactionary: • ’Subjective welfarism holds that all existing preferences are on a par for political purposes... • People living in poor conditions because of unjust institutions who accept their lot prefer the conditions of their lives. • The preference utilitarian holds that people are better off having their preferences satisfied--whatever those preferences are, so... • ‘Embraced as a normative position, subjective welfarism makes it impossible to conduct a radical critique of unjust institutions’

18. Response to Nussbaum • Adaptive (‘deformed’) preference is possible but rare • E.g. Stockholm syndrome • The deprived individuals whose predicament Nussbaum describes do not prefer their lousy condition but are rational choosers making the best of a bad deal • Most would prefer alternatives that are not available to them that would, on the preferentist account, make them better of. • Preference utilitarianism therefore can provide a radical critique of unjust institutions: Nussbaum’s subjects are badly off because they are not getting what they want

19. Preferentism is not ‘the Desire Theory’ • Preferences are ranked so preferentism provides an acocunt of relative well-being • making sense of the relative ‘strength’ of desires is problematic so difficult to appeal to desire to explain ‘betterness’ or identify least-worst options • Preference is dispositional • ‘Desire’ ambiguous and, usually understood as an occurrent, ‘feely’, state or yearning, craving, etc. • We may prefer a state that we do not actively desire (yearn for, crave, feel frustrated for not getting)

20. Preference can’t be read off of choice • Well-Being • Note: we consider bundles of goods—choosing a bundle that includes x but not y doesn’t mean we preferx to yceteris paribus. • Satisfaction of ‘true’ (i.e. informed, rationally-considered) preferences rather than merely ‘manifest’ preferences (Harsanyi) • Decisions under uncertainty made considering (perceived) risk • Social improvement • What should be invested to change budget constraints???

21. Not all choices are free • When someone’s alternatives to choosing x are too lousy we say he was forced to do x , or couldn’t do otherwise. • Remember of discussion of coercion and exploitation? • Substantive question: when is are the alternatives too lousy: there are borderline cases, but also clear cases about which we agree.

22. ‘Commitent’: The Possibility of Altruism Not all free (rationally considered, informed) choices promote the agent’s well-beingor satisfy preferences. Sympathy materializes when one pursues one’s own self-interest but that self-interest is positively sensitive to the welfare of others. Commitment occurs when I recognize the goals of others...My modified goals will reflect, not self-interest, however enlarged, but rather “broader values” that bear on how others are to be treated. http://www.princeton.edu/~ppettit/papers/2005/Construing%20Sen%20on%20Commitment.pdf

23. Preferences are ranked • Desire is a binary relation holding on an agent and state of affairs or bundle of goods. • Preference is a ternary relation: where i prefers x to y, that is, where x is higher on i’s preference ranking than y, i is better off getting x than she would be getting y. • Not every state of affairs is desired, but every state of affairs is preferred--to some stage or other. • So preferentism must be understood as an account of betterness or relative well-being

24. Preference is dispositional • iprefers x: iwould choose x if it were available and… • Fox preferred the grapes all along! • Jayamma et. al. preferred better conditions even when they weren’t available. Fox’s Utility Function Grapes + no felt frustration >> 3 No grapes + no felt frustration >> 2 No grapes + felt frustration >> 1

25. Fox’s preferences are stable • I may prefer x to y even though I do not desire (i.e. yearn for, crave) x because, eg • The very idea of x hasn’t occurred to me • I don’t know what x is like • I judge (rightly or wrongly) that getting x isn’t feasible and engage in foxy self-deception or ‘character planning’ to avoid futile frustration • If I jump at x once I learn about it and what it’s like and recognize that getting it is feasible then I have preferred it to y all along. • Fox preferred grapes to mice, fungus, and carrion all along.

26. Life-Improvement and Life-Adjustment • We can avoid frustration by life-adjustment or by life-improvement: by changing ourselves to suppress our desires, or by changing the conditions of our lives to satisfy our desires. • Fox suppresses desire when grapes are unavailable • Preferentism explains why, ceteris paribus life improvement is better than life-adjustment • Even if I satisfy my preference to avoid felt frustration for not getting x, I still have the unsatisfied desire to get x.

27. Budget Constraint – Preference is not Choice • Preferences are ranked—and what we want may go beyond what we can get • Most people can’t get most things that are high on their preference rankings. • We can’t choose what we can’t get. • If well-being is understood as preference-satisfaction, we can’t understand preference as preference-revealed-in-choice The ethical question: should the menu be changed?

28. Should the Menu be Changed? • The social critic’s question is not whether people are getting what they prefer from the current menu but • Whether the menu should be expanded • So that people can get more of what they prefer • Arguably, Jayamma et al are badly off precisely because they are not getting what they want • Preferentism provides the most compelling rationale for a radical critique of unjust institutions because such institutions thwart preference-satisfaction!

29. The Least-Worst Option: Jayamma Jammaya’s Utility Function Better job + no feelings of outrage or frustration >> 3 Current lousy job + no feelings of outrage or frustration. >> 2 Current lousy job + feelings of outrage and frustration >> 1

30. Jayamma: A Rational Chooser • Nussbaum: ‘Jayamma seemed to lack not only the concept of herself as a person with rights that could be violated, but also the sense that what was happening to her was a wrong’ but no evidence for this. • Preferentists do not hold that we are obliged to satisfy this preference for least-worst options instead of preferences for states of affairs that are higher on their preference rankings, which are unattainable. • We hold that additional options should be available to them so that they can achieve results that are higher on their preference rankings and do not have to settle for the least-worst.

31. Another rational choice I’d sure as hell rather be a housewife than work at Walmart, sling hash at Mel’s Diner, or sit at a terminal inputting data. You can take your feminism and shove it. She may not prefer housewifingceteris paribus but the alternatives are worse.

35. Informed Preference • The preference whose satisfaction make us better off are “true” preferences, i.e. • Rationally considered • Informed • I know what’s on the menu • know what the items are like and the consequences of consuming them • Rational choice: I know the probability of getting the preferred outcome

36. Decisions Under Uncertainty: Playing It Safe Shooting the moon is too risky

37. Factual Error: Vasanti I’d rather have a roof over my head, even if my husband beat me, then be out here on the street begging. Vasanti’s Utility Function Home + no beatings >> 3 Home + occasional beatings >> 2 Begging in street, no beatings >> 1 Choosing a bundle that includes x over one that includes y doesn’t mean we prefer (or would choose) x over y ceteris paribus.

38. Vasanti: A Rational Chooser • Bundles of goods: A rational chooser may prefer x to y but nevertheless choose y + z over x + w because she is more averse to w than she is to y and cannot get x without w. • Informed preference: An individual prefers x to y only if she would choose x over y given all relevant information--and that is what Vasanti didn’t have. • Decisions under uncertainty: To assess our options we consider the way things go for others similarly situated and infer, reasonably that that is the way things will go for us.

39. Normative Error In 29 countries . . . one-third or more of men say that it can be acceptable for a husband to “beat his wife.” [And] . . . in 19 countries, one-third or more of women agree. . . . In Rwanda, 96 percent of women say the practice can be justified, according to the World Values Survey. (Aizenman 2015)

40. Women’s Responses to Survey • subjects were asked: “Sometimes a husband is annoyed or angered by things which his wife does. In your opinion, is a husband justified in hitting or beating his wife in the following situations?” and presented with a number of scenarios • Did they take this to be a normative question or a factual question about the local code of conduct? • Changing views: there’s evidence that women’s attitudes are changing dramatically in some places. In Nigeria, 44 percent of women said it was all right for a husband to beat his wife in 2003, but the figure dropped to 21 percent in 2013, according to the World Bank. In Benin, the drop was from 39 percent to 10 percent over a similar period. And in Haiti, the decline was from 11 percent to 3 percent. (Aizenman 2015)

41. Against ‘Preference Deformation’ • Against Nussbaum claims about ‘preference deformation’ • Nussbaum’s subjects are rational choosers--not victims of “preference deformation” • They lack • Information about available alternatives • Information about the probability of achieving their preferred outcomes • Inability to assume risk • Most of all: alternatives!

42. Stockholm Syndrome • During a 1973 bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden, several bank employees who were held hostage in the bank vault by career criminal Jan-Erik Olsson and a confederate became emotionally attached to their captors, rejected assistance from government officials, and even defended their captors after they had been freed.

43. Adaptive Preference Sometimes Happens • In a 2009 interview . . . Kristin Ehnmark, [one of the hostages,] explained: “It’s some kind of context you get into when all your values, the morals you have, change in some way.” . . . In one phone call from the bank’s vault to the country’s prime minister Olof Palme, Ehnmark begged to be allowed to leave the bank with the kidnappers. One of Olsson’s demands had been the delivery of a getaway car in which he planned to escape with the hostages. • After Olsson and his confederate, Clark Olofsson, were captured, Ehnmark and Olofsson met several times and their families became friends. • Stockholm hostages did not jump at the chance to escape: their preferences had changed--unlike Fox who jumped at the grapes once he had the chance

44. Andhra Pradesh • Nussbaum: ‘[In] Andhra Pradesh I talked with women who were severely malnourished, and whose village had no reliable clean water supply. Before the arrival of a government consciousness-raising program, these women apparently had no feeling of anger or protest about their physical situation. . . . • ‘Now their level of discontent has gone way up: they protest to the local government, asking for clean water, for electricity, for a health visitor. . . . • The consciousness- raising program has clearly challenged entrenched preferences and satisfactions, taking a normative approach based on an idea of good human functioning.’

45. And Sometimes It Doesn’t • Consciousness-raising? Or the provision of opportunities that weren’t earlier available? • Unlike the Stockholm hostages (and like Fox) the women of Andhra Pradesh jumped at their chance to get what they preferred all along.