Article summary of Well-being in Normative ethics by Kagan. - Chapter

What is this article about?

This is an explanation of well-being from the view of normative ethics. It tries to answer the question of what exactly "well-being" is and what it means for someone's life to go better or worse. Hedonism will be explained in all its forms and the most important rejections of it will be dealt with. This article is not an exploration of the causes of happiness, but of the definition of happiness.

What is well-being?

An important answer is that well-being consists in the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain. A lot of people believe this. Pretty much everyone at least believes that the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain is at least one component of well-being. It is hard to deny this. But are pleasure and pain the only elements of happiness?

It is important to know that this "hedonism" is not the only way to use hedonism. Psychological hedonism claims that everyone's ultimate goal is to pursue pleasure and minimize pain. Ethical hedonism is the claim that everyone should try to do this. Value hedonism claims that pleasure is intrinsically good and pain intrinsically evil. But we are concerned with welfare hedonism. Welfare hedonism claims that pleasure and the lack of pain, is what happiness entails. 

In this form of hedonism, there is also quantitative and qualitative hedonism. Quantitative happiness suggests that the more pleasure we have, the more happiness we have. This leads to bizarre conclusions. Suppose pigs, wallowing in the mud, are filled with pleasure, a far greater quantity of pleasure that can be found in the life of a person, who has responsibilities and can never fully avoid suffering. Most of us would still not trade places with a pig. 

We prefer human life over porcine life because, even though pigs might have greater quantity of pleasure, humans have greater kinds of pleasure. Humans can experience love, friendship, and art, and can have the pleasures of discovery, creativity, and understanding. Such spiritual and mental pleasures could be of a higher quality than the bodily pleasures. Perhaps these higher pleasers are of greater intrinsic value than the lower pleasures. This is what qualitative hedonism suggests. 

Both qualitative and quantitative hedonism agree that your mental states are what determine your level of well-being, and that pleasant mental states have value. But not everyone agrees with this. People can either disagree with the mental state theory, or with the value of pleasure, or with both. 

An important critique of the mental state theory is the experience machine. If all that matters for our happiness, is what happens in our mental states, we would all want to be hooked up on a machine that makes us think and feel like we are experiencing pleasurable or happy events. But most people would not want to be hooked up to this machine. What matters more than mental states, are real lived experiences, even if they are less happy or pleasurable. This is what preference theory suggests. According to preference theory, well-being consists in having one's preferences satisfied.

There is also important critique of the preference theory. According to some theorists, this theory also yields unacceptable results. Your desires can be met in ways you are not aware of. If you have no idea that your desires are met, can you really say it has made you happier? The critics would answer this question with no. Happiness seems to have a cognitive and/or affective element as well. For example, someone cares about the environment and prefers environmentally friendly products. But they have been buying the same products in the supermarket. Now, the processes behind production and transport have been made more environmentally friendly. The customers have no idea that something has changed. The critics would argue that this person has not become happier because of the change, even though their desires are being met more.