Intro to Ethics - What Makes Someone's Life Go Best? (Parfit)

What are the three kinds of theory of self-interest? State each.  

• Hedonistic Theories: what is best for someone is what makes their life happiest. 

• Desire-Fulfilment Theories: what is best for someone is what, throughout their life, best fulfills their desires. 

• Objective List Theories: certain things are good or bad for us whether or not we want the good things or want to avoid the bad ones. 

What is the difference between Narrow Hedonism and Preference-Hedonism? Why does Parfit reject Narrow Hedonism? What does the Freud example show? 

• Narrow Hedonism says pleasure and pain are two distinctive kinds of experience. Preference-Hedonism says a pleasure is an experience we want and a pain is one we don’t want, and the more we want it, the better it is.  

• Parfit rejects Narrow Hedonism because experiences like quenching thirst, hearing music, and reading a tragedy share no common quality.  

• In the Freud example, Freud refused painkillers to think clearly in torment instead of being euphoric, so his life went better by his own preference, even though euphoria is more pleasant. 

What is the difference between the Unrestricted Desire-Fulfillment Theory and the Success Theory? What is the dying stranger case? 

• The Unrestricted Theory counts all of your desires, whatever they are about. The Success Theory counts only your preferences about your own life.  

• In the dying stranger case, I strongly want a stranger with a fatal disease to be cured and years later, unknown to me, they are. The Unrestricted Theory says this made my life go better, which isn’t plausible, and the Success Theory avoids this because the cure isn’t about my own life. 

How do Preference-Hedonism and the Success Theory differ on being deceived? What is the failed-parent case, and what does it suggest about events after one’s death? 

• Preference-Hedonism says it’s fine for me as long as I believe I’m not being deceived. The Success Theory says being deceived is bad for me even if I never find out.  

• In the failed-parent case, I want to be a good parent, but unknown to me my children’s lives go badly partly through my mistakes, and the Success Theory says that is bad for me. It suggests things can go badly for us after we die, because if not knowing doesn’t matter, then being dead (and so never knowing) doesn’t matter either. 

Why don’t actual desires alone work? What is the King Lear example, and how does comparing strength of preferences help? 

• Appealing only to actual desires fails because it would make both alternatives better than each other.  

• In the King Lear example, if I stay home to read King Lear I’m never sorry, and if I had gone to the party I also wouldn’t have been sorry.  

• So we must compare the strength of preferences: if I’d be only mildly glad at the party but very glad with King Lear, then King Lear gave me the better evening. 

What is the difference between Summative and Global versions? What is the drug addiction case? Which does Parfit find more plausible? 

• Summative versions add up all your desire-fulfilment, while Global versions only count your preferences about your life or part of it as a whole.  

• In the drug case, I make you addicted to a harmless drug you can easily get every morning, and the Summative view says your life goes better because each morning’s strong craving gets fulfilled.  

• Parfit finds that implausible and thinks the Global versions are more plausible, since they count only your preference not to be an addict. 

What is on the Objective List? What is the key difference between the Success Theory and the Objective List Theory about why things are bad for us? 

• The good things include moral goodness, rational activity, developing one’s abilities, being a good parent, knowledge, and awareness of beauty. The bad things include being betrayed, deceived, or manipulated, losing liberty or dignity, and sadistic pleasure.  

• The key difference is that on the Success Theory, something is bad for you because you don’t want it. On the Objective List Theory, you shouldn’t want it because it is bad for you. 

How do cases like the grass-counter and the sadist bear on the choice between theories? 

Rawls’s grass-counter prefers counting blades of grass over doing useful mathematics, even knowing what he’d achieve. The sadist, if never caught, most prefers a life of causing others pain. On the Success Theory these lives could be best for them, and if we deny that, it counts against pure desire theories. Saying “real people wouldn’t want that” doesn’t help, because it gives up the theory in those cases. 

What is the composite view? Does Parfit endorse a theory? 

• The composite view says what’s best for someone is having good things (like knowledge, rational activity, mutual love, and awareness of beauty) while strongly wanting them. Each side saw only half the truth: pleasure and desire alone have little value, and the objective goods lack value if there is no enjoyment of them.  

• Parfit doesn’t endorse a theory; he says “I shall not attempt an answer here.”