Week 1A: Good life (Hedonism & DST)

Wat zijn twee features van wat ethics examines?

1. Normative
   -It is not a description of how people treat each other, but it asks how it should be
   -It is often precisely critical of a prevailing morality

2. Based on argumentation
   -Answers are based on well-reasoned arguments

Wat zijn de areas van ethics?

1. Value theory
   -What is valuable? What is worth pursuing?

2. Normative ethics
   -What are the correct rules, guidelines, and role models?

3. Meta-ethics
   -Asks whether moral principles are objective, relative, or fictitious. What kind of claim is a moral claim?

4. Applied ethics
   -What is the solution to a specific ethical issue in practice?

What’s the most important question for Socrates?

How should one live?

Wat is het existential starting point van Epicurus?

Er zijn obstacles to achieving the good life:

1. Unnecessary desires
   -Status, pleasure & luxury

2. Irrational fears
   -Fear of the Gods and fear of death

Wat zegt Epicurus over fear of the Gods en fear of death?

Het zijn irrational fears

Fear of the Gods:

• Everything consists of atoms and void

• We can understand the universe without the need for a purpose or creator

• Gods may exist (as seen in dreams and visions), but they live blissful lives and have no concern for us

Fear of death:

• Based on metaphysics (atoms and boid), there is no life after death

• When we are, death is not come, and when death is come, we are not (death doet alleen pijn na death maar dat voelen wij niet meer dus je hoeft er niet bang voor te zijn)

Wat is ataraxia?

The ideal state of being

A lucid state of robust equanimity characterized by ongoing freedom from distress and worry

Peace of mind

Primarily consisting of the absence of pain and the fulfillment of basic needs

Epicurus. Well-being is ataraxia. How can it be achieved? Get rid of unnevessary desires and irrational fears

Wat zijn verschillen tussen antiquity en modern ethics?

Antiquity

• Focus on how do we attain well-being

• Assumes that a good life is a moral life

Modern ethics

• Focus on what well-being is

• Distinguishes between a good life (for one self) and a moral life

Wat is hedonism?

Well-being is determined by: The net amount of happiness (which we’ll understand as positive experiences) in a persons life

Wat is het verschil tussen intrinsic en instrumental value bij hedonism?

According to hedonism, the net amount of positive experiences is the only thing that makes a life intrinsically valuable

Other things can, acoording to hedonism, have instrumental value: they are valuable insofar as they bring about positive experiences and help to avoid pain

Wie zijn drie bekende hedonists?

Epicurus: Ataraxia (a state of tranquility and freedom from distress)

Jeremy Bentham: Monistic pleasure (focused on the quantity of pleasure)

Mill: Pluralistic pleasure (considering both the quality and quantity of pleasures)

What is well-being according to Bentham?

As much pleasure (understood as enjoyment) as possible and as little pain as possible

Monist:

• One type of state

• Duration and intensity

• Hedonic calculus: a method for measuring pleasure and pain

Wat zijn Mill’s higher forms of pleasure?

Mill was a hedonist, defining well-being as ‘an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments’

Mill’s view on pleasure:

• Critique of Bentham: quantity of pleasure being equal, push-pin is as good as poetry

• The value of pleasure is determined by intensity, duration and quality

The ‘Competent Judge’: Those who are equally acquainted with, and equally capable of appreciating and enjoying, both, do give a most marked preference to the manner of existence which employs their higher faculties

What are advantages of hedonism?

1. The claim that happiness improves a person’s life is very plausible

2. Hedonism can explain why different kinds of lives can be good for the people living them

What are challenges of hedonism?

1. What if happiness results from hurting others?

2. Is a life with a downwards happiness-trajectory as good as a life with an upwards trajectory?

3. What if happiness is based on false beliefs?

Wat is de kritiek van Nozick op hedonism?

The experience machine

• If hedonism is true, then our lives go well to the extent that we are happy

• It is not the case that our lives go well to the extent that we are happy, because life in the experience machine is worse than life outside the machine

• Therefore, hedonism is false

(De meeste mensen zouden liever kiezen voor de echte wereld dan een leven gekoppeld aan een machine die je neppe, plezierige dingen laat ervaren. Dus geluk alleen bepaalt niet of een leven goed is)

Wat is de desire-satisfaction theory?

• Something benefits you if and only if it satisfies your desires

• Anything that benefits you does so exactly because it satisfies your desires

• The DST doesn’t merely claim that anything that satisfies your desires is good for you (and vice versa)

• Take the example of a thermometer: It is 21 degrees outsides if and only if an accurate thermometer says ‘21 degrees’

• By contrast, DST ascribes to desires a special role in conferring well-being. Desire-satisfaction make things good/bad for us

• The desire satisfaction theory does not claim that you must feel fulfilled or even believe that your desire has been fulfilled for its fulfilment to be good for you. (Even if you don’t know yet your favourite club won the match, when you had the desire that they would win and they won, at that moment it was already good for you, even if you only knew about it later)

Wat is de relatie tussen desires en welfare economics?

• The concept of well-being can be researched, you ask people what they desire/if they have what they desire/what their preferences are, etc.

• And based on that, you then determine the level of well-being in a country, for example, and you can take this information into policy plans

• This is still a common way in economics to examine levels of well-being (preference satisfaction = quality of life)

Desire-satisfaction theory

What are advantages of the desire-satisfaction theory?

1. Tells us how to find out how to make our lives go better

2. Explains why it is not the case that the same thing contributes to everyone’s well-being
   -Your desires differ from my desires
   -So, what is good for you differs from what is good for me

3. DST avoids experience machine objections, because someone desires it to be like that in the world, not just in the experience. Also explains why life in the experience still is somewhat good

What are challenges of the desire-satisfaction theory?

1. The scope problem:
   -The stranger on a plane: stranger tells you a plan, you desire they reach it but never hear from them again
   -Concerns the scope of desires that should matter for a person’s well-being

2. The impoverished desires problem:
   -The dutiful housewife: someone has been brought up to expect to be a housewife, has never considered a different life and is satisfied with her lot
   -Concerns the origins of desires that should matter for a person’s well-being

What is a modification on the desire-satisfaction theory?

What makes your life go well is the fulfillment of your well-informed desires

The theory then states:

• If something fulfills your well-informed desires, it is good for you

• These desires are based on all relevant information and are not based on falsehoods

But we still don’t really know what well-being is.. the outcome of well-informed desires, but what is that outcome?

What are two theories of well-being?

1. Hedonism: well-being is a maximal amount of net positive experiences

2. Desire-satisfaction: well-being is the fulfillment of your (well-informed) desires