WELL-BEING Its meaning, measurement, and moral importance JAMES GRIFFIN CLARENDON PRESS, OXFORD 1986 WELL-BEING PREFACE SOME years ago I gave a series of seminars with two colleagues, Jonathan Glover and Derek Parfit. For me those seminars were the occasion for first trying out the ideas that I present here. I learned a great deal from Glover and Parfit, much of it at so early a stage in the development of my ideas that sometimes I cannot now disentangle my thoughts from theirs. Recently I gave another series of seminars with Parfit, from which I also benefitted greatly. But I have benefitted most of all from Parfit's penetrating and stimulating criticisms of drafts of these chapters. He has been exceptionally generous. We were lucky to have Richard Hare drop in occasionally on both series of seminars. My discussions with him then, and since, have helped me a lot; he has not always agreed with what I have to say but he has been an important stimulus to it. I owe him much. Richard Brandt, John Broome, Amartya Sen, and Wayne Sumner read large parts of early drafts, and spent hours, for which I thank them deeply, writing or talking to me about them. I have also had much helpful advice from Kurt Baier, Timothy Besley, Roger Crisp, Ray Frey, Allan Gibbard, John Harsanyi, Brad Hooker, Joel Kupperman, Jeff McMahan, Joseph Raz, Donald Regan, Tim Scanlon, Larry Temkin, and Henry West. Some of my chapters are revisions of material I have published already. I took a preliminary canter across the terrain in a survey article "Modern Utilitarianism', Revue Internationale de Philosophie 141 (1982), and sentences from that article crop up here and there throughout this book. A very early version of chapter VII saw life as "Intersubiektywne poro$0wnania uz$9ytecznos$0ci', in Etyka 19 (1981) and was resur- rected, much changed, as "Well-Being and Its Interpersonal Comparability' in a not yet titled collection of essays on R. M. Hare edited by N. Fotion and D. Seanor, forthcoming from vi PREFACE the Clarendon Press; chapter VII is much the same in argument as the latter but rather different in focus. An earlier version of chapter X first appeared as "Some Problems of Fairness' and "Reply to Kurt Baier' in Ethics 96 (1985). And chapter XI appeared, in shorter form, as "Towards a Substant- ive Theory of Rights' in R. G. Frey (ed.), Utility and Rights, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. I thank the editors and publishers concerned for letting me use the material again here. The bulk of this book was written during the two academic years 1982--4, while I held a Radcliffe Fellowship, a most welcome and well-conceived relief from teaching supported by the Radcliffe Trust. I thank them warmly for that support. This book is printed from camera-ready copy. It took the kindness and skill of many persons to turn my scrawl into that final copy. Pauline Valentine typed successive drafts. Stephen and Alison Cope keyed the final one into the University computer. Michael Clarke of Bradley Computing devised Microset, the software for pagination. And, kindest of all, Catherine Griffin put aside hieroglyphs to program, and generally to oversee, the typesetting of this book in as humdrum a language as English. J. P. G. Keble College, Oxford CONTENTS INTRODUCTION111 PART ONE MEANING III. UTILITARIAN ACCOUNTS: STATE OF MINDOR STATE OF THE WORLD?117 1.Mental state accounts117 2.Sidgwick's compromise119 3.The actual-desire account110 4.The informed-desire account111 5.Troubles with the informed-desire account116 6.Is there something between mental state and desire accounts?118 III. UTILITARIAN ACCOUNTS: THE DESIREACCOUNT DEVELOPED121 1.How may we restrict the desire account?121 2.Why we should resist restricting it more124 3.How value and desire are related126 4.A formal account131 5.Maximization and the unity of life134 6.A (restricted) interest theory of value137 7.Is this account still utilitarian?138 III. OBJECTIVE ACCOUNTS140 1.Two concepts of well-being140 2.The need account141 3.Can we give a tolerably clear sense to "basic need'?142 4.The link between need and obligation145 5.Avoiding distortions to moral thought147 6.A flexible need account151 7.Neutrality, objectivity, and moral depth153 viiiCONTENTS IIIV. PERFECTIONISM AND THE ENDS OF LIFE156 1.Prudential perfectionism1156 2.Moral perfectionism160 3.The ends of life164 4.How morality fits into prudence168 5.What is the good point buried in perfectionism?170 6.The primacy of prudential value theory172 PART TWO MEASUREMENT IIIV. ARE THERE INCOMMENSURABLE VALUES?175 1.On measuring well-being175 2.Moral incommensurables and prudential 2.incommensurables177 3.Forms of incommensurability: (a) Incomparability179 4.(b) Trumping183 5.(c) Weighting183 6.(d) Discontinuity185 7.(e) Pluralism189 IIVI. THE CASE OF ONE PERSON193 1.Is well-being the sort of thing that can be measured at all?193 2.An ordinal scale of well-being195 3.Pockets of cardinality198 4.What powers of measurement do we actually need?103 IVII. THE CASE OF MANY PERSONS106 1.The link between conceptions of well-being and problems 1.of comparability106 2.A natural proposal for comparability and a problem with it108 3.Can the problem be solved?111 4.Interpersonal comparisons of well-being113 5.Intrapersonal intertemporal comparisons120 6.Comparability on a social scale121 PART THREE MORAL IMPORTANCE VIII. FROM PRUDENCE TO MORALITY127 1.Morality as something alien127 2.(a) Morality and self-interest128 ixCONTENTS 3.(b) Morality and personal aims133 4.(c) Morality and rationality141 5.The nature of the self and the source of morality155 IIX. EQUAL RESPECT163 1.Equal respect and psychological realism163 2.The utilitarian view of equal respect167 3.The contractualist view of equal respect170 4.The two views compared183 5.A view of equal respect that allows some partiality186 IIX. FAIRNESS192 1.Two problems: fairness and the breadth of the moral outlook192 2.The consequentialist's problem of finding a broad enough 2.outlook195 3.The free-rider problem and a minimal solution206 4.The possibility of tougher, Kantian solutions215 5.The solution of an agent-centred deontology219 IXI. RIGHTS224 1.The need for a substantive theory224 2.First ground: personhood225 3.Second ground: practicalities228 4.Third ground: the private sphere228 5.Fourth ground: equal respect230 6.What rights does the substantive theory yield?232 7.The need for a second level to the substantive theory234 8.A sampler of values that rights protect235 9.The second level242 XII. DESERT254 1.The moral interest254 2.Is desert a moral reason for action?257 3.Is merit?258 4.Is my own demerit?264 5.Is the demerit of others?270 6.The social response272 7.Retributivism and utilitarianism282 xCONTENTS XIII. DISTRIBUTION284 1."Distributive' justice284 2.Role-based principles289 3.Rights-based principles292 4.Equality-based principles294 5.One setting and its principles301 6.A glance at another setting304 7.How are the principles structured?307 NOTES313 BIBLIOGRAPHY391 INDEX401