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Academic

: Legal Theory Blog

Bronsteen Responds to Chappell on Welfare Subjectivism

By Lawrence Solum

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On Sunday, I put up a short post noting Richard Chappell's comments on Bronsteen, Buccafusco, and Masur's Welfare as Happiness. Bronsteen has now commented on Chappell's post, with a further reply by Chappell (just scroll down). One of the points of disagreement concerns the question whether persons do care about objective well-being for reasons other than the subjective experiences that may (or may not) result. Here is a brief taste of Chappell:

Now, it simply isn't true that I only care about what my friends think of me, or about doing good philosophy, as a means to "positive subjective experience". These things are instead among my ultimate ends, on a par with happiness itself. I would genuinely prefer to live a moderately happy life with genuine friendships and doing genuinely good philosophy, than to live a slightly happier life of farce. These are all genuine non-instrumental concerns of mine, and none has lexical priority over the others. It should also be fairly clear that none of them are purely moral/altruistic concerns. It's not as though I care about what my friends think of me for anyone else's sake. Why would it matter to them (except insofar as they have a sympathetic concern for me)? The point is that these are my concerns.

Of course, Bronsteen might reply that Chappell's argument is based on his caring about what his friends think, and that this caring is itself subjective. But that move would miss the point--which is that what we care about is not our subjective experiences but the objective happening (in this case, the friend's opinion) irrespective of whether it is subjectively experienced. Of course, all of our beliefs, including our metaethical beliefs (our beliefs about what can count as a good for us) are subjective in the sense that they are beliefs--but this does fact does not show that our welfare is itself subjective. If you doubt this, try creating a formal argument with true premises and valid moves that takes you from the premise (our beliefs about what is good for us is subjective in the sense that all beliefs are subjective) to the conclusion (well-being or welfare is subjective).

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on May 19, 2009 (boomark / email).