I close by sketching some non-obvious difficulties that subjectivists will face if they attempt to show rival objectivist theories suffer even more counterintuitive implications. The second has been noted in passing, but its seriousness underestimated. I then raise two different, challenging objections. I examine what I take to be the two main current objections to LSTs and argue that they are unproblematic.
Third, subjectivism is implausible, although for different reasons from those that are usually given. ) in the sense that they maintain individuals decide what makes their lives go well for them hedonism and other desire theories are subjectivist only in some alternative senses. Second, the life satisfaction/global desire theories are the only subjectivist accounts of well-being (. First, on closer inspection, LSTs are indistinguishable from a type of desire theory-the global desire theory. When philosophers have discussed LSTs, they are taken to be a distinct alternative to the three canonical accounts of well-being-hedonism, desire theories, the objective list. While life satisfaction theories (LSTs) of well-being are barely discussed in philosophy, they are popular among social scientists and wider society. Nozick's experience machine thought experiment appears in Nozick 1989.įeldman 2004 provides the most thorough introduction to hedonism about well-being. See also Crisp 2013 (Sec. 1), Heathwood 2006, and Lazari-Radek & Singer 2014 (Ch. The most comprehensive contemporary defenses of hedonism are Feldman 2004, Crisp 2006 (Ch. Important historical discussions of hedonism are found in Plato's Philebus, Epicurus' Letter to Menoeceus, Bentham's Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, and Mill's Utilitarianism.
The most influential contemporary challenge to hedonism is Robert Nozick's "experience machine" thought experiment, according to which hedonism entails that it would be best for one to plug into a machine that would give one any future course of experiences one wanted, when this plainly would not be best for one. Whether hedonism counts as a subjective or objective theory of well-being depends on whether it is paired with an attitude-based or felt-quality theory of pleasure. Hedonism about well-being, roughly put, says that how good or bad our lives are for us is just a matter of our pleasures and pains.
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