A Paradox for Some Theories of Welfare

Ben Bradley, a UMass Ph.D., now on the faculty at Syracuse, recently published a tremendously interesting paper in Phil Studies entitled "A Paradox for Some Theories of Welfare". The paradox threatens Desire Satisfactionism, truth-adjusted versions of attitudinal hedonism, and in general any so-called correspondence theory of welfare according to which:

how well things go for a person is determined by (i) the person’s attitudes towards states of affairs or propositions (...), and (ii) whether those states of affairs are true. (p. 5)

Here is the paradox, as far as Desire Satisfactionism is concerned. Epimenides has just two desires:
D1 = a desire of intensity +5 for an apple.
D2 = a desire of intensity +10 that his life go badly.

Suppose Epimenides does not get the apple, so D1 is frustrated. This decreases his welfare by –5. Now here is the paradox. Either D2 is satisfied or it is frustrated. If D2 is satisfied, then it enhances Epimenides’ welfare by +10 and the total value of Epimenides' life is +5. But if the total value of Epimenides' life is +5, then D2 is frustrated. But this is a contradiction: if D2 is satisfied, then D2 is not satisfied. On the flipside, suppose D2 is frustrated. If so, this decreases Epimenides’ welfare by –10 and the total value of Epimenides' life is –15. But if the total value of Epimenides’ life is –15, then D2 is satisfied! So also in this case, we get a contradiction: if D2 is frustrated, then D2 is satisfied. Thus no matter how you slice it, Desire Satisfactionism leads to a contradiction.

Some restricted versions of Desire Satisfactionism can avoid this paradox. Most promisingly, the paradox can be avoided by a version of the theory according to which welfare is enhanced only by the satisfaction of desires for *objectively worthwhile things*. After all, the desire that one's life go badly would clearly not be a desire for something worthwhile. (Scanlon endorses a theory like this.) Desert-adjusted versions of hedonism (like the one Feldman endorses) can avoid the paradox in a similar, though slightly different way.

However, these two views face challenges of their own. What makes a desire be for something worthwhile? What makes something deserve to have pleasure taken in it? More work needs to be done before these theories are fully worked out. However, the payoff for filling in the details of these views would be huge: it would provide a way to avoid Bradley's paradox.

Bradley's paper is excellent and deserves a close read.

Bibliography on Theories of Well-Being

Here. (In progress - suggestions for additions welcome.)