Happiness, Flourishing and the Good Life: A Transformative Vision for Human Well-Being 2020017035, 2020017036, 9781138613881, 9780429464317

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Happiness, Flourishing and the Good Life

Well-being studies is an exciting and relatively new multi-disciplinary field, with data being gathered from different domains in order to improve social policies. In its reliance on a truncated account of well-being based implicitly on neoclassical economic assumptions, however, the field is deeply flawed. Departing from reductive accounts of well-being that exclude the normative or evaluative aspect of the concept and so impoverish the attendant conception of human life, this book offers a new perspective on what counts normatively as being well. In reconceptualising well-being holistically, it presents a fresh vista on how we can consider the meanings of human life in a manner that also serves as a source of constructive social critique. The book thus undertakes to invert the usual approach to the social sciences, in which the research is required to be objective in terms of methodology and subjective with regard to evaluative claims. Instead, the authors are deliberately objective about values in order to be more open to the subjectivities of human life. Happiness, Flourishing and the Good Life thus seeks to move away from economic considerations’ domination of all social spaces in order to understand the possibilities of well-being beyond instrumentalisation or commodification. A radical new approach to the human well-being, this book will appeal to philosophers, social theorists and political scientists and all who are interested in human happiness. Garrett Thomson is Chief Executive Officer of the Guerrand-Hermès Foundation for Peace (GHFP) and Professor at the College of Wooster where he holds the Compton Chair of Philosophy. He is the author or co-author of 20 books, including On the Meaning of Life, Needs and Bacon to Kant. He co-edited the six-volumes of the Longman Standard History of Philosophy and is the co-author of Rethinking Secondary Education: A Human-Centred Approach and Understanding Peace Holistically. Scherto Gill is Senior Fellow at the Guerrand-Hermès Foundation for Peace (GHFP) Research Institute, Brighton, UK, Visiting Fellow at the University of Sussex, and Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts. She is also Board Member of Rising Global Peace Forum and Trustee of the Spirit of Humanity Forum. Scherto writes about peace, dialogue, education, and narrative research. Her most recent publications include Understanding Peace Holistically, Peacefulness: Being Peace and Making Peace, Education as Humanisation and Narrative Pedagogy. Ivor Goodson has worked in universities in England, Canada, and the USA, and has held visiting positions in many countries. He is now Research Associate at the GuerrandHermès Foundation for Peace (GHFP). Ivor has contributed over 50 books and 600 articles to the fields of education and social change. His most recent publications include The Routledge International Handbook on Narrative and Life History, Curriculum, Personal Narrative and the Social Future and Developing Narrative Theory: Life Histories and Personal Representation.

Classical and Contemporary Social Theory Series Editor: Stjepan G. Mestrovic Texas A&M University, USA

Classical and Contemporary Social Theory publishes rigorous scholarly work that re-discovers the relevance of social theory for contemporary times, demonstrating the enduring importance of theory for modern social issues. The series covers social theory in a broad sense, inviting contributions on both ‘classical’ and modern theory, thus encompassing sociology, without being confined to a single discipline. As such, work from across the social sciences is welcome, provided that volumes address the social context of particular issues, subjects, or figures and offer new understandings of social reality and the contribution of a theorist or school to our understanding of it. The series considers significant new appraisals of established thinkers or schools, comparative works or contributions that discuss a particular social issue or phenomenon in relation to the work of specific theorists or theoretical approaches. Contributions are welcome that assess broad strands of thought within certain schools or across the work of a number of thinkers, but always with an eye toward contributing to contemporary understandings of social issues and contexts. Titles in this series: Making the Familiar Strange Sociology Contra Reification Ryan Gunderson Happiness, Flourishing and the Good Life A Transformative Vision for Human Well-Being Garrett Thomson, Scherto Gill and Ivor Goodson Towards a General Theory of Boredom A Case Study of Anglo and Russian Society Elina Tochilnikova For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ sociology/series/ASHSER1383

Happiness, Flourishing and the Good Life

A Transformative Vision for Human Well-Being Garrett Thomson, Scherto Gill and Ivor Goodson

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Garrett Thomson, Scherto Gill and Ivor Goodson The right of Garrett Thomson, Scherto Gill and Ivor Goodson to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Thomson, Garrett, author. | Gill, Scherto, author. | Goodson, Ivor, author. Title: Happiness, flourishing and the good life : a transformative vision for human well-being / Garrett Thomson and Scherto Gill, with Ivor Goodson. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2020. | Series: Classical and contemporary social theory | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020017035 (print) | LCCN 2020017036 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138613881 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429464317 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Quality of life. | Well-being. | Happiness. Classification: LCC HN25 .T46 2020 (print) | LCC HN25 (ebook) | DDC 301—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017035 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017036 ISBN: 978-1-138-61388-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-46431-7 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

Acknowledgments Preface

vi vii

1

Preliminaries for a framework

1

2

Beyond instrumentalisation

21

3

Activities and desires

45

4

Awareness

72

5

Relationships

95

6

Evaluative self-awareness

117

7

Towards a definition of well-being

138

8

Towards social critique

169

Bibliography Index

186 194

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank from the bottom of our hearts the Trustees of the GuerrandHermès Foundation for Peace (GHFP), who have supported and shaped the work of this book in very many ways: Sharif Horthy, Isni Astuti Horthy, Alexandra Asseily, Patrice Brodeur, Mohammed Ridwan and Simon Xavier GuerrandHermès. Thank you. For this book, the GHFP’s research team interviewed 50 people from all walks of life, collecting their perceptions and experiences of well-being. We would like to extend a very warm thank-you to every single participant whose lived experiences and life narratives formed a very important part of this work. Equally, we would like to thank the staff members of the GHFP, especially Alice Sommerville, Laura Hobson and former colleague Heather Stoner, for their hard work to support this research. We are grateful that Frances Thomson and Mark Wells read through the chapters of the book and gave extensive comments, which were very helpful. We would like to express our appreciation to the Center for Bhutan Studies, Prof. Juan Martin Lopez Calva and the team from UPAEP Puebla, Anders Moller and Scarlett Chen, for offering insights into the study of well-being and happiness. We would also like to thank those whose support and friendship continued to encourage our work, including Dr. Philip Turetzky, Prof. Jaime Ramos, Prof. Peter Baumann, Prof. Adrian Moore, Prof. Evan Riley, Prof. Kenneth Gergen, Prof. Diana Hoyos and Prof. Pablo Arrango. Likewise, we express our gratitude to many people who supported our work either in conversation or through their writings, such as Susan Wolf, Daniel Haybron, Sabina Alkire and Richard Kraut. A special thank-you goes to Daniel Kprof, Jean Gordon and Linda O’Toole of the Learning for Well-Being initiative in the EU, and whose ongoing work on well-being is exemplary. Garrett would like to acknowledge from among his teachers: Mary Midgely, Derek Parfit, James Griffin, David Wiggins and Richard Hare. Finally, a deep thank-you to our respective families: Helena, Andrew, Frances, Verena, Susana, Robert, Tony and Toto.

Preface

We would like to start with three common-sense platitudes about human life. We regret if this seems to rehearse the obvious, but these commonplaces are important for understanding well-being. First, we are temporal beings. This has profound consequences for our study. ‘Well-being’ appears to be a static term, but this appearance needs to be quickly dispelled and remedied. We change in many ways. Our activities are infused with beginnings, continuations and endings. Small-scale activities are usually embedded within larger ones, and these nestings are temporal. For instance, we take the bus to visit a friend to plan a holiday or to discuss a new venture. These are temporal relationships: one action comes before the ones that it is a means to, or one is embedded in the other as a part. Furthermore, our relationships to each other change, not only because people alter, but also because their knowledge of each other and feelings towards each other change. Additionally, our awareness and self-awareness change. For example, one thought that one was still young, and one discovers that one is actually older. One’s idea of oneself is constantly subject to revision. The term ‘flourishing’ has temporal connotations, as does the notion of selfdevelopment. However, the point isn’t simply the fact that we continually change. As we shall see, the issue is that what constitutes well-being alters. What counts as greater well-being for a person as a child and for the same person as a young adult will differ in many regards from what constitutes her well-being as an older person. The same point would apply to ‘flourishing’. Indeed, a full theory of wellbeing would be at the same time an account of some aspects of human development. So, this sets us an important task: to explain how well-being is composed differently through time. This quest contains an important presupposition that runs contrary to much of the current literature on well-being and happiness. The contrarian assumption that we make is that there needs to be systematic empirical investigation regarding the nature of well-being that doesn’t consist simply in studying what causes or promotes well-being or in making well-being comparisons across different societies. The vast majority of the empirical studies concerning well-being (and happiness) are either directed towards what causes, facilitates or damages well-being or towards comparisons between the levels of well-being of different social groups. What else is there to investigate, if not the causes, conditions and comparisons?

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As a quick reply, we need empirical work directed towards the nature of wellbeing, and how it changes through time. This is a topic of this volume. The second platitude is that we are animals. This means that our lives have the general characteristics of those of animals. We are bodies. We breathe, drink, eat, sleep and perform other bodily functions. We get hot and cold. Like all other animals, we have a natural history, an evolutionary genealogy. We have parents, and people typically have children. We move around, perceive and want things. These general features of life define (inter alia) the contours of well-being. This second platitude sets us another task, which is to answer the question: what kind of animals are we? To specify this, it is tempting to place a single adjective or phrase before the word ‘animal’ when describing ourselves. It is often claimed that we are rational animals, but there are many other adjectives we could employ to complete the sentence ‘we are . . . animals.’ These include: wise (sapiens), self-conscious, willing, linguistic, social, relational, humorous, ironic, creative, political, self-defining, productive (of the means of production), narratival and spiritual. The difficulty is that, by themselves, each of these single predicates fails to capture what we are. Yet when taken together as a list, they seem to miss the point: what unifies the things on the list? What is this supposed to be a list of, or how did things get on the list? When is it complete? In other words, the answer to this difficult question won’t be a single adjective, however encompassing it is, and nor a list without a connecting explanation. This means that the question needs to be transformed, as we shall see. The third platitude is that we inhabit a world that is experienced and shared with other persons and that our actions have meanings only in relation to other human beings.1 Even the monastic action of removing oneself from society to meditate and contemplate in solitude has meaning in relation to a religious path trod by others. Even in the apparently solitary of walking alone in the wilderness one is accompanied by the social concepts that allow this action to be meaningful as communion with nature. So, even when our actions are performed alone, their meanings are composed of relations to other people, and even if they were not, those meanings consist in content that requires social concepts. The meaning of our actions and their relevance for our own well-being is thoroughly social and relational. So, to put the point slightly paradoxically, even in our deepest selfinterest the meaning of our actions is in relation to others. This third platitude about human life sets us another challenge. It is an abstract one, but it involves conflicts of principles that need to be settled by any framework for well-being: are we autonomous individuals, or are we essentially relational beings? In this preliminary form, the question is too crude, although the issues that it raises are not. Traditional modern western philosophy, political theory and economics tend to regard the individual as an isolated or autonomous being who cooperates with others only insofar as it benefits him or her.2 This conception needs to be challenged and revised because a vital part of our lives is our relationships with others. These three common-sense platitudes define the framework of our study at its most general. We shall investigate the question: ‘What is the value of a person’s life from his or her point of view, as the person living the life?’ When we ask, ‘Is

Preface ix my life going well?’, or rather when we ask, ‘What should I do to make my life go better?’, what is the relevant sense of ‘better’ or ‘well’? We need to understand what matters in the living of human life and why. The concept of well-being is supposed to capture an important part of the answer to these questions, though not necessarily all. Notice we are not asking whether a person’s life is moral or important or aesthetically attractive. We are asking about its value to the person who is living it. We ask this question in the following context. Well-being studies is an exciting and relatively new multi-disciplinary field. Social scientists from around the world are gathering measurements of well-being in different contexts so that the resulting data can improve social policies (Kruger 2009: 11; Diener, Lucas, Schimmmack and Helliwell 2009; Huppert and Cooper 2014; Alexandra 2017). This kind of project suggests that socio-political institutions should serve human well-being, albeit in different ways, and that policies should be sensitive to empirical evidence. This is full of promise! Nevertheless, the field is also flawed. It often relies on a truncated account of the concept of well-being, based implicitly on neoclassical economic assumptions in two ways. First, the evaluative model is often minimalistic; it tends to exclude or emaciate the normative or evaluative aspect of the concept of well-being, and thereby deprive it of its potentially radical and transformative force. Second, the discipline tends to be reductive in the sense of reducing human well-being to a set of central concepts such as happiness, desire satisfaction or rankings. These reductive theories do not allow for the varied subjectivities of experience, and the resulting conception of human life is impoverished. For these reasons, the field of well-being studies makes a set of promises that it does not usually deliver. It promises deep critical evaluations of social institutions based on empirical evidence, but it doesn’t deliver on this promise because the emaciated conception of well-being tends to merely reflect existing pleasures, preferences and subjective rankings. It is evaluatively minimalistic, and tends to be a pallid reflection of a society’s accepted assumptions rather than a potential basis for radical social critique. What is the antidote to this impasse? We need to be clearer and more explicit about what counts normatively as being well. Well-being is a prime value. Given that the centrality of such an idea, it deserves a deeper exploration without neoclassical fetters. We need a new trajectory that reflects the wealth and variety of human experience, and that embraces the normative. With a reconceptualisation of well-being, the field provides the opportunity to rethink the meanings of human life in fresher ways that can be a source of constructive social critique. There is an interesting inversion here. In the standard positivistic view, the social sciences tend to be objective in their methodology and subjectivist with regard to evaluative claims. We are arguing the inverse: that a study of well-being needs to be more objective about the relevant values, and more open to explorations of the subjectivities of human life. Progressive thought needs this inversion; it needs to be evaluatively robust and subjectively rich. As social spaces become increasingly dominated by purely economic considerations, we need to understand the possibilities of human well-being without playing into the instrumentalisation or

x

Preface

commodifying of life in the ways that the value-free and objective social sciences tend to do. We regard this arena as a key political battleground: the construction of understandings of human well-being from which Enlightenment and neoliberal conceptions of progress can be challenged. In this book, we attempt to provide a new direction with an account of wellbeing that is not limited by neoclassical economic assumptions and value-free quantitative methodologies. An account that is faithful to the richness and variety of human life requires a multi-dimensional analysis that explains what it is to be well with regard to different aspects of human life. Specifically, these include: our activities and experiences, our everyday awareness, our relationships and our self-consciousness. In other words, we will explain well-being in a way that is both normatively strong and holistic in the sense that it can include all aspects of being well as a human. As students of this field, we find that many books on well-being and happiness are lacking in their basic theoretical framework. For instance, among other things, many books confuse means and ends and instrumental and non-instrumental value, and often confuse these with measures and indicators. These are profoundly important points that have much more than academic relevance. Parts of western culture are laden with deeply entrenched and systematic misunderstandings about values and their nature. The study of well-being offers an opportunity to redress these misunderstandings, and our project is partly motivated by the idea that a normatively powerful and holistic framework to reconceptualise well-being might help overcome these systematic errors and enable us to view well-being afresh, and understand well-being from a new and better perspective, as this time of impending global crises merits. A theory of well-being ineluctably must involve an account of human life and what it is about, while at the same time respecting and accounting for sometimes huge social, cultural and individual differences between people. In other words, we need a theory that can do justice to the complexity, richness and diversity of human lives and of our ways of being. The idea ‘what human life is about’ or even ‘what my life is about’ seems deceptively simple and naïve. In fact, there are so many aspects and parts to a person’s life and the relations between them are so complex that the task is almost overwhelming. The challenge this project confronts is not just a lack of empirical information. In effect, not only do we lack the required detailed knowledge about human wellbeing, but we also need the conceptual frameworks within which to carry out such empirical research. As already mentioned, empirical studies of well-being tend predominantly to be directed towards causes of well-being rather than its constitution. As we shall see, clarifying those conceptual frameworks is paramount as apart from everything else, it will also permit us to pose better empirical questions.

Notes 1 ‘Meanings’ here means roughly mental contents that have evaluative implications. 2 See, for instance, Hobbes’ Leviathan (2017).

1

Preliminaries for a framework

This first chapter is a bit like setting the table for the dinner to come: a necessary preparation for the meal that is on the stove. But it isn’t the same as eating. Nevertheless, the chapter is immensely important in defining the framework, agenda and direction of our later discussions. We wish that our readers might glance it over again after having completed the whole book because its agenda-setting nature is most apparent at the end. This chapter may be the most important in the book. It is like a backroom strategic planning discussion prior to the board meeting. The fundamental tension that drives this chapter concerns evaluative claims. On the one hand, as we shall see, evaluative claims can be true or false, and they are so in virtue of some criteria that are empirically specifiable. On the other hand, we will reject theories that reduce well-being to empirical concepts such as preference, pleasure and self-reported happiness. Such reductive accounts fail to capture the multi-dimensionality and richness that well-being has as an evaluative concept. The tension between these views needs resolution.

Some misconceptions This tension is set in the following context. While the idea of basing social policies on well-being and happiness is very welcome, currently, the new field of well-being studies thwarts a golden opportunity to transcend the severe limitations of society’s understanding of value. We can break out of current misapprehensions of value that plague our lives and society, which we will document in this book. It is a pity to repeat those misunderstandings within the study of well-being. Here is why. It is important for the critique and re-envisaging of society. Increasingly, governments determine social policies using well-being and happiness indicators; increasingly, social progress and development are being defined in such terms. Such changes make sense. Well-being indicators are more responsive to what matters than purely economic ones. They pick out more directly what matters more directly. If money and economic factors are valuable only as a means to well-being, then our policies and interventions should track changes in wellbeing. This more direct approach is especially welcome given two factors. First, there is increasing awareness of the importance of the diminishing marginal utility of income. As we grow richer, after a point, money matters less (Easterlin 1974;

2

Preliminaries for a framework

Easterlin, McVey, Switek, Sawangfa and Zweig 2010). Second, because environmental concerns are pressing, there is a cry to be more efficient in the ‘production of well-being’; that is, to not squander precious natural resources for little or no gain in well-being, and not to ruin our natural environment for minimal gains in utility. Thus, the shift towards economies of well-being is exciting and promising on several counts. Nevertheless, there is also a danger lurking here. The shift from policies based on neoclassical economics towards those founded on well-being could be a truly liberating transformation. However, the opportunity for radical social improvement might be lost, depending on how we understand ‘well-being’. The more we employ implicitly economic ideas to understand the core of human well-being, the more we squander the opportunity for radical transformation. Our understanding of well-being will merely echo the values accepted by society rather than being a way to critique them. This is not only a missed opportunity, but also a profound misapprehension. Whilst economic thought is vitally necessary to evaluate the means to well-being, for instance, to assess efficiency and to weigh costs and benefits, standard economic concepts are inadequate to articulate the core nature of human well-being. Well-being itself is not an economic notion even though the means to well-being includes those that are economic. The more we understand well-being in human and evaluative terms, the more liberating the shift towards well-being based policies will be. The book will make these ideas clear and vivid. To begin, we will argue that there are four erroneous tendencies concerning the study of well-being. 1) Empirical and evaluative In the social sciences, writers tend not to distinguish well between empirical and evaluative claims. Put simply, empirical statements describe what is, and evaluations tell us what ought to happen and what is better or worse. The social sciences are concerned exclusively with empirical facts about social groups, and often only with measurable ones. Evaluative questions about what is good or bad do not fit into such a framework (Hollis 2015).1 Because of this, scientists tend to reduce claims about what is valuable to assertions about what someone considers valuable or what someone values. This is because the latter are empirical facts about a person or group, which in principle can be measured.2 Supposedly, in contrast, what is valuable seemingly isn’t an empirical fact, at least in a straightforward way. Therefore, according to the empirical social sciences, it must be understood in terms of what someone values. Although this reductive error is understandable, it remains a mistake. What is important for a person’s life cannot be reduced to what she thinks is so. Nor can it be reduced to what she values.3 The fact that someone values something or has a positive attitude towards it doesn’t ipso facto render it valuable. Nor is it necessary. The question of what is valuable might be outside the proper province of the social sciences, but this does not mean that such evaluative questions can be

Preliminaries for a framework 3 avoided. We cannot ignore the evaluative nature of the concept of well-being because that is what the concept is for: a multifaceted kind of evaluation. ‘Wellbeing’ is roughly equivalent to ‘being and living well’ and ‘well’ is equivalent to ‘in a good way’. ‘Well-being’ requires ‘goodness’; it is an ineluctably normative concept. We have found that there is resistance to and misunderstanding of this point. Many define happiness in terms of what a person values.4 This ties a person’s happiness conceptually to the values that she accepts or ‘has’.5 In opposition to this, there is the possibility that a person might have values that are not at all conducive to her happiness or which don’t constitute it. The person may value the wrong kinds of things (Badhwar 2014: 222). What a person values doesn’t necessarily track what is valuable as part of her well-being. In this regard, we are fallible; we can make mistakes and be ignorant. This implies that we cannot define well-being in terms of what a person values.6 This is a result of fundamental importance. Traditionally, well-being has been understood either in terms of feelings of happiness or the satisfaction of desires. These perspectives accord with popular understandings and with common sense. This means that they are most likely not entirely wrong, and that they contain important insights, which we shall need to unearth. Nevertheless, we shall also argue that these two views are mistaken. Some contemporary psychological studies of well-being rely on these ideas, and we shall argue that this comprises a significant limitation of those empirical studies. One aim of the book is to show why these reductive or thin accounts fail. We can already discern the evaluative nature of the quest from the question ‘How should one evaluate one’s life?’ We aren’t asking ‘How do people evaluate their lives?’ but rather how they ought to. The enterprise is essentially evaluative. It concerns how we ought to live or be, albeit that the ‘ought’ is non-moral. This facet of the question already indicates that the answer is normative.7 Consequently, our study is already meant to exclude thin as opposed to thick or value-rich conceptions of well-being. Thin conceptions try to avoid evaluative concepts, whereas, in contrast, rich conceptions employ value concepts. In short, well-being is not simply a question of happiness or of getting more of what one wants or having more pleasure. It cannot be reduced to evaluatively thin concepts such as happiness, desire and pleasure. Claims made with thick evaluative concepts face the challenge of how they relate to empirical facts. This challenge is especially acute for the notion of wellbeing: if someone’s well-being has improved, this must be in virtue of some other facts about her life. We require some empirical criteria for what constitutes wellbeing. If the concept of well-being is evaluatively rich, then how can we determine empirically what well-being is? Furthermore, how can we make such an evaluative concept operational and quantitatively measurable? How can we make such a concept useful for social policy? Many social scientists ignore or evade the normative dimensions of the concept of well-being in part because they assume that such questions cannot be answered adequately within the framework of a rich theory. Nevertheless, in this book, we embrace these questions. The systematic

4

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study of human well-being requires that empirical investigations are directed towards the composition of well-being, as opposed to merely its causes and conditions. This requires a conceptual framework for understanding this composition. In this work, we will show how this requirement can be satisfied without embracing the standard happiness, desire and pleasure theories of well-being. 2) Instrumental and non-instrumental The second systematic engrained error about the nature of value concerns the distinction between instrumental and non-instrumental values. Society abounds with mundane examples of the failure to draw this distinction because people tend to explain the value of anything in purely instrumental terms, even when this contains a patent absurdity. For example, consider the claim that happiness is good because happy people are more productive. True: it makes us so. True: this adds to the value of happiness. Nevertheless, it is a grossly misleading claim insofar as it ignores the point that ultimately productivity is only valuable instrumentally as a means to happiness. The original claim suggests that happiness is valuable because it makes us productive, and in this way, it puts the cart before the horse. For the moment, suffice it to say that inappropriate instrumentalisation is a systematic evaluative error in society. The basic distinction between instrumental and non-instrumental values is important for our theory in several ways. However, we will save the deeper significance of the distinction for Chapter 2. That is something to look forward to! First, in conversation, people typically switch from talking about well-being to what causes a sense of or feelings of well-being. This shift is in danger of confusing happiness and well-being, which we need to separate. It also threatens to conflate well-being with a person’s perception of it, which again are distinct. More important, though, we need to separate two types of questions. ‘What typically causes or contributes to X?’ is distinct from ‘What does X consist in?’ For example, asking what kinds of things causally contribute to good health is different from seeking the definition of good health itself. Similarly, ‘What causes harm?’ is different from ‘What does harm consist in?’ We are concerned with the question ‘What does well-being consist in?’ which is different from and prior to ‘What sort of things causally contribute to well-being?’ There is a systematic tendency to ignore the former question by replacing it with the second. For example, ‘What role does friendship play in well-being?’ becomes wholly assimilated by the question ‘How does friendship contribute to our sense of well-being?’ (Graham 2011: 122). The constitutive question has been ignored, in lieu of the causal one. Both kinds of question are important, that is, both empirical causal studies and a better understanding of what constitutes well-being. Second, we need to distinguish instrumental and non-instrumental values in our thinking about self-interest. It is obviously in our individual self-interest to earn more money, all other things being equal. Ceteris paribus, it is to our benefit and in our self-interest to acquire means of purely instrumental value, and harmful to lose and waste them. However, the idea of obtaining such benefits does not take

Preliminaries for a framework 5 us beyond instrumental value, which is purely derivative, and because of this an explanation of well-being cannot be couched entirely in such terms. Thus, the idea that well-being consists in acquiring more benefits is mistaken. It is erroneous even if it were true that such benefits always contribute to well-being. It is flawed as an account of well-being because such a theory must specify the kinds of noninstrumental values that constitute well-being. To underline the point, notice that the above conditions may not hold. Benefits don’t always contribute towards well-being. For instance, a very depressed person, who acquires many instrumental benefits or goods, which she cannot use or appreciate, may not actually live a better life. Possessing or owning is a material relationship that does not suffice for the appreciation of value, which may require a change in the person. Merely having a benefit needn’t be sufficient for the living of a valuable process. This important point may become lost easily by the already-mentioned failure to draw a simple distinction. The acquiring of such benefits may lead to a better life, but it does not constitute such a life. Likewise, losing wealth may cause us harm, but it does not constitute harm. In other words, we must distinguish what leads to or facilitates well-being and what this consists in. This point also applies to allied concepts such as happiness, welfare and quality of life; in each case, constitution and cause are distinct. To understand well-being, it is necessary to first elucidate what it is, which is in part a conceptual or philosophical exercise, rather than to start by trying to discover what causes or facilitates it, which is an empirical investigation. If we are not clear what it is, then we cannot determine what causes it. What constitutes well-being is only partly a conceptual question. The relevant concepts will provide the framework, the types of distinctions and classifications that we need to investigate human well-being empirically. So, we need a conceptual framework for an account of well-being. But such a framework needs to be filled by empirical studies that show us what well-being consists in. In other words, empirical research shouldn’t be solely directed towards the causes of wellbeing. They should also help us understand its nature. We can have a preliminary taste of the importance of the distinction between instrumental and non-instrumental values by considering the value of work. It is a well-known limit of purely economic analyses of work that they treat it purely instrumentally as a means of production and of personal income (Elster 1989; Ventegodt and Merrick 2009; White 1998). Given this, we might widen our conception of the value of work by looking at other non-financial utilities. One might ask: ‘What other measurable benefits does work bring us?’ The point is that even this improved conception of the value of work doesn’t frame all the issues in the right way. It still makes work only a production or only instrumentally valuable. And while work is a production, it is also much more than that. It is also a lived experience and a self-conception. In other words, work has non-instrumental value. But what does its being valuable non-instrumentally consist in? Such values cannot be reduced to what people like or enjoy or value in their work.8 This is because we can make mistakes and be ignorant. There may be aspects of work

6 Preliminaries for a framework that we enjoy that are inherently contrary to our well-being, and there may be aspects of work that we fail to properly appreciate. In other words, we have an interesting theoretical problem of significance: how should we identify or specify the relevant non-instrumentally valuable aspects of work? We need to answer the above question to be able to combine the productive and human aspects of work into one overall vision of well-being. This task is less easy than it might seem. It won’t do to say that the instrumental and non-instrumental must be in balance. It requires framing the issues in a way that places the economic and human aspects in an appropriate relationship. For instance, on the side of economic rationalism, it is right and important to systematically and rationally weigh expected costs and benefits. However, on the side of the more human, there is something elusively right to the sense that not all decisions are a question of only cost-benefit analysis. We need different ideas for different contexts. But it is not immediately clear how to combine both. A theory of well-being ought to provide the insights that will allow us to do that.9 3) Value and measurement There is an endemic failure to separate what is valuable from the measurement of that value. Clearly, the indicators of X are distinct from X itself. A rise in temperature isn’t the same as its measurement with a thermometer. We could have the one without the other. Likewise, performing better on an IQ test does not constitute an increase in intelligence. Even though the first is usually a reliable indicator of the second, we can imagine situations in which it isn’t. In practice, we disregard this difference at our peril. We do so, for instance, when we define our goals in terms of performance outcomes that are supposed to be measures (Gill and Thomson 2013). The distinction is crucial for comprehending rational choice theory and utility. Sometimes, ‘utility’ stands for what is desirable; sometimes it refers to a measure of value. This difference is important for understanding the claim that traditional aggregative utility theory omits aspects of what counts as an improved quality of life (see Chapter 3). Does ‘utility’ measure what is valuable or constitute it? The difference is also crucial for the evaluation of the idea that desirable aspects of life can be ranked in a quantitative manner (see Chapter 7). In short, the claim that utility is a measure of well-being isn’t the same as the theory that utility is well-being. The point that we are making is a simple one: how one measures well-being doesn’t define what it is. The two are distinct. This implies that the process of trying to understand what well-being is, and the process of figuring out how to measure it, are separate. The concept needs to be explained insofar as possible in its full richness without the muddling constraint that it should be simplified for the sake of making it measurable. It is a distinct process to work out how the wellbeing of people should be measured. Thus, we shall explain what well-being is without the constraining requirement that it should be measurable or quantifiable.

Preliminaries for a framework 7 This doesn’t mean that well-being isn’t measurable. Nor does it mean that wellbeing shouldn’t be measured. It means that understanding well-being is a distinct enterprise from measuring it. We shall discuss these issues later in the book (see Chapter 7). Sometimes, the three mentioned errors are innocuous fallacies. However, they can constitute grave mistakes that lead us to misidentify what really matters in practically significant ways. They can damage our understanding of well-being. As we shall see, to avoid this requires a dogged determination to separate means and ends, and instrumental and non-instrumental values (Chapter 2), and a constant keen eye to distinguish the measurement of value from the value considerations themselves (see Chapter 7). Let us affirm the three points positively. We are advocating a strategy for wellbeing studies that conforms to the following principles: 1

2

3

We shouldn’t try to simplify our conception of well-being in order to measure it. We should make our account rich and complex, and also work out how this conception can be measured. This requires separating clearly exposition of the concept and measurement of well-being. We mustn’t confuse the causes of well-being with its constituents. We need to have a good understanding of what it is that the causal connections are between. This requires empirical studies concerning the nature of well-being in a synergetic relation to conceptual work. Empirical investigation shouldn’t be directed exclusively to what causes or facilitates well-being. The conceptual work that a framework for well-being requires should be directed towards (among other things) showing how an evaluatively rich conception of well-being can be given empirical determinations.

Objective/subjective Earlier we mentioned four errors, but so far we have discussed only three. Let us add the tendency to ignore the subjectivity of experience as the fourth. Contemporary science has difficulties acknowledging the subjectivity of experience on its own terms; as we shall see in Chapter 4, it tends to be acknowledged in objective terms. This means that it isn’t being comprehended adequately as subjectivity. One cannot conceive of subjectivity adequately from an objective point of view. Although this claim needs careful qualifications, subjectivity is a vital aspect of well-being; how one experiences the living of one’s life from the first-person point of view is a necessary and important part of one’s being, and hence of one’s well-being. This subjectivity, vital to well-being, cannot be understood as such in purely objective terms. This topic is potentially confusing because the key words ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ are employed in many different ways. What matters in a person’s well-being seems to have both subjective and objective aspects.10 Therefore, as a preliminary, we might distinguish four distinct uses of the terms ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’.

8

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a) Meta-ethics In meta-ethical theory, subjectivism is roughly the view that evaluative claims cannot be true or false.11 This is usually taken to be equivalent to the claim that they are subjective because they are merely a matter of opinion or an expression of a positive attitude (Thomson 2002b). (Technical aside: The view that claims of the form ‘X is desirable’ or ‘X is good’ can be reduced to assertions about what someone values is closely related to meta-ethical subjectivism. They are not the same but it is plausible to argue that the first entails the second. This is reasonable because if a person A claims ‘X is desirable’ then this claim should be understood as an expression of A’s valuing X and not as an assertion that can be true or false. This last alternative is not plausible: ‘A values X’ doesn’t entail the assertion ‘X is desirable’ because the former is about A and the latter is about X. In summary, the view that claims about what is valuable are reducible to claims about what a person values can be taken as equivalent to meta-ethical subjectivism.) In this book, we shall assume that evaluative claims can be true or false. They are assertions and not merely a matter of opinion, and in this sense, they are not subjective. This assumption is important because it determines the shape of the project to be completed. It means that we are fallible about evaluative claims and that we can be ignorant about them (McDowell 1998). It also means that we need to discover the relevant criteria. Let us go through these points one by one. If evaluative claims can be true or false, then it is possible for a person to make mistakes in her judgment about what is good or bad. For instance, a person might judge that her well-being is best served by forming a life-plan and trying to fulfil her ambition. But this whole approach might be an error. The specific life-plan might be quite unsuited to her character, and tempt her into making sacrifices that would not be psychologically healthy. Furthermore, having a life-plan might be a formula for disappointment and a recipe for self-instrumentalising. In short, she might be making a mistake. Not only are mistakes possible, but also, so is ignorance. One might be ignorant of alternative ways of life that would be more fitting to one’s well-being. In such a case, it may be that one isn’t making mistaken judgments about those lifestyles; it may be rather than one isn’t even making judgments about them at all. One’s horizons can be restricted, and because of this, one’s practical conception of well-being. The space of value possibilities of human life is largely unexplored (May 2005). Consider the different ways that people live around the planet now. Consider the different ways of living that we have tried throughout our human collective history. Despite this variety, there well may be ways of life and social arrangements that we humans have not imagined that are much more conducive to well-being. A value theory that permits both errors and ignorance in our judgments about well-being requires criteria. Our project of understanding well-being in a nonreductive way will be a search for the relevant constitutive criteria. In accordance with what criteria, is the judgment that my well-being is best served, for instance, by having many friends? What are the pertinent criteria constitutive of well-being?

Preliminaries for a framework 9 Objective accounts of well-being require the discovery of criteria. This is one of the main quests of this book, to seek evaluative criteria that are empirically specifiable without being thin or reductive. b) Pertaining to subjects There is second kind of subjectivity. Something is subjective if it pertains to the subject as such. In this sense, pain is subjective and physical mass is not. The first depends on the subject of experience as such, and the second does not. Well-being is clearly subjective in this second sense. Well-being requires that there is a subject who is well. c) Intentionality We can extend this second use. Often when theoreticians discuss the subjectivity of experience, they refer to its intentional and/or its self-conscious nature. The idea that experience is intentional is important for this study, and we explain it in detail later (in Chapter 4). We can explicate it provisionally as follows: many mental phenomena have the characteristic of having content or being about something. For example, when we think, our thinking has a content, which is usually expressed with a sentence, and our thinking is about something, such as tonight’s dinner. Furthermore, mental states are intentional in a way that embodies a point of view on the world. d) Methodology The assertion that the natural sciences have an objective methodology means roughly that experiments in the natural sciences shouldn’t depend on the psychological state of the experimenter. Experimental results should be reproducible by any experimenter in the same conditions, and this requires that the experiment be conducted with controls. The natural sciences are objective in the sense that their methodology is repeatable and not dependent on the state of the experimenter. It is impersonal and supposedly neutral. We might contrast the natural sciences in this regard with interpretation. How a text should be interpreted may depend on the state of the interpreter. Because of this, interpreting a text is often regarded a process of dialogue between the reader and the text. Notice that even if interpretation is subjective in this third sense, this doesn’t mean that it is subjective in sense a). Even though interpretation is not impersonally repeatable, nevertheless there can be better and worse interpretations. Even if there isn’t one true interpretation of a text, there can be more true or more false ones (Gadamer 1989). We have identified four senses of the objective/subjective contrast. First, subjective claims are merely a matter of opinion if that they don’t have a truth-value. Second, claims are subjective when they are about a subject as such, and third, they describe the intentional content of a person’s experience or psychological

10

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states. Fourth, a methodology is subjective if it isn’t suitably impersonal and repeatable.12 These senses of ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ are independent of each other. To see this, consider the following: we can have objectively true claims about the subjectivity of a person’s experience, which are investigated with objective methodology. For example, consider the sentence ‘John believes that there are beings living on the moon.’ This judgment is objective in the sense of being true or false; there is some fact of the matter: subjective psychological claims are objective because it is not merely a matter of opinion what John’s opinions are. Additionally, we can gain evidence about those opinions through objective methodology. We can have behavioural evidence for or against the assertion regarding John’s belief. So, in this case, ‘John believes that there are beings living on the moon’ is objective in senses a) and d) but it is subjective in sense b) and c). In short, we can have objective claims about subjective experience that are investigated objectively. Returning now to the main point, a framework for well-being must include the subjectivity of experience. There is a difference between one’s inner life as constituted by one’s awareness and shifts in one’s attention, and one’s outer life as others might observe it.13 One’s inner life is something that one experiences for oneself, and this phenomenology of consciousness will need to be part of the framework of well-being. This requires the third sense of subjectivity, namely intentionality: how one experiences the world. This point will be elaborated in Chapter 4. Perhaps due to their positivist lineage and to their proclivity for numerical results, some approaches in the social sciences exclude the subjectivity of experience (in sense c) from accounts of well-being. There are epistemological reasons for this. There are notorious difficulties in knowing the inner life of others (and of oneself). There are also indeterminacies in our psychological lives. For example, in certain circumstances it will be indeterminate whether a person is experiencing the same taste that he previously liked and now dislikes or whether he is experiencing a different taste altogether (Dennett 1992, 1998). We should not take our experiences from the first-person view to be given or transparent or determinate. Nevertheless, despite these and other difficulties, the way in which one experiences or is aware of one’s life from the first-person point of view is a necessary facet of well-being. Readers might protest that contemporary psychology does not ignore the subjective aspects of well-being. Indeed, current psychological literature on wellbeing is often focused on so-called subjective theories of well-being. There is a vast literature on subjective well-being. However, such theories use the term ‘subjective’ in a way that needs clarification and, once clarified, we will see that ‘subjective theories of well-being’ tend not to take subjectivity seriously in the sense that we mean. This is because, in such theories, the subjective element is usually conceived either as a feeling of pleasure or in terms of so-called subjective life-satisfaction. Accordingly, to judge a person’s subjective well-being is to discover either how often and how much the

Preliminaries for a framework 11 person reports experiences of feelings of pleasure, or second, how a person would rate her life: how satisfied the person is with her life overall.14 Neither of these two theories allow us to understand how and why the phenomenology of experience partly constitutes well-being. They tend not to be not concerned with the content of how the person experiences her life except insofar as this provides a set of external measures. In the first instance, subjective wellbeing is understood as a function of individual moments of pleasure or happiness (Kahneman, Diener and Schwarz, 1999; Kahneman, Daniel and Krueger, Alan, 2006). However, as we shall argue in Chapter 4, this kind of account treats pleasure as a mental occurrence that doesn’t have a content beyond being pleasurable. It overlooks the intentionality of such experiences, which is to say that it ignores what it is like for the subject to have the experience in question. It gets radically wrong what pleasurable experience is. We can have a preliminary glimpse of the importance of this point by considering the variety of kinds of pleasures that a good life might contain. How can one account for this variety within a purely quantitative frame consisting of units of pleasure? In the second case, subjective well-being is understood in terms of self-reported life-satisfaction, as answers to questions such as ‘How satisfied are you with your life?’ Again, this approach is limited to providing a set of measures but without specifying how lived experience constitutes well-being. This is because such selfreported life-satisfaction claims don’t have any criteria determining their truthvalue beyond the person’s avowal. Given this, they count merely as an expression of feeling rather than a true or false claim about the person’s life. They are expressions of a feeling (rather like ‘Yes!’ ‘Great!’) rather than statements with a truthvalue about the person’s life. The person is expressing a positive attitude towards her life rather than making an assertion about the positives in her life. Without relevant criteria that could make such a claim false, nothing could constitute an error (see Chapter 4). Following the initial clarification, we can see that contemporary subjective theories of well-being tend to not be concerned with how the subjective experiences of a person constitute inter alia her well-being. Rather, their interest is with self-reports insofar as these yield a measure of well-being. This amounts to a huge difference that has several implications. First, subjective theories of well-being do not answer our earlier complaint that contemporary accounts tend to ignore the subjectivity of experience. How one lives one’s life from the first-person point of view is a necessary constituent of well-being. We need to understand how consciousness defines well-being: what is most basically relevant and why? For example, how is depression relevant? How is a person’s insecurities and self-image pertinent? Subjective measures presuppose that what is to be measured is already defined. Second, methodologically, the theoretical need for greater understanding of a person’s subjectivity isn’t satisfied by self-reported measures or by compiling scores. It needs a fresh approach. Partly for this reason, we undertook life-narrative interviews with 50 persons regarding their well-being. The idea wasn’t to try to confirm or disconfirm the theoretical framework offered in this book empirically. It was rather mainly to illustrate it with real-life examples. The aim was also to set

12 Preliminaries for a framework up an interrogative dialogue between the empirical study and the development of a conceptual framework. Third, the goal was to help escape the positivist lineage that suggests that the only way to study well-being is through quantitative correlations. Thus, we wanted to show that life-narrative interviews might provide a fruitful complementary method. This is a thread that we pick up in Chapter 7 when we discuss measurement. Also, in the appendix of that chapter, we elaborate how life-narrative interviews can provide an alternative and complementary methodology. Finally, throughout the book, we employ examples from our case studies to illuminate the theoretical framework we develop. In conclusion, we have tried to draw attention to three important high-level theoretical errors in studies of well-being. To these we added a contentious fourth: insufficient attention to the subjectivity of experience. We have noted some issues and confusions regarding this point and have indicated that this will be a major theme of Chapter 4. We suggested that life-narrative interviews can provide an alternative to the statistical correlations that tend to dominate the field.

Evaluative claims Well-being is an evaluative concept. Earlier, we affirmed that this study would be driven in part by a tension between two claims about evaluations. On the one hand, because evaluative claims can be true or false, there are criteria for such evaluations. We need to specify the empirical criteria that make evaluative judgments regarding well-being or the good life true or false. No doubt such criteria will depend on cultural and psychological facts about humans, as we shall see later. On the other hand, evaluative claims (about what we have reason or ought to do) are not reducible to value-free empirical ones. We should shun thin accounts of well-being that reduce the concept to a simple empirical criterion such as a feeling of happiness or ranked preferences (without excluding the possibility that such concepts are important for understanding well-being). These two claims seem to conflict with each other: the one side asserts the need for empirical criteria that the other side denies are possible. This conflict is alleviated, but not resolved, by the claim that there is no one single value criterion for well-being. If well-being is, crudely speaking, in the living of certain values, and if these values are multifarious, then they cannot be reduced to a single common factor such as pleasure, happiness, desire or preference. For a full resolution of the antinomy, we require a non-reductive account of what is non-instrumentally valuable given in empirical terms, with the now-added idea that the criteria will be plural. This resolution will require empirical research. Well-being is not the same for a human and a monkey. It is not the same for a child and an old person. It will vary between cultures and temperaments. In short, this means that judgments about well-being must specify for whom: X is better for A’s well-being than Y. This doesn’t make judgments about well-being subjective (in the first sense noted earlier); we can still make mistakes. It doesn’t mean that one can decide for oneself

Preliminaries for a framework 13 what will constitute one’s well-being; there are criteria at play.15 However, the empirical content of these criteria may vary between people, societies and species. This means that there will be something about the nature of the being in question that makes the difference. Here the word ‘nature’ should be taken as a promissory note to be redeemed in Chapters 3 and 7. Simply, there must be some varying facts about people in virtue of which their well-being is differently constituted. We need conceptual work to uncover the framework, and empirical study to discover the variations. We also need empirical investigation directed to understanding the field of human possibilities. There may be modes of life or ways of living and being that are far better in terms of human well-being than the restricted ways in which most of us live today within western society. However, we have limited knowledge of those alternatives. Studies of traditional tribal societies might suggest that people in contemporary western society tend to pay a heavy toil in terms of (for instance) anxiety. However, traditional societies tend to be limited in other ways. Can we have the best of both worlds? We don’t know how well humans might live. This means that well-being studies must try to imaginatively envisage possibilities of how well we could be, but based on empirically sound understanding and evidence. This point is significant. Evaluative judgments are implicitly comparative: one thing is better or worse than another. Even when we say that X is good or bad, there is an implicit comparison at work. A good hammer is good not only relative to its function, but the judgment also is implicitly comparative: the hammer is at least as good as most other hammers. Likewise, when we judge a person’s well-being, there is an implied comparison (as well as a set of criteria). If we claim that a person has well-being, then we are making a tacit contrast with some group. This implies that claims about a person’s well-being will depend on what implicit comparison is being made. A person may feel better than she did yesterday and report her well-being positively based on that comparison. The same person could have made a judgment based on how happy, healthy and wealthy some other people feel, and reported her own well-being as negative based on this other comparison. There is no contradiction here so long as one makes the comparison explicit. Comparison is important when we employ the concept of well-being in social critique. For example, one might claim that contemporary western society in general emphasises consumerism to the detriment of the quality of work or personal relationships. Such a claim would be comparative. But what is the relevant comparison? To test such claims empirically, we would need empirical research of the alternatives so that the comparison class is specifiable. We need research directed towards mapping the field of human possibilities. This is closely allied to a slightly different point. Evaluations presuppose an implicit scope that is defined by what one takes for granted. For example, one might ask, ‘How can I improve my well-being concerning my work?’, assuming one will stay in one’s current employment. The scope is narrow. We could ask for a wider evaluation – ‘What sort of work should I seek?’ – but assuming implicitly

14 Preliminaries for a framework the limitations of one’s current qualifications, and employment possibilities in the region. One could make the scope of the question even wider and more ideal by removing these limitations and asking, ‘What sort of work would be ideally suited to my abilities, talents and temperament?’ One could widen the scope of evaluation even more by asking about how the institution of work might be redesigned for the sake of human well-being. In each case, the evaluative question (and its answer) takes something for granted or as a given. A wider question submits one or more of these assumed elements to interrogation; it no longer takes it as a given. In this way, the scope of the question is broadened. In our everyday lives, we usually take socially accepted views of well-being for granted and tend to only ask causal questions about how to improve that wellbeing as and when they arise practically. When we are ill, we want to know how to get better. When we are poor, we want to know how to earn more. When we are insulted, we want to recover our dignity. When we are bereaved, we want to know how we can carry on. We want our children to do well and worry about them when there are problems. We want things to go smoothly at work and worry about it only when things are awry. This indicates the narrow scope of our everyday evaluations about well-being. At the most practical level, one might want to evaluate one’s personal well-being within the confines of one’s circumstances and culture or social conditions. Thus, one would ask: ‘In this kind of society, given my basic character and this context, what would constitute an improvement in my well-being and what can I do to achieve that?’ In such cases, the considered field of possibilities is circumscribed. Thus, so are the implicit comparisons in our judgments about well-being. For example, we tend to not worry about how we can improve our character for the sake of a better life: ‘This is a long-term issue for another day.’ We usually don’t concern ourselves with the kind of society and civilization that are conducive to human well-being. We take a lot for granted in our everyday judgments about well-being. Perhaps too much . . . At a broader level, we can abstract from our culture and from the institutions that define our society. We don’t have to take our current desires or character traits as given. We don’t have to take for granted the institutional frameworks that we inhabit. Human beings have a plastic nature, and there are many ways in which we can live; some of these would be better than the currently available social options. In this manner, we can employ the concept of well-being to critically assess society and ways of life from a broad perspective, as Freud did in his work Civilization and Its Discontents (Freud 2010). From the perspective that Freud adopts in his work, life in contemporary western society is marred by tendencies towards psychological illnesses. From this vantage point, Freud might claim that none of us have well-being. Such a judgment would suggest that human life could be wonderful in ways that are difficult to experience in our civilization. It would also imply that humans could have the self-understanding and capacity to build for themselves lives and institutions that fit their needs far better than we do now. However, even if we could be clear about them conceptually, such claims are difficult to test empirically; nevertheless, to understand them, we must step outside

Preliminaries for a framework 15 the delineated scope of our everyday judgments and their limited range of possibilities and comparisons. The interplay between questions with a narrower and wider scope will be an underlying theme of this book. In general terms, it is better to be aware of the presuppositions of one’s questions. In particular, we need to be wary of comparing apples and pears by forgetting the implicit scope and comparative nature of judgments about well-being. This is important for the operationalisation of the concept. For example, if we want to compare the well-being of children in urban and rural schools within a country, then we would make some cultural assumptions about the nature of well-being that we wouldn’t want to presume if we were critically assessing the institution of schooling within the same country using the concept of well-being. For these two cases, the concept needs to be conceived differently. For instance, the institution of schooling shapes the nature of adolescence. In the second study, the question ‘For the sake of the well-being of young people, should adolescence be shaped in the way that it currently is?’ is pertinent. And therefore, for that investigation, the nature of adolescence within that culture can’t be taken as a given. This last point has a theoretical significance, as we shall see in Chapters 3 and 7. In general, the concept of well-being should be robust enough that it can be used for social critique, and as we have argued in this chapter, this requires a framework that allows for empirical research about what constitutes well-being.

The concept of well-being This book aims to provide a framework for theories of well-being. It doesn’t present a full theory, because this would include specifications that require empirical investigation. For instance, the well-being of a child will be different from that of an older person; the differences are empirical. This work aims to provide a framework for a theory by constructing and explaining the relevant concepts. We have already glimpsed at some of the errors to avoid in our account of the concept of well-being. The framework needs to be consistent with the evaluative nature of the concept without being reductive. It needs to explain the relevant noninstrumental values. It should avoid the error of being driven by measurement. However, before we can embark on providing a framework, we need to identify the concept that we are providing this frame for (Metz 2013; Campbell 2016). Before we articulate and argue about conceptions of well-being, we need to characterise the concept that will be the centre of our investigation. The idea of well-being is the concept of our being well in the most fundamental, inclusive or complete way. This means that we are living well or in non-instrumentally good ways in all aspects of our lives, where ‘non-instrumentally good’ is qualified in what we might call for the moment provisionally ‘a prudential manner’. A person’s well-being provides her and others with reasons for action. To identify the concept, we need to specify the kind of reasons in question. We can start with some preliminary points. The reason in question will be defeasible; that is, it can be overridden by other kinds of consideration. Because of the public nature

16 Preliminaries for a framework of concepts, the reason in question will be interpersonal, as Darwall’s account implies. Nevertheless, the reason will be primarily first personal in its content; it is a reason for the person with regard to her own life. It is because of this that others have a reason to rationally care for one (Darwall 2002).16 When we specify the kind of reason in question, it is usual to claim that wellbeing concerns ‘what is good or bad for a person’ and that it is ‘an evaluation of the person’s life’. However, these phrases are still too broad; we need to narrow them down. We can do this in three steps. First, the reasons in question will be non-instrumental. This implies that the concept of well-being should be distinguished from that of self-interest. This is because self-interest includes cultivation and gathering of the merely instrumentally valuable. So, for example, wealth, fame, reputation and power will usually be in a person’s self-interest, but we cannot conclude from that they will be constituents of her well-being. They might typically cause well-being, but that is a different point. Neither can we automatically assume that it is only rational to pursue wealth, fame, reputation and power insofar as they bring or cause well-being. Second, well-being–defining reasons will be concerned with the quality of the person’s life but not qua some role or social position. Therefore, they are different from the judgment that a person’s life is going well as an artist, or as a designer or as a mother. A person’s life can go well qua these regards without it going well as a life per se. Indeed, they might involve a sacrifice of well-being (as well as of self-interest). Thus, one’s life going well in these regards doesn’t constitute wellbeing. Of course, again, one’s life going well qua some role or social position might typically cause one’s well-being, but that is a different point. In a similar vein, one might evaluate a person’s life with regard to its success. However, for similar reasons, this won’t be a constituent of well-being either. These points also mean that concepts such as ‘enviable’ and ‘admirable’ won’t necessarily track well-being because they might be tracking some other kinds of desirable features that a life might have. A more delicate point: we might evaluate a person’s life in terms of her achievements; that is, whether she is achieving her important goals. And arguably this is a component of well-being. Third, in summary, well-being concerns how well my life is going for me, as the person whose life it is and not qua or with respect to criteria of evaluation outside my living it as such. This implies that the concept of well-being isn’t about specific events in my life. For example, if I trip over or get embroiled in an ugly dispute or get confused in an argument, then such events might cause me illbeing but they won’t constitute it per se. To constitute ill-being, they would have to be part of a pattern such that they form part or an aspect of my way of being. The concept of well-being concerns the quality of my life as lived concerning my being well. In reply to the question, ‘What does it mean for me to be well?’, we need to answer ‘What does it mean for me to be?’ This is an important clue as to how to proceed with a substantive analysis.17 From this set of claims, we can derive some implications that will guide our investigation. Foremost, the account ought to specify the relevant kinds of

Preliminaries for a framework 17 non-instrumental value. This imposes an important constraint that we will examine in Chapter 2, which is that we shouldn’t instrumentalise ourselves. It also entails that the components of well-being themselves shouldn’t themselves be harmful, as we shall see in Chapter 7. Furthermore, the framework ought to include all the relevant value-making facets or aspects of human life. Our being well should include our being well physically, emotionally, cognitively, relationally, identity-wise and spiritually. This means that there shouldn’t be some aspect of human life that is omitted from the account. The resulting framework ought to be complete, with nothing significant missing. Because we are investigating what constitutes being well, the account should reflect the holistic nature of human life. For this reason, we have used the word ‘aspects’ rather than ‘components’ or ‘parts’ when discussing well-being. Usually a component can exist on its own, like an atom. Aspects can’t exist in this way; they are abstractions from a totality. The different facets of well-being described in this treatise aren’t separable except in account. For example, self-consciousness isn’t like a layer that sits on top of awareness or consciousness. Rather, it permeates and modulates it. Likewise, appreciative awareness isn’t something separate from one’s activities and experiences. In short, the facets of well-being aren’t separable components; they are aspects.18 In this work, we will focus on four, perhaps five, aspects of human life, which we shall argue capture the required entirety in the desired way. Let us start with the first four. First, our lives comprise various experiences, activities and processes that partly constitute a human life. By ‘experiences’, we mean, for instance, the experience of going to a fair or that of taking an exam. These are things that happen to a person. By ‘activities’ we include actions, but also the complex nesting of actions. For instance, digging the soil is an action, but it is part of the larger activity of looking after a garden. The activity of reading a book is contained in that of understanding a subject matter, which is itself incorporated in the broader activity of studying for a degree. By ‘processes’ we mean even broader sets of activities and experiences. For example, one of the processes of human life is to fall in love (and out of it!). Another process of human life is to grow older. Let us call this overall aspect of well-being ‘the level of activities’. Part of what well-being is about must be characterised at this level. A description of well-being must concern what a person’s life consists of with regards to what the person experiences and does. For example, if a person is seriously ill and cannot go out of the house, then this is relevant to her well-being at this first level. Likewise, a person of limited material resources would likely be deprived at this first level (this is the topic of Chapter 3). Second, we are aware of those constituents of a life in ways that can be more or less appreciative of the valuable nature of those experiences, activities or processes. As we undergo an experience or process or undertake an activity, we are conscious of our actions and what they are directed towards. Let us call this ‘the level of awareness’. Part of the specification of well-being must be at this level. A

18 Preliminaries for a framework description of well-being must include how a person is aware of her experiences, activities and processes, and their objects. A person’s awareness can be of lower or higher quality. For example, if I am attentive to and absorbed in what is good about the activity that I am engaged in, then ceteris paribus, my well-being will be greater than that of a person who isn’t. At this level, well-being is about how we are aware of the world around us, including our activities. Put simply, such awareness should be appropriately appreciative. Such appreciation will involve one’s emotions and moods, including happiness. From the phenomenological point of view, the quality of one’s life depends on what one pays attention to and under what descriptions. By appreciating appropriately the value of one’s activities etc., one can construct a phenomenological world that constitutes one’s being well. This is the subject matter of Chapter 4. Any account of well-being must be concerned with this level of human life: the quality of awareness with which the person attends to the activities of her life. For instance, a person who is seriously ill may be very anxious about her health and, as a result, unable to appreciate the limited activities that she can engage in. Third, the activities (etc.) that partly constitute a life are essentially relational in nature. In our experiential and active life, we are always interacting with things and persons beyond ourselves. The meanings of our everyday actions concern especially other persons. This implies that to describe the well-being of a person, we must characterise her relations with the world around her, and especially with other persons. In a sense that has yet to be explained, other people can become part of our lives. Any account of well-being must include this aspect of human life. Without it, a characterization of well-being would be essentially incomplete. Fourth, in these experiences, activities and processes, we are aware of ourselves; we are self-conscious. As we shall see, self-consciousness is not a single phenomenon. However, in terms of well-being, this dimension may be regarded as one’s relationship to oneself. This is another ineluctable aspect of human life that needs to be included in any account of well-being. So far we have presented four aspects of human life that any account of wellbeing must include. These four aspects are structurally constitutive features of any human life that are evaluative necessary in the requisite sense. They are structural features of living that are potentially good-making in the relevant way. They are something like the a priori forms of well-being. To characterise human well-being, in each case, we need to describe a set of non-instrumentally valuable states of being and specify the relevant criteria. Additionally, the four features require irreducibly different criteria of evaluation, and therefore they are genuinely independent from each other, even if they causally feed into each other in synergetic ways. Thus, when we specify the relevant criteria for each of the four aspects of being human, we will be close to grasping the required framework. Furthermore, if there are no other necessary and structurally constitutive features of a human life that are genuinely independent (i.e. that can’t be reasonably subsumed under one of these four), then we have all the elements for a complete framework. Have we left out something essential and

Preliminaries for a framework 19 structurally constitutive? If the answer is ‘no’, then we have all the elements for a complete framework. Please remember that these features are supposed to be four general aspects of human life. They are separable only abstractly or in thought. As I eat my food in a restaurant with my friends, my actions constitute the first level. Thank goodness, I am conscious of the food I eat, and of the activity of the eating. That is the second level: my awareness can be of better or worse quality. In eating, I am in relations to the other people around me, and to the food. The quality of these relations constitutes the third level. While I am eating, and being with my friends, I am conscious of myself in many ways, including as someone doing those things. Selfawareness constitutes the fourth level of well-being. These four aspects or levels are intertwined with each other in everyday life. We distinguish them because in each case the criteria relevant for well-being are different. We put forward four, but is there a fifth? This question is difficult to answer now because we haven’t even been through the first four criteria, and therefore we cannot assess whether putative candidates for a fifth structurally constitutive aspect of human life are already included within the four or not. We need to understand the four before we can assess whether there is a fifth. The next chapter will propose what might appear to be a distinct fifth candidate. This is the general idea that we shouldn’t instrumentalise ourselves. A person’s well-being is diminished when she instrumentalises herself or parts of her life. For instance, life’s activities typically involve having purposes, and well-being will depend on whether one instrumentalises one’s activities to those purposes or goals. This suggestion needs some explanation and work. Hence, we shall dedicate a whole chapter to it.

Notes 1 Mackie (1991) assumes that for claims about something to be valuable or good to be true there must exist values as Platonic entities. In other words, objective claims about what is valuable must be absolute and cannot be relational. This tendency to confuse absolute with objective and subjective with relational is criticised by McDowell (1998). In other words, there can be objectively true claims about what is valuable that aren’t absolute. Objective claims don’t need to be absolute. See Thomson (2002a, 2002b) and also Le Bar (2013). 2 ‘Theory tells us that well-being components or dimensions will assume different priorities in different countries, depending on their levels of achieved wellbeing, different cultural priorities and so on’ (McGillivray and Noorbakhsh 2004: 15). That different cultures in fact value differently doesn’t imply difference in what is valuable. 3 Tiberius and Plakias (2010) seem to confuse subjective theories in this sense with hedonist and desire satisfaction–based theories. We need to separate a) what counts for wellbeing is dependent on the subject’s positive attitudes or what she values from b) that pleasure and pain and/or that desire satisfaction might matter non-instrumentally for well-being. The first is akin to a meta-ethical subjectivist claim, which we will examine shortly. The second is a substantive normative claim about well-being which can be made within an objectivist framework. 4 This includes whether a person feels satisfied with aspects of her life.

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Preliminaries for a framework

5 Seligman (2012: 29) says positive psychology is about what we choose for its own sake. Notice that this is descriptive and not normative. 6 Even if we can so measure it. 7 For the purposes of this discussion, we are not distinguishing ‘evaluative’ and ‘normative’: both affirm reasons for action. 8 By ‘those values’, we mean the non-instrumentally valuable aspects of work. 9 As a technical but important aside, one should distinguish between the intrinsic and the non-instrumental value of an activity. ‘Non-instrumental’ indicates that the activity is valuable for its own sake; ‘intrinsic’ indicates that the valuable features of the activity are non-relational. By distinguishing them we allow that the non-instrumental value of an activity need not be intrinsic; it could be relational. 10 This isn’t the idea that we should examine a mix of both objective and subjective indicators of well-being. Indicators pertain to how to measure rather than what is measured. 11 Academically, this position is called ‘non-cognitivism’. 12 For present purposes, we can collapse the second and third senses. However, it is important to keep them separate because of the prevalence of understandings of subjectivity that ignore intentionality. This point will be important for Chapters 3, 4 and 6. 13 This doesn’t imply a Cartesian view of the inner. 14 In contrast, the objective measures of well-being are those which are not subjectively self-reported, such as income levels, health and family life conditions. Of course, these objective markers aren’t definitional of well-being even if they are reliable indicators. 15 Evaluations are relative to some criterion or set of criteria. In other words, we should not say ‘X is better than Y’ simpliciter because there must be some criterion with respect to which this is true. It may be false with respect to other criteria. In effect, this means that ‘better’ and ‘worse’ judgments are description-relative. 16 One has reason to rationally care for things apart from the well-being (such as things of aesthetic value or truth). However, if one cares for a person then there is a defeasible presupposition that ipso facto one cares for her well-being (Darwall 2002). 17 Like the concept of good health, we would expect the concept of well-being to be multi-dimensional, pluralistic and vague. 18 This point belongs to Kant and Marx.

2

Beyond instrumentalisation

At the age of 51 the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy entered a crisis. In My Confessions, he describes his life before the breakdown, which led him to consider suicide: And this was happening to me when I was on every side surrounded by what is considered to be complete happiness. I had a good, loving and beloved wife, good children and a large estate, which grew and increased without any labour on my part. I was respected by my neighbours and friends, and more than ever before, I was praised by strangers and, without any self-deception could consider my name famous. . . . I was in full command of my mental and physical powers, such as I had rarely met with people of my own age: physically, I could work in a field, mowing, without falling behind a peasant. (Tolstoy 1983: 26) The passage is striking because Tolstoy characterises his former life in terms of the results he had achieved rather than as a set of valuable activities. For example, he regarded his estate as a cash cow that grew effortlessly as opposed to an opportunity for meaningful work, and this implies that he conceived work as a chore to be avoided. Tolstoy also describes his literary career in terms of the resulting fame and praise rather than as a love. Concerning his health, he emphasises that he can keep up with the peasants. There is even the slight suggestion that his wife and children are like well-behaved possessions that do not cause him any trouble. In short, his description of his former happiness focuses on the end-result of his activities rather than their inherent meaning or value. Tolstoy depicts this period of his life as hollow. However, the damage may have been self-inflicted, albeit unwittingly. One can eradicate the value or meaning in one’s life by treating one’s actions purely as instrumental to goals, such as fame and status. This damaging conception of value is implicit in a standard view of rationality that portrays all rationality as instrumental. In short, what’s at stake is the way that we conceive of the value of our activities, ourselves and our lives. Any account of well-being must have these relationships right, otherwise our understanding of well-being will dehumanise us. Tolstoy shows us that instrumentalisation, or the lack of it, is an ingredient of well-being.

22 Beyond instrumentalisation Consider also the famous Myth of Sisyphus. To emphasise the grotesquely absurd nature of human endeavour, the French Existentialist philosopher Albert Camus paints a bleak picture of the life of Sisyphus, which consists in his rolling a huge stone up a steep hill. The gods condemn Sisyphus to repeat his action endlessly. Every time he nears the top, the stone rolls down again (Camus 1991). Sisyphus’ fate appears pathetic only because we assume that the point of his existence is to reach the peak of the hill. If, on the contrary, we give up this assumption, and imagine that Sisyphus loves stone rolling, we can paint an entirely different portrait in which he repeats his actions with delight and thanks the gods that the stone never reaches the summit. Sisyphus’ destiny appears depressing because we assume that the value of his activity is defined by a goal that he can never achieve. Seen in this way, strangely enough, the fact that Sisyphus never attains his goal is not strictly relevant to Camus’ story. Sisyphus’ life would seem valueless even if he reached the crest of the hill because his actions are depicted only as instrumentally valuable to achieve a goal, rather like Tolstoy’s despair in the midst of plenty. The two examples share an underlying conception of value; insofar as we define value in terms of the goals of our activities, we treat the activities themselves merely as instrumentally valuable, thereby denying their intrinsic value.1 In contrast, to recognise the value of an activity is to regard the process of engaging in it as something worthwhile in itself. Of course, this does not mean that results are unimportant, rather it requires us to revise the way we conceive of their value in relation to actions. In a way, the German philosopher Kant has an answer to the problems of Tolstoy and Sisyphus. Kant’s notion of dignity and the Categorical Imperative is usually seen as important in ethics (Kant 2003). We will be showing how it is needed to understand well-being. To develop a conception of value that is required for a framework for wellbeing, we will show how a commonly held instrumental conception of rationality is fundamentally mistaken and deeply misleading. We will discuss what should replace it, and how all of this is vital for understanding well-being. As the discussion progresses, we will use real-life stories, collected as part of our research, to illustrate different ways in which ordinary people instrumentalise their activities.

The instrumental conception of rationality We can define the standard instrumental conception of rationality as follows. Given that a person wants X, and given that, to achieve X, she will have to perform actions that are means to X, then, according to instrumental rationality, the following theses will be true: A) As means, these actions have only instrumental value; B) The goal or end X has intrinsic value as such; C) Thus, the person rationally ought to choose the most efficient means to the end. This common view of rationality is concerned exclusively with defining the most efficient means to a given set of goals or ends (Bermudez 2009: 12–14), and it

Beyond instrumentalisation 23 underlies standard economic theories that characterise production and consumption as means for maximising utility. Instrumental rationality has four features, which make it good for solving specific problems, but inappropriate as a framework for conceiving well-being. 1 Given goals Instrumental rationality assumes that a goal or a set of goals is given (Nozick 1993). Furthermore, it requires that the alternative means are already defined and ready for selection. They must be a fixed, exclusive and exhaustive set of possibilities, so that there remains only the choice between them on the grounds of their relative efficiency. These points indicate two well-known limitations of instrumental rationality. First, typically, problems are not neatly pre-packaged in the way such reasoning requires. We have to know what concepts to apply to a problem, which necessitates answering the following questions: in what terms should the problem be framed? What is the problem? Once these questions are answered and the relevant goals are clear, much of the work is already completed. Second, instrumental concepts such as ‘efficiency’, ‘savings’ and ‘usefulness’ are essentially relative to a goal. They presuppose an aim. Instrumental rationality selects the most efficient means to a goal, but it does not help us to choose rationally among a variety of ends, except on the grounds of cost efficiency. The response to this limitation is to argue that there is only one thing of intrinsic value, namely utility, which enables us to compare the value of different more specific aims. 2 Restricted relevance The second feature of instrumental reasoning is that only the features relevant to the attaining of the defined goal are important. What is relevant is defined solely by the achievement of the specified goal. For example, if the objective is to arrive for the appointment by 9.00 a.m., then the only relevant feature of the walk or journey is the time, energy and cost that it takes to arrive on time. This implies that the value of the activity as a living process is irrelevant. However, any activity is also an experience to enjoy, like a stroll. The standard conception of instrumental reasoning can only accommodate this point by assuming that people have an overarching aim to increase their utility. In this way, the enjoyment derived from the walk itself can be factored into the efficiency calculation. 3 Justification The third feature is that the burden of justification must be borne entirely by the goal. Since what is merely instrumental has no value per se at all, its use is a cost, which should be proportionate to the value of the goal. According to the instrumental conception, a long chain of means constitutes an accumulation of costs, and the goal would need to be sufficiently valuable to make incurring these costs

24 Beyond instrumentalisation worth the while. Behind this point lies what we might call ‘means exhaustion’. For instance, Elisabeth, a mother of two teenage sons, assumes that the point of sending her children to an expensive private school is to enable them to get into a good university in order to receive a degree, which is required for a good job, which is necessary for a high salary. Of course, money, too, has only instrumental value, and so the chain of instrumental justification must continue. At each step, the cost of the whole chain of means gets heavier, until it may seem that no goal could be worth all that effort. This phenomenon is a feature of the instrumental conception of rationality. 4 Minimising Costs The essence of instrumental rationality is that we should be efficient. This means that we should cut or minimise costs. This view of rationality is concerned exclusively with the most efficient means to a given set of goals.

The argument We shall argue that the instrumental conception of rationality is flawed because it does not allow us to articulate what is valuable. Rejecting it will transform our understanding of the relationship between our activities and their goals in a way that is significantly important for well-being (Thomson 2002a). Let’s state the argument in three steps. The instrumental conception commits us to the disastrous view that all our goal-directed actions as such have only instrumental value. By definition, goal-directed actions are means to goals, and if all means as such have only instrumental value, then actions as means cannot be intrinsically valuable. In other words, the instrumental conception implies that all goal-seeking activities as such have only instrumental value. Thus, it contradicts the possibility that the activities themselves can have intrinsic or non-instrumental value. Second, the claim that all such activities have only instrumental value implies that the person herself is only instrumentally valuable. This is because one’s goal-directed activities constitute part of one’s life, and in some sense, one’s life constitutes oneself. Thus, to regard all one’s goal-directed actions as merely instrumental implies treating oneself as merely instrumentally valuable. It is like saying, ‘What is valuable about me and my life are only the results that I achieve.’ Indeed, one of our participants, Stanley (see his story later in the chapter), enumerated some desirable achievements, claiming that, without them, his life would have been wasted. This kind of thinking and mentality is not uncommon amongst the people we spoke to. Third, such a claim would defeat the very idea of anything being valuable. If it were true of everyone that they have no intrinsic value, then nothing could have value. If anything has non-instrumental value, then persons do. If persons don’t, then nothing has non-instrumental value; in which case, nothing can have instrumental value.

Beyond instrumentalisation 25 In brief the argument can be summarised as follows: 1 2 3 4

If the claims of the instrumental conception of rationality were true, then all of one’s goal-directed actions as such would have only instrumental value. If all of a person’s goal-directed actions as such have only instrumental value then the person has only instrumental value. It is not true that persons have only instrumental value. ________________________________________ Therefore, the claims of the instrumental conception of rationality are not true.

In short, the instrumental conception of rationality instrumentalises our actions and hence dehumanises our lives, which makes value impossible. Crudely, it turns us into machines for achieving results. Let us review these premises one by one. Premise 1 The principle that things that are only instrumentally valuable should be used efficiently is true. For example, all other things being equal, it is irrational to pay more rather than less for the same product or to use more energy than one needs. This same principle seems to apply to our goal-directed actions because, by definition, such actions are means to some end. Additionally, the instrumental conception of rationality entails that means as such have only instrumental value. Because of A) above, it implies that if an action is essentially a means, then as such it has only instrumental value. This, in turn, denies the non-instrumental value of the goal-directed activity as such.2 We can also view this argument from the backdoor, the other side. In accordance with B) above, the instrumental conception of rationality claims that all intrinsic values are goals and only goals have intrinsic value. Given this, then all goal-seeking activity necessarily has only instrumental value (because the activity itself isn’t the goal).3 Premise 2 Let us assume that premise 1 is true and briefly examine some of its counterintuitive implications. To utilise a means is to incur a cost, and an action that is merely instrumentally valuable is a cost that we pay to achieve a goal. Efficiency requires that we should achieve our goals at minimal cost. Thus, we should always minimise the time and energy spent to achieve the desired results. To do otherwise would be irrational. Hence, the use of instrumentally valuable actions should be minimised in so far as possible. The ideal of efficiency would be to achieve all of one’s goals without the need for expending any means at all, that is, at no cost. To make this point vivid, imagine that one can achieve one’s aims instantly just by snapping one’s fingers. This is the finger-click test: it provides a way to

26

Beyond instrumentalisation

judge whether one is treating something as only instrumentally valuable.4 If one is willing to click one’s fingers to attain a goal, then what one dispenses with is considered as a cost. What we dispense with in such a case is not considered a loss of something valuable, but as a gain in efficiency.5 The sting in the tail is that the instrumental conception of rationality would require one to treat all goal-directed actions as subject to the finger-click test. Something that is merely instrumentally valuable is a cost, and the ideal of efficiency would be to achieve our goals without any cost. Thus, premise 1 claims that the instrumental conception of rationality implies that all our goal-directed actions are only costs. The error of choosing our activities only for the sake of an external goal, as we shall see, is clearly reflected in some of our participants’ stories, such as that of Adrian. Adrian is 62 years old. He took early retirement after 38 years working in the public-sector. He continues to claim that it was due to ‘THAT horrible job’ that he has been miserable for most of his life. This ill-being started when, at the age of 22, Adrian took his first job that offered a good salary. He developed a strong resentment towards this work from the start, and tried to leave after the first two years. However, he felt trapped by the need for money – for a car, crucial for commuting to work; for a flat, to live comfortably; for the monthly bills and daily expenses, as well as for holidays. After the first few years, he realised that he couldn’t leave his job because he was too dependent on the money he earned. Although he has now finally retired with a generous pension, Adrian still feels that his life is too ‘spoilt’ for him to live with well-being. The second premise asks us to take this counterintuitive result to its logical conclusion. When we think of a person, we are apt to imagine a body frozen in time, and this allows us to conceive of a person and her life as distinct. However, in some sense, a person consists of her life. A life is a person in time; a person is a dynamic and historical life, a body in action. In a sense, I am constituted by my life.6 Next step: a person’s life consists (at least in part) of the actions, activities, experiences and processes that she performs and lives through. The actions that I perform, the activities I engage in, and the experiences and processes that I live through are all parts of my life, which comprises me. Given this, if all activities were merely of instrumental value, then so is the life of the person.7 In short, the claim that actions as means have only instrumental value entails that a person only matters instrumentally as means to what she achieves. Premise 3 It is patently absurd to claim a person is only instrumentally valuable to the achievement of a set of goals. Such a supposition defeats the very idea of anything

Beyond instrumentalisation 27 having value at all because for things to have value implies that there is a reason for beings to choose them; values are essentially in part reasons for action or choice for persons.8 They are supposed to guide choice. This implies that if anything has value then a person does. More specifically, if anything has instrumental value then there must be something that also has intrinsic value, and if anything has intrinsic value then so do persons.9 To make this absurdity vivid, we can apply the finger-click test. The instrumental conception of rationality requires that all one’s goal-directed actions pass the test. So, universalised, it implies the ludicrous result that a person’s life would be subject to the finger-click test. In short, identifying value with goals entails that a person is only valuable as an instrument to what she could achieve. It requires regarding oneself as a machine for the realisation of one’s own goals. The fingerclick test makes clear that this is rather like suicide without actual death because it is effectively the same as wishing one’s life away. It is like proclaiming: ‘I am no more than a cost.’ From this, we can appreciate the poignancy of Tolstoy’s portrayal of his early life. In effect, he inadvertently or implicitly wished for his own death by treating all his actions as having only instrumental value. He fingerclicked himself to death.

The solution We have a problem: a commonly accepted and apparently plausible view of rationality leads to absurd consequences, and it does not permit us logically to even articulate the notion of valuable activities that we need to describe well-being. The solution is the deceptively simple claim: ‘actions are intrinsically valuable means.’ This ought to sound strange: custom associates the word ‘means’ with ‘instrumentally valuable’ as if they were Siamese twins. This is precisely what we need to deny. To escape the traditional conception of rationality, we must separate two distinctions: on the one hand, instrumental and intrinsic value, and on the other means and ends. This frees us to reject the gruesome assumption of instrumental rationality that all means as such have only instrumental value (A above), and that the only things that have intrinsic value are ends as such (B above). The first distinction is instrumental versus non-instrumental value. Something is instrumentally valuable insofar as it has value not for what it is but because of what it leads to or facilitates. For example, money has purely instrumental value; it is only good because of what it can buy. On the other hand, happiness is said to have non-instrumental value. It is good in itself because of what it is. Of course, some things such as health can have both kinds of value. The second distinction is means versus ends. An end is a goal. Typically, our actions are directed towards goals or ends and, as such, they are means. A means is something that is causally relevant or necessary to achieving a goal. An end is such a goal. The instrumental conception of rationality conjoins these two pairs of distinctions. Because of theses A) and B), it implies that all means as such have only instrumental value and that only ends as such have intrinsic value. This failure

28 Beyond instrumentalisation has two related disastrous consequences: means as means have only instrumental value, and only goals as goals can have non-instrumental value. In other words: 1 2

Goal-directed actions as means cannot be intrinsically valuable. Anything of non-instrumental value must be a goal or an end as such.

In summary, by failing to distinguish instrumental/non-instrumental value and means/ends, instrumental rationality implies that a person’s life is a dispensable cost to her goals. It denies the value of persons. The remedy is simple; by separating the two distinctions, we can claim that actions as means can have intrinsic value, and deny that only goals have non-instrumental value. The need for this point can be illustrated with a story. There was once a fisherman living in the South Sea Islands, who caught a fish a day. Once he had caught his fish, he went home and rested. A foreigner came to the fisherman and entreated him to give up his laziness and be more active. ‘Imagine’, said the foreigner, ‘you could catch at least four fish a day.’ The fisherman was silent in thought for a moment; ‘What would I do with the extra three fish?’ he asked. ‘You could sell them in the market.’ The fisherman pondered this idea, ‘But what would I do with the money?’ The foreigner replied, ‘Why, you could buy a stall in the market and make more money.’ But now the fisherman was puzzled. ‘But what would I do with this money?’ he asked. The foreigner answered: ‘You could buy the whole market and make even more money.’ Now the fisherman was bewildered: ‘What would I do with yet more money?’ The answer came without pause for thought: ‘Why, you could retire and go fishing!’10

The relevance to well-being The double distinction that we have just drawn is relevant to well-being in three inter-related ways, which we will elaborate in subsequent sections. First, it is relevant because it transforms the way that we should think about our goals and their relationship to our activities, including, for instance, work. We are accustomed to the idea that the value of what we are doing consists in the results that we attain. We have now seen this idea cannot be correct. The point isn’t simply to reaffirm that activities such as work are also intrinsically valuable. It is rather that this simple truth cannot be recognised by the standard instrumental conception of rationality. Insofar as we are under the spell of this conception, we have core value relationships the wrong way around. The value isn’t in the end; it is in the means when those are activities. Second, the distinction suggests that persons are the primary bearers of noninstrumental value (Downie and Telfer 1969). The traditional conception entails that a person has value only because her goals have value. According to this view, ends make persons valuable rather than the other way around. Consequently, the instrumentalist view of rationality cannot recognise the value of persons. We can turn this negative conclusion into a positive guiding principle for our thinking about well-being.

Beyond instrumentalisation 29 Third, the distinction is important for the composition of well-being. One significant way of having ill-being is to instrumentalise: either one treats things that have only instrumental value as if they had intrinsic value or, the other way around, one treats things of intrinsic value as if they were only instrumentally valuable. So, for instance, a person who is obsessive about money might fall into the first category, and a person who uses his friends as tools might fall into the second. Of primary importance is the idea that a person can instrumentalise himself and/or parts of his own life, and that this constitutes a form of ill-being. In a sense, something that is merely instrumentally valuable is not valuable at all; its worth is entirely derivative. Consequently, whereas something intrinsically valuable should be promoted and appreciated, the use of things of merely instrumental value should be cut insofar as possible. The term ‘instrumental value’ hides the point that such things are costs. The finger-click test brings this out. The hidden point implies that insofar as we characterise the value of our actions instrumentally, we cannot appreciate the intrinsic value of the activity. Thus, insofar as one instrumentalises an activity, its value cannot become part of one’s well-being because one cannot connect appreciatively to its intrinsic value. As we shall illustrate with Stanley’s life, instrumentalising is a form of ill-being. Stanley regards himself an entrepreneur. An enthusiastic man in his early 30s, he loves French cheese and the Pyrenean mountains, and he has an interest and talent in renovating old houses and restoring them to their former glory. At the time of the interview, Stanley’s preoccupation was to develop his own company - a building and decoration business that focuses on renovating and decorating houses. To make this start-up business profitable, Stanley worked very hard, to the extent of exhausting himself. He hired more people, borrowed more money to pay his growing team, sought more projects to generate more income, and dealt with more clients. However, increasingly customers became dissatisfied because Stanley and his team were over-stretched by an unmanageable workload. The concern for making money soon took control over all else. When Stanley met with us, he was nearing breaking point because of the pressure of his work. When asked why he was working like this, Stanley went quiet and thought for a moment, and then replied slowly: “So that I could make enough money and eventually buy an old house in Southern France where I would enjoy nice French cheese and restore the house to its former glory.” According to the traditional conception of rationality, insofar as an action is a means, it has only instrumental value; accordingly, the hard work of Stanley and his team would be merely a cost to be minimised, and not something to be appreciated as intrinsically valuable. Like the earlier story of the fisherman, this is ironic because renovating and decorating houses is precisely the kind of activity that Stanley enjoys. But, by instrumentalising them, he was unable to appreciate them.

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In identifying means and instrumental value, the traditional conception of rationality implies that no action can be appreciated as something of intrinsic value, and so the struggle to accumulate more means of only instrumental value will appear to be ultimately without any value. In short, the conception renders all activities valueless and converts our lives into that of Sisyphus. It is the contemporary version of the Midas touch: a little tap and everything turns instrumental. We can never actually chew the grass; we can only keep making it greener on the other side.11 Stanley’s case illustrates this: the activities of renovating and restoring buildings have intrinsic value for him, but by treating them instrumentally, the valuable nature of the activities eludes him, as if with a finger-click. The following sections will explore each of the three points in turn.

The meaning of goals The earlier discussion shows the urgency of rethinking the relationship between activities and their goals. When we think that a set of actions is for the sake of some goal, the fact that the action is a means to a goal doesn’t imply that as such it is only instrumentally valuable. In this sense, it is not for the sake of the goal. On the contrary, the activity is a part of a person’s life and as such it has noninstrumental value, which the person him or herself can appreciate or enjoy. The critique of the instrumental conception of rationality does not mean that goals should not be an important aspect of our lives. The idea is rather that traditional means–ends thinking should be turned on its head. Such reasoning is sometimes expressed with the saying ‘The ends justifies the means.’ Our discussion shows that such reasoning fundamentally misrepresents the value relationships between actions and goals. The activity which is a means to a goal is non-instrumentally valuable, and it is the end that is instrumentally valuable. We might express the non-instrumental value of lived processes with paradoxical saying: ‘The ends are means to more means.’ In other words, the achieving of a goal is valuable often because it facilitates other non-instrumentally valuable activities, which themselves are means to other goals. Ends are valuable insofar as they are instrumental for performing other activities. In other words, the importance of goals is that they can enrich activities or the processes of life. This idea can be amplified in three ways. First, for instance, we run to win in order to improve the running. We write to a deadline, not because having the work finished by the deadline is intrinsically valuable, but rather for the sake of the process of writing itself. In other words, goals define, give direction to and improve processes. Having an end to attain can improve an activity, make it more valuable. Metaphorically, we run to win but the intrinsic value isn’t in the winning, it is in the running. In that sense, we win to run. In this manner, having goals can be instrumentally valuable. This first point becomes even more important in the context of doing things with others, trying to achieve goals in a group or a community. We have just seen that the non-instrumental value is in the activity and not the goal or end. As it were, the end provides a direction to the activity, and it is performing the

Beyond instrumentalisation 31 activity as such that is non-instrumentally valuable. This point can be amplified to include being-with others and being-in a community. In other words, one aspect of the non-instrumentally valuable nature of performing an activity is that this is a way of doing things with others and of being with others. The nature of this noninstrumental value will be explained in Chapter 5. Second, as means, activities have non-instrumental value, and achieving the goals can be instrumentally valuable because it can further these activities or lead to more of them. For example, if one wins a race, one will have the opportunity to run again. Winning allows us to run more often in competitive races. Likewise, if the work process is profitable, then this enables one to carry on working. In this process of activity generating more activity, achieved goals are instrumentally valuable because they enable more, and hopefully better, activities. In this way, attained goals are instrumentally valuable for the person. In this way, ends are means to more means; the end-state is instrumentally valuable because it enables one to engage in further activity. Third, the achieved goal of an end-guided process provides products such as cars that are instrumentally valuable for other people in the living of their lives. In this case, the attaining of the goal is valuable instrumentally because of what it allows others to do (i.e. more intrinsically valuable activities of other people). In other words, the goal achieved has instrumental value. In this manner, attaining goals is instrumentally valuable because of what it leads to (i.e. more intrinsically valuable activities for others). The point is that objectives or end-states, such as a constructed or finished building, the achieving of a certain volume of production, the capturing of a market, are not intrinsically valuable. We should value those goals because they will have a certain role in facilitating, accentuating and permitting other activities for other persons. For Stanley as a builder, a completely restored house may appear as something of intrinsic value. However, its importance really resides in what it enables other people to do: it permits a family to live in a beautiful and comfortable environment. Furthermore, for Stanley himself, the work of renovating is intrinsically valuable as a lived process, and the attainment of the goal, namely the finished building, has instrumental value because of the valuable activities of other people. To add a twist, suppose that the finished building is an office that houses a construction company. In such a case, the importance of the completed edifice is that it permits more building, as an activity. It is instrumentally valuable even if during the construction process it was the goal. In this specific case, it is instrumentally valuable because it allows further constructing. Analysis shows that our normal supposition is back to front. We uncritically assumed that the activity of constructing is only instrumentally valuable as a means to having a finished building. However, with a little reflection, we discover that the finished edifice is instrumentally valuable because it permits more construction. It is the activity of constructing that has intrinsic value, not the resulting building. Likewise, although work is defined by its goals, this doesn’t mean that the goals have intrinsic value and that the work is merely instrumentally valuable.

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On the contrary: having separated means/ends and instrumental/intrinsic value, we can affirm that although work is a means to an end, it has intrinsic value. Furthermore, as we have just seen, the goals of work have instrumental value in three ways. In conclusion, among other things, the results of working enable more and better working because the intrinsic value is in the lived activities, which include working. From the point of view of the person’s well-being, the value of the goals is derivative on how they enter the lived activities in question. Instrumental rationality implies that the ends justify the means, but we have argued that the truth is closer to the opposite – the means justify the ends. More exactly, ends are instrumentally valuable either because they improve the quality of processes or because the achieving of a goal permits more and better activities and processes later on. Having a destination improves the running, and winning the race enables you to run again. The value is in the running, and not in the arriving. For example, Merriam is a travel writer, who enjoys cooking, especially for family and friends. Feeding them with delicious, nutritious food is her goal, but Merriam engages in the activities of preparation and cooking with relish. For example, she searches for unusual dishes; the novelty of exotic food excites her; she shops around to find the freshest ingredients; she prepares the dishes with care. Indeed, the end of entertaining her guests makes it possible for Merriam to enjoy more deeply the processes of cooking. Merriam is in her mid-40s. As a single mother, she brought up a child independently. At the time of the interview, her daughter had just graduated from university, and Merriam felt that she could finally work as a travel writer and photographer. She and her partner decided to embark on a journey around Europe and to live a deliberately unconventional life. It required courage for her to take to the road, traveling, learning about other cultures, languages, and writing. She says that it is an unusual way of life but that she treasures these experiences to the fullest. She feels that it is in her wellbeing that she doesn’t have pressing goals to distract her from appreciating her traveling activities. She feels fortunate to enjoy an exceptional luxury. Because they can live on very low budget and because there are enough people who read their blogs, Merriam and her partner can live on her readers’ support, albeit only just. There is an objection to this general line of argumentation. One might claim that goals don’t have to be external to the action. Usually, we think of goals as states of affairs that are distinct from the action itself. My goal is that the apple tree is picked or that the television is fixed. In each case, the required actions are distinct from the goal itself. But, so goes the objection, this needn’t be the case. For instance, Merriam’s goal might be to live her dream of traveling, or to enjoy learning about new cultures. According to the objection, in such cases, the goal is the activity itself, and the goal is intrinsically valuable (Aristotle 2000). In sum,

Beyond instrumentalisation 33 whether a goal has intrinsic or instrumental value depends on what the goal is and how it is described. In reply to this objection, clearly the object of a goal can be a state of affairs that has non-instrumental value. However, this doesn’t get to the issue at hand because that state of affairs would be valuable independently of its being someone’s goal. It’s being a goal isn’t what makes it valuable. The assumptions of the instrumental conception of rationality are: 1 2

Goal-directed actions as means cannot be intrinsically valuable. Anything of non-instrumental value as such must be a goal or an end.

Thus, the dispute is whether means as such can have intrinsic value and whether only goals as such have non-instrumental value. The standard conception of instrumental rationality conflates goals or ends with intrinsic valuable. To counter this, we have separated the two and described the role of goals without assuming the conflation. In summary, although having aims or goals is an important aspect of life, it is a mistake to confuse those goals with non-instrumental value because that would imply that activities are merely instrumentally valuable. It is the goals of our activities that are instrumentally valuable; they are instrumental to further worthwhile activities and improve the quality of lived processes. These conclusions are important because instrumental rationality states that the criteria for the selection of means should be the efficient completion of goals. In contrast, we urged that one should select goals that will require means that have desirability characterisations that we can appreciate. In other words, we select the goals for the sake of the means rather than simply choosing means for the sake of the goals.

The primary bearers of value Instrumental reasoning presupposes a false dichotomy: means or ends. It presents no alternative, to identifying intrinsic value with goals and means with instrumental value. To avoid the dichotomy, we rejected these identifications. To begin to develop a positive alternative to the instrumentalist conception, we shall present a principle important for well-being. The principle is that the primary bearers of non-derivative prudential value are persons and other conscious beings, such as non-human animals.12 This principle is required to avoid the view of value inherent in the conception of instrumental rationality that places the values of goals prior to that of persons, and which we criticised earlier. Persons have primary non-instrumental value and, because of this, their lives are intrinsically valuable. This implies that the experiences, activities and processes that constitute their lives also have such value. The activities and experiences that comprise parts of a life have value because the person has value. This reverses the thesis that persons and their activities have value because their ends do. It places persons first and, in so doing, it negates the instrumentalism inherent in goal-based conceptions of value.

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In order to matter, goals must be relevant to some aspect of the intrinsic value of living a life. Without such a condition, the process of achieving a goal to attain another goal in order to achieve yet another goal, and so on, would be without value. This is because ends or goals as such don’t have intrinsic value. Whether they do depends on what the end is, and how it is relevant to the intrinsic value of living a life. The principle may be contentious for various reasons. First, some thinkers argue for a non-realist view of value, which denies that anything is a bearer of value. Such writers would deny that persons are truly non-instrumentally valuable. Second, it might be argued that the principle ignores non-conscious living beings such as plants and ecosystems, which also have a non-derivative value. Third, it might be contended that some states of affairs have non-derivative or primary value without relation to the living of a life.13 We shall concentrate on the third of these opposing views, the main argument for which is that the only alternative is to reduce other values to well-being. Thus, the objection is something like this: values such as beauty and truth aren’t reducible to well-being, and given this, the claim that goals must be relevant to some aspect of the living of a life to be valuable is false. Goals pertaining to truth and beauty can have value independently of persons’ living in a valuable way. Consequently, the idea that persons have primary value is false. There are other things that have primary value. The strength of this objection is that not all evaluative claims are reducible to ones pertaining to the quality of persons’ lives. For example, those regarding truth and beauty would be candidates for such non-reducible values; it is not plausible to make evaluative claims about the importance of truth in research (and hence about the methodologies of research) instrumental to claims about the quality of people’s lived lives. Sometimes, the truth hurts, and what makes it good isn’t simply that it benefits us. It is valuable and worth seeking independently of our self-interest. The weakness of the argument is that, for example, the concept of ‘is true’ only has value insofar as it functions as a guide for our activities of finding out, acquiring knowledge and revising beliefs. The evaluative aspect of concept indicates that it is better to know than to be ignorant, and to believe true rather than false claims. This shows that the principle that persons are the primary bearer of value doesn’t require that all evaluative claims are reducible to those pertaining to well-being. Two claims need separating. First, truth is valuable only in relation to human activities, which it can potentially guide, and insofar as those kinds of activities form part of our lives and are intrinsically valuable, they are a constituent of well-being. Second, truth is valuable is reducible to evaluative claims regarding well-being. The first doesn’t entail the second. Truth is a concept whose essential function is to evaluate activities that form a part of our well-being doesn’t mean that truth is reducible to well-being. A similar reflection could be applied to other guiding values that do not pertain directly to well-being. This might include, for example, aesthetic values such as beauty. This illustrates that something can have derivative value other than by being an instrument. An example of this might be truth. While truth has instrumental

Beyond instrumentalisation 35 value because knowing is useful, this doesn’t exhaust why it is better to believe true claims. In this regard, truth is also non-instrumentally valuable (Lynch 2004). However, with regard to this non-instrumental aspect, it is still derivative. It is valuable only in relationship to human activities such as talking, sharing, investigation, thinking, understanding and cooperating. Thus, truth is a non-instrumental value that is nevertheless derivative. Margaret is deeply concerned that her life be useful to others. As we will see in Chapter 5, serving others is a valuable form of activity, insofar it connects to the value of other people. However, Margaret’s story is more ambiguous. She seems to be obsessed with the need to be useful to the extent that she not only instrumentalises herself and her life, but also that she misses out on valuable aspects of life and seems to be unaware of this. Margret was 86 years old at the time of the interview and had been widowed for 3 years. A recent fall left her with a broken hip, which is slow to mend. This resulted in mobility difficulties and much frustration. Coming from a large working-class Baptist family and growing up during WWII, Margaret was encouraged be ‘useful’ at an early age. This became a major thread dominating her life. She and her husband volunteered in West Africa where they set up community schools for the poor and helped orphaned children. Back in the UK, at their local village, they organised village fetes and events at the Women’s Institute and baked and sold cakes for charities. Being insistent on being useful also means that Margaret can be critical of other people’s actions. For instance, she regards listening to music, going to the cinema, walking in the countryside, shopping for nice clothes, and hanging out with one’s friends as a waste of time. Margaret tends to eliminate non-useful activities from her life. She regards reading and education as important only because they can help us to become useful. To return to the main theme, persons have primary value, and because of this, the activities and experiences that comprise parts of a life have non-instrumental value. This suggests that the value of a person’s life for the person is in the living of it. This second principle is suggested by the first given the additional claim that a life is a person in time. Of course, this second principle does not mean that our lives can’t be useful. Rather, it signifies that the value of a life for the individual who lives it is in the processes of living it instead of in its use-values. Furthermore, the second principle doesn’t exclude the importance of trying to achieve goals because goal-directed activities are part of the process of living. Nevertheless, it does preclude the instrumentalist claim that only goals as such are intrinsically valuable.

Instrumentalising One important way of having ill-being is to instrumentalise. Consider the way Stanley instrumentalises his activities and his life. This constitutes a form of

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ill-being, quite apart from the anxiety and feelings of alienation that it caused him. In fact, Stanley did suffer a total breakdown after his company’s finances went downhill. To instrumentalise means either that one treats things that have only instrumental value as if they had intrinsic value or the other way around, that one treats things of intrinsic value as if they were only instrumentally valuable. For example, in the first case, we are addicted to money or good reputation or to success, and in the second, we treat our activities and our friends as instrumental to our goals. We can treat ourselves in such a way, too. How can we do that to ourselves? How is this relevant for human well-being? As an example of the first category, Quintin admitted to being obsessed with money in his first job; in contrast, Adrian, who felt himself on a treadmill throughout his working life, would fall into the second category insofar as his work and he himself had become no more than a tool for paying bills.

Quintin is 26, a graduate with a degree in law, but he is now self-employed, maintaining a small antique furniture business. He also does part-time work for others, such as gardening and dog-walking, to supplement his income. Quintin enjoys this way of working because he has more time for the activities that he is passionate about (such as being outdoors with animals and looking after antiques). His current work contrasts sharply with his previous employment with a large insurance company in London. He worked very long hours at repetitive uninteresting and ‘fairly futile’ tasks. Yet he persisted because of the money he could earn at the end of the year. Also, he was also bothered by how the insurance company treated other people. After working in the company for 3 years, Quintin found himself in ‘an existential crisis’ because he was working so much that he almost ‘forgot’ what it is like to be alive. At this point, his fiancé presented him with an ultimatum: “Are you going to be married to money or to me? Make up your mind.” Waking up, Quintin realised that, because of his obsession with money, he had distancing himself from the things and people he loved and cared for, and that he was tolerating unethical practices.

There are some appetisers that motivate the idea that self-instrumentalising is a form of ill-being. First, people tend to associate the term ‘well-being’ with feeling well or feeling happy. A little thought helps to dispel this association: there is more to living a flourishing life than feeling happy. For instance, often when we feel miserable, this is a sign that something else is amiss. The fact that something is wrong with the way that one is living isn’t constituted by the misery; the bad feeling is a sign. Consider the relation between a feeling of loneliness and being friendless. Having friends isn’t merely instrumental to curing the feeling, for if it were then one wouldn’t have friends at all. Thus, the lack is being with friends; the resulting feeling of loneliness is a sign of that lack (even though it is also bad).

Beyond instrumentalisation 37 Such considerations indicate that there is more to well-being than simply feeling good. Thus, the idea that instrumentalising can be a component of ill-being cannot be ruled out on hedonistic grounds. Second, treating something of merely instrumental value as if it were intrinsically valuable is akin to an illness. If someone likes money too much, we call him ‘miserly’. Beyond that it can be an unhealthy infatuation or obsession, such as the extreme desire to hoard goods. Sometimes, we call these tendencies ‘fetishes’ or even ‘pathologies’. Much the same applies to treating something of intrinsic value as if it were only instrumental. We call someone ‘mercenary’ or the treatment as ‘dehumanising’. For example, a person who is racked by ambition can treat himself inhumanely by regarding much of his life merely instrumentally. The point is that such states are illnesses or afflictions, and this is because, in such modes of being, we have fundamental value relationships the wrong way around. It is akin to falling in love with a doorpost or not being able to distinguish emotionally between a cell phone and one’s mother. When such mistakes characterise the way one lives, or important sectors of one’s way of living, then the person herself is ipso facto subject to a form of ill-being. The contrary state is one aspect of well-being. In sum, once we reject the hedonistic assumption that that the only ways in which a person can have ill-being is by feeling bad, then we face the question: what more is there? How does the concept of well-being extend beyond feeling well? Part of the answer is that ill-being can consist in getting fundamental evaluative relationships the wrong way around. A person who consistently puts the cart before the horse cannot be well. Such a behaviour is irrational, but without necessarily being immoral. a) What it means How do we treat things of intrinsic value as if they had merely instrumental value? Why is it a mistake? Fundamentally, the point is that something of merely instrumental value is replaceable and subject to the four features of instrumental rationality outlined earlier. Basically, such a thing is a cost. This means that it is to be used efficiently, and that, by definition, its only value is relative to the relevant goals. Therefore, rationality demands that we minimise it. In contrast, insofar as something has intrinsic value, it is not something that we treat as a replaceable cost that must be minimised. On the contrary, it is to be appreciated and enjoyed. Given this simple explanation, we can see why hoarding and miserliness are considered as being akin to illnesses. It is as if the person has made a fundamental evaluative or emotional category error: treating objects as people. The same kind of consideration applies to the treating of things that have intrinsic value as if they had merely instrumental value, that is, people (and their temporal parts) as if they were objects. Something of intrinsic value is valuable because of what it is and not simply because of what it leads to, facilitates or prevents.14 The difference is important because, on the one hand, the four features of instrumental rationality define exclusively the value of something purely

38 Beyond instrumentalisation instrumentally valuable and, on the other hand, insofar as something has noninstrumental value, it is not subject to the features of instrumental rationality. It is to be respected, appreciated and cherished for what it is.15 If we want a more specific reply to the question ‘what more?’ then we need to return to the first chapter. We outlined four necessary structural features of human life with regard to which a life can be evaluated as non-morally better or worse. The first part of this work is dedicated to explaining the idea that well-being can be based on such characteristics. In each case, the four aspects define features of well-being that cannot be reduced to feeling good. Not instrumentalising is relevant to all four features. b) Positive applications to well-being Given that instrumentalising is a form of ill-being, we need to examine positively how such instrumentalising can be an aspect of well-being. There are at least four ways in which instrumentalising can be directly relevant to well-being. They pertain to the four structural features of well-being argued for in Chapter 1. a) The first is when one instrumentalises one’s activities. This occurs when one treats one’s activities as if they were merely an instrument to one’s own ends. We have seen an instance of this in Stanley’s enslaving himself to his business goals. This kind of behaviour is common amongst people that are over-ambitious. Their goals (e.g. for Stanley, making his business highly profitable) become treated as if they had intrinsic value and the person’s activities or their life tends to become an instrument to their achieving those goals. In other words, as shown in Stanley’s case, one treats parts of one’s life as having merely instrumental value. b) In such cases, instrumentalising implies that one is not able to appreciate the value of one’s activities as a lived process of intrinsic value. For example, when I just want to get the job done, such a feeling implies that I am treating the time I spend on the job as merely instrumental to the result, which entails that I am not appreciating that time for what it is. We saw this with Adrian who was unable to enjoy aspects of his work that otherwise would have delighted him, such as meeting clients, and seeking ways to meet their needs. These non-instrumentally valuable aspects of his work were erased by the fact that he treated the job instrumentally. In other words, instrumentalisation implies the incapacity to appreciate the non-instrumental value of the activity. It constitutes unappreciative forms of awareness. We will return to the importance of instrumentalising for appreciation and awareness in Chapter 4. c) Many of the same points apply to one’s relationships with others. Insofar as a person treats others as mere instrument to his own ends, he cannot have friends. Worse, he cannot have other people as a part of his life. In other words, insofar as we instrumentalise others, those persons cannot become part of our own wellbeing. This is a theme of Chapter 5. d) People can also instrumentalise themselves. One way of so doing is seen in the example of Margaret whose sense of her own worth lies entirely in what she does for other people and who is willing to instrumentalise herself in service to others. Another way of instrumentalising oneself is by making one’s sense of

Beyond instrumentalisation 39 one’s own worth dependent on the opinions of others. In effect, I can treat myself as an object (implicitly) insofar as I treat my self-worth dependent on how others perceive me. For example, this occurs when a person commodifies himself to gain the approval of others. This seems to be true of Adrian in his youth. In such a case, the person has the fundamental value relationships back to front in application to himself or embodied in his self-awareness (Hill 1991). This feature of well-being will be discussed later in Chapter 6.

Objections and complications Readers might be surprised by the idea that instrumentalisation is a concern relevant for well-being; after all, Kant’s claim is that it is the basis of morality. However, perhaps, the idea shouldn’t be a shock because Kant’s fundamental point is that it is irrational to treat ends as mere means.16 He claims that such actions are immoral because they are contrary to reason, which suggests that they can also constitute a form of ill-being. Furthermore, Kant himself states that the immoral is not restricted to instrumentalising others. It also covers the cases in which we instrumentalise ourselves.17 Part of the issue is that Kant has a traditional conception of happiness, as feeling pleasure and not pain. This is a limitation not only because well-being cannot be defined merely as a state of feeling, but also because it marks an underlying important asymmetry between the first- and third-person cases. In the thirdperson case, part of what makes an action immoral is that one treats another person instrumentally for the sake of one’s self-interest. However, one cannot characterise the first-person case in the same way. It is not that one fails to respect one’s own dignity for the sake of one’s own self-interest. Rather, the issue is that one has mischaracterised one’s self-interest. For example, the overly ambitious person doesn’t treat himself as an instrument to his own self-interest. Rather the overly ambitious person has made a fundamental mistake about what his self-interest consists in. For instance, he assumes that it consists in achieving self-defined goals even when this undermines his self-interest as defined by his dignity. In other words, in the case of treating oneself instrumentally, it isn’t a case of denigrating the dignity of a person for the sake of self-interest. According to Kantian theory, such an action is, nevertheless, fundamentally irrational: there is something wrong with it, just as much as there is with instrumentalising others. Consequently, one argument in favour of the claim that instrumentalising oneself can count as a form of ill-being is that what is wrong with it isn’t completely captured solely with the idea that it is immoral. Thus, if we think that morality is fundamentally concerned with how we treat others, then what’s problematic about instrumentalising oneself isn’t a moral issue.18 It is more an issue of how one conceives of one’s well-being. Objections An objector might insist that non-instrumentalising is necessary for morality but not for well-being: the injunction to not treat persons as objects is specifically

40

Beyond instrumentalisation

moral and does not pertain to well-being. In reply, there are forms of instrumentalisation that are not immoral. For instance, a person who hoards rubbish would not ipso facto be acting immorally. Nor is a person who works too hard or is overambitious. However, there is a problem with such behaviour patterns; there is something deeply irrational or problematic about them. This problem is nonmoral, and it pertains to the muddling up of instrumental and non-instrumental values, and it concerns the well-being of persons. This same problem applies to actions that are immoral because they instrumentalise. For example, suppose that I use a person in a way that is immoral. This supposition does not deny that such an action also constitutes or expresses a state of being of mine that is ill. The moral claim doesn’t exclude the idea that instrumentalising can also constitute or express ill-being. For instance, if I do this regularly, it means that I cannot have friendships, and as such, it pertains to the composition of well-being. A third objection is that the central theses of this chapter deny the obviously true claim that we should be efficient. The critique of the instrumental conception of rationality given goes too far because it denies that it is better to be efficient, all other things being equal. For example, I am seeking an inexpensive secondhand car. Instrumental rationality implies that I should be efficient in attaining this end. The objection is that the critique implies that we shouldn’t; instead, we should try to ‘be in the present moment and appreciate the experience as such’. The objection argues that this attitude is mistaken because the actions of finding a good secondhand car are purely instrumental. The reply to this objection is simply that the position outlined here doesn’t deny that we should try to be efficient. The instrumental conception of rationality implies that the only relevant criterion of evaluation is the efficiency of an action in pursuing a given set of goals. The critique is that we should deny this. This claim is never true of an action because any action is part of a human life. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to be efficient. Efficiency is an instrumental value and not a non-instrumental value. Notice that the issue here is what comprises well-being and not what causes it. So, the question isn’t for instance, ‘Does treating oneself as an object cause a person to feel unhappy?’ Nor is it ‘Does such treatment cause psychological illhealth?’ The question is ‘Does such treatment constitute ill-being?’ Complications These points are made more complex by several factors. First, the term ‘treat’ is intentional or description-relative or aspectual. We should be careful about regarding instrumentalising as a black-and-white issue or as an all-or-nothing affair. It is description-relative or intentional. In other words, a person will typically treat himself or his activities or other persons as only instrumentally valuable in some respects or under some descriptions, but not in others. Recognising the intentionality of treating and of instrumentalising is necessary because, for example, treating a person as a slave isn’t equivalent to treating her

Beyond instrumentalisation 41 as an object. To treat a person as a slave requires recognising her subjectivity and reality as a person in some limited regards. For instance, it requires recognising that the slave is a person who can serve one and hence understand what one wants. But to treat a person as a slave is also at the same time to fail to recognise the subjectivity and the reality of the other as a person in other regards. For instance, it is to regard her subjectivity and agency as unimportant except insofar as it serves one’s own ends. In this manner, the slave owner knows perfectly well that the slave is a person with a subjective point of view on the universe who can understand orders, can be punished, humiliated and harmed. In other ways, or with respect to other descriptions, the slave owner doesn’t recognise the slave as a person but rather as property that can be traded. He treats him or her as a mere instrument to the achievement of his ends. In this sense, what the person wills is inconsistent. Similar points can be made about other kinds of instrumentalisation. In very general terms, all actions are intentional in the sense that their individuation is relative to a set of descriptions. In this sense, they are aspectual. Therefore, how one should characterise an action is never a black-or-white affair. This means that when we talk about actions, our language must be nuanced in ways that make measurement and quantitative approaches difficult, though not impossible, as we shall see in Chapter 7. Second, as a result, what counts as treating someone as if he or she were of only instrumental value can take different cultural forms. This shouldn’t be a surprise. Politeness is a value shared between all peoples. However, saying this doesn’t deny that politeness can be constituted in different way in different social contexts. Sometimes it is rude to burp; in other cultures, it is rude not to. Such differences don’t present fundamental conceptual problems. However, they do present difficult problems for measurement. If I want to measure how rude people are, then I need to assume that rudeness will take certain social shapes. I can make measurements only given this assumption; I can’t measure rudeness in abstract. To measure it, it needs to have specifiable behavioural forms. However, if I want to measure rudeness across cultures, then these forms cannot be taken as a given. Burping isn’t a sign or expression of rudeness in all cultures. Comparable points apply to some forms of instrumentalisation. For example, there are different ways to address people, and we can insult people by addressing them consistently as if they were objects. We can imagine cultures in which such forms of address don’t constitute treating the person as an object, although in others it does. It might be urged that we need a conception of well-being that is readily operationalised, because only such a conception can be useful for social policy-making. We aren’t so sure that this is always true, and we will return to it in Chapter 7. However, given that it is true, it might be objected that the points about instrumental rationality raised in this chapter are difficult to apply in a theory of well-being. In reply, despite the difficulties, we can operationalise the idea that we shouldn’t instrumentalise ourselves, or our lives and our activities. There are several ways that we could measure the degree to which and the different ways in which a person treats himself instrumentally. Furthermore, such measures could be incorporated in principle into an overall measure of well-being, as we shall show in

42 Beyond instrumentalisation Chapter 7. However, such an affirmation is only plausible insofar as we are willing to take specific cultural assumed forms of instrumentalisation as a given. This implies that insofar as we can operationalise and measure well-being, it is less relevant as a key concept in social critique. Operationalising the concept means accepting some cultural norms with regard to its constitution, which a social critique might need to challenge. This is an important concept for Chapter 7. The simple idea that we can dehumanise ourselves can become complicated. A third complication is that, sometimes, it seems as if we are right to treat mere objects as if they were more than mere objects. For example, I treasure the gift that my mother gave me, or I care deeply for the book that my grandmother received as a prize. Here I am treating an object as if it were non-instrumentally valuable. According to what we said before, this should look like a contradiction: to treat a person as an object is ipso facto to treat something of dignity as if it merely an instrument to be used efficiently. Despite this, it seems justified to treat objects as if they are more than objects when the object has expressive value. It would be heartless to throw the book away because one is never going to read it. Its value is more than its instrumental value because the book is an expression of my love for my grandmother. I treasure the book, and this seems quite different from the miser who hoards money. This reinforces an important lesson from earlier in the chapter. On the one hand, we do not want to assert that the book has intrinsic value in the way that a person does. On the other hand, we don’t want to affirm that the book has only instrumental value. In terms of the kind of value it has, it seems to sit between the two cases. The book has non-instrumental derivative value. It has expressive value. In other words, insofar as it has expressive value, the book has non-instrumental value: it isn’t something that should be minimised efficiently for the sake of a goal. Nevertheless, this expressive value that it has is still derivative. It isn’t basic, in the way that the value of persons is. The value of the book depends on the value of the relationship that it expresses. One might make similar points about works of art. Having a Matisse in one’s living room isn’t the same as having a friendship with the artist Matisse, but the painting means more than its mere status as an object indicates. The owner of the painting might say that the work of art has expressive value. According to what we just argued such value is derivative without being instrumental. It isn’t instrumental because the work of art isn’t used efficiently; it is to be appreciated for what it is. However, it is derivative because it doesn’t have value independently of persons. However, all this poses an epistemological problem. Are the previous examples very different from the person who lavishes loving care on his expensive car? Does this latter count as instrumentalisation? How are we to distinguish the person who treats his car as a fetish from the person who treats his car as having expressive value? This is epistemologically difficult. The fact that it is so, however, doesn’t mean that we cannot distinguish the two cases in principle. In brief, there is an important difference between the two kinds of cases. On the one side, there is the paradigm of the miser who treats X as having intrinsic value when it

Beyond instrumentalisation 43 is merely instrumentally valuable. On the other side, there is the case of the gift: when something that doesn’t have non-derivative or intrinsic value has expressive value and because of this isn’t purely instrumentally valuable. In principle, these two cases are fundamentally different. In practice, we may have severe epistemological difficulties in knowing which of the two paradigms is applicable to any particular case. This epistemological difficulty is enhanced by the assertion that such distinctions are ones of degree.19 Such considerations mean that the distinctions are difficult to apply in practice but this doesn’t deny the relevance of the distinction per se. Because of this, we regard these points as complications rather than objections. It is similar with any complex concept: sometimes the concept is difficult to apply. For example, we can imagine cases of persons who are on the borderline between being depressed or not. Such grey cases do not invalidate the concept of depression. They show that the application of the concept is nuanced. The concept does not determine its own application (Wittgenstein 2009; Kolak and Thomson 2005). Depression is still an important concept. It isn’t invalidated by the putative critique. The critique only means that its application is difficult.

Conclusions The central point of this chapter is that a commonly held (and purely instrumental) conception of rationality does not permit us logically to articulate the intrinsic or non-instrumental value of the lived processes of a person’s life. To formulate this point, we need to distinguish between means/ends and intrinsic/instrumental. We need the idea that means as such can have non-instrumental value. Without the distinction, this crucial point is impossible. Furthermore, the idea that we can instrumentalise ourselves only makes sense given this distinction. The idea that we can dehumanise ourselves is directly relevant to well-being. The idea of not instrumentalising ourselves is an important component of wellbeing in each of its four structural dimensions: activities, awareness, relationships and self-consciousness. We will detail these in turn in the relevant chapters of the work.

Notes 1 We employ the term ‘intrinsic values’ without implying that they are non-relational. The term ‘intrinsic’ indicates that something is valuable non-instrumentally, because of what it is and not because of what it promotes or causes. This does not rule out the idea that things that are intrinsically valuable are so because of their relations to other things. 2 The argument for premise 1 is: i ii

All goal-directed actions as such are means. If the claims of the instrumental conception of rationality were true, then if X is a means, then X has only instrumental value as such.

1

Thus, if the claims of the instrumental conception of rationality were true then all of one’s goal-directed actions as such would have only instrumental value.

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Beyond instrumentalisation

3 When Aristotle defines the good as what all things aim at, he commits the fallacy. See N. Ethics 1094a1–3 (Aristotle 2000). Making the activity itself the goal doesn’t solve the difficulty: one is still defining the good as a goal. Thus, for Aristotle, what makes an intrinsically valuable activity valuable is that it is a goal. 4 Robert Nozick has a similar idea (Nozick 1974). 5 We need to distinguish comparative and absolute uses of the test. 6 This point needs to be refined because it makes sense to imagine that a person might have led a different life and, therefore, a person is not strictly identical to his or her life but rather is composed of a series of experiences and processes that constitute a life. 7 The hedonist reply would accept this conclusion by claiming that only pleasure and the absence of pain are intrinsic goods. For a reply, see Chapter 4. 8 The word ‘part’ is very important here. We shouldn’t assume that values are exhausted by reasons for action. Appreciation is also vital to the understanding of ‘X is valuable’. See Chapter 4. 9 This doesn’t mean that the existence of persons always has overriding importance on any occasion. 10 From an anecdote from Tarzie Varindra Vittachi. 11 To see this point at work in education, please refer to Gill and Thomson (2013, 2017). 12 Since we are investigation living the good life for humans, we concentrate on persons. 13 For example, G. E. Moore argued that the fact that some things are beautiful is valuable quite independently of whether that beauty is appreciated by any person (Moore 1903). 14 To repeat: in this book to say that something has intrinsic value is to claim that its value is non-instrumental and non-derivative. It is not to claim that the value is non-relational. 15 The idea that the value of something is relational doesn’t affect this point, although it complicates it. 16 Here we ignore the fact that Kant doesn’t separate the distinction between means and ends from that between instrumental and non-instrumental values. 17 An objector might urge that, in the Groundwork, Kant portrays such self-regarding actions as immoral specifically because one is contravening moral duties to oneself. It is a question of morality and not well-being. However, in reply, the word ‘moral’ is up for grabs and we need to contrast two meanings of the term. The first might be Kant’s. When he claims that it is irrational, this does not exclude that it might also be part of one’s ill-being. What Kant might call ‘moral duties to oneself’ could be part of what we call ‘well-being’: if one contravenes what Kant calls ‘moral duties to oneself’, then this might constitute a form of ill-being. In contrast, the second sense embodies a more popular view according to which it is immoral to treat other persons as a mere means for the sake of one’s own self-interested goals. In this second case, the term ‘immoral’ is exclusively concerned with how one treats others, and thus it excludes the idea that the action is a constituent of a person’s ill-being. In sum, we shouldn’t mix up the two senses when we claim that Kant’s conception of instrumentalisation is a moral notion. If we mean it in the second sense, then calling it ‘immoral’ excludes its being ‘a component of ill-being’. If we mean it in the original Kantian sense, it doesn’t. 18 That doesn’t mean that Kant would say that. 19 Or worse, that they are intentional.

3

Activities and desires

A life is composed of a structured nesting of happenings, activities and processes. Because these components constitute a life, they have all the requisite features of human living: they require awareness; they are relational; and they involve consciousness of ourselves. These high-level features of human living will occupy our attention in the following chapters. In the present one, we are concerned with what makes these components non-instrumentally good or bad as such. Experiences are micro events such as falling off a chair, being in a rainstorm and receiving a present from a friend. Life-processes are long-term structured macro processes such as living as a spouse, following a career, developing a business and ageing. Activities are the mid-range things that we do, such as going to a meeting, digging a ditch and cooking dinner. The three-way distinction isn’t sharp. Roughly, the difference between experiences and activities is that the former are things that happen to us and the latter are things that we do. The difference between these and processes is that experiences and activities tend to be nested within the structures of processes. Experiences and activities are micro-level happenings and mid-range activities that occur within the frameworks of processes. As we have already seen, the processes, activities and experiences that comprise a person’s life have value because the person does. The primary bearers of non-derivative value are conscious beings and the lived activities etc. of a person’s life are valuable because the person is.1 This idea is required to avoid the instrumentalism of standard goal-based conceptions of rationality. Although the activities etc. have value because they are part of a life, at the same time, they are desirable for the person living the life in virtue of being characterisable in certain ways. For instance, an activity doesn’t have value per se under the normally irrelevant description ‘performed south of the Equator’. It will have well-beingrelevant-value only under certain descriptions, and we need to know what those descriptions are. What are they? In this regard the debate between desire and objective theories is crucial. Desire theories claim that the well-being-relevant-value is constituted by the activities etc. being the object of desire: an activity is intrinsically valuable for (or as part of) P’s well-being if and only if and only insofar as it is desired non-instrumentally by P. The value lies in the satisfaction of the desire. So-called objective theories deny this.2 They claim that the value is desire independent.

46 Activities and desires This debate is important in several ways. If desires are understood teleologically, the desire theory contradicts the conclusions of the previous chapter. If desires set goals to be achieved, then the theory implies that well-being consists in achieving goals, thereby falling into the instrumental theory of rationality that we strenuously denied in Chapter 2. As we shall see later in Chapter 8, this point is pregnant with socio-political implications. For instance, if political economic institutions should serve well-being, and if at root well-being is concerned with the satisfaction of our desires and if, for most goods, markets are efficient ways to satisfy desires, then there is a defeasible presumption that large parts of our society should be organised in terms of markets. In contrast, if well-being at root is not concerned with the satisfaction of our desires, then the burden of political proof would be reversed. This is a guarded way of saying that a desire theory of well-being will tend to give credence to a consumer view of society, as we explore in Chapter 8. Quite apart from its political implications, an account of well-being must show how the pertinent evaluative concepts are grounded empirically. Normative or evaluative concepts specify what is valuable and indicate reasons for action, and as such, it is usual to contrast them with empirical concepts that merely describe reality. One of the functions of a theory of value is either to bridge or transcend this putative gap. We can transcend the gap only by showing which types of facts count as reasons for action and why. ‘Well-being’ is not only an evaluative concept; it is also, at the same time, a relational psychological state that can be investigated empirically. On this precise point, desire and objective theories crucially diverge. Traditional value-thin theories of well-being, such as desire accounts, seem to do well on this score. If we can define well-being in terms that are clearly empirical (e.g. in terms of what people want) then we can investigate in a scientific manner the causal conditions conducive to well-being. The desire theory provides such a criterion in a straightforward manner. Objective theories apparently don’t. In this chapter, we shall argue that both standard desire and objective accounts of well-being-relevant-value are inadequate, and suggest an alternative account that indicates the empirical conditions for the relevant kind of desirability. Developing this alternative account requires interrogating the concept of desire.

The desire theory The theory claims that an improved state of well-being consists in having some of one’s strongest desires or highest ranked preferences satisfied. This account defines the valuable nature of the activities, experiences and processes that constitute a good life in terms of their being the objects of the person’s desires or wants. There are several different versions of the desire theory of well-being because the key insight of the theory requires qualifications. For example, how should it be applied to past, present and future desires? Do the desires that I have now about my future count more than the desires that I will have in the future about my life at that time? Most important, we shall assume that the desires in question

Activities and desires

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are non-instrumental and that they are directed towards the kinds of activities etc. that constitute a life. Furthermore, the desires in question would include projects that a person wants to engage in, and is not restricted to local, momentary desires.3 The most plausible version of the desire account is perhaps the informed preference theory. It claims that well-being consists in the satisfaction of only certain kinds of ideal or informed preferences, and it specifies the conditions that such preferences must meet to count towards well-being (Brandt 1979; Railton 1986; Griffin 1986; Frey 1980; Rawls 1973: 416–424). These preferences are thought of as hypothetical, those which one would have under certain ideal conditions. Thinkers who try to define (the relevant kind of) value in these terms argue in the following way. Suppose that I very much want a specific job, but when I am appointed, I find it disappointing. The informed preference theorist would argue: ‘The desire itself was not misleading; the problem was that it was based on false beliefs about the job. Thus, once one corrects one’s beliefs concerning the things that one wants, value can be defined in terms of getting what one desires.’ Accordingly, one version of the informed-preference theory can be explained in three steps. First, like the economic concept of utility, it assumes that a person’s motivational state consists of a list of (object-individuated) preferences that ranks what the person desires. Given a few assumptions, we may construct an idealised list or ordering of a person’s preferences, which may be considered as an ordinal preference function.4 This function is a form of ranking, which permits us to specify intrapersonal quantifiable comparisons such as ‘I am worse off now than I was ten years ago.’5 For interpersonal comparisons, we would need consider the rankings as defining a set of cardinal quantities (Bermudez 2009: 44). Given the above, a theorist might define rationality as follows: a choice is rational if the person has an idealised preference function, and does not prefer any option to the one she has chosen. The second step is to specify that the desires in question are non-instrumental. Insofar as one desires Y merely as a means to X, then the desire for Y would not enter the listing as distinct from the desire for X. The third step is to eliminate preferences based on false beliefs or ignorance by defining well-being as the satisfaction of informed preferences, those a person would have if she were fully informed about the objects of her preferences.6 The idea is that an improvement in well-being can be defined in terms of being deprived of noninstrumental valuable activities who value is explained in terms of the relevant informed desires that would survive criticism by knowledge or deliberation (or cognitive therapy; Brandt 1979). Contrary to the desire theory, we shall argue that the relevant desires or preferences function only as a guide to what is valuable, which implies that they do not define it. If A prefers X to Y (under the relevant conditions), then this is defeasible evidence that X is better than Y for A. A’s preferring X to Y indicates that A considers X to be better than Y which constitutes some evidence that X is more desirable than Y for A in the relevant sense. Given this, under the relevant conditions, preferences can function as a measure of what is non-instrumentally valuable. We measure what is non-instrumentally valuable for a person by learning certain facts about what she prefers (under certain conditions). This point will

48 Activities and desires be important for Chapter 7. In conclusion, the relationship between ranked preferences and non-instrumentally valuable is epistemological and not definitional, a point we will argue for in a moment. The evidence that it is only a guide (i.e. it provides evidence for what is desirable) is that it can sometimes mislead, for instance, when we don’t want things that would be wonderful for us and we want things that are bad for us. We shall now present three considerations that show why the desire theory is mistaken, even given the idea of informed preferences (Scanlon 1975, 1998; Thomson 1987, 2002a; Parfit 2011). (1) The theory mistakenly assumes that desires can mislead only when based on false beliefs. It supposes that, knowing all the relevant information, I would automatically and necessarily prefer only what is non-instrumentally best for me, and it assumes there cannot be an instance of an informed preference that one would be better off not satisfying. It presumes that preference provides an infallible definition of value except when the preference is based on faulty cognition or beliefs. However, the above assumption seems false: the satisfaction of an informed preference need not constitute an improvement in well-being because correcting false beliefs is not always sufficient to render preferences coextensive with such an improvement. Preferences (however well-informed) can fail to track the relevant kind of intrinsic value not only because of cognitive errors but also because of affective or emotional failures, such as an obsessive hatred or being in a bad mood. For instance, when I feel vile, my desires will be obnoxious. More knowledge is not always the cure. This suggests, again, that preferences are only a guide to the relevant kinds of values but not definitional of them. Even when informed, desire remains as a guide to, and does not define, what is valuable. Sometimes, what one needs for improved well-being may be a transformation of desire rather than the obtaining of what one wants. Janet’s story may serve as an example. A person who is inhibited by anxieties will have desires that reflect those fears. For someone like Janet, a better life might involve being more free of such fearful desires or her feeling humiliated as a teenager. A higher quality of life sometimes requires a transformation of desire or preference, which will involve more than just a revision of her beliefs. In such a case, more information would not suffice for this transformation. Instead, it might require a change of heart, a release from anxiety, a new emphasis in life, etc. Given the role of advertising in shaping our desires, one cannot assume that the satisfaction of desires defines well-being, even after they are informed or subject to cognitive therapy.7 Janet is a homemaker, a mother of two, married to a successful self-made entrepreneur. Despite having a materially comfortable life, Jane feels an inadequacy due to a lack of higher education. After failing a major exam at the age of 11, she didn’t do well in her secondary school and missed the opportunity to go to university. During her first pregnancy, Janet’s biggest fear was that her children would repeat such a humiliating fate. An advertisement she saw in her doctor’s surgery kindled her hope – the power

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of private schools in securing children’s success in education and later in life. Janet immediately knew that this was exactly what she wanted, and the image of the wonderful education portrayed in the ad stayed with her throughout both her pregnancies and the beginning of motherhood. Therefore, as soon as her children turned 3, Janet placed them in the advertised private school, and she mobilised savings to pay for this expensive education. However, at the time of our conversations with Janet, she was struggling with her adolescent children’s (13 and 15 years old) rebellion against the exam-oriented experience at school. Janet felt miserable and so were her children.

Janet’s story illustrates how ‘getting what one wants’ is too limited a notion to capture the value possibilities before us. Our desires are limited by what or the way we are, by our emotions and character traits, but evaluative judgments reach out beyond how things already are, to indicate something better. Basing the concept of well-being on desire constricts this reaching out: it limits the possibilities to what is already conceived, and extends only as far as the horizon prescribed by our wants. The full relevance of this point will be apparent in Chapter 7. (2) To understand well-being, we must comprehend what makes activities non-instrumentally valuable. We need to ask the Socratic question: ‘Which way does the explanation run: from desire to being valuable or from being valuable to desire?’ The desire theory requires the first. However, the better answer is that desire doesn’t explain what is valuable. To see this, consider the following. When a person A changes her preferences, after acquiring new information, this change will be explained and justified in terms of the factual content of the information. Thus, it is the factual content of the information, rather than the change in preference per se, that constitutes the value. What makes the one course of action preferable to the other for person A are the facts about those options, and not A’s preference once A is informed of those facts. It is the facts explain and justify A’s informed preference. The change in preference merely indicates A’s sensitivity to the comparative preferability of the options; it is not constitutive of that preferability, but merely reflects it (Thomson 1987: 46–49). In which case, a person’s preferences and desires don’t constitute what is desirable or valuable for her. Indeed, they presuppose it. We can assume that the ranking of the non-instrumental preferences of an omniscient and perfectly rational being would reflect perfectly the non-instrumentally valuable nature of the activities in question. They would track it perfectly. But they would not constitute it. This means that we would still face the problem of defining the relevant criteria for the non-instrumentally valuable nature of the activities that constitute life. (3) Things that are good are not simply so because we want them. Something that has no worth apart from the fact that one desires it has only a comparatively trivial value. This is shown as follows: the proposition ‘It is good only because I

50 Activities and desires want it’ implies that it does not matter what I desire, because it entails that what is valuable is the obtaining of what I want, whatever that happens to be. If there were no value in what one desires aside from one’s wanting it, then one may as well have wanted something else (Kraut 2007: 99). The content of the desire would be irrelevant; only the mere fact of desiring would be relevant. Consequently, the notion of getting what one wants does not define the non-instrumental value of activities that constitutes well-being. Thus, even when one wants something that is valuable, it is not the desire that constitutes it being so. Furthermore, some things that we want are not valuable, and there are valuable things that we do not want. So, desire is neither necessary nor sufficient for the relevant kind of noninstrumental value.

The opposite theory The opposite account, sometimes called the ‘objective list theory’ has roots in Aristotle’s conception of eudaimonia. It claims that activities and experiences are worthwhile because they have desirability characteristics and not because they are desired.8 To explain what makes an activity worthwhile, we cite general desirability features of the activity or its relational object. We show how the activity is characterised by a desirability predicate. For example, an activity is exciting, soothing, engaging, or the apple I am eating is delicious. Such characterisations show what it is about the activity that makes it valuable. In opposition to the desire theory, objective-list theorists advocate that such desirability characterizations do not depend on our wants, but rather explain them. We desire things because we perceive them to have such characterizations; our perception of these characterisations explains why we desire what we want: ‘I see that the ice cream is delicious, and this is why I want it’ (Platts 1979, 1980). Thus, the explanation runs from desirability to desire, and not the other way around. This suggests that one could construct an objective list or groupings of the kinds of characterisations that make life’s activities, experiences and processes valuable in well-being relevant ways (Sen 1985, 1993).9 This is exactly what philosopher Martha Nussbaum has done, following Aristotle (Nussbaum 2000). A similar kind of list is also to be found in the work of Max-Neef and Mark Anielski (Anielski 2007: 71; Max-Neef 1987; Ekins and Max-Neef 1992: 206–208). How is such a list to be generated? It cannot come out of thin air.10 One plausible reply is that it is derived from our understanding of the independently good, which is enshrined in language (Platts 1980). Hence, friendship is on the list, and we know that friendship is a good compared to friendlessness, loneliness and enmity because it is part of the concept of friendship that it is a good. In other words, the sentence ‘friendship is a (defeasible) good’ is an analytic claim, true in virtue of the meaning of the term ‘friendship’. According to this idea, the composition of the list of objective goods is already inherent in our language, in our concepts: it doesn’t come out of thin air! However, this is not a complete explanation of desirability. We can doubt its sufficiency because to claim, for instance, that friendship is good simply because

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it is part of the concept of friendship that it be so misses the opportunity to explain why our concept is like that. One might add that we have a concept of friendship precisely because human beings are social animals who live in groups, communicate and form emotional bonds with each other. The concept captures something important about us. In short, one also needs some explanation of why and how such a concept is applicable to our lives. This forms the seedling of a critique of the objective list theory. It is a contingent fact that we are the kinds of beings who have and need friends. Even if there are good evolutionary reasons why we are like that, nevertheless, it is contingent and, because of this, one would expect some social and individual variations between people in this regard. For instance, some people are more solitary and others more gregarious. Furthermore, we change as we grow older. Likewise, for instance, it is a contingent fact about us that we have aesthetically motivated desires, and it is because of this fact that aesthetic desirability concepts have application in characterising what is valuable for us. If there were beings without any aesthetically motivated desires then, for them, there would be no aesthetic deprivations. In which case, it is in virtue of contingent features of our makeup that aesthetic considerations count towards our well-being at all. This conclusion can be generalised: worthwhile activities that are partly constitutive of well-being are contingently desirable for us (Crisp and Hooker 2000: 283). An objective list theory cannot account for such contingency and for the subsequent variations. It provides us with a ready-made list rather than a custom-made account of primary desirability or well-being-relevant-intrinsic value. Explaining desirability does not terminate with the citing of a desirability predicate. It appears to do so, because in citing such a predicate we assume a shared form of life that makes the relevant desirability concept possible.11 To explain desirability would require identifying the features of such shared forms of life that constitute the relevant kind of intrinsic value. This identification is needed to explain the contingent nature of statements such as ‘friendship is a defeasible primary good for humans’ and the variations between cultures and individuals and between the same person at different periods of life. Consequently, the objective list theory is incomplete.12 The above argument suggests that our empirical motivational make-up is relevant to our well-being, and this consideration seems to throw us back towards the desire account.

Towards a third theory13 We are faced with an apparent dilemma; we have rejected both objective list and desire conceptions of well-being.14 This double rejection seems to be like asserting the contradictory claim that well-being both does and doesn’t depend on desire. However, the apparent contradiction can be avoided if the dichotomy is false. The dichotomy hinges on treating the two types of account as exhaustive, and, contrary to that assumption, there is a set of alternatives that, as it were, sits midway between the two accounts. We shall now outline this seldom explored third path, and suggest why it constitutes a more fruitful way of regarding well-being.

52 Activities and desires The misleading dichotomy comes from thinking that well-being and harm must be construed either in terms of what a person wants, or else in terms of the desirability of processes, activities and experiences that is totally independent of our desires. However, desirability can be explicated by reference to desires without being tied to the specific objects that we want.15 There is an alternative to the suggestion that either well-being must consist in satisfaction of desires or else desires are completely irrelevant to well-being. To develop this midway alternative, we require a more complex view of desiring. A person’s motivational nature is not exhausted by what people want. There is more to desiring than what it is directed towards, or what its object is. The idea is that, because preference functions ignore the intentional nature of desiring, they omit the content of desiring (or they collapse content into object) (see Chapter 4).16 Preference functions rank the objects of desire, but without specifying the content of those desires. In this way, they try to replace a qualitative understanding of desire (in terms of content) with a purely quantitative one (in terms of an ordinal function).17 In brief, they rank the objects of desire without specifying the content of the desire, and specifically, the content insofar as it specifies why we desire what we do. We shall argue that such a content-based view is needed anyway to understand desiring. As we shall see, there are reasons quite independent of well-being in favour of such an analysis. This third view allows us to escape the dilemma because it enables us to affirm that some activities are valuable because they accord with aspects of a person’s motivational makeup but without being tied to the idea that the person should get what she wants. We have suggested that desires act as a guide to the relevant kind of non-instrumental value and that, as a guide, they can mislead us. This suggestion indicates the need for a critical attitude towards one’s desires, which necessitates trying to identify the kinds of interests that motivate our desires, as we shall see. Unfortunately, there is little research done along these lines regarding the relevant aspects of our motivational natures, both empirically and conceptually. The literature is rather scant perhaps because psychology and economics tend to be unwilling to acknowledge fully the intentionality of desiring. This intentionality means that an object of desire is always wanted under some description and not under others; desires have an aspectual content, as well as an object. Thus, desire cannot be reduced to the idea that either one wants something or one doesn’t. It is much more complex because desiring is description-relative. I want the cake under one description, ‘the cake with the most chocolate’, but not under another, ‘the oldest cake in the shop’. Oscar Wilde once quipped: ‘there are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants and the other is getting it’, thereby testifying to the description-relative nature of desiring and liking, which makes preference functions look simplistic. This point also indicates that our wants are often opaque to us; we may be ignorant and mistaken concerning descriptions of our own desires. Consequently, the hope of utility theory that we could in principle list all the states of affairs that we want and conceive of this as a complete description of our desires is utterly forlorn.

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Another reason why the literature in this area is scant is perhaps the unwarranted fear that this path leads us towards postulating Freudian unconscious drives. The claim that our non-instrumental desires have motivational sources seems to suggest the suspicious idea of unconscious drives that underlie our conscious desires. More on this later. The relevant literature is scarce perhaps also because of an underlying hedonic reductionism, which blocks questions about underlying motivation or why we desire what we do prematurely (Irvine 2005: 64; Schroeder 2004: 73). The monistic assumption that all desires must be motivated ultimately by pleasure closes the door to other, pluralist, answers. We will attempt to dispel hedonism in Chapter 4. Whatever the case, we are about to venture into aspects of human psychology that need to be developed both empirically and conceptually to understand ‘being well’. a) Deslogo interests introduced We need a framework that allows us to not take our desires at face value, and to interpret them in ways that transcend merely specifying their objects. Freud, for instance, distinguished between the object and the aim of desire (Freud 1957: 111). He took the aims of desires to be certain basic pleasures related to the satisfaction of instinctive drives. However, we do not want to commit ourselves to any substantial view concerning the aims of our (non-instrumental) desires. Moreover, Freud’s distinction between aim and object is not clear because he characterises the aim of a desire in terms of what satisfies it; since the satisfaction can also be defined in terms of the object of desire, this fails to distinguish aim and object. Nevertheless, what does emerge from Freud’s discussion is the need for some distinction between the motivational force of a desire, and what the desire is directed towards, that is, its object. He realised that even our basic desires have a motivational source behind them, of which we are not always aware. Unfortunately, Freud tended to think of this as another desire, albeit an unconscious one, which he termed ‘a drive’. Fortunately, Freud’s insight does not have to be couched in Freudian terms of drives, in general, and repressed sexual ones, in particular. Freud’s idea of the aim of desire does not have to be thought of as a drive, nor as part of the unconscious mind, nor as having sexual content. Freed from the particularities of the Freudian message, the important insight is that desires for very different things can have a similar motivational source. Wants are structured by this source. This insight is important for our inquiry because it allows us to recognise that our motivational nature as individuals, as members of a society and of a species, is relevant to what constitutes well-being. It permits this recognition while liberating us from the trap that value simply consists in the obtaining of what one wants. It allows the distinction between the wilful feeling ‘I have to get what I want!’ and the idea that one’s life should fit one’s motivational nature as a human person. It enables us to separate the specific thing that a desire is directed towards from its

54 Activities and desires general source. Thus, the insight permits a more mature attitude towards wanting than the exclusive focus on getting what one desires. Apart from knowing what a person wants, we also need to know why she desires what she does, even when the desire is non-instrumental. We shall coin the term ‘deslogo interest’ to indicate the reasons that motivate a person’s basic noninstrumental desires.18 The term ‘deslogo’ indicates that we are referring to the logos or account of our basic desires. It refers to the motivational sources or nature of non-instrumental desires. A description that specifies a person’s deslogo interests indicates the motivational nature of her desires, which is an empirical feature of them. It indicates, from a psychological viewpoint, the non-instrumentally desirable aspects of what we desire. We use the term ‘deslogo interests’ with some trepidation because the term ‘interest’ usually indicates something merely instrumentally valuable, such as money and power. Unfortunately, alternative terms are perhaps even more misleading. The notion of a basic drive is wedded to a hydraulic or homeostatic theory of motivation and suggests something innate. The term ‘basic need’ refers to something that is inescapably necessary for life or well-being, such as food, and thus indicates something of only instrumental value. It presupposes the concepts of harm and well-being, and thus it doesn’t help us understand what is non-instrumentally valuable about the activities processes and experiences that comprise a life.19 In this work, if we occasionally employ terms such as ‘drive’ or ‘need’, this is intended to refer to non-instrumental deslogo interests. As we shall see, deslogo interests are not things separate from our desires; rather they are facets of our wants. They constitute a way of characterising the content of a desire that is distinct from specifying its object. Descriptions that specify a person’s interests inform us of why a person desires non-instrumentally what she does, but without telling us what she desires. They indicate why we want and not what we want. This suggests that the notion of a deslogo interest is quite different from that of a desire identified and individuated by their objects, or what one desires.20 On the basis of this distinction, we shall advocate a conception of well-being that combines and transcends both the desire and the objective list positions. The view rejects the idea that desirability is entirely independent of desire, because some psychological differences between people amount to the fact that something is desirable for some and for others not.21 Yet, simultaneously, the view avoids the identification of the desirability with the satisfaction of a non-instrumental desire. b) The interpretation of desires We shall now argue that, in everyday life, one needs to interpret desires, and that such a practice requires a distinction between deslogo interests and objectindividuated desires. The aim of the argument is to show that we require such a distinction, quite independently of its importance for well-being. In quotidian living, one needs to understand desires in ways that transcend their identification through their objects. First, we need such comprehension to

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be able to predict what people would want and like in hypothetical situations, and to anticipate how their desires will alter in changing circumstances. For example, when one can no longer obtain exactly what one wants, one’s desire switches to something relevantly similar. The standard account of desire cannot explain adequately what counts as ‘relevantly similar’ insofar as it simply lists preferences and thereby ignores their structured content. This idea that one would want something relevantly similar in different circumstances is vital for understanding human motivation: it enables us to explain why expensive suits might be substitutes for expensive cars, a claim which from a purely external point of view would seem ludicrous: how could clothing be a substitute for a vehicle? This idea that one desire can be relevantly similar to a desire for something externally quite different requires the concept of what the original desire was really about. This is equivalent to the idea of deslogo interests that motivate a non-instrumental desire. Such a concept is also needed to see how there can be commonalities through changes in our desires. It is necessary to interpret how desires change. For example, it allows us to comprehend how a desire for material success might be replaced later by a desire to conform. As a person acquires new beliefs, her desires alter. However, such changes need not amount to a transformation insofar as the motivating sources of the desires remain constant. If our motivational nature is structured like a web, the outer part consists in specific desires individuated by their objects, which change with belief and circumstances, while the central hub remains relatively stable and permanent, constituted by general deslogo interests, which are belief independent. Shifts in the central core constitute a transformation in character and nature. As the outer ring of the web alters, sense and order can be made of this flux through the relatively stable deslogo interests. So, for example, the kinds of things that we want change as we grow older. This isn’t only an alteration in the objects of desire, but also in the motivational natures of those desires, such as our desires become less playful. In summary, without the notion of a deslogo interest, one cannot see the patterns in the ways that desires change, nor structure in the varieties of our wants. Interests explain desires by structuring them into belief-independent groupings. Third, extending the earlier points, the notion of a deslogo interest allows us to see how apparently disparate desires at the same time might have something in common. This applies to both intra- and interpersonal comparisons. For example, the need or deslogo interest that people have in belonging may express itself in a wide variety of ways, depending on cultural and individual differences. It may be manifest as a general desire for friendship or to live in a small community. Alternatively, it may express itself as a general desire to conform or to outshine others in competition. It is also an important factor in the way people decorate their houses and tend their gardens. In each case, these disparate general desires will generate a proliferation of more specific wants in specific circumstances.22 These very different but general object-individuated desires may have a unifying aspect, namely the shared deslogo interests they express. Because desires are dependent on belief, as a person acquires new beliefs so what she desires changes, and in this sense, she has different desires. But such change may only amount to a change in

56 Activities and desires contextual expression, if the motivating sources of the desire remain constant. In this way, the notion of a deslogo interest enables us to understand how desires for disparate things are nevertheless relevantly similar.23 Fourth, we interpret desires in part because often we cannot obtain exactly what we want. The relevant interpretation consists in characterising the deslogo interests that motivate the desires – it reveals what the desire is about. For example, when your child wants a popsicle and the shop is shut, you might freeze a banana on a stick. Now, imagine that there is no banana and no fridge, what should you do? It depends on the nature of your child’s desire. Is she thirsty? Does she have a bad taste in her mouth? Does she just want a treat? Is she hot? Or, is it that she wants loving attention? If it is the latter, then a walk in the park might be better than a popsicle. One doesn’t know what would count as a suitable substitute. This illustrates why people sometimes find it difficult to know what they themselves want. One may know the object of one’s desire but be quite ignorant of the descriptions under which one wants it. The content of one’s desires may be opaque to oneself. The ability to predict what people, oneself included, will want in new circumstances is crucial to the understanding of well-being. The idea of deslogo interests allows us to understand how desires change. However, such an idea also reframes our conception of the underlying values needed for well-being. Because the desire theory defines value in terms of the obtaining of what one wants, it excludes the claim that value can be defined using the concept of something relevantly similar to an existing desire or the idea that it could be defined in terms of what the relevant desires ‘are really about’. Such an idea can allow us to indicate what is valuable about a desired object, without being tied to its specificity. Fifth, sadly, there are cases in which the deslogo interests do not coincide with or match the relevant object of desire, such as the example of Theo. Suppose that Theo’s underlying deslogo interest is not praise but stable affection: underlying the desire for success, there is a deslogo interest for affectionate love. Clearly, there is an unfortunate incompatibility between what he wants and a deslogo interest that motivates those wants: the harder he works, the less time he has available to interact with his friends and the more isolated he feels. Such a case constitutes a breakdown in the way deslogo interests are expressed as specific changing desires. In this way, the desire is hollow: the object of desire is not apt for the underlying deslogo interest. In such a case, we might want to say that Theo’s well-being is better served by some transformation of life-style rather than by his getting what he wants. Theo was 25 at the time of our interview, and he was in his third year working at a prestigious digital media company. The company is made up of young employees, and it celebrates high achievers. Theo immediately saw that the most popular colleagues in the company were those who were most successful. As a new graduate, starting from the bottom, Theo believed that to gain acceptance and to become ‘popular’ amongst his colleagues, he had

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to work the hardest to impress them and thus make new friends. With a goal to achieve the top performance in all tasks, Theo worked day and night throughout the first two years, hardly leaving his computer and allowing little time to interact with anyone. His hard work indeed paid off. At the end of the second year, he was awarded a significant bonus for his effort, accompanied by a promotion to a slightly higher position in the Company. This was a most impressive achievement, and yet Theo felt more isolated and lonelier than ever. In trying to impress his colleagues and friends, he seemed to have few left. In the example of Theo, there is an incompatibility between what he desires (praise and success) and what underlies this desire (the deslogo interest for affection). The mismatch is not between two desires. He desires praise and success, even if this requires distancing herself from others. This is what he has chosen. In contrast, he doesn’t desire affection: he has rejected it; he does not actively seek it; nor is he currently disposed to. Nevertheless, his desire for praise is explained in terms of a deslogo interest for affection. In this case, the distinction between the deslogo interest and the general desire is striking. However, this does not obviate the need for the distinction in cases that are less obvious, namely when a person’s desires and interests do match well. Deslogo interests are not general desires. What underlies desire is not another desire. Such interests are not choices based on beliefs, and so they constitute a feature of our motivational nature distinct from object-directed wanting. This is so for three reasons. First, desires are typically belief-dependent, and interests are not. For example, the desire to buy a painting depends on one’s judgments about its desirability and cost. In contrast, if a person has aesthetic deslogo interests, then she has aesthetically motivated desires, and this is not dependent on such judgments. A person might be unaware that he has such an interest. Second, desiring is often a form of conscious choosing: to desire something is to choose it over other things. In contrast, to have a deslogo interest is never a form of conscious choice. To have a deslogo interest pertaining to belonging is not to choose or value belonging. To have such an interest is to have non-instrumental desires motivated by that interest. For this reason, the desires motivated by, for instance, belonging need not be directed towards belonging. Third, desires act as potential reasons for actions in conjunction with suitable beliefs. Theo wants to have friends and believes that friendship is to be won by impressing his friends; jointly, these explain his action of working hard to impress his friends. They constitute Theo’s reason for action. In contrast, interests act as potential explanations of desires without the need for the intervening of a relevant belief. Such explanations indicate the motivational nature of a desire, but they do not constitute the person’s own reasons. The person may not acknowledge those interests, and so such acknowledgment cannot be essential to their existence, nor to the fashion in which they explain. In short, deslogo interests explain desires in a way that is fundamentally different from the way desires explain actions and other desires.

58 Activities and desires These three differences mean that deslogo interests are not another desire, even one that is general. Why does this seemingly pedantic point matter? It is relevant because we argued vigorously against a desire theory of well-being: the mere fact that one wants something doesn’t constitute the relevant kind of non-instrumental value. Instead, we are trying to carve out an alternative position that doesn’t make desires irrelevant to well-being but doesn’t define it in terms of desire satisfaction. We are doing so by identifying patterns in our non-instrumental desires that pertain to its content rather than the ranking of its objects. In this regard, although deslogo interests are different from object-specified desires, they are not some entity distinct or separate. They are facets of our wants. c) Conclusion To sum up: in our everyday practice, we interpret people’s desires without always taking at face value their word concerning how this should be done. We read between the lines of verbalised conscious desires to find broader patterns but without impugning unconscious drives to the individual. Such hermeneutics constitutes an approach to desire that is significantly different from the economic model and from psychoanalytic theory which postulates unconscious drives. Everyday interpretations of people’s wants are holistic and self-critical. They aim at more truthful interpretations through self-correcting experimental processes. This requires a distinction between desires and deslogo interests to explain how desire may shift from object to object, and how something remains constant through such transitions. The distinction is required to see how apparently disparate desires may have common sources. Thus, this distinction is already inherent in everyday practice. It may take considerable knowledge of a person’s character and a culture, and wide experience of human nature in general, to know how to interpret a person’s desires, and to know how to read from these the deslogo interests that motivate the desires. Nevertheless, we need to and do engage in this kind of practice. In conclusion, let us enumerate the main points. 1

2

3

Non-instrumental desires have a motivational source, which we may call a deslogo interest, and which is not another general desire. Some of our beliefdependent desires and preferences are expressions of such interests. Such deslogo interests are expressed as desirability characterisations or predicates. These interests define the temporal patterns and non-temporal structures of our desires. They permit us to see that desires for very disparate things may have common motivational sources. In this way, they make interpretation of desire possible. What is important about non-instrumental desire is not the specific obtaining of what one wants, but rather that the interests underlying the desire are met. If I need more beauty in my life, then it is not so important that I obtain the specific beautiful things that I want, but rather that there is more beauty present in my life.

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The objects of desire do not necessarily express well the interest behind the desire. For example, Theo may have an interest in affection, and this may express itself as a range of desires pertaining to status, which drive him to work so hard that he ends up feeling alienated. In this manner, deslogo interests provide a way to evaluate desires.

The truth in the desire model is that our motivational patterns can define what has non-instrumental value for us. In this sense, our desires are relevant in defining what constitutes an improvement in the quality of life. However, this improvement does not consist in the satisfaction of desire. What desires bid us to do is not automatically good for us (non-instrumentally). Yet, at the same time, desires have motivational sources that reveal our deeper interests, which do define in part what has non-instrumental value for us.

Relevance for well-being How does all this matter for well-being? We need to understand the advantage of characterising well-being in terms of deslogo interests rather than desire. Primarily, the deslogo account avoids defining the relevant kind of non-instrumental value in terms of getting what one wants; instead, it is about the basic motivational content of those desires. In this regard, it is closer to the objective theory which also pays attention to why we want what we desire. Moreover, because it is about content, the deslogo theory isn’t goal based, unlike the desire theory. This is a crucial point given the critique of instrumental reason given in Chapter 2: the failure to distinguish means from instrumental value, and ends from intrinsic value is disastrously endemic in most contemporary societies, as we shall see in Chapter 8. Insofar as it is teleological, the desire theory falls prey to this same failure: it puts results before living. Furthermore, because of the point about content, the deslogo account allows for a radical critique of desires. We can assess our object-individuated desires in terms of how well they meet and express the deslogo interests that motivate them. The deslogo account allows us to criticise our desires in terms of what is desirable for a person instead of taking one’s desires as a given (or rather as a given once corrected for false beliefs). This is a radical critique compared to one based only on cognitive therapy. How does the notion of deslogo interests characterise well-being? The first dimension of well-being is that a person engages in experiences, activities and processes that are non-instrumentally valuable. While the activities themselves are particulars, their value is that they belong to a type or kind defined by the person’s deslogo interests. A person will have a lower level of well-being if she is not engaging in experiences, activities and processes that belong to these types. For example, a person who has aesthetic interests but does not engage in activities that suit those interests ipso facto has less well-being. Her life is deprived of a relevant non-instrumental good. Likewise, a loner who nevertheless has social deslogo interests would be missing out on a whole desirable activity type. Suppose that a recluse who doesn’t have any desires directed towards social ends, nevertheless

60 Activities and desires does have desires with an underlying social motivational content. As such, the person would be harmed by a life deprived of social interactions, even though she doesn’t have desires that have such interactions as their objects. However, the point is that it is not all or nothing. Typically, these desire types come and go in temporal patterns or waves. So, for example, we need to be with friends (or with anyone) after a gap of solitude. We need excitement after a time of routine. We need intellectual stimulation after a long period of mindless activity. And vice versa in each case. Consequently, the empirical work that is needed is not only to interpret our desires and group them into more general patterns that reveal the underlying desirabilities, but also to do so with regard to temporal phases. We can see that there will be considerable individual and cultural variations between people concerning timing. How do people come to miss out on parts of life in the ways that we have been discussing? Generally, if people have control over their lives and if they have a grouping of desires that define a deslogo interest then there is a prima facie reason to think that they will be performing the activities of the relevant kind. However, sadly, this supposition can be defeated. First, the conditions might not be satisfied. In our interviews, we have noted that young people who are usually not in control of their lives (because of parents and school) tend to suffer from this kind of deprivation. Young people and children often cannot spontaneously follow their desires. This might mean, for example, that they spend less time with their friends or dedicated to physical activities than their interests would indicate. Likewise, people who are in prison or who are institutionalised will not be able to live fully as a result of not being in control of what they do. We also observed that poverty typically causes a similar phenomenon. Insofar as the meeting of deslogo interests require, within a specific social context, financial resources, a person’s life may be fundamentally stilted by poverty. All sorts of desirable activities and social interactions are usually denied to the poor. Second, people who are overworked may not be able to live a life that is balanced or in which the full range of their deslogo interests is expressed. In general, the economic demands of work can limit our freedom to spontaneously express our interests through activities. We came across people who moved to a new environment for the sake of a higher pay and who found that their lives became narrower than before because of their job was more demanding. There was less time for them to make and be with friends, and hence fewer opportunities to engage in the kinds of activities that are best shared with friends. Such examples might be viewed as instances of a more general phenomenon in which some of the social institutions we inhabit might be inadequate in relation to our deslogo interests. For example, one might imagine that the institutions in a specific culture might not permit or encourage the kind of intimacy that people typically need; or that the kinds of creative application and variety that people usually need are lacking from the standard workplaces that are defined predominantly in terms of financial results.24 A language itself may restrict the capacity of persons to live in accordance with their deslogo interests by failing to make distinctions that deslogo interests require. For instance, in English, there aren’t many words to differentiate the varying kinds of friendship.

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Third, some people make a deliberate choice to dedicate themselves to a narrow range of pursuits, for example, to achieve greatness as an artist or to find a spiritual path. We won’t defend or challenge the assumption that a person may be prudentially justified in doing this. The artist sacrifices aspects of her life for the sake of perfecting her art. Without claiming that this be justifiable (or not) all things considered, we can still maintain that it constitutes a loss (or a sacrifice). Fourth, desires can be diverted socially. Take the case of Theo who worked long hours to gain praise because of an underlying interest in affection, and who thereby failed to find affection. The deslogo interest was perverted into a general desire for praise, which motivated him to work hard. Through such examples, one can see that social institutions can be inadequate in terms of matching activities to our interests. Given that the institutions are designed for quite different purposes, we must ask: are social institutions and workplaces suitable for the deslogo interests regarding belonging? Are they even adequate for the deslogo interests concerning work? Similar questions apply to our lives as consumers: are there social needs that we try to satisfy materially? Typically, when people are deprived of a general kind of intrinsically valuable activity then a sign of this will be resulting feelings of dissatisfaction. When life is monotone, we feel bored, as when Janet’s children complain about their endless preparation for exams. When Theo spends too much time alone, he feels lonely. Sometimes the feelings are not so specific: we might feel depressed, glum or at a loose end; there might be a general feeling of drudgery or that something is amiss. Such feelings are often signs of a lack of non-instrumentally valuable activities of some kind. Two important caveats. First, the negative feeling is often a sign or symptom that there is something missing from one’s life. The feeling itself is a result of something undesirable: the lack of a general type of intrinsic value. Although the feeling also is bad, we shouldn’t think that what is undesirable in this situation is simply the feeling of loneliness or of drudgery etc. Such feelings can be a barometer of one’s own state of being, but whether life is going well or badly does not simply consist in lacking or having those feelings or symptoms. The non-instrumental value of the activity doesn’t consist in the fact that performing it alleviates bad feelings! That would render it instrumental. Second, we shouldn’t conclude from this that every such lack would cause a negative feeling. In Chapter 2, we came across Miriam who had chosen to live an economically limited life. She might miss out on parts of life, but without this impinging directly on her feelings. Likewise, we shouldn’t attribute every negative feeling to a lack. Of course, it is built into the concept of feeling lonely that it is based on a lack. However, this does not mean that all negative feelings are due to something missing from one’s life. Nevertheless, it remains true that negative feelings of illbeing can be symptomatic of some fundamental lack within one’s life.

Empirical specification We are committed to the claim that there are empirical criteria for what counts as valuable.25 This means that if two people disagree about what activities have the relevant kind of non-instrumental value for a person, then there will be some

62 Activities and desires empirical facts that decide the issue.26 For example, someone might claim that intimacy isn’t an important aspect of human life compared to achievement. There will be some empirical criteria to settle such issues, even if we don’t know yet what these are. It is reasonable to believe that there are such criteria because the alternative meta-theories (such as subjective theories of value) are inadequate. To move forward, let us assume that the reader agrees that we need something like the notion of deslogo interests, because the desire and the objective list theories are both insufficient. Let us also assume that such a notion defines the kinds of non-instrumentally valuable activities that comprise a life and without which a person’s well-being would be diminished. Given these assumptions, what empirical evidence can one provide for determining what deslogo interests a human being has? How are we to interpret human desires that allows us to affirm that they derive from and express deslogo interests X, Y and Z? How might one make a mistake in identifying such interests? The possibility of making mistakes is essential to the claim that such identification is an empirical enterprise at all. As the motivating source of desire, deslogo interests provide a choice and beliefindependent grouping and organization of desire. To know what a person’s interests are, we must interpret her desires: we must attend to the way her desires are patterned and organised by their motivational source, rather than simply discovering what it is she desires. This implies there is a set of descriptions of a person’s motivational nature or her deslogo interests that are pertinent to the kind of desirability relevant for well-being. Such interpretations are objective in the minimal sense that one can make mistakes with respect to them, even though they are subjective in the sense that they depend on the specific nature of the person or subject: the interpretation applicable to Janet needn’t be true of Theo. Furthermore, the interpretations are objective in the sense that they don’t depend directly on the decisions or will or the pro-attitudes or the beliefs of the person. In other words, what is desirable for a person isn’t something that is true simply in virtue of what the person decides about it. In this sense, the theory is objective. Differing views about human well-being can be understood in part as different interpretations of human desires. For instance, Buddhist philosophers may claim that many human desires are united by a deslogo interest pertaining to enlightenment. Freud portrays many desires as expressions of a deslogo interest concerning sex;27 Nietzsche as the will to power. As another example, Christians read some human desires as an expression of a need for union with God: the human soul ‘yearns’ for union with the divine, and this expresses itself in many areas of human desire, such as the artistic. An analogous view is to be found in the writings of Plato, especially the Symposium: sexual desires are fundamentally an expression of an interest or need pertaining to the Form of Goodness, even if we don’t consciously desire the Form of Goodness as such. According to Plato, there is a whole range of human desires that express a deslogo interest concerning the Form of Goodness, even though the person might not desire to know this Form. The overarching point is that, metaphysics aside, these readings of human desire are supposed to be empirical. These specific interpretations are implausible

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insofar as they affirm only one dominant interest rather than an irreducible plurality of desire types. Furthermore, one might think that they are too vague. Nevertheless, placing these reservations to one side, the interpretations constitute different empirical views about the nature of human non-instrumental desires. Thus, we would need to work out what hypothetical observations might disconfirm them. In this context, the term ‘empirical’ doesn’t indicate that the relevant kind of evidence is quantitative or numerical.28 It indicates that the interpretation of desire is based on observation. Insofar as disputes about the nature of human well-being are not a priori, they are empirical, and in principle, there will be evidence to settle disputes regarding conflicting claims about (this aspect of) the nature of well-being. Given all this and the earlier definition, what does an interpretation of human desires look like? How will it proceed? We can characterise it in four broad stages. In the first stage, we delimit the kinds of desire that are relevant to identifying deslogo interests. The relevant desires need to be non-derivative. For instance, we can discount instrumental desires because they aren’t basic. On this ground, we can also discount wishes because they are derivative. As usually understood, the desire for happiness is also derivative, as is the desire for well-being: these are wants based on other desires rather like the second-order desire that one’s first-order desires be satisfied. The desires relevant to identifying interests need be non-derivative, and directed towards the experiences, activities and processes that make up a person’s life. For example, the desire wouldn’t be specified as wanting an apple but rather directed to an activity; that is, wanting that I eat an apple.29 Second, when interpreting such desires, we need to disentangle the different kinds of interests that they express. In each of our daily activities, there are typically a host of different kinds of deslogo interests at play; likewise with our desiring. For instance, the desire to go for a walk has many facets, such as the exercise of the body, being in a different place, the beauty of the scenery, the exploring of a new part of town, the possibility of meeting new people. When we drive a car, there is changing countryside, the use of motor skills, the breaking of routine, the exercise of agency, sharing company within a private space. Eating feeds the body, but it is also a social and aesthetic activity. With higher-level processes, such as studying for a university degree or the forming of a friendship, the mixing of deslogo interests is even greater. Because they are intertwined, discerning the different deslogo interests at play is a bit like picking out a specific violin in the furious sound of the crescendo of an orchestra: the relevant judgment will be counterfactual. The evidence for such interests is counterfactual: that is, it is of the form, ‘under suitable conditions, person A would have non-derivatively desired activity D rather than E.’ In the third stage, we specify the kinds of structural features of desires or desire patterns that will count as candidates for deslogo interests. To do so, we group together desires in terms of their motivationally relevantly similar content. Desires for disparate things may be motivationally alike. To explain ‘alike’, we must seek shared descriptions of the desires in question that identify what those desires are about. The description of the content of the desires has the relevant

64 Activities and desires kind of explanatory power. The idea is that specifying deslogo interests is a kind of explanation of desire that is distinct from desire-based explanations. The first, that is desire-based explanations, consists in citing the goals or reasons of the agent. The second, that is explanations consisting in specifying deslogo interests, doesn’t. The first, when one explains one desire in terms of another, typically entails showing how particular desires follow from more general ones, given the agent’s beliefs about the circumstances. But, in the second – that is, when we explain a desire in terms of deslogo interests – we re-describe it to reveal or make plain what is desirable about it in belief-independent ways. We aren’t citing another goal. Thus, these re-descriptions are fundamentally different from any specification of what the person wants. As we argued earlier, these descriptions needn’t be ones that the person herself would give of the motivational nature of the desire, and they will be belief and choice independent descriptions. Fourth, we identify the limits of relevant substitutability. Suppose that A desires X. There will be a relevant description of X that specifies what is desirable about X such that A wants it. If so, then there will be a range of other activities Y and Z that are relevantly similar to X, and which A could desire and which could serve as relevant substitutes for X. Specific desires are substitutable so long as they satisfy the same broader interest. This implies that distinct deslogo interests are distinct insofar as they are not substitutable. In other words, A and B constitute distinct interests insofar as the satisfaction of desires that are characterised as A type desires are not a substitute for the satisfaction of desires that are characterised as B, within a time frame. Fifth, deslogo interests will be relatively inescapable. The more the relevant patterns in our desires are relatively inescapable, the more we count them as basic or fundamental descriptions of a being’s web of desire. We will return to this important point in Chapter 7. The descriptions that satisfy these conditions provide candidates for the role of deslogo interests. These candidates explain a person’s non-instrumentals desires; they identify a pattern in this person’s wants and they constitute an empirical feature of her motivational makeup. As explained, the term ‘deslogo interest’ refers to the reasons that motivate a person’s basic non-instrumental desires by indicating the motivational nature of those desires that are choice and belief independent and are not the person’s own reasons.

Persons as primary In Chapter 2 we argued that a person’s desires matter only because the person is inherently valuable. It would be the wrong way around to think that the person is valuable because of the desires she has. In importance, the person comes first; the value of the desire is derivative. If the person is primary, then the value of the processes that constitute her life must be prior to the value of her desires. The processes and activities cannot be merely instrumentally valuable as means to desire satisfaction.

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The desire theory fails to comply with these points. What we desire is an end or goal. To desire X is to have X as a goal, and vice versa. Therefore, insofar as we define the intrinsic values relevant to well-being directly in terms of desire satisfaction, we accept the instrumental conception of rationality rejected in Chapter 2. Furthermore, the instrumental conception assumes that something non-instrumentally good must be an end or a goal. It also involves a theory of the good, namely: 2) Anything of non-instrumental value as such must be a goal or an end.30 Since having a goal is equivalent to desiring, the desire theory is equivalent to statement 2) in italics. In arguing against the desire theory, we thereby reject goalbased theories of the relevant values. Therefore, the conclusions of Chapter 2 are reinforced by the argumentation against the desire theory in Chapter 3. Critics may see a problem here. Surely the same kind of argument would make the deslogo interest theory championed in this chapter incompatible with the main conclusion of Chapter 2. If the value of a person’s activities depends on her deslogo interests, then it is those interests that make the activity valuable rather than the fact that those processes constitute the person’s life. In other words, in Chapter 2 we argued that a)

Activities have value in virtue of being parts of a life

In this chapter, we have claimed that b) Activities have value in virtue of the deslogo interests of the human being concerned. In this way, it might be objected that our appeal to interests in this chapter contradicts the main principle of Chapter 2. The reply to this objection has three components. First and foremost, the deslogo interest model is not goal based. Interests are not goals or object-individuated desires. Therefore, the deslogo interest model is not committed to statement 2) above in italics. Of course, the nature of a person’s deslogo interests depends on her desires, but that is beside the point because this dependence is epistemological in the sense that the deslogo interests are read from the desires. The claim that what counts as a valuable activity is comprised by a person’s interests is different from the assertion that it is constituted by her goals. Because the deslogo account is not a goal-based value theory, it doesn’t require identifying the value of activities with their being goals. Thus, it escapes confusing both non-instrumental value with ends, and hence statement 2) above in italics. The fact that epistemologically, we must work out what deslogo interests we have from the morass of our daily desirings and the fact that deslogo interests are akin to structural patterns among our desires doesn’t mean that their value is derivative on that of desire satisfaction. The critic might press the following question: ‘Are activities valuable because they are part of a person’s life, or are they valuable because they answer our

66 Activities and desires deslogo interests? Which is it? If it is the first, then the conclusions of Chapter 3 are wrong. If it is the second, then the conclusion of Chapter 2 is flawed.’ In reply to this new version of the objection, we deny the dilemma and assert: ‘Activities are valuable both because they are part of a person’s life and because they answer our deslogo interests, but the second is because of the first.’ We saw in Chapter 2, persons have value and, because of this, their lives and parts of their lives have value. Thus, it matters how we live, and because of this, it matters whether our lives are going well or not. But for a being’s life to be going well, that life must be consonant with the fundamental interests of the being in question. ‘It’s a dog’s life’ is fine for dogs. Human beings need a human life. This is why our deslogo interests matter: such interests define the kinds of activities and processes that are desirable for the agent. In contrast, the first principle, a), defines that the primary bearers of value are human beings. It defines why a person’s life has value; whereas the deslogo interests define how a person’s life can have value. The first defines the nature of the value, and the second, the manner in which it is valuable. The second are specific manifestations of the first.31,32 The primacy of the first is confirmed by the fact that things have value in relation to persons (and other conscious beings) only because persons have value. Deslogo interests or desire patterns count only because conscious beings have value. This point is established by the idea that, per impossible, the life of a conscious being without desires would still have value. Third, the primary principle implies that one should value the processes of one’s life because this is a way of caring for oneself. This is quite different from the idea that one should value them because they provide us with what we want, which is the root of the goal-based theory of value. ‘Care for yourself’ is a very different maxim from ‘Get what you want.’ Care for oneself manifests in our attitude towards the elements of our well-being: it means that one should try to live in a way that accords with one’s deslogo interests. It doesn’t mean that one follows one’s desires. In conclusion, the deslogo interest account does not violate the first principle in the way that goal-based theories do.

Conclusion What makes activities non-instrumentally valuable? The explanation of the value must cite the valuable features or the desirability characteristics of the activities. And, it must provide empirical criteria for this value by specifying aspects of the person’s motivational psychology in virtue of which of the activities in question have value. This may vary from person to person and society to society. These points transform the relevance of desires for an understanding of well-being. In brief, the desire model claims that increased well-being consists in greater desire satisfaction.33 In contrast, we advocate that the activities in question are constitutive of well-being when they are non-instrumentally desirable insofar as they track an abstract feature of desires, even if they are not desired. This abstract feature specifies the irreducibly basic motivational nature of the desires in question.

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APPENDIX I Earlier we set up a dilemma, arguing that both subjective desire theories and objective list theories are erroneous. To escape this dilemma requires rejecting the claim that desires can only be individuated by their object (what is wanted). As we saw, the objective list theory is flawed because it doesn’t allow for the contingent nature of what is non-instrumentally good. However, as an objection, one might claim that we jumped over a set of alternatives; there are objective theories that apparently provide the required flexibility or contingency. So-called perfectionist theories tie intrinsic goodness to some notion of human nature. One variant of this is called ‘eudaimonism’, which explicates non-instrumental goodness in terms of human functioning (Besser-Jones 2016). Such theories have three core elements: what the good life for an H is determined by what it means to be an H; what it means to be an H involves certain capacities; and a life that accords with those capacities will involve certain activities, which exercise and develop those capacities (Dorsey 2010; Fletcher 2016a; Hurka 1993: 240; Kraut 2007: 137; Hurka 2011).34 In short, a perfectionist theory will include the axiological claim that a good life for a human or human is determined by human nature, and some specification of what this nature is. The concept of human nature in general is problematic, especially in the context of nature-versus-nurture debates. Fundamentally, this is because there is no possibility of specifying which traits are inherited except in relation to sets of environmental conditions. After all, DNA regulates cell differentiation and the complex processes whereby this produces traits depends on a hugely complicated set of environmental factors.35 It is not an Aristotelian unfolding of a given. Sceptically, one might assert that the meaning of being human is simply biological, namely that one has human parents. But, rather than interrogating the notion of human nature, we shall challenge the perfectionist versions of objectivism by arguing that the fact that something is definitional of human nature doesn’t make it a criterion for well-being. The mere fact that a characteristic is shared by all beings belonging to a species is neither necessary nor sufficient for it being good-making. The fact that it is species shared isn’t directly relevant. Furthermore, suppose that the characteristic were a well-being-relevant trait. Even supposing this, the fact that it is shared by most members of a species or group wouldn’t mean that it defines or constitutes wellbeing for any specific member of the group. Therefore, it is not human nature per se that defines the relevant kinds of valuable activities. In contrast, in Chapter 7, we shall argue that, although sharing isn’t, relative inescapability is definitionally or constitutionally relevant. A counter-reply to this point might be that the notion of a species is implicitly normative. Following Michael Thompson, Philippa Foot argues that the notion of a species is such that, for instance, it is part of the concept of a horse that horses ought to have four legs. Assertions to this effect are called ‘natural history propositions’ (Foot 2001; Thompson 2008). Given this, if an individual horse has only three legs then it is in some way impaired or defective. Foot claims that such

68 Activities and desires natural history propositions can underwrite the notion of human flourishing and goodness. In this, Foot doesn’t have a leg to stand on. If a person were genuinely asexual, then we couldn’t argue that his well-being should include sexual relations just because that is part of being human. Likewise, if a person were a recluse, we couldn’t argue that he needs social relations simply on the grounds that this is part of a shared human nature. Of course, there is a strong expectation that a human wouldn’t be asexual or asocial, but this shows that the relevant ‘ought’ is epistemological rather than evaluative. There is a good reason to expect members of the species F to have typical F characteristics. The relevant reason is epistemological, and it is supposedly based on inductive reasoning following causal regularities or, if Thompson is right, a special kind of explanation based on the norms inherent in the concept of a specific species. However, such claims do not imply that the individual is defective if they don’t meet our expectations. In this sense, ‘a horse ought to have four legs’ doesn’t mean that it is ipso facto defective if it doesn’t have them. Natural history propositions indicate that the concept of a horse implies that we have good epistemological reasons to expect a horse to have four legs. Furthermore, natural selection indicates why three-legged horses would be a genetic rarity. But neither of these two points show that the exercising of four legs is well-being relevant activity for any horse (including those that happen to be threelegged). The general conclusion is that the mere fact that F is a feature of human nature or of what it means to be human doesn’t imply that the exercise of capacities pertaining to F will be well-being constitutive for any human. To return to the broader point, there are plenty of species-wide human traits that are inimical and irrelevant to human well-being. For instance, we have the tendency to complain, get irritable or to deprecate oneself. We have the tendency to instrumentalise. Not only do such predispositions cause ill-being, but they also partly constitute it. In short, these are aspects of human nature that are constitutive of ill-being. Additionally, there are plenty of aspects of human nature that are simply irrelevant to well-being. There is an additional point at stake here that might seem pedantic, but which really isn’t. The manner in which Foot articulates the argument tends to confuse cause and constituent: she discusses natural necessity in the context of what is needed for human development. However, for this to work, ‘human development’ would need a non-instrumental specification. For example, not being fourlegged might cause a horse ill-being (in certain environmental conditions), but this doesn’t mean that this characteristic is constitutive of its ill-being. To define well-being, we need to seek the second and not the first; we need constituents and not causes, even when the two overlap. Merely citing causes and what is instrumentally valuable postpones the issue. Appeals to human needs and to human functioning suffer from the same defect. If, on the one hand, needs are simply what are inescapably necessary to avoid harm or for flourishing, then employing needs to clarify well-being is circular (because needs have only instrumental value).36 If, on the other hand, we define some needs as constituting human functioning then we require some evaluative

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non-instrumental criteria for defining what should count as well-being-relevant good human functioning. The appeal to human functioning needs criteria for good functioning that are at least in part non-instrumental. This plonks us back in the need for some notion like deslogo interests. APPENDIX II With reluctance, we provide here a provisional indication of such a classification of the relevant kinds of desires. We have several misgivings, but primarily, we haven’t been through a systematic process of investigation, arguing the case from specific observations in different cultures and contexts. This means that this very broad categorisation is no more than an educated guess, which might well be both erroneous and incomplete. The idea of deslogo interests is important because it defines the need for a methodology: we need ways to understand non-instrumental desires that reveal their fundamental motivational sources. Second, in any case, the following list merely provides headings and doesn’t capture what is desirable about each of the proposed kinds of desires. It doesn’t provide a description of what is desirable or what is relevantly similar about the desires that fall under these headings. Diagram 1: 1 Physical – Using the body (e.g. walking, sports, gardening, resting) 2 Material – Owning (e.g. having things, buying, tidying up, organising the house, collecting arts or objects, taking care of things, repairing, etc.) 3 Sensory/perceptual – Perceiving, seeing, imagining, etc. including aesthetic (e.g. nature, architecture, arts, music, enjoying the weather) 4 Intellectual – Understanding, thinking, reading, attending lectures, asking questions 5 Agency – Being proactive, engaging in change, actively making choices, planning 6 Accomplishing – Pursuing causes, working, getting something done, achieving, making a difference 7 Playing – Humour, laughing, engaging in fun activities 8 Sexual – Flirting, kissing, caressing, making love 9 Emotional – Feeling, experiencing emotions (e.g. happiness, sadness, gratitude) 10 Relationships: Sharing and communicating; being with friendships and with family 11 Loving – Caring, looking after; helping 12 Belonging – Feeling and acting as part of a community or group 13 Being oneself – authenticity as opposed to pretending and forcing 14 Spiritual – Spiritual practices of connecting to something holy We maintain that when a person’s life is missing any of the activity types on a list such as this one, it cannot be said to constitute a life of well-being. For instance, a life without aesthetic concerns would be incomplete (given that the person has

70 Activities and desires the relevant interests). Likewise, the same applies to the other deslogo interests. Insofar as it is incomplete, or has something of primary value missing from it, then such a life has less well-being (all other things being equal) than a life that includes that kind of activity.

Notes 1 We will abbreviate ‘experiences, activities and processes’ as ‘activities’. 2 In the context of this current discussion, the term ‘objective’ is a variant of the three discussed in Chapter 1. According to Sumner, it means roughly the following: a theory is subjective if it is a necessary condition of a thing being valuable (in the well-being relevant way) that the person has a favourable attitude to it. An objective theory denies this (Sumner 1996). This is a variant of the second sense of ‘subjective’, as discussed in Chapter 1. There is also a defeasible presupposition that it will be non-cognitive or subjective in the first sense. 3 Dorsey (2011) contrasts life-structuring goals or global projects with desire satisfaction and argues that both objective and subjective theories might be compatible with the importance of life projects. However, subjectivist versions would be subject to the critique outlined here. 4 The assumptions are that the preferences of any person are complete and transitive. They are complete if, for all X and Y, the person either prefers X to Y, or Y to X, or is indifferent between them. In other words, one cannot have indeterminate preferences. Preferences are transitive if, when A prefers X to Y and Y to Z, then she will prefer X to Z, for all alternatives X, Y and Z (Hausman 1992). 5 We wouldn’t assume that the preferences are identified as revealed by choice. 6 The theory holds that Y has a greater value than X for a person A is constituted by person A’s having an informed preference for Y rather than X. 7 Edward Bernays understood this. 8 Different versions of this type of theory include: Annas (1993), Darwall (2002), Kraut (2007), Badhwar (2014), Fletcher (2013, 2016a). 9 Sen (1993) defines capabilities in terms of functionings. These seem to include achievements that have instrumental value such as gathering food, but it isn’t clear how the non-instrumental valuable nature of such functionings is to be defined. 10 In claiming this, we are affirming that even an objective list theory would need to have an explanatory aspect, and shouldn’t be only enumerative (cf. Rice 2013; Fletcher 2013). 11 In the long term, even if an action or experience does meet a person’s interests, this may not mean it is of given primary value. This is because it might be the case that the subject ought to have different interests. To meet this doubt, ultimately we must appeal to the person’s inescapable interests, as we shall see in Chapter 7. 12 Note that this point concerns primary prudential non-instrumental values, and that it is quite compatible with this point to maintain some other statements about what is desirable and undesirable are analytic. For instance, harm is necessarily bad, and this is because it consists of the deprivation of primary goods, even though these primary goods are contingently valuable. Statements such as ‘harm is bad’ are analytic, but they do not give us any substantive information about what has primary prudential value for individuals or groups of individuals. Therefore, we should distinguish between primary values on the one hand, e.g. privacy, friendship, beauty, fun, and humour, and secondary values, on the other, e.g. health, well-being, happiness. The claim that we are making now concerns primary value statements. 13 This section is based on Thomson (1987: Chapters 4 and 5). 14 Please see Appendix II to this chapter. 15 The object of desire is not ontologically restricted to objects; it can include states of affairs and actions. It indicates what the desire is directed towards.

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16 The object of desire will be specified with an extensional or referentially transparent relational sentence of the form aRb such as ‘John wants the cake’. The content of the desire is the way in which John wants that cake and that is specified with a nonextensional or referentially opaque sentence such as ‘John wants that p’. 17 For more or the content/object distinction, see Chapter 4. 18 As directed towards activities, experiences and processes. Things wanted noninstrumentally are desired for their own sake. Usually, our desires have both instrumental and non-instrumental aspects. 19 Contrary to Hamilton (2003). 20 It is probably better to not employ the term ‘need’ instead of deslogo interest in this context. Whereas needs are inescapable necessary conditions for avoiding serious harm, the concept of deslogo interests specifies an ingredient of harm. To use the term ‘need’ as equivalent to ‘deslogo interest’ is to confuse cause and constituent, which was a major complaint of Chapter 1. 21 This is not the claim that what a person thinks is desirable for him might be different from what another thinks is desirable for her; it is the assertion that what actually is desirable for one person might not be for another. 22 To be clear, the claim is that various disparate general desires may have the same deslogo interests at root and that in each case these desires generate a host of more specific desires. 23 We shouldn’t assume that English, for example, has developed all the vocabulary necessary to characterise our interests. In this regard consider that Aristotle has several unnamed virtues (see Thomson 2016). 24 We are here using the term ‘need’ as a stand-in for deslogo interest. 25 Of course, in the relevant way; there are many kinds of value, and we are only discussing that relevant to well-being. 26 Unless there are some a priori differences and unless there is some indeterminacy at this point (see Ruth Chan 1997). 27 Of course, the term ‘sex’ in a Freudian context does not merely refer to the reproductive act. 28 See Chapter 7. 29 The object of my desire is an activity that is directed towards an apple. In Chapter 5, we shall explore the claim that all activities are relational. 30 This statement 2 is given on pages 28 and 33. 31 In this sense one might claim that desires are expressions of need (when the term ‘need’ is used to refer to deslogo interests). 32 We could affirm that the first is about what is valuable and the second about what is desirable. 33 Crudely speaking. More accurate and refined statements of the theory can be found earlier in the chapter. 34 Such capacities may be specified as virtues. See for example: Bloomfield (2014) and Le Bar (2013). This may be misleading because ‘virtue’ carries a moral or ethical connotation. Haybron imagines persons, such as Ghenghis Khan and slave owners who lack moral virtues but who might experience well-being (Haybron 2008: 5). Of course, if we define ‘virtue’ in terms of human development or flourishing then we risk a vicious circularity: virtues are necessary for well-being by fiat (Hursthouse 1997). 35 Garrett Thomson (1987: Chapter 2) argues that the content of inherited traits cannot be specified expect in relation to ranges of environmental conditions. 36 See, for example, Hamilton (2003), who argues that there is a sense of ‘need’ that isn’t instrumental. However, he appeals to a notion of human functioning to ground this notion.

4

Awareness

To comprehend the conscious life of humans, we need understandings from both the humanities and the sciences: an account of consciousness that doesn’t compromise its subjectivity, nor violate the public objectivity of the world.1 This dual requirement is important for well-being. For, on the one hand, an account of wellbeing that fails the first inevitably will be impoverished regarding the richness of our experiential lives. It will be unable to show the import for well-being of the lived meanings of our experiences, activities and processes. It will be confined to purely external descriptions of our lives such as ‘John went fishing’ and the feeble ‘It gave him pleasure.’ While, on the other hand, an account that fails the second will be unscientific. It will be incompatible with the idea that mental states, consciousness and persons are part of the natural world, and will tend to treat them as insulated private mental objects. We can have the best of both sides because to satisfy the second condition, we needn’t dilute the first. The rigors of science may seem to deny the richness of subjective experience.2 However, properly understood, it doesn’t. To satisfy the two abstract requirements, we need to distinguish between the object and content of mental states. This distinction is deeply relevant for our project because it will abolish the traditional conception of pleasure as a mental entity and thereby transform our understanding of happiness. First, mental states are typically directed to something in the world. They can have an object.3 For example, I can look at the cat, which exists independently of my seeing it. Second, mental states have a content, which is how I see the cat. For example, I see the cat as hungry, sitting on the table. My seeing has a content, specified by at least a whole sentence, such as ‘I see that my hungry cat is perched on the table.’ The relevant sentence specifies the way in which I see the animal or the description under which I perceive it.4 It is in virtue of this content that the seeing is of the cat, or that the mental act is directed towards its object. On the one hand, mental content is subjective and aspectual: one always experiences under some set of descriptions to the exclusion of other ones. For example, I see a person first as an enigma, then as someone to help me, and finally as someone to listen to. During this process, I did not perceive the person as a child or as a threat. In this manner, awareness is aspectual; whenever one experiences something in one way, it is necessarily to the exclusion of other ways (Crane 2001).

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On the other hand, the object of experience itself is not aspectual; it is objective, meaning it has the properties it has independently of how anyone perceives or conceives them. We need the idea that awareness is directed towards something in the world which exists independently of being perceived. This idea of an object of perception or thought is a minimal requirement for us to be able to discuss mental states as part of the public world, for without it, we could not conceive of mental states as being directed to the objective world described by science and could not regard them as part of that world. The distinction between content and object can become obfuscated in two ways. First, in sentences such as ‘what the mental state is about’, the term ‘about’ is ambiguous because it can refer either to the object or to the content. For example, when someone is asked, ‘What are you thinking about?’ and she replies, ‘my cat’, the answer specifies the object of her thought: an entity that exists independently of her thinking about it. It doesn’t indicate the content of her thought, because it doesn’t specify how she is thinking about the cat or what she is thinking about it. In contrast, when someone is asked, ‘What you are thinking about?’ and she replies that Father Christmas has a dirty beard from his work in the chimneys, the answer articulates the content of her thinking. In fact, in this case, her thought doesn’t even have an object because there is no Father Christmas. In a similar vein, the object of perception is the thing perceived, however it is described; the content of the perceiving is the way a person perceives it.5 Now for the second way the distinction can be obfuscated. In some empiricist theories, the content or meaning of a mental state is treated as an object, for example, as an essentially private mental entity (Wittgenstein 2009). The error is to handle the content as if it were a mental object. This is an error because the content is simply the way in which a real object is picked out or presented to consciousness, or the way in which one perceives or thinks about it. As such, the content should be considered adverbially: it is the way in which one perceives. Because of this, it is not another object. To treat it as such would constitute a vain attempt to objectify the subjective (or the intentional), as will be described later. The distinction shows that to respect the subjective aspect of awareness, one does not need to posit a separate ontological realm of the mind. We don’t have to objectify or reify the subjective. The contemporary philosopher John Searle puts the point like this: One should say that a proposition is not the object of a statement or belief, but rather its content . . . that proposition is not what the statement or belief is about or directed at. (Searle 1983:18) Why is this distinction important for well-being? We need a conception of awareness that can accommodate the richness of the subjectivity of experience without violating the claim that awareness is a phenomenon of the natural world. On the one hand, we need a robust notion of content insofar as consciousness defines the quality of the lived-in-world of the person. People’s inner lives are

74 Awareness vital constituents of their well-being.6 On the other hand, traditional hedonic theories treat pleasure as a self-contained inner state rather than as an intentional one that points outwards towards bits of the world. Accordingly, they fatally ignore the relation between pleasure and the desirable features of the activities that we engage in, as we shall now explain.

Moving away from pleasure The pleasure theory of well-being claims that a better life is constituted solely by more pleasure and less pain. Such a theory is usually committed to the thesis that pleasure and the absence of pain are the only things of intrinsic value (Bradley 2009: 8).7 This theory has some well-known problems, which can be divided into two types: first/, those concerning the standard conception of pleasure, and second, those directed to the claim that pleasure is the only non-instrumental good. We shall concentrate on the first. The standard conception treats pleasure as a simple feeling that is caused by actions and activities.8 We will deconstruct this conception in four steps with the aim of showing that the term ‘pleasure’ is misleading. In fact, we should substitute the noun ‘pleasure’ with the verb ‘to enjoy’, which in turn should be understood in terms of the cognitive verb ‘to appreciate’. As we shall see, these four steps constitute a recognition of the intentionality of pleasure. Later we will add a fifth step regarding happiness. Step 1: It is a mistake to think of feelings, thoughts and other mental states as objects that exist in a mind, semantically independent from a person’s possible actions. For this reason, it is an error to regard pleasure as an essentially private mental object. It isn’t essentially private because it can be referred to in a public language and known through its relations to a person’s behaviour (Wittgenstein 2009; Thomson 2002b: Chapter 7). It isn’t an object at all because treating it as such tries to objectify the intentional nature of our mental lives.9 Mental states are intentional in the sense that they have a content that is aspectual or descriptionrelative. For example, under one description, I want the chocolate cake in the window (‘delicious’); under another, I don’t (‘old and stale’). It is an error to treat such psychological states as mental objects because doing so implicitly denies their intentionality. An object is non-aspectual or non-intentional; it is what it is independently of how one describes it. In contrast, a mental state is intentional or aspectual. Thus, to reify a psychological state is to try to objectify the subjectivity of our mental lives. Treating a mental state as an object involves denying its subjectivity or intentional nature.10 Here is how we can understand this point: 1 2 3

Psychological states are essentially aspectual By definition, an object is non-aspectual Therefore, psychological states are not objects.

In conclusion, as a first step, we can no longer conceive ‘pleasure’ as a noun nor pleasure as a mental object.

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Step 2: Is there a less misleading way to think about so-called ‘pleasures’? Yes! Pleasurable experiences come in kinds: that of eating spicy food is quite different from that of playing chess; that sharing with a friend is distinct from that of swimming on a hot day (Seligman 2004: 8–9). This suggests that the pleasure cannot be separated from the nature of the activity in question. It isn’t a separate inner mental object caused by outer activities because it depends intimately on the activity itself. Thus, to avoid regarding pleasure as a private mental object distinct from the external activities, we might conceive it as the way one performs those activities. To play chess with pleasure is not to have a private mental object sitting in one’s awareness as one plays, but rather to engage in the activity pleasurably (Gosling 1969; Crisp 2006: 622; Feldman 2004; Sumner 1996). It is a way of performing the relevant actions. In conclusion, instead of regarding ‘pleasure’ as a noun that refers to a private mental object, we should consider it as a verb, as in ‘she enjoys running’, or as an adverb, as in the grammatically awkward sentence ‘she runs pleasurably’11 Step 3: The conception of pleasure as a mental object instrumentalises the relation between the activity and the feeling. Because it regards the pleasure as a mental entity distinct from the activity, and because it regards only the pleasure as having intrinsic value, the theory treats activities as mere instrumentally valuable ways to attain pleasurable states of consciousness; activities are only valuable insofar as they cause pleasure. This instrumentalisation is possible because pleasure is treated as an entity distinct from the actions that supposedly cause it. It implies that we should discard those activities when they are no longer needed as an instrumental means to pleasure. So, for example, if I could have the pleasure of seeing my mother by simply taking a mother-feeling pill then the theory implies that I should take the pill rather than going to visit her. It is more efficient. The theory turns the activity into a mere cost that ought to be decreased rationally. Similar reasoning applies to being with one’s friends, watching the sunset, and so on, for the whole of life! In the terms of Chapter 2, we can finger-click away one’s life for the sake of efficiently getting pleasure. Nozick’s experience machine example makes a similar point (Nozick 1974). The idea is that if one were permanently plugged into a pleasant virtual reality (like a stable vivid dream) then one would lose something of intrinsic value, namely the performing of life’s activities.12 Although Nozick doesn’t say this, in fact, the example shows us that the standard hedonistic theory portrays life’s activities as merely instrumentally valuable means to pleasure.13 It turns a person’s life into a pleasure-machine, and thus it fails because it instrumentalises living. The theory turns living into an inconvenience or a cost, which would be subject to the finger-click test. In opposition to this instrumentalisation, we have argued that we ought not conceive pleasure as a mental object that can be hived off, but rather as the way one engages in activities. Such considerations weaken the intuitions that support hedonism. Step 4: We have provided three reasons for moving from the statement ‘This activity causes me pleasure’ to ‘I enjoy this activity.’ The next step is the shift

76 Awareness from ‘I enjoy this activity’ to ‘I appreciate, in an experiential way, the desirable features of the activity.’ This shift allows both for the cognitive and for the intentional nature of enjoying.14 When it feels wonderful and delightful to have a shower, this is because of certain aspects of the activity such as its refreshing or invigorating features. The so-called pleasure is being aware of those features of the experience in relevantly appreciative ways.15 The point of this shift is that it underscores the interactive and cognitive nature of enjoying. This is important because we are trying to dispel a mistaken view of pleasure, which tries to convert the subjective into a mental object and turn activities into instrumentally valuable causes of that object. As an antidote, we need the idea that the enjoying of pleasurable activities has a cognitive aspect that links the person’s consciousness to the desirable features and parts of her life. Enjoying isn’t a question of having a positive attitude towards a set of sensations; it is a question of connecting cognitively to the evaluative realities of one’s life (Feldman 2010). These four steps also apply to pain, suffering and distress. They show why it is a mistake to think of pain as an essentially private mental entity, a sensation. As we saw in step 1 with so-called pleasure, it isn’t essentially private because it can be described in public language, and it isn’t a mental object because treating it as such betrays its intentionality. Because there isn’t a single unified sensation pain, because painful experiences come in kinds, we need to think of them adverbially, as the way we experience the relevant undesirable activities and processes, such as an injured toe, the breakdown of a relationship or the feeling of insecurity. Additionally, it is erroneous to think that experiences, activities and processes are only undesirable insofar as they cause pain or suffering, namely a mental state. We can conceive of suffering as the emotional cognitive experience of an undesirable happening or activity.

Shifting towards appreciation Let us explain the fourth step in more detail. As we saw in the previous chapter, we capture the value of activities with predicates that are called ‘desirability characterisations’ (Platts 1979, 1980). For example, we describe an activity as fun, delightful, enchanting, peaceful, blissful, exciting, stimulating or engrossing.16 These desirability characterisations can also apply to a person’s perceptions of the activity when she experiences the activity under those same descriptions. Such perception is evaluative, and we shall call this evaluative perception ‘appreciation’.17 We shall advance the thesis that a person must appreciate appropriately the intrinsically valuable experiences, activities and life-processes that she undergoes or undertakes in order for those to count constitutively towards well-being. For a person’s life to be valuable in the living of it, she must perform activities with the appropriate kind of appreciation of their value. For example, one enjoys lying on the beach by finding it relaxing; one appreciates a serious debate by becoming engaged with the issue. For the value of the activity to mean anything to the

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person, she must appreciate it. Without appreciation, the activity will not contribute constitutively to her well-being. It will not count, at all. For example, Justin loves surfing and he finds it an enjoyable activity because in his own words: ‘It is thrilling, exciting, challenging, and energising.’ But, for these desirable features of surfing to mean anything to Justin, he must experience the activity under those desirability characterisations. In this way, Justin identifies surfing as an instance of a valuable activity kind, which as such counts as part his well-being. However, Justin’s girlfriend, Clara, who is terrified of waves, is not able to appreciate the valuable aspects of surfing; because of this, the activity of surfing will not contribute constitutively to Clara’s well-being.18 Various authors have advanced a similar kind of theory concerning the meaningfulness of life. Susan Wolf pioneered this approach (Wolff 1997). The key idea is to combine objective claims about what is non-instrumentally valuable in a life for a person with the direct subjective perception of those activities under the relevant evaluative descriptions (Kagan 2009; Kauppinnen 2014). In simple terms, we have replaced the concept of enjoyment with the richer notion of appropriate appreciation, which is a form of evaluative perception. What was formerly called ‘pleasure’ is now a special type of this appreciation or engagement (Raz 1995: 6–9).19 The argument for the above thesis has two premises. One is that well-being includes the ways in which the aspects of a life enter into consciousness. For a conscious being, living must always include the conscious facets of living, and so living well will include being conscious (of one’s experiences, activities and processes) in good ways. Thus, aspects of one’s life that one is not aware of will not be (partially) constitutive of one’s living well. For instance, if something happens to a person that doesn’t impinge on her awareness in any way, then this event isn’t a constituent part of her well-being. This first premise isn’t threatened by the claim that events that one is unaware of might have a causal influence on one’s well-being. It is clearly true that one needn’t be aware of what is harmful or beneficial to one. For instance, suppose a distant uncle in New Zealand prevents Bert from receiving an inheritance, and Bert has no idea of these events. Nevertheless, the actions of the uncle do cause Bert harm because there are true (counterfactual) claims about how much better his life would have been had he received the inheritance. Likewise, our bodies recuperate while we are unconscious. Clearly one can be harmed or benefited by things one is not conscious of. But these are claims about what causes rather than what constitutes well-being. The other premise claims that the relevant kind of consciousness is appropriate appreciation. Appreciation fits the bill uniquely: the relevant kind of consciousness counts as experiential appreciation. As we have seen, the pertinent type of consciousness must be directed at something and must involve taking in or allowing something to enter into consciousness. In this regard, the germane state is experiential and cognitive. Then, to be relevant to the good life or well-being, this cognition needs to be evaluative or value-laden. A value-neutral perception would not count towards well-being; it wouldn’t count as allowing the relevant kinds of

78 Awareness value to enter one’s consciousness. Furthermore, to be relevant to well-being, the consciousness must be directed towards something of value in ways that are pertinent to the living of the person’s life. In short, the relevant kind of consciousness must constitute an experiential evaluative cognition of the valuable features in the living of a life. In conclusion, in order for states of consciousness to be relevant to the well-being of a person, they must be appreciative awareness. In summary, the overall argument is as follows: 1 2 3

The good life of a conscious being must include necessarily the ways in which the valuable aspects of his or her life enter this consciousness. The valuable aspects of a conscious being’s life can enter into (part of) his or her consciousness only insofar as he or she has appropriate appreciation of those aspects. Therefore, the good life of a conscious being must include appropriate appreciation of the valuable aspects of his or her life.

Without appropriate appreciation, the valuable features of a life would not count towards well-being. For instance, if, per impossible, one were to engage in an activity without any conscious awareness of its value then the activity would not count constitutively towards one’s well-being. One might as well have been asleep. This point means, metaphorically, that appreciation is the gate by which value enters a person’s consciousness and thereby becomes in part constitutive of his or her well-being. Appropriate appreciation, as it were, allows value to enter consciousness and hence into a conscious being’s life. In conclusion, even if one can have a life that is full of wonderful experiences and activities, this will mean nothing with regard to one’s well-being if one does not appreciate them. They don’t count constitutively towards one’s well-being unless they are appreciated (and enter consciousness under the relevant descriptions). The need for appreciation shows that a person can suffer ill-being in at least two general ways. We can be harmed when we are deprived of engaging in general types of non-instrumentally valuable activities and experiences. Injury, illness and poverty harm us in this way; they prevent us from doing general types of desirable activities, such as seeing our friends or caring for our children. However, we can also be harmed by not appreciating the value of those desirable activities, even when we engage in them. For example, depression can prevent a person from appreciating the value of what she is doing. Under such conditions, the activity will have no value for the individual. Poverty and illness can harm in this second way, too, by preventing one from enjoying or appreciating what one has. This point shows that well-being requires both being able to participate in activities of worth or value, and being able to appreciate their worth.20 This shows that one’s well-being will depend directly on one’s capacity to appreciate well, which in turn depends on the quality of one’s awareness, a concept consisting of two parts (a third to be added later). First, the quality of awareness is a function of one’s general capacity to be conscious. If a person is living on auto-pilot mode and is, metaphorically speaking, sleep-walking, then

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her general capacity to appreciate will be diminished. More positively, the more conscious one is, the more one is intensely aware of one’s life and the different elements that constitute it, the greater is one’s capacity to appreciate life’s worthwhileness.21 A person whose awareness is vivid tends to live in a different phenomenological world from someone whose awareness is dull. Second, insofar as a person is incapable of focusing and has a fragmented awareness, her wellbeing will be systematically diminished. Being distracted from appreciating what one is doing constitutes a form of ill-being.22 Thus, emotions, moods and other psychological states that prevent us from being fully appreciative of what one is doing or engaged in one’s activities will ipso facto count towards ill-being (Lear 2000: 116). Consider, for instance, Adrian, whose life stories we shared in Chapter 2: when he was working, he was numbed by routine, distracted by desires, clouded by anxieties and dulled by the sadness of finding himself stuck on a treadmill. Adrian’s ill-being was so pronounced during his working life that, even in retirement, he continued to experience the same psychological states that once haunted him. In sum, the state of our consciousness can prevent us from appreciating life’s activities. Let us briefly examine four examples of consciousness-ill-being. (1) A person will not be able to appreciate the intrinsic value of the activities that she engages in if she instrumentalises the activities. One instrumentalises an activity insofar as one treats it as being merely instrumentally valuable. An example is Adrian’s relationship with his work. As illustrated in Chapter 2, Adrian instrumentalised his work by treating it as a mere cost to achieving an end or goal. Insofar as he did so, he was not able to appreciate its non-instrumental value. As indicated in Chapter 2, infatuation with things of only instrumental value is like a disease. This is a potential problem with personal dreams, projects and life-plans: they can turn the living of life (or aspects of it) into an instrument for their realisation. For this reason, such concepts should not be fundamental in an account of well-being. (2) Wanting usually has an important experiential or phenomenological aspect. The economist idea of an ideal, transitive and complete set of preference functions, which we rejected in Chapter 3, is abstracted from our daily experience of desire. The preference listings of the theory are disconnected from the desires of everyday life (Schroeder 2004: 15). This is because such preference functions omit the intentional or aspectual nature of desiring. They rank the objects of desire but without specifying the content of desires. In this way, they try to replace a qualitative understanding of desire (in terms of content) with a purely quantitative one (in terms of an ordinal function among objects).23 Furthermore, such preference functions drain out or leave out the emotional aspect of wanting. More generally, they abstract from the phenomenological aspects of desiring. They ignore the experiential aspects of what it is like to desire. The phenomenological or experiential aspects of desiring are not directly relevant to the task of defining value as addressed in Chapter 3. However, despite this, these experiential aspects are very important for appreciation, the issue at hand. Because of their phenomenological nature, strong desires typically prevent

80 Awareness appreciation because they consume or absorb attention. The phenomenon of wanting typically involves having one’s attention drawn in specific ways, largely to the exclusion of other ways of regarding the thing in question. Desires are hypnotic. They fill one’s attention with an awareness of lack. Insofar as one’s attention is occupied in this way, it cannot consist in an appreciative awareness of what one is doing. This focusing and consuming of attention is key to why the tendency for desires to expand is detrimental for well-being, for a person’s capacity to appreciate. For example, Edmond, who had just finished his PhD and was working in a university library, very much wanted a job as a lecturer. This want had psychological and phenomenological effects. It meant that Edmond was prone to thinking about the lectureship often, and was reminded of it by apparently disconnected events, all to the exclusion of other things. Moreover, these modes of attention were defined by the lack of what Edmond wanted, and this affected his feelings. Whenever he thought that he might be offered a job, he felt happy, but he felt grey and flat, when he thought that he would not. Desire as characterised by lack occupies emotional attention with a negative. When one’s conscious desires expand, a new want will supplant a satisfied one, which means that removing lack (satisfying the desire) doesn’t solve the problem. The attention-space taken up by the original desire, which was filled by awareness of a lack, will now be replaced by another desire-filled attention-space, also directed towards a lack. In short, the expansion of desire tends to perpetuate felt dissatisfaction. In Edmond’s case, his awareness absorbed by the desire to be hired as a lecturer was soon captivated by new longings, such as for the publication of his thesis and for a mortgage to buy the apartment he was renting. When continually filled with such desiring, one’s consciousness is occupied by a feeling of lack and by the negative emotions this brings. This implies that one’s attention is not directed to other positive features of what is around one, such as the appreciation of one’s existing conditions. For instance, while Edmund was seeking work as a lecturer, he tended to underappreciate his challenging and varied job at the library, as well as the people around him. For instance, his family was experiencing joy because of his brother’s new-born child, and his girlfriend was concerned that she and Edmund spend more time together, now with his doctorate completed. Because of his new preoccupations, Edmund was not tuned into these events. Perhaps for this reason, Plato and Buddha claim that desires tend to expand continually and that want-satisfaction is not the path to an improved life because for every satisfied desire, a new unsatisfied want will be born. Being constantly absorbed by new desires has a cost in terms of attention, and attention is the blood of life (Thomson 2002a). Insofar as a person’s attention is nagged by desires, she will ipso facto suffer a diminished appreciation, and hence well-being. This may occur more often than we think because we tend to detect the phenomenon only when it is strikingly disappointing. When it is not so, we tend not to notice because new wants quickly distract us from the fact that were not satisfied earlier. We move on to another project. In short, one recipe for failing to appreciate what one has is to quickly

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and repeatedly desire something else, once one has obtained what one wanted. In order to avoid appreciating anything: please allow a new desire to be born in one’s attention as soon as any previous desire is satisfied. People who suffer from certain kinds of ambition would be vulnerable to this aspect of desire. Avid shoppers may also be susceptible to this kind of phenomenon. As one’s levels of desire increase, appreciation drops. In sum, when attention is filled with desire, one’s consciousness is occupied by a feeling of lack and by the emotions this brings. This means that one’s attention is not directed to other features of what is around one. Being constantly captivated by new desires has a cost in terms of attention because attention space that could be engaged with the appreciation of what one is currently doing is instead filled by the awareness of lack. During such times, the intrinsically valuable nature of the activity one is engaged in would not count towards one’s well-being insofar as one is not focusing one’s attention to it. It does not enter one’s awareness, and as such, it counts for nothing. (3) A person may be unable to appreciate the desirable features of activities and processes that she engages in because of habit. Edmond cannot appreciate his work in the library because he takes it for granted. This has an important consequence: one’s general capacity to appreciate the value of one’s activities will depend on the extent to which one lives consciously rather than in a routine way. What we take for granted, we underappreciate. (4) Negative emotions, such as anxiety and sadness, are negative not only because they make a person feel bad, but also because they prevent her from appreciating the valuable aspects and components of her life, including other people. For example, worries about not landing the lecturer’s job destroyed Edmond’s joy of being with his girlfriend, and his disappointment embittered his work at the library. Other negative emotions have similar effects. Depression debilitates or disenables. Sadness incapacitates our capacity to appreciate. Jealousy taints everything in a relationship. Complaint makes everything look faulty. Anxiety constricts the breadth of the person’s experienced world. Edmond’s story illustrates that a person who is wedded to the achievement of goals or to the judgment of others (see Chapter 6) will tend to suffer anxiety, which gnaws away at one’s capacity to appreciate. In each of these four cases, the negative emotion has an overwhelming phenomenological impact. The felt experience excludes positive feelings, thoughts and perceptions. One cannot think lovingly of a friend when one is in the middle of being angry with her. One cannot perceive one’s life in appreciative ways when one is constantly complaining about it. The feeling of complaint is constituted in part by a tendency to attend to the negative aspect of one’s experiences and activities. By definition, one’s attention excludes the appreciative awareness of the intrinsically valuable features of one’s experiences and activities. This is why the feeling of complaint is like a curse: it is like a value-nullifying machine or a desirability-destroyer: direct it towards any experience or activity that has desirable features and it will ensure that, from the point of view of the subjectivity of the person, it will be as if those experiences or activities are not desirable at all.

82 Awareness Part of why a negative emotion feels bad is that it blocks or diminishes appropriate appreciation. It is part and parcel of an emotion’s being negative experientially that it obstructs appreciation of the positive. In similar vein, negative feelings prevent us from connecting to other people. They tend to imprison us in our self-concerns. This is the same phenomenon in a different guise: the inability to connect to other people is a failure to appreciate the intrinsic value of one’s activities insofar as they pertain to others. We return to these points in Chapter 5. Likewise, positive emotions such as joy are joyous not only because how they feel directly, but also because they usually enable an appreciation of the valuable aspects of activities and other people. There are two ways to misunderstand the above discussion. First, the issue is the nature of well-being and not its causes. We are not asserting that the person who complains causes his own ill-being; rather we are showing how and why complaining is a form of ill-being (with respect to this second dimension). This apparently subtle difference is significant. A person who lives in miserable deprived material conditions may have good reason to feel complaint, and we are not asserting that the cause of her ill-being is her complaining rather than those conditions. Instead, the feeling of complaint is itself a form of ill-being, and the environmental conditions that cause such a feeling ipso facto cause ill-being. Second, we are engaging in an extended reflection on what constitutes well-being. We are not promoting nuggets of practical advice. We are not prescribing the injunction ‘Don’t complain!’ Much less are we advocating that those who are prone to such negative feelings should stop feeling in this way, and should blame themselves and feel guilty if they don’t. It is one thing to engage in an axiological reflection about what is valuable and why; it is another to make prescriptions based on such reflections (Nussbaum 2008). Some writings in the tradition of positive psychology fall victim to these two misunderstandings. First, they tend to be individualistic concerning the causes of well and ill-being and ignore systemic socio-economic causes. This is a theme that we return to in Chapter 8. Second, they tend to be moralistic insofar as they imply that one ought to be happy. Morality is a social institution that apportions blame and praise, and feelings of guilt and deserves and the moral use of the term ‘ought’ usually carries these emotional tones. But when we affirm that there is a good reason to be happier, this doesn’t imply that it is morally wrong to be fed-up! Two major points emerge from the discussion in this section. First, appropriate appreciation is necessary for well-being, and appreciation is appropriate when it experientially tracks the relevant desirability characterisations. Second, a person’s well-being depends directly on the quality of her awareness. This consists in one’s general capacity to be aware to greater or lesser degree. Awareness has to be clear, clean and open to appreciate fully the value of what one is doing. It also needs to be steady, that is, not at risk to constant distraction. This requires that the person doesn’t instrumentalise the activities; that her attention is not distracted by extraneous factors such as the naggings of desires, and that it is not coloured by negative emotions.

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Happiness as an emotional state So far we have argued in four steps for the thesis that the hedonistic notion that activities cause pleasure should be dropped. Instead, we proposed the idea that well-being involves a person experientially appreciating the valuable features of the activities as she engages in them. We have also argued that, without appropriate experiential appreciation, the desirable activities in one’s life would not count towards well-being. But their desirability doesn’t consist in our appreciating them as such. To bring to fruition the critique of the traditional theory, we now need a fifth step. This is required to integrate happiness as an emotional state and as a mood into the new vision. The additional step is to argue that happiness as an emotional state must be understood partly in terms of the concept of appropriate experiential appreciation.24 Traditionally, happiness is conceived as a state of having more pleasure and less pain. In this section, we critique this traditional conception, and explain, more positively, the importance of happiness for well-being by arguing that happiness requires an emotional appreciation of the desirable activities, experiences and processes that make up a life. (a) Emotions have a cognitive aspect because part of what it is to feel an emotion is to perceive pertinently. For instance, part of what it is to love is that we perceive the loveable qualities of another person with our feelings. The cognitivist aspect of this view allows for the possibility that the person may have those qualities, which is a realist claim; veridical perceptions are of something real. Because our theory is cognitivist and realist, this also means that one can make mistakes in one’s emotional judgments. For instance, one can think that one sees kindness and generosity in a person one is attracted to, when one is misperceiving her anxiety to please and to be accepted. In summary, emotions essentially involve perceiving, shifts of attention and the making of judgments. In this sense, they are at least partly cognitive (Nussbaum 2003). (b) Appropriate appreciation can require feeling emotions. For example, I cannot be said to appreciate the arrival of my loved one if I am not filled with joy. Failing to have an appropriate feeling can be a form of undervaluing something. For example, if I feel bored then I am not appreciating the day out with my friends. Having appropriate emotions can be an aspect of appreciating. Part of appreciating one’s children is to love them. Notice that the claim isn’t that failing to have the appropriate feelings can be the cause and the result of a lack of appreciation. It is rather that, in addition to this causal role, such emotions can be a form of and a part of appreciation. Consequently, appreciating something can require being in an appropriate emotional state. This is because we can perceive the valuable aspects of an experience with our emotions (Solomon 1976: 111) These two points are important for understanding happiness. To feel happy requires being in an emotional state in virtue of which one is disposed to appropriately experientially appreciate the non-instrumentally valuable nature of the experiences, activities and processes that one lives through. A person who is unhappy is not so disposed. Happiness as an emotional state and a mood is partly defined

84 Awareness by one’s emotional openness to appreciating the relevant kinds of valuable activity. This kind of analysis renders the notion of happiness derivative on appropriate appreciation. To feel happy includes the idea that the happy person ipso facto appreciates appropriately the non-instrumental value of the activities that constitute well-being. Thus, the person who is irritable or bothered or sad ipso facto will appreciate less the valuable characteristics of the activities that she is engaged in, and such states constitute ways of being less happy or unhappy. How do emotions matter non-instrumentally for well-being? In particular, why is happiness as an emotion and mood primordially important for well-being? While one might be rightly convinced of the empirical claim that emotions have a huge impact on our well-being, this causal claim doesn’t touch the idea that such emotions are (partially) constitutive of well-being.25 A better answer has two facets. First, emotions and moods are the materials out of which the phenomenology of our lives is constructed. They are how we feel, and as such, they absorb our attention and define our lived experience. Let’s return to Adrian, who we introduced in Chapter 3. When Adrian felt that his work and life was dull and monotone, these feelings defined how the world appeared to him. His attention was coloured by these emotions, and the two reinforced each other towards a dreary grey. Turning the tables, when he left his job, and when he was taking on voluntary work, the days became much brighter: he was almost gliding along, and the world seemed to him wonderful and beautiful. The emotion and the colouring of the attention are part of the same phenomenon. In these regards, emotions can be very powerful. They dominate consciousness. They fill up awareness such that, for instance, Adrian could not live normally when he was miserable. The feeling of sadness ate up his life. Moreover, he couldn’t escape the feeling simply by willing himself to be free of it or by rehearsing to himself reasons to be cheerful. Feelings such as sadness colour one’s thoughts, memories and perceptions in ways that are temporarily inescapable. Much the same points can be made about anxiety and anger, or fear and resentment, or complaint and bitterness. Thankfully, feelings of happiness and love can be much the same, too: good feelings constitute part of our well-being, as well as being conducive to it. The quality of one’s day is a direct function of how one feels; what is in one’s heart defines the lived quality of one’s life. Emotions are an important component of well-being because of their potential strength. Furthermore, emotions partly constitute the appreciation of the valuable activities that are an element of well-being. Emotions connect us to what is valuable. Engaging in a type of non-instrumentally valuable activity cannot be a component of a person’s well-being unless such engagement includes awareness, and in this way, emotions matter constitutively for well-being. This is shown by the fact that they typically concern the things in our lives that matter most, such as the people that we are close to. The point isn’t only that these are things that we happen to care about. The point is also that emotions typically concern themselves with things that we care about because they have value. In other words, our caring about them isn’t simply a noncognitive positive attitude that we just happen to have. It is an evaluative cognition or perception of the value of something. Emotions connect us to what is important or

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valuable. We have used the word ‘appreciation’ to indicate this perceptual way of connecting to what has value in our activities. Thus, our emotions are typically concerned with the things in our lives that matter most, and because of this, they comprise in part appreciation of those things of value. In summary, emotions are important in our lives due to two contrasting reasons. First, they are phenomenologically strong; they colour our attention. Second, they are typically concerned with what is important in life. To express this second point adequately, we need the idea that emotions are partly cognitive because they involve appreciation. Emotions matter for well-being in another way too. Feelings of happiness and joy are like a barometer or symptom of how one’s life is faring (Raibley 2012: 16–18). As well as contributing to it and being a part of it, they also express it. If I feel utterly disheartened, this may be a sign that my life is going badly. Similarly, if I feel relaxed and happy, then this may be a sign that my life is faring well. We should beware of thinking that such feelings constitute the wellness or illness. In our interviews, we heard the stories of Mike, a promising boxer, who felt saddened when his knees were damaged in a car accident. His sorrow was a result of the loss, but it did not constitute it. The direct loss in well-being is constituted by the non-instrumental value of the type of activities involved: Mike loved boxing, and now he can’t engage in it. As with Mike’s sadness, feelings of unhappiness can be symptoms that something is amiss in the relevant spheres of life. The unhappiness is important expressively because it indicates that this aspect of his life is not going well. This point is relevant for the interpretation of desires as discussed in the previous chapter. When we try to form an understanding of the kinds of deslogo interests that underlie the changing patterns of our desires, we can appeal to feelings of discontent to characterise what the relevant non-instrumental desires are about. More on this in Chapter 7. In conclusion, happiness as an emotional state is in part the capacity to appreciate through one’s emotions the non-instrumentally valuable nature of the activities, experiences and processes that make up one’s life. This partially cognitivist view is needed to explain why happiness is such an important aspect of wellbeing. Emotions tend to dominate consciousness, and happiness is an emotional state that connects us experientially to what is most valuable in life. This cognitive view has the important implication that our capacity to feel emotions is partly constitutive of our well-being. It is a form of ill-being to have a stunted or repressed emotional life. Objections There are many theories regarding how we should conceive happiness; the term has many uses. For example, some thinkers employ it to stand for the supreme non-moral good in life; some to refer to feelings of pleasure and the absence of pain. The objection is that we have failed to consider these other conceptions. In reply, this is a dispute that one can and should avoid, and we have avoided it. There is no point in becoming embroiled in the diverse meanings or uses of

86 Awareness ‘happiness’. We only need to focus on the role of awareness in human wellbeing, which is the topic of this chapter. For this reason, we have concentrated on conceptions of happiness as an emotional state and as a mood because these contribute directly to this understanding (Haybron 2008). Other uses of the term ‘happiness’ needn’t concern us. Another objection is that happiness should be conceived as life-satisfaction, a conception common in the literature, but which we haven’t attended to yet in this chapter (Eid and Larsen 2008: 3–4; Vitrano 2013: 103–110; Boniwell 2012: 41). The general idea of this proposal is that a person will be happy insofar as she feels generally satisfied with her life and that this constitutes a subjective factor or component of well-being. There are three related objections to this view of happiness. First, the definition of happiness is incomplete because the expression of life-satisfaction doesn’t provide a constitutive criterion of being happy beyond a feeling. This is incomplete because, when one feels satisfied or dissatisfied with one’s life, this is an emotional judgment that the person makes about her life (‘my life is wonderful’, ‘my life is dismal’). As a judgment, the self-report requires some criterion in virtue of which it can be true or false. Without such criteria, there can be no meaning to the claim that the person might be mistaken in her judgment. And it is possible for a person to be mistaken in her judgment about her life; for example, in a pessimistic mood, I can feel bad about a life that is objectively wonderful. Thus, we need criteria: if a person judges that some aspect of her life is satisfactory, then this will be in virtue of the relevant features of her life, and an account of well-being should try to uncover directly what those features are, as we have tried to do. But the subjective theory doesn’t provide any such criteria; it only records the subject’s emotional judgment. Thus we may conclude that the theory is derivative: it tries to capture what is valuable indirectly through a person’s reaction to or cognition of that value (or how she feels about it). Because it is derivative, it is incomplete. The fact that self-reports can be made domain specific doesn’t answer this objection. Self-reports regarding life-satisfaction can be restricted to specific domains of life, such as friendships, work and family relationships. However, this increased specificity doesn’t answer the objection that they presuppose relevant criteria rather than providing or articulating them. Defenders of the subjective approach might argue that their theory allows the subject to choose and weigh their own criteria as they feel fit (Pavot and Diener 1993) and that this is more appropriate since it is the subject’s own well-being that is in question. In counter-reply, it is important to note how this makes the theory close to some version of the preference theory that we argued against in the previous chapter. Like the preference theory, this subjective approach is effectively trying to capture what is non-instrumentally valuable through a person’s cognition of that value, that is, indirectly. This would be fine as a method for measuring the relevant values, but it cannot be definitional or constitutive of them precisely because it is derivative. As for it being more appropriate: of course, it is more apposite, in most contexts, that a person is free to follow her own preferences because that means she is not being forced or coerced. Nevertheless, that doesn’t

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mean that a person can invent the criteria for well-being willy-nilly or in accordance with personal likes. Neither does it make the preference theory true. Second, because of its derivative nature, because the subjective life-satisfaction approach doesn’t offer defining criteria, the theory only provides a subjective way of measuring well-being (Veenhoven 2002). In this sense, it mirrors what is good rather than constituting it, as we have just seen. Feeling satisfied with one’s life is a reflection that it is going well. It is like a customer survey form of one’s life. Therefore, the subjective theory of happiness and of well-being as life-satisfaction is only a form of measurement of happiness or of aspects of wellbeing. As such it is indeed important, but it doesn’t provide a constituting criterion for well-being (see Chapter 7). Third, because it doesn’t provide criteria, it doesn’t allow for the intentionality of appreciation and hence of happiness. Appreciation is directed to the relevant good-making features of what one appreciates. But life-satisfaction theories don’t specify what those good-making features are, as we have just seen. This means that they tend to treat happiness as a self-contained sensation. The claim ‘I feel happy about my life’ is taken to be the report (or expression) of a simple feeling rather than a description of one’s emotional perception of one’s life. In this way, they tend to ignore the intentionality of feelings of happiness. This point about intentionality is important because it pinpoints a limitation of these subjective measures of well-being. Intentionality implies that under one description, I might like something and under another dislike it. This means that when thinking of X in one way, I respond positively; when thinking of X in another way, I respond negatively. Because of the intentional nature of appreciation, life-satisfaction measures are subject to contextual or framing factors, as is widely recognised (Eid and Larsen 2008; Schwarz and Strack 1991). Another objection against the understanding of happiness outlined in this section would be that it privileges being actively engaged with activities against other forms or kinds of happiness. One might think something like this: being engaged with one’s activities is a specific way of being happy, perhaps one which is especially prized in some western societies that value engagement. However, it is not the only way of being happy, and because of this, it shouldn’t be portrayed as primary a priori (Haybron 2008: 121). Other ways of being happy might include being tranquil and attuned. Such an objection might also be levelled against the flow theory of Csikszentmihalyi (Csikszentmihalyi 1998, 2008). This objection misunderstands the point that we are making. We are not asserting that the appropriate appreciation of the valuable features of life’s activities specifically consists in engagement. Rather we are trying to answer the apparently silly question ‘Why does happiness matter (both as an emotion and as a mood) for well-being?’ The question is apparently silly because it looks so self-evident like: ‘What is good about being in a good mood?’ But it is only apparently foolish because, in fact, the answer isn’t self-evident. How would one characterise the relevant features of happiness as an emotion that makes it an intrinsic aspect of well-being? The reply is not so obvious. The answer that we are arguing for is that happiness is the emotional (and mood) state that allows for appropriate

88 Awareness appreciation of life’s desirable features. The point is that without appropriate appreciation, the desirable features of a life would not count towards well-being.

‘Constructing’ a ‘world’ Appreciative consciousness is necessary for well-being. We have tried to describe the importance of this point by examining its implications for emotions and moods, including happiness. Now, we shall do the same by describing the metaphorical idea that a person’s phenomenological or experiential ‘world’ that she lives in defines the possibilities of her well-being. The core idea is that a valuable experience, activity or process becomes a part of a person’s well-being only insofar as it forms part of her phenomenological ‘world’. The evaluative aspects of our everyday lives depend on the phenomenology or the experiential nature of appreciative attention. The intentional nature of attention means that we attend to the world under a range of descriptions and not under others. There is selection not only in terms of what we pay our attention to, but also in terms how, or under what descriptions, we attend to it. Attention is always selective in both ways. It is directed to this but not that, and in this way but not that. It includes some aspects of what is noticed and excludes others. In this manner, usually without being aware of it, and piece by piece, our phenomenological ‘world’ is ‘constructed’. The way in which our attention is focused can ‘construct’ our phenomenological ‘world’ as a personal heaven or hell. Wittgenstein said: ‘The happy man lives in a happy world’ (Wittgenstein 1994: 6.43). To this we might add: the fearful person lives in a world of dangers, anxieties and threats; the courageous person lives in a world of greater possibilities; and the generous person inhabits a world in which there is plentiful of everything. The qualities of the phenomenological ‘world’ one inhabits depend in part on how one’s attention is directed and, in this sense, they build an experiential ‘world’. Returning to Adrian, during the periods in which he felt resentful about his life, such feelings reinforced his tendency to complain, and thereby, he perceived more and more things as worthy of complaint. In this way, he indirectly constructed a phenomenological ‘world’ with more bitterness and resentment in it. In contrast, after his retirement, when he had more time to be with others, and as he became more aware of the non-instrumental value of his activities, he began to perceive more things in life as delightful. In a similar fashion, someone who perceives others as persons thereby indirectly ‘constructs’ a more humane phenomenological ‘world’, compared to someone who perceives other people as a mere resource or nuisance. We have deliberately avoided claiming that a person directly constructs their phenomenological ‘world’. Indeed, although one may have some control over what one attends to and how, this will be limited. It will depend largely on factors that are beyond one’s direct control and of which one is perhaps unaware. This is because the nature of our subjectivity depends not only on our personal character, but also on the social historical conditions under which we were raised. This means that some improvements in well-being need to be socio-economic and

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political. It is not merely a matter of self-improvement and the acquisition of virtues. This is one reason why we argue that the notion of well-being can be a basis of social critique rather than simply a concept to guide individual choices. Despite the dependence on wider conditions that are beyond the control of any single person, nevertheless, the phenomenological ‘world’ that we inhabit is contingent. It is not a given. Thus, in some sense, it is constructed. Unpacked, the metaphor of the construction of a phenomenological ‘world’ highlights three things. First, the point of calling it a ‘world’ is that these conditions form consistent all-encompassing patterns that lie at the heart of one’s subjectivity (whether they are within one’s control or not, and whether they are within one’s self-awareness or not). In other words, directing attention in appreciative ways isn’t a question of discrete one-off acts, but is rather a whole approach to one’s living. Second, the metaphor highlights an ironic tension. On the one hand, we have limited choice concerning the ‘world’ we inhabit. The phenomenological ‘world’ strikes us as something that is not of our own making. Thus, experientially, it is as if we are thrown into a world that one cannot escape. For instance, we can imagine two persons with very different dispositions who undergo the same experience, but in fundamentally different ways. The point of saying that they inhabit different ‘worlds’ is the one who experiences the events as unhappy does not access the meanings of the experiential world of the person who experiences the same events as happy. It is a space that he does not enter. It is as if they are from different historical epochs. On the other hand, the term ‘construction’ suggests the opposite view: the ‘world’ we inhabit is a construction means that, although it may feel like a given, it is not. Although it may be inescapable for any individual person, nevertheless, it is the result of conditions that have been chosen. It is contingent. Third, one’s choices are limited partly because the content of one’s awareness is akin to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Within limits, what consciousness tends to contain, it will find in the world. An embittered awareness will find that the world is full of things that taste bitter. The content of our awareness is reflected in the ‘world’ constructed from that awareness. So, we must taste the ‘soup’ that we have stewed for ourselves. Or we must sleep in the bed of our own making, whether it is collective or individual. What matters for well-being is the experience as lived in its full subjectivity. Consequently, we are tempted to affirm that it is as if a person with a happy disposition lives in a different world from a person with a miserable one. The experience of each is entirely different in a systematic and thoroughgoing manner. Therefore, we say that they might as well inhabit different planets. Metaphorically, they do. In Chapter 3 we saw that one’s desires must track interests. Now we see that awareness must track the desirability features of activities etc. as defined by those deslogo interests. This second kind of tracking is only possible in an experiential world that permits it. For example, we talked to Fanny who indirectly constructs a ‘world’ of solitude through repeated acts of attention, and who cannot easily appreciate friendship as such. Therefore, she would not be nourished by being

90 Awareness with friends insofar as she would not connect to the value of those activities under the relevant descriptions. This is a less metaphorical reading of ‘we must drink the soup of our own brewing.’ There are types of activities and experiences that would constitute a minimally valuable life from an external point of view. Such types of activities are describable with desirability characteristics, but for the subject to have well-being, it is necessary that she experiences those activities as desirable under the appropriate range of descriptions. This is a condition that well-being as a value places on awareness: one’s awareness ought to be directed in a certain way. Qualifications The inverted commas throughout this section indicate the need for some qualifications. First, the word ‘construct’ usually implies that this is something that we do deliberately and self-consciously, like the physical act of building. However, as we are using it here, the word needs to be severed from these implications. We build a phenomenological world without intending to and without doing so consciously, drop by drop. We do so by acquiring habits and tendencies concerning how we direct our attention moment to moment, which are usually not determined by overt choices. They are determined by the character of the person, and by socio-political, economic and cultural factors. The second qualification concerns the inverted commas placed around the word ‘world’. The point is to avoid the idealist claim that we construct our own worlds. It is to acknowledge that the phenomenological content of a person’s experience is defined by how her attention is directed to selected details of the real world. The term ‘world’ in inverted commas does not refer to the object of experience, something that exists independently of the act of perceiving it. Instead, it refers to the content of experience, which isn’t an object but is rather the (adverbial) manner in which we experience. The point of calling the content ‘a world’ is to emphasise some of its worldlike and holistic qualities. It is as if we lived in a world of our own inadvertent creation.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have put forward and defended the importance of consciousness in well-being. Appreciation For the value of our activities to count towards our being or living well, we must appreciate them as valuable, by being connected appropriately to the valuable nature of the activities that we engage in. We defined ‘appropriately appreciating’ in terms of the person’s experiential awareness that tracks the desirable characteristics of the activities in question.

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Awareness One’s well-being is partly constituted by the quality of one’s awareness, which consists of three aspects. First, one’s awareness will tend to be focused on the relevant desirable characteristics, and not distracted and fragmented by thoughts, feelings and desires that would count against being so appreciatively connected. Second, well-being is a function of our general capacity to be aware. The more conscious one is, the greater can be one’s appreciation. Finally, awareness is also a function of our emotional state, which takes us to the next conclusion. Emotional state Well-being depends on one’s emotional state and specifically on one’s capacity to be happy in the sense of being disposed to appreciate emotionally the valuable aspects of one’s life. Contingency In appreciating the value of one’s activities, or in failing to do so, one’s phenomenological ‘world’ is constructed because of the intentionality of attention. This implies that, insofar we can train ourselves to appreciate the valuable nature of one’s activities, we can ‘construct’ a more desirable phenomenological ‘world’. However, insofar as our phenomenological ‘world’ depends on cultural historical or socio-economic and political conditions, this shows how well-being cannot be conceived of solely in terms of individual self-improvement and the cultivation of virtues. Together the arguments in this chapter undermine the pleasure theory. We have argued that the concept of pleasure should be replaced by the notion of the experiential appreciation of the desirability features of activities etc. Such an account is significantly different from a hedonist theory because treating activities as merely instrumental to pleasure destroys the possibility of appreciating their noninstrumental value.

Notes 1 In this context ‘objectivity’ means ‘described with non-intensional or extensional sentences’. 2 Phenomenology needn’t be inconsistent with a functionalist or causal theory of mental contents so long as we don’t require that such a functionalist theory be extensional. 3 In this context, ‘object’ doesn’t necessarily denote an object such as a chair. It might refer to an event or a state of affairs (or fact). 4 To avoid reifying the content of a mental state, and thus to avoid treating the content as the object, one might think of this content adverbially. The content of perception is simply the way in which one sees the object. This essentially Fregeian idea avoids the fatal Lockeian assumption that the object of perception must be an idea. In short, Locke confuses the content of perception (the idea) with the object of perception (the object such as a chair).

92 Awareness 5 Sentences that characterise the content of mental states as such are intensional and those that specify the object as such are extensional. 6 We are not asserting that all intentional content is phenomenological, nor that all phenomenological content is intentional. However, we are not denying these claims either. Please see Horgan and Tienson (2002). 7 The early utilitarian thinkers, Bentham and Mill, were the first to explicitly articulate this theory. Some contemporary economists, who identify utility with pleasure, also implicitly accept the theory. 8 Typically, the standard conception claims that pleasures vary only quantitatively: for example, in their duration, intensity and in the degree to which they are pleasurable. 9 This relates to the discussion of subjective and objective in Chapter 1. 10 There are other reasons for thinking that mental states shouldn’t be conceived as objects in a mind. For instance, such a view dichotomises the inner and the outer. See, for example, Dennett (1992). A more elementary presentation is Thomson (2002b). 11 The adverbial form accentuates the point that the pleasure isn’t a thing; it is the way in which one performs an activity. In this way, it is philosophically illuminating despite being grammatically clumsy. 12 Like Nozick himself, Kaez asks ‘should one plug into the machine?’ (Kazez 2007: 52). The relevant question for refuting hedonism is rather: ‘Does one lose anything of noninstrumental value by doing so?’ One could answer ‘yes’ to both questions. 13 This provides a different lesson from the one that Nozick himself draws in Nozick (1974). 14 Or the aspectual or description-relative nature of enjoying. 15 We haven’t specified in what ways enjoying an activity is a form of appreciating its desirable features. Therefore, we haven’t given an analysis of enjoying. 16 Activities are relational, and because of this, we usually describe the object of the activity with the relevant set of desirability characteristics: e.g. the apple was delicious. 17 What is appreciation? Clearly we are using the word as a term of art that has certain features. It is a cognitive state that is evaluative; it is cognition of the desirable features of an activity. Additionally, it must also be experiential. It cannot be just a belief that the activity one is engaging in has desirable features. It is a direct experience of the activity as such. Thus, the description of appreciation as an evaluative cognitive state doesn’t exclude the idea that appreciation can be emotional. To properly appreciate an activity can be to feel. For instance, when one sees one’s family for the first time after a long forced separation, it is emotional. The appreciation of being reunited isn’t distinct from the emotions. For example, sometimes people express the experience of seeing the sunrise in a beautiful spot as a joyful recognition of being alive in the cosmos. In such a case, part of the appreciation is the exquisite feeling. Appreciation is an intentional conscious state. This means that when we appreciate, for instance, a work of art we do so under certain descriptions of that work and not under others. Appreciation is partial and aspectual. Likewise, our appreciation of our friends is intentional, too. As we mentioned, this implies that there might be more to appreciate, and it suggests that appreciation is inexhaustible. There is always more that we could appreciate. The intentionality of appreciation also implies that appreciation is not all or nothing. It comes in degrees. This also suggests that I can appreciate any aspect of my life more than I do now. Appreciation can be more or less intense. This feature of appreciation (its intensity) depends on the state of one’s consciousness. 18 In ‘appropriate appreciation’ the term ‘appropriate’ can be defined initially as the content of cognition of the activity is characterised by the same desirability predicates as the activity itself. 19 This kind of view has two key philosophical assumptions: cognitivism and realism. In this context, cognitivism is the claim that we can have cognitive states regarding (the subject matter of) evaluative claims. It is the claim that evaluative cognition is possible.

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The idea that we can perceive meaning and values may sound strange at first. In fact, such phenomena are part of our everyday life. When one listens to someone speak, one hears him or her saying something (semantically) meaningful. One perceives meaning. Likewise, one perceives people and their actions under a wide range of evaluative predicates, such as ‘joyful,’ ‘lonely,’ ‘patient,’ and ‘cruel’. These adjectives describe the subjective content of the experience itself; they characterise one’s perception, or how one saw the action or person. Similarly, one’s self-perception is often evaluative. The idea of appropriate appreciation can also be affective, as well as cognitive. The other assumption is realism. This is the further claim that when the perception is accurate or truthful, then what one perceived is real (or the description of the content of the perception is true of the world). For example, one sees a person’s action as cruel, and when one’s perception is accurate, then the person’s action was cruel. This may sound like common sense, and it is, but, nevertheless, it is also a piece of common sense that requires a philosophical defense (which we cannot give now). The cognitivist position more accurately reflects the phenomenology of everyday experience in which we can see things as beautiful or just plain, feel them to be meaningful or hollow, and perceive our actions as worthwhile or trivial. These examples illustrate that the perception of values is nothing exotic or mysterious. We will assume that both cognitivism and realism can be adequately defended against objections. We shall also assume that there are strong and compelling arguments for both. In addition, there are many variants of both views, which we shall blissfully ignore to keep on track. The combination of these two views contains insights relevant to well-being. First, the cognitivist and realist way of understanding our interaction with things of value is especially illuminating when it comes to the appreciation of other people. In everyday experience, we perceive other people as courageous or timid, creative or highly-strung. For example, there is a person whom I admire for her incredible combination of persistence and flexibility. The realist position allows me to affirm that she does have these (value-laden) qualities, and the cognitivist view permits the assertion that I admire her because I perceive that she has these qualities. It also allows the idea that my perception might be mistaken or erroneous. Someone who knows my friend better might disagree with me, and have a more accurate perception of her qualities. Second, the cognitivist and realist way also allows for the idea that someone might be ignorant of these qualities that she has. Realism permits the possibility of ignorance. There are evaluative facts (or facts described in evaluative terms) concerning which I am ignorant. For example, there is beautiful music that I have never learned to appreciate. There are people around me whom I could love and become friends with, whom in fact I have hardly met. This is a super important point, because it means that we live in a world of untapped value-possibilities. It implies that the world that we live in is richer in meaning than our experience of it. The importance of this point is that one can be aware and appreciative of the fact that there are untapped value-possibilities, and this can affect one’s feelings and one’s sense of the meaningfulness of one’s life. In other words, one can appreciate the second-order fact that there are things of value (or first-order evaluative facts) that one does not appreciate either for lack of opportunity or lack of aptitude. Appreciating this second-order fact can make a substantial difference to how one feels about one’s life and surroundings. We can feel that the world is richer than we can ever know and that we could never exhaust its meaning. 20 This second kind of harm to well-being is often ignored. It is ignored by utility-based preference theories and desire theories that (implicitly) evaluate a person’s well-being solely in terms of the goods that a person has. In opposition to such theories, we might affirm that merely ‘having’ a good isn’t sufficient for appreciating it. The mere fact that the preferences of a person are formally satisfied does not imply that the person was able to, or in fact did, appreciate the obtaining of those states of affairs. Of course, one could specify by fiat that the relevant appreciation is already built into the description

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21 22 23 24

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of the preference. For example, rather than saying that a person wants to ride on the roundabout soon, we might specify as part of his want that he experience this ride in an appreciative way. To pursue this point properly would require a discussion of levels of consciousness, which would take us into Chapter 6 on self-awareness, and which in any case is beyond the purview of this book. The two parts are independent because a person might be attentive but dull, or might have a vivid awareness that is directed elsewhere, away from the valuable features of her living processes. See Chapter 3, page 52. We employed the term ‘appreciation’ because it is a cognitive or perceptual word, which, at the same time, has evaluative and aesthetic implications. As we have seen, appreciation is a form of perception, and as such it is a cognitive state that can represent truly or falsely the world. To appreciate X is to perceive appropriately the valuable aspects of X. We added the word ‘appropriately’ because appreciation requires the estimation of the true value of something. This implies that one can make mistakes and one can be ignorant in one’s appreciation. Diener and Biswas-Diener (2008) argue that happy people function better and that it pays to be happy. Even if they are true, such empirical claims don’t help us understand the non-instrumentally valuable nature of happiness and tend towards the instrumental theory of rationality criticised in Chapter 2.

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Our aim is to provide a conceptual framework for human well-being, a framework that requires empirical filling. Being well is constituted by non-instrumental goodness along the inescapable dimensions of our (human) way of being. In Chapter 1, we identified four such dimensions. These are structural features of any human life, akin to the a priori forms of well-being. As such, they constitute different ways of good-making relevant to well-being, and thus different kinds of intrinsic values directly pertinent to being well. For this reason, any account of well-being must include at least these four aspects. The first is the level of activities, which we examined in Chapter 3; the second is the level of awareness as discussed in Chapter 4; the third is that of self-consciousness, which is the topic of Chapter 6. In this chapter, we examine the relational dimension of our way of being. The experiences, activities and processes that comprise our lives are all relational. We are constantly in interaction with objects, one’s body, nature, buildings, other people, social groups, society and the world at large. Some of these relations constitute aspects of well-being. The aim of this chapter is to clarify these uses of ‘some’. In what ways do these relations partly constitute well-being? Specifically, we shall concentrate in this chapter only on our relationships with other people and how they pertain to well-being. This doesn’t mean that other relations, such as one’s relationship with the natural world and with everyday objects, aren’t also constitutive. Human relations are especially important and difficult. Let us take the example of digging a ditch, as a typical social activity. To advance, we need to distinguish three ways this activity is relational or social. First, the end is social: the finished ditch has instrumental value in relation to how it improves people’s lives (doing-for). Second, we are digging the ditch with one another, as a part of a group (being-with). Third, the activity is embedded in a complex set of social relations, which form part of a society (being-in). To explore more deeply these complex relationships, this chapter will be organised around this three-way distinction. We assume that a person is always already a social being: we humans are part of communities and societies, and our lives are ineluctably lived in relation to other people. The content of our consciousness is formed by social meanings (Wittgenstein 2009). Thus, well-being is constituted in part by relations (Aristotle 2011: 1245b18). Consequently, when we mention later how relationships contribute to

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well-being, this does not imply that a person is an autonomous individual who becomes more than that through her relationships to others (Thomson 2017). We shall investigate how other persons are integral to one’s well-being without such an individualistic assumption.

Doing-for To examine the first of the three ways activities are relational, we will resolve a curious paradox. Because the paradox is abstract, its immense importance is perhaps initially difficult to discern. David Wiggins discusses the puzzle in relation to the action of helping a community by digging a drainage ditch. Insofar as such activities constitute part of one’s well-being, they are non-instrumentally valuable, but at the same time, the action of helping is clearly instrumental (Wiggins 1987: 162).1 How can it be both at the same time? The puzzle consists in three seemingly inconsistent propositions: a) The meaning of a goal-directed activity is the achieving of the relevant goals. b) Such activities contribute to well-being because of their meaningfulness. c) Such activities are relevant to well-being directly only insofar as they have non-instrumental value. In short, the dilemma is how could the meaning of an activity be its point or purpose if it is also the non-instrumental value of the activity? As Thaddeus Metz wisely points out, it is important to see that the puzzle is not solved simply by noting that some activities, such as eating, are good both for their own sake and for the good for what they bring about (Metz 2013). You can’t just say: ‘both’. This is not sufficient to defuse the puzzle because the problem is that helping seems to be an action that is intrinsically or non-instrumentally valuable insofar as it is instrumentally good.2 This paradox requires us to rethink the relationship between goals and activities, echoing Chapter 2. There we saw that if we confuse goals or ends with noninstrumental value then this implies that all activities are merely instrumentally valuable. To avoid this disastrous result, one needs to separate two distinctions: instrumental versus non-instrumental value and means versus ends. This separation permits the important idea that actions can have non-instrumental value as means. This idea resolves the paradox. Helping is an activity that has non-instrumental value, but, at the same time, it is also a means to the end of helping another person or helping a worthy cause. Separating the two distinctions allows that an activity has non-instrumental value as a means. Thus, well-being can be constituted (in part) by the purposes of our actions without this endangering the idea that this value is non-instrumental.3 The activity of cooking is a means to feeding the family, but the activity as a means has non-instrumental value. Metz puts the point like this: the intrinsic value of help is constituted by its extrinsic value (Metz 2001). About the same point Shelly Kagan says:

Relationships 97 Helping is not a case of ‘mere’ instrumental value, but rather a case of intrinsically valuable instrumental value. . . . In helping someone else, my own life has intrinsic value – by virtue of this instrumental fact about me. (1998: 288) With the phrase ‘intrinsically valuable instrumental value’, Kagan is referring to means that as such have non-instrumental value. The same point applies to Metz when he talks about intrinsic value being constituted by extrinsic value. In other words, to make their point, one needs the distinction between means/ends versus instrumental/intrinsic value, which we drew in Chapter 2.4 This solution requires a condition that is pregnant with implications: the intrinsic value of activities as means can consist in activity for a purpose but only when the person is appropriately connected to the purpose as something of value beyond herself. For instance, the non-instrumental value of digging the ditch can consist in the activity of trying to attain the goal. But, for it to do so, the person must be appropriately connected to the value beyond herself, which might consist in understanding the need for the ditch, and performing the action from this understanding. How does this abstract solution help us understand well-being? Doing things for other people is an important part of our lives, and is a dimension of well-being. Understanding it properly requires the ideas that solve the paradox, namely the idea that the activity of helping is intrinsically valuable albeit as a means. Of course, in everyday life, people won’t separate the means/ends distinction from the instrumental/intrinsic distinction. As we saw in Chapter 2, this implies that they will tend to be wedded to an instrumental conception of rationality, which automatically identifies means with instrumentally valuable and intrinsically valuable with ends. It also implies that they won’t articulate the idea of an activity being intrinsically valuable as a means and won’t employ such an idea to characterise the well-being-relevant value of helping, caring and contributing. Nevertheless, in our research conversations, most people report that ‘helping others is an important part of my life.’ Here is an example.

James was in his mid-30s at the time of our research and was working as an expert consultant in social work. An eloquent and articulate interlocutor and an animated storyteller, James speaks with a Northern accent, proudly pronouncing his working-class background. Born in a large city in Northern England (but lived ‘a small life’ in his own words), he grew up in an ‘austere’ environment. As a child and a young person, James was a victim of violent abuse from his father, and he learned to defend and look after himself from an early age. This was also because there was little help from agencies outside of his home. For instance, although, at the age of 10 or 11, there was a period when his father’s punches became a daily feast

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Relationships and James often carried black eyes and other wounds from the beating to school, few teachers or social workers enquired about them. This continued until he was 16 when he was able to leave home thanks to the kindness of strangers. These early experiences prepared James to be empathetic to the vulnerable, and willing to help and care for the poor and the powerless.

James spent half a day each week helping (on a volunteer basis) a charity that supports people who are struggling with mental health issues and cognitive disabilities. He spent another half-day studying part time for a doctorate in social work. The help James provided for the charity enabled social workers to develop better rapport with ‘clients’ and their families, and to see how relational approaches can better support the clients in a holistic way. This was also the focus of his doctoral research. Volunteer work has always been part of James’ life ever since he got his first job in social work, and he set himself the challenge to study for the PhD, not to progress to a more senior position in his workplace, but to understand better social work. The combination of the two objectives, helping others and studying, brought James immense joy and happiness. ‘I feel benefit if I help people; and I study to be able to better help those who are in need,’ said James. Expanding on the above solution to the paradox, we shall argue that a person’s living can be more valuable through her connection to things of value beyond itself, such as the needs of others. Appropriate connection to value beyond oneself can partly constitute and augment the intrinsic value of one’s own activity. One way this can occur is through our actions being means to valuable goals (Haidt 2007: 222). What are things of value beyond oneself? What does it mean to be appropriately connected to them? Regarding the first question, in Chapter 2, we argued that the primary bearers of non-instrumental value are persons and other conscious beings. From this, we may conclude that ‘things of value beyond oneself’ will include other people and their interests, as we have just illustrated with James’ story. The second question. The immediate goal of one’s activities is often to acquire something that has only instrumental value. For example, we gather firewood or collect water; we make chairs and we earn money. Under these descriptions of the goal, one has not connected directly to something of primary value beyond oneself. As we saw in Chapter 2, in a sense, it is misleading to describe something of purely instrumental value as valuable because their use is a cost that we should rationally diminish. For instance, in Chapter 2, we discussed Stanley’s ambition to make money. However, as such, making money doesn’t count as connecting directly to something of value beyond oneself. The goal is under-described. The meaning of money is how one uses it, how it enables one to do things, how it lubricates one’s life. This applies to Stanley’s ambition. Equally, the firewood we gather enables someone to cook and to keep warm, and the chair enables people to sit in comfort and it furnishes a home that we inhabit.

Relationships 99 These ruminations establish an illuminating contrast. On the one hand, if we are aware of our goal simply as to make a chair, this will not count as connecting directly to something of value beyond oneself. On the other hand, insofar as we are aware of our goal as enabling people to sit or as improving people’s lives by visually decorating their homes, then we have connected to something of value beyond oneself, namely to the lives of other people. In the former case, the activity will not ipso facto be a partial constituent of well-being. In the latter, it will. We can portray the point as an argument: 1 2 3 4

Well-being consists in part in doing activities that connect directly to things of value beyond oneself. Such connection requires appreciating the things in question as valuable. Such appreciation is impossible insofar as one conceives as one’s goals as purely instrumentally valuable. Thus, insofar as one conceives as one’s goals in purely instrumental terms, they will be not a constituent of one’s well-being.

This conclusion has startling implications for traditional conceptions of work, business and economics (Thomson 2015). ‘Connecting directly to things of value beyond oneself’ must include more than the purely instrumental; it must be to things of intrinsic value such as persons and their interests. Thus, insofar as work has intrinsic value as a means, this consists in its relation to other people.5 This is an important insight. In support of it consider the following two steps. First, the instrumental value of work is always in relation to people or other conscious beings, though this is often hidden and indirect, as we have seen in James’s story. Let’s now examine another research participant, Malik, and how he connects with his work in a company that produces stationery. As in many companies, there is a tendency to regard the instrumental value of the work solely in terms of the volume of production, the sales of the commodity and the net revenue. However, this misses the point that articles of stationery only have value in relation to the people who might use them. Any article is the permanent possibility of service. Thus, the instrumental value of one’s work is entirely derivative on the value of people, their lives and well-being. This is often disguised because we tend to think of the point of the work in purely financial or material terms.

Malik just turned 50 when he took part in our research. He was very enthusiastic about sharing his life. His family immigrated to the UK from the Horn of Africa, and he is a father of three daughters, two of whom already graduated from universities and the youngest was in her second year. Malik had worked for a large office stationery company for his entire adult life. Initially, he was a labourer in the factory, then in charge of quality control, and after completing a business management diploma, he was promoted to work in marketing, and he became ‘really successful’. Most recently, he

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became the Regional Marketing Director for the Southeast of England. For Malik, his life was a triumphant story of upward social progression, and he was eager to narrate it in that way. He recounted his smart approaches to marketing and his achievements, marked by the sales records that his office continued to break. At a time when there are so many competitions in the sector, Malik was proud to be able to create so much wealth for the company, which in turn meant benefits for himself and other employees.

This point is not altered if the dependency of the instrumental is indirect. For instance, consider the case of working in an industry that produces part of a product, such as a valve needed in an airplane engine, or the construction of the machine that makes the regulator. The instrumental value of the work depends on a resulting service in a very indirect manner. Second step: insofar as one understands the value of one’s work in purely instrumental terms, one does not connect properly to the relevant intrinsic value (namely other people). It is the intrinsic value that makes the relevant instrumental value valuable at all. In Malik’s case, there is a tendency to regard the value of the company in purely instrumental terms. Because of this, the failure to connect constitutes a diminishing of well-being. To connect only at the instrumental level is one way of missing out on how other people can enter one’s life. It represents work as solely material as opposed to social or human in its aims. It disguises the nature of work, and in the process diminishes our well-being. This is a form of instrumentalisation whereby we take as primary our relation to objects instead of our relationship to other people. For instance, we often assume that our work relationship is with a material product because we view work as instrumentally valuable in producing commodities.6 After all, so the reasoning goes, work is a means to an end (the production of a product), and thus work is primarily of instrumental value. This reasoning contains two huge but subtle errors. First, it forgets that mere instrumental value is only a shadow of intrinsic value; it is entirely derivative. Second, the term thus neglects that ‘work is a means’ does not imply ‘as such it is instrumental valuable’. It commits the error of the instrumental conception of rationality characterised in Chapter 2, which is bound to ignore the intrinsic values of work activities. This point is important for how one appreciates the value of one’s work, and for how shared purposes are understood by a group of people who are working together.

Being-with in general We turn now to the second way in which activities can be social: we dig a ditch with others (rather than for others). In a similar manner, we work, play and hangout with others. Indeed, few of life’s experiences, activities and processes are solitary; most are social in this second sense (being-with). To investigate this dimension of human life, we will outline a second paradox. As with the first, resolving this new

Relationships 101 antinomy will enable us to understand better an aspect of well-being: in this case, how other people enter one’s life. Typically, the most important aspect of a person’s life is her relationships with other people. This generates a paradoxical tension. On the one hand, the value for me of the activities I engage in with others is self-regarding. This suggests that other people, including even friends, are valuable only instrumentally insofar as my well-being is concerned. On the other hand, in one’s relationships, it is the other person that matters, and a relationship requires connecting to that person as such. Insofar as one doesn’t, one wouldn’t have a relationship with another person as such at all. This suggests that the value of relationships is other-regarding, and that acts of friendship are altruistic. Is the well-being-relevant intrinsic value of relationships self-regarding or other-regarding? The paradox consists in the fact that it apparently must be one or the other, but in neither case would relationships be constitutive of well-being. If friendship is self-regarding then friends are merely instrumentally valuable to one’s well-being. In contrast, if friends are valuable in themselves then friendship is other-regarding and altruistic, and thus not constitutive of our well-being.7 We cannot resolve this apparent paradox by trying to combine both ideas (i.e. self-interest and altruism). This is because neither view is adequate to understand our relationship with other people. To resolve it, we need to carve out a space that is neither self nor other-regarding. Or put another way, we must define when other-regarding becomes self-regarding and vice versa. We need to transcend those categories. We shall argue that this occurs when other people become part of our lives. The solution to the paradox combines two ideas. The first is that of connecting to something of value beyond oneself. We employed this idea earlier to goals to resolve the first paradox. In the case of being-with, the appropriate connection isn’t through attaining a goal, but rather through being with other persons. For example, I take a stroll with a friend: this friendship-activity connects me to a person who is something valuable beyond me. To claim that the other person is something of value that one can connect to might sound a little strange, but the idea isn’t weird. Persons and other conscious beings are the primary bearers of non-instrumental value; their activities and life experiences matter because they matter. Because of this, all the instrumental goods that enhance those activities of persons, such as shoes, stationery and automobiles are important. The idea that other people have value that one can connect to signifies that one has good reason to care for them. The second idea is that, insofar as a person is connected appropriately to the value of other people, that value can become part of her life. Appropriate connection to primary value constitutes an enhancement of one’s life: one’s life is better in ways that are constitutive of well-being. It is as if such connection enlarges one’s life because other people become a part of it. Family and friends are not just external causes of our well-being; they are part of one’s life. The combination of these two ideas resolves the paradox regarding self and other-regarding values. When someone is a part of one’s life, the two meld: the

102 Relationships self-regarding intrinsic value of the activity consists in connecting appropriately to something of value, which is other-regarding.8 When one engage in activities and connect with others, our activities contribute to one’s own well-being-value in virtue of this connection. The connection transcends the categories of selfregarding and other-regarding values by making others part of our lives. This is a major conclusion of this chapter: the claim that by becoming part of one’s life, other people can augment one’s being well. The argument is as follows. Premise 1: Insofar as one connects appropriately to a person in performing an activity, then that person may be part of one’s life. Premise 2: Insofar as a person is a part of one’s life, then her value as a person is part of the value of one’s life. Conclusion: The value of one’s activities is partly constituted by their being performed with other people.9 When other people are part of one’s life, it is as if one imports their intrinsic value into one’s life through the appropriate connections. One’s life is enlarged. This constitutes a dimension of well-being distinct and not reducible to the other dimensions discussed in Chapters 3 and 4.10 One’s well-being is enhanced when other people are a part of it.11 This conclusion signifies that, to have well-being along this dimension, one must be capable and willing that others become part of one’s life. This means that one must be open and accepting of them as persons. Attaining this can be a life-long struggle. This isn’t merely a question of transcending personal self-centredness inter alia. It is also a question of to what extent the society one lives in permits others to be part of one’s life. It is both a personal and a social issue. The unusual story of Eleanora illustrates the possibility of such an ‘enlarged’ life. Let us rehearse the steps of the argument. Premise 1: through appropriate connections, a person may become a part of one’s life. The claim seems intuitively plausible, as illustrated by Eleanora’s connection with people in the Buddhist community. Her decision to join the community suggests that she considered the other people, both the members of the community and people it serves, as a part of her life. However, the two central concepts (appropriate connection to others and part of one’s life) have not been clarified sufficiently. We need independent criteria for ‘appropriate connection’ to avoid that the premise is true trivially. Premise 2: Insofar as a person is a part of one’s life, her value as a person becomes a part of one’s life. The bearers of primary value are persons and, because of this, our lives have value, and so do the activities that make up our lives. When someone becomes part of one’s life, the value of her life becomes an ingredient of the value of one’s own. As Eleanora showed us, this implies that one has reason to care for the other person, just as one has reason to care for oneself. The fact that she has a subjectivity, a point of view on the world, and a history and future becomes relevant to one’s own life. In a sense, one no longer lives through oneself only, but also through the other.

Relationships 103 Born and bred in the West country of England to a farmer’s family, Eleanora loved nature, but hated the hard work of the farm. At 19, she was married Max, a builder 10 years her senior, as a way to leave home and to escape the heavy duties on the farm. At 21, Eleanora moved to Essex with Max, who started a construction company. Within a few years, they had two children. They lived in constant pressure from Max’s business. Far from families and friends, and with little time to socialise, Eleanora lived an isolated life. By fully occupying herself with childcare and housework, she got accustomed to the isolation. Her only sanctuary was the garden behind her house, where she created beauty and wonder with the help of nature. Life went by quietly, until when she reached her mid-40s and after both her sons left home, Max suddenly became disabled in an accident. Losing mobility had turned Max into an angry and self-pitying person, and he found other people a pure annoyance. Eleanora saw it her duty to care for him, and remained Max’s carer for 14 years until he passed away. At 60, widowed, living in large house all by herself, with her sons working in the Middle East, Eleanora soon found life alone unbearable. She was desperately in need of company and connections with other people, but too shy and too out of practice to know where to start. Eventually, she chose to take a week-long health retreat in the Midlands, which was previously recommended for Max when he was suicidal. The retreat was in an idyllic setting, which appealed to Eleanora’s nature-loving yearning. Additionally, most of its daily activities were organised for groups, so she wouldn’t be alone. In fact, Eleanora was elated by how welcoming and accepting the retreat centre was. It was also home to a Buddhist community with members from all walks of life and backgrounds. During the retreat, Eleanora felt alive and happy, and the meditation and the conviviality touched her. She wanted to stay a little longer, and ended up staying for another three months. By then, Eleanora also learned more about the community – meditation, self-development, serving others, taking care of nature and contributing to the greater good. Not having had a job of any sort in her entire life, Eleanora was initially embarrassed and uncertain about what she might offer, but was soon able to recognise the qualities she could bring to other people. At the end of the three months, Eleanora left for a professional training course in holistic healing, and within a year she had sorted out all her affairs at home, in order to return and become a permanent resident in the community. At the time of our interview with Eleanora, then aged 73, it was her 12th year there. She told us that she adores everyone in the community, who are now her closest friends, and she enjoys life more than ever because she feels a part of larger family. She concluded: ‘More importantly, by taking care of the community and running the retreat centre together, we also contribute to other people’s health and wellness.’

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To make these points vivid, consider a newly born baby. Quite suddenly this new person becomes an immensely important part of the parents’ lives. The best explanation of why this is such an important transformation is that the value of the baby’s life has been imported into the parents’ own lives.12 The baby is a bearer of primary value: this means that the baby is worth loving, and that a host of other things matter only because the baby matters, such as: Do the nappies work? Is the food too hot? The baby has become part of the parents’ lives: they are not living as one person anymore. Sadly, in a similar fashion, when a person one loves dearly dies, their life is abruptly removed from one’s life.13 We have given a rudimentary defence of premise 2. Nevertheless, the main ideas are still not clear in part because we must distinguish two ways people can be part of one’s life. First, in the minimal sense: people are part of my life insofar as I relate to them as people. This depends on my willingness and capacity. In the second sense, people are part of my life insofar as I have good quality relationships with them, and this quality depends not only on what I do, but also on what they do. These two ways are unified because one’s life is better insofar as other people are a valuable part of it.

Being-with 1: others as persons We claimed that there are two ways in which a person can be part of one’s life: the minimal way, and the way that depends on the qualities of the relationship. In this sub-section, we will briefly examine the first of these. Part of one’s wellbeing is to recognise others as persons as one undertakes activities with them. This recognition is part of well-being because one’s being with others has intrinsic value but only insofar as one is connected to them as bearers of value or as persons. One way to fail to be so connected is to instrumentalise other people. Insofar as one does that, one inhabits a phenomenological world that does not contain other people as such. For example, when I regard someone primarily as a nuisance or as an obstacle then I am treating that person in this respect merely as an object. Likewise, if I regard someone merely as useful or as an affordance, to that extent I do not regard her as a person. In a similar fashion, many interactions and social relations with others are governed by functional roles defined by purposes. Insofar as one’s interactions with others accord with such roles, one does not regard the person as a person, but rather in terms of use-value. For example, consider the person at the supermarket cash register. In societies that are largely structured around production and consumption, these functional relations can dominate the way that we are with others. Insofar as they do, we are not connected to others as people. As we saw in Chapter 2, this is not an all-or-nothing affair. Terms such as ‘regard’ and ‘treat’ are intensional verbs; this means that their individuation is relative to a set of descriptions, and they are aspectual.14 In some respects, we regard the cashier as a person, for instance, even when we ask him whether we can pay with a credit card. In others, we don’t. Nevertheless, insofar as one regards a

Relationships 105 person merely instrumentally, one cannot connect appreciatively to her intrinsic value. And insofar as this is true, then being with other people will not count towards one’s well-being. The point isn’t the familiar Kantian one that treating others as mere objects is immoral. Rather it is that the tendency to treat other people in this way constitutes a form of ill-being. It is a pattern that precludes one from appreciating and being with others as persons. Insofar as we live in a phenomenological world that is devoid of other people, we live an impoverished life. Eleanora’s story demonstrates vividly the following: the fact that other people have entered one’s life brings value to the living of one’s life. It satisfies a necessary condition for the relational aspect of her well-being. Insofar as one lives more as one among others, the more this relational dimension of well-being will be satisfied and one’s experiential or phenomenological ‘world’ will be richer, in that it contains persons with their own experiential ‘universes’. Consider how great novelists bring characters to life and illuminate the complexities and depth of the other person. In contrast, insofar as one lives as a single isolated person and views other people merely as a nuisance or as useful affordance, one will inhabit a phenomenological ‘world’ empty of people. The famous quote ‘A person first starts to live when he can live outside of himself’ misses the point that, in a sense, there never was a time that a person didn’t live outside of herself.15 We always have been in myriad relationships with others in a society at large. The point is that we don’t always live with emotional recognition or appreciation of those relations. To live in a self-centred way is not to live as an autonomous individual, but rather, it is to live in a way that fails to recognise emotionally that one is not an autonomous individual. The conclusion isn’t that we add value to our lives by becoming more than self-contained autonomous individuals. It is rather that we add value by recognising more deeply and thoroughly that we are not such individuals. This suggests the principle that all people are equally real. Hopefully, this sounds like a tautology. Nevertheless, self-centredness is a failure to recognise or appreciate emotionally the reality of other persons. For example, consider Max’s self-absorption: when he was preoccupied with his own disability, he was less sensitive to the emotional state of other people around him, even Eleanora’s. Being withdrawn is a way of being less connected to the reality of others. Another person is a living being whose existence constitutes a subjective point of view on the world, as equally real as one’s own. When Max was withdrawn, he could not make contact with that reality. In sharp contrast, the capacity to see things from another’s point of view constitutes evidence that one recognises more fully the reality of others. This would apply to James. Likewise, the capacity to recognise that I am part of other people’s lives will count as evidence that I recognise the reality of others. It indicates that I can view our relationship from their point of view. These points need to be set in the context of the previous chapter: the intrinsic value of an activity can become a part of a person’s well-being only through her awareness. This applies to the relational, our connections with others.

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Appropriate connections Being appropriately connected to other people means that they become more part of one’s own life as persons. This important idea needs amplifying. We connect to other people in three fundamental ways: first, by appreciating them, that is, through our own perception, feelings and emotions; second, through our goals and desires, by making their interests or concerns our own. The third involves a ‘we’-consciousness (Solomon 1988; Nozick 1989; Martin 2012). As we shall see, the third element is crucial because it marks the transformation from the minimal sense in which others can be part of one’s life (by being recognised as persons) to the richer sense in which a person is a part of one’s life because one has a meaningful mutual relationship. 1) Appreciation and feeling Appreciation is a form of experiential perception of valuable characteristics, which may involve having appropriate feelings and emotions. Part of appreciating the value of the activities that constitute our lives consists in appreciating the valuable nature of other people. Both James and Eleanora’s stories illustrate this appreciation. Such emotive perception is part and parcel of what it means to admire, respect, like, adore, love and care for others. These are ways of connecting to something of value beyond oneself. 2) Caring and common purpose An important way of connecting to other persons is through goals and desires. For example, when we love another person, we make her concerns our own. We can care for strangers in this way, too, as James’ does in his studying for a PhD and in his volunteer work and as Eleanora does in her work for people who attend the retreat centre. Furthermore, most people feel a need to be connected to things of value beyond themselves, and we forge such connections by adopting new ends, such as social causes, the furtherance of knowledge and the creation of art. There are jobs to be done, people in need and our friends require help. In these ways, we care. In Chapter 2, we saw that purposes are a way of improving the lived-through processes of life. By caring, we extend the limits of our lives. In both James’ and Eleanora’s stories, we see how we expand our lives, and we improve the quality of life’s processes. This does not imply that the things of value that we connect to are merely instrumentally valuable as a way to improve the processes of living. There is a world of difference between, on the one hand: a) ‘I care for him because I want my life to be meaningful, and caring for him is a way to make it more meaningful.’ and, on the other, b) ‘I care for him because he has the following qualities . . . and he is part of my life and its meaning.’

Relationships 107 The key differences between the two are that the first example is driven by an I-desire, whereas the second is motivated by a perception of the other person’s qualities. Additionally, the first example involves an instrumental relation, and the second a part/whole relation. Let us review these two points. First, an I-desire is directed to oneself; it has oneself as part of its content. For instance, the desire to drink coffee has the form ‘I want that I drink coffee soon.’ It is an I-desire because the content of the desire requires mention of me. In contrast, wanting the world to be a healthy place for future generations is not an I-desire, because its content does not mention me. Psychological egoism is the view that all one’s basic desires are I-desires (Williams 1973). Second, the caring mentioned in b) constitutes a connection to value; claim a) does not because it instrumentalises the other person. It is not an instance of connecting to the intrinsically valuable aspects of another person. In contrast, b) is such an instance, because she is part of one’s life. 3) Awareness of us The third way in which one connects to other people is by thinking, feeling and perceiving them and oneself not as ‘me and you,’ but as ‘us’. What are the differences between these two? The first difference is that the idea of two individual persons with separate, but perhaps overlapping, interests and concerns is distinct from the idea of a couple or group, for each one of whom the other is part of her life. Additionally, ‘we’-consciousness is self-reflective. In other words, I am aware of us as a couple, and so are you. Furthermore, you are conscious that I am so aware and so am I. We recognise of each other that we regard ourselves as ‘we’ or ‘us’.

Being-with 2: relationships Earlier we claimed that other people can be part of one’s life in two ways. In the minimal way, insofar as one treats others as persons, they form a valuable part of one’s life and one inhabits a phenomenological world that includes other people as such. Since conscious beings are the primary bearers of value, this implies that one’s life will be more valuable. It is better to live in a human world. The second way ascends to the level of relationships. This constitutes a new dimension to the idea of other people being part of one’s life. In this new dimension, as the quality of one’s relationship improves, the more the other person becomes part of one’s life and one’s life improves. Because relationships are two way, the quality of the relationship will depend on the other person, as well as oneself. We have provided two distinct accounts of being-with; isn’t this an unnecessary complication? To answer this, consider the following juxtaposition. On the one hand, one’s capacity to regard other people in general as real beings doesn’t depend directly on how others behave. It is rather a question of one’s growing beyond one’s self-centredness (Russell 2012: 216–219). In this regard, what matters for one’s well-being is that other people in general are part of one’s life as persons, that one lives in a human world. On the other hand, however, this doesn’t guarantee

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good relationships. For instance, throughout her period of caring for Max, although Eleanora was in a deep relationship with him, nevertheless, it was close to being abusive. Being in an abusive relationship would constitute a form ill-being, even when one regards the other fully as a person. In this regard, what matters for one’s well-being is the quality of one’s relationship with the other person.16 As so far defined, appropriate connection enables others to be part of one’s life in a minimal sense. How do we make the jump to the richer second sense of being part of one’s life, when people have reciprocal relationships with each other? The answer is that self-reflective ‘we’-awareness dramatically alters the nature of relations. It transforms the bonds between people from the interpersonal to the collective intrapersonal in three ways. First, it permits the ideas of doing things together as a unit and as communal activity, in contrast to the concept of co-operation between separate individuals. This locates a very important difference, say, between playing tennis with a close friend and playing with a stranger: the first is something we did; the second is something I did with someone else. Second, it transforms the way other peoples’ concerns enter our lives. It is one thing for a person’s goals to become mine, quite another for us to have purposes that are essentially conceived of by both of us as ours. This allows for a new possibility: this goal is mine only insofar as it is ours. Third, ‘we’-awareness permits the introduction of a new historical consciousness into the appreciation of a relationship. For example, couples often say: ‘We have been through many things together.’ Blood and family ties involve this historical ‘we’-awareness. In summary, ‘we’-awareness transforms the earlier points about appreciation and shared goals. There is now another way to appreciate other people: as part of one’s life. In this regard, they are no longer other. And there is now another way to share goals: not merely by having purposes in common but by having common purposes. We acquire ends that are ‘we’-goals. As we become ‘we’-centred in these reflective ways, we move into the sphere of personal relationships. For example, one’s children are part of oneself, integral to one’s everyday living, and one is a member of a family group. One is a ‘we’. For the limited purposes of this chapter, we will not define what ‘a good quality relationship’ means.17 Nevertheless, one of the minimal dimensions that defines a good quality relationship is the extent to which one feels recognised as a person by the other. A major complaint in relationships is that the other person doesn’t pay one enough attention, or doesn’t listen to one, or that the other person is cruel or treats one as stupid or disrespectfully. For example, James’ parent being abusive and Eleanora’s husband being angry suggest that these weren’t good quality relationships. In each case, the person who feels unloved or disrespected feels treated as less than a full person. In a similar vein, it is hard to have a good quality relationship with a person who is consistently selfish and bullying, and a person who is short-tempered or irascible will tend to treat one as less than a person during her bad moods and storms. In each of these relationships, one will tend to feel treated as less than a full person. Let us return to the broad context. Human experiences, activities and processes essentially involve interactions. Whenever we act, our activity has a content that is necessarily defined in relation to others, that is, to things, organisms, persons,

Relationships 109 social groups, and assemblages of these. For reasons already discussed, relations with other persons are especially important for our well-being. One’s way of being is better insofar as one has good quality relationships with others and, consequently, such relationships constitute an important aspect of well-being. The two ways in which other persons are part of one’s well-being stand in tension. First, all other things being equal, it is better to have a wider life that has more persons as part of it. This means that it is better to connect to the reality of more persons as opposed to fewer. Being connected to the reality of other persons means feeling that the other is a living bearer of intrinsic value. This means feeling that she is worthy of care. This means that other things matter because she does. This connection can be a strong emotional experience. As such, this requirement of the first kind may conflict with the second regarding quality relationships. In short, all other things aren’t always equal. One cannot be close friends with everyone. One cannot let everyone enter equally into one’s life. People have different capacities to bring others into their life, and people matter to us in diverse ways. Given my capacities, if I have too many friends, then the quality of each of those relationships may decrease. A person can overstretch herself, and thereby end up having fewer meaningful good quality relationships. Quality relationships require commitment and loyalties. This means that one must spend time on and pay attention to those persons with whom one has a special relationship, and this may compromise or diminish one’s capacity to connect well to the reality of others beyond one’s immediate circle. There is a second tension. Insofar as I perceive others as real and as persons, to this extent I am more vulnerable to being mistreated by them. To let another person into one’s life is to be closer to her subjectivity, which means being more willing to see and feel things from her point of view. This means that one is more willing to consider the other person’s perception of oneself. In short, it is much harder to be rejected or abused or humiliated by someone whom one perceives as real than by someone whom one discounts or hardly sees as real. The same point: one way to become less vulnerable to the mistreatment by others is to cut oneself off from them by regarding them as less than human. One gains greater immunity from mistreatment by others by distancing oneself from them and thereby living in a less human ‘world’. In affirming this, we are not denying that there might a better third alternative: a way of being more immune from hurt without depersonalising others. This third alternative has important ramifications. It means that well-being requires that we need to be more resilient in our relationships with others without sacrificing our capacity to appreciate the reality of others as persons. We don’t need to cut off others who hurt or humiliate us. However, in suggesting resilience, we do not mean that people should put up with abuse and relational exploitation, or that one must endure the ill-treatment. How is this possible? We shall see.

Pitfalls and objections Let us deal with some misunderstandings of the points argued for here and avoid some pitfalls. First, especially considering Eleanora’s story, one might be tempted

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to affirm: ‘Life is dreary without friends, and empty without people to share with. We need friends, companions and acquaintances.’ This kind of assertion carries a misleading emphasis. It suggests that friends are external to us, and that we need them to avoid feeling empty and dreary. It misses the whole idea that others can be part of one’s life and that this matters because the other person matters. To remedy this misleading approach: the issue isn’t what causes a feeling or sense of wellbeing but rather what constitutes being and living well. Relationships with others might cause well-being, but the more fundamental point is that they constitute an inescapable aspect of well-being. Consequently, relationships with others might constitute well-being, even when they cause feelings of ill-being. In more common parlance, another person can be a meaningful part of one’s life even when she causes one to feel bad. There is a deeper remedy for the misleading approach. Insofar as one enters a non-instrumental relationship with another person, it is the other person that matters. In such a relationship, one cares about the other because she has value. My care shows that I am connected to this value in virtue of which she matters and my relationship with her consists inter alia in this value becoming part of my life. Likewise, the relationship consists in my value as a person becoming part of her life. Recognition of this adds to my being well. My well-being consists in a mutual recognition that this is happening to both of us. Just as she is part of my life and just as I am part of her life and just as we both recognise these truths, these mutual recognitions make our relationship deeper, and hence more constitutive of our being well together. This general point is important for happiness studies about having children: many parents report a reduced feeling of happiness when they have children. At the same time, parents report that their lives are more meaningful for having children. These reports might look contradictory if we conflated the causes of and the constituents of well-being, and if we fell into the allied mistake of identifying well-being with feelings of happiness (Layard 2006). These reports seem contradictory insofar as we forget that children become part of one’s life and, insofar as they do, they transform what counts as one’s being well in a way that is an improvement.18 Once these points are clear, we can understand that aspects of our lives are constitutively part of well-being even when they cause us hardship. In this sense, they need to be accounted for differently: as constituent and as cause. While people who don’t have children may have lives that are more self-directed and even carefree, it is fair to say that they lack a dimension of human existence. It might be objected that this last claim is too romantic and not realistic enough. Indeed, there are people who wish that their children had never been born. Presumably, this is usually because of the hardship and the emotional strain of having children in conditions of deprivation. Having children demands sacrifices, which under conditions of destitution and struggle may be near impossible. On the other side, we perceive the normal human condition as one in which any person has others as part of her life, and children would be one paradigm of such a relation. Where does our analysis fall concerning this conflict? The answer is that the current analysis insists on distinguishing constituent and cause: having children is

Relationships 111 part of well-being, but it can cause parents hardship. How do these two factors play out? It depends on the circumstances of the lives of the parents. There isn’t an answer that it is context-free, except for inter alia the general insistence that we shouldn’t confuse the constituents of well-being with the causes. A second pitfall: there is the tendency to think that other people enter one’s well-being through their well-being. The idea is that if the people I love are ailing then I cannot flourish. Likewise, if my loved ones are flourishing then this will contribute to my well-being. We claim that this way of conceiving the connection between people is a pitfall: it is too individualistic to serve as a constituent of the relational aspect of well-being because it lacks the underlying idea that other people can become part of one’s life. The point shouldn’t be that I can’t feel good unless my children are flourishing or happy because this would make them external causes or conditions of my well-being. Rather the point should be that my children are a part of my life. My sense of me includes my children; in some regards they are not other at all. Claiming that our well-being is interlinked underdescribes this point. Third, someone might object that when other people increasingly become part of one’s life, this doesn’t necessarily constitute a furtherance of one’s well-being. Other people can destroy one’s life. Sometimes one is better off alone. Sometimes, it is better that others are not part of one’s life. To answer this objection, we need to make a fundamental point. This is the now tedious idea that we aren’t discussing what causes well-being but rather what constitutes it. It may cause one terrible suffering and ill-being to allow a malicious person to become part of one’s life. This isn’t the issue at hand, however. The issue is whether other people becoming part of one’s life constitutes ipso facto an increase in well-being. If it does, then this doesn’t preclude the idea that such intrinsic value might be overridden by the harm another person can cause one. In short, intrinsically, it is better to be open; instrumentally, sometimes, in special circumstances, we need to be closed. One might want to press the objection. Clearly, our relations with others can constitute ill-being. Indeed, damning relations with other people constitutes the worst hell, as Sartre reminds us. This suggests the objection that it is not part of our well-being to be open to others as persons; sometimes we need to be closed. This objection isn’t about social moral norms; rather it is that well-being dictates that, in harmful relationships, we may need to close-down to the reality of others. The aim of this section is to reply to this objection in a deeper way. We begin with two observations. First, whenever someone wants something, she necessarily wants it primarily under some description that describes it as desirable. This doesn’t mean that the thing wanted is desirable, but it does mean that the thing wanted is perceived as desirable under some description by the person who wants it.19 It implies, what is perhaps obvious, that a person’s intentions always make sense to the person herself. However, this first-person point translates into the possibility of a third-person understanding. It implies that there is some description of the person’s desires or intentions that make sense to others who can see it from the person’s point of view. There is a way of making sense of others’ wants, of seeing what they want as a good in some fashion. This applies to one’s worst

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enemy: there is some description of the situation such that he thinks it of as good, which one could oneself recognise as such. However, this doesn’t mean that we must agree with the person’s judgments concerning the overall goodness of the intended action (Thomson 2020). To this, one might add a second point. We are subject to an epistemological asymmetry, which follows from the very nature of consciousness. This is the tendency, in our own case, to apparently understand directly our own intentions, but in the case of others, to perceive their actions as defined by their results.20 In the first-person case, we perceive directly our own intentions, which are necessarily directed to some good. In contrast, in the case of others, we directly perceive their actions, usually as defined by their results, which are typically at best a mixed bag. In conjunction with the first point, this epistemological asymmetry constitutes a double standard: it means that I am prone to see my own actions as always intended at good, and those of others as wrong or, at best, as less than good. There is a built-in bias.21 Here we are concerned with the consequences of this asymmetry for well-being rather than morality. The quality of a relationship depend/s on the other person, as well as oneself. The two points that we just made modulate this dependence on the other: one cannot simply place blame on the other person for the poor quality of the relationship. Let us examine an example. I am fed up with a close friend of many years. Recent events have led me to feel that he is too self-absorbed, and that our interactions are less than satisfactory from my point of view: he doesn’t listen well and he is always putting his own interests first in any conversation or situation. I feel used or taken advantage of. This situation causes me pain, sadness, self-doubt and some anger and anxiety. I take this example to be a mild but typical case of the kind of sufferings one might endure in a relationship. How do the two points temper this description? My description of the relationship doesn’t respect the two hermeneutical ideas. First, I have ignored the idea that the other person is aiming at something good in his desires, and I haven’t tried to make my description and feelings consistent with this. Of course, I don’t see what he wants as directed to the overall good, but that’s not the issue at hand. Even given this, this shouldn’t lead me to deny that his wants are directed towards something good. In other words, I have dismissed his wants as being directed towards the bad per se. Second, I have fallen blindly into the trap of the epistemological asymmetry. I have put my grievances about his actions solely in terms of their effects on me, which signifies that I haven’t tried to enter his point of view. While, I think of my intentions as necessarily directed towards some good, I judge his actions in terms of their results on me. Thus, I haven’t tried to overcome this epistemological asymmetry. In conclusion, this means that I have adopted a hermeneutic that favours blame. Let us relate this to well-being. We argued that well-being requires having good relations with other people, which requires being connected and open to the value of others. Against this proposal, we articulated an objection, namely, that when one has seriously bad relationships with other people then well-being cannot require that we be open to the other as a person. In other words, horrible relationships that

Relationships 113 partly constitute ill-being don’t require this condition of openness. In reply to this objection, we have presented two ingredients: the idea that others’ intentions are directed to some good and the concept of the epistemological asymmetry. How do these two ingredients relate to the point at hand (replying to the objection)? They show how acknowledging that a relationship is constitutive of ill-being doesn’t require jettisoning the idea that well-being requires that we relate to others as persons. What the two ingredients show is that one doesn’t need to demonise or dehumanise the other, even in the context of a harmful and abusive relationship. One can still maintain that well-being requires that one regard the people around one as persons, including the person who has hurt one. The fact that others might treat one as less than a person doesn’t require abandoning the idea that our well-being requires that we don’t do the same. Even when a relationship is bad (intrinsically), we can still acknowledge that the other is a person who intended something good, even if he is egoistic, insensitive and misguided. Furthermore, once we acknowledge the inherent epistemological bias, ipso facto, we will be less willing to judge the situation in terms such as ‘I was right and you were wrong.’ Recognising the inherent partiality means that one’s judgments will be spontaneously predisposed to be more nuanced and open-ended: ‘As far as I can see, I was more right in this way than in that way . . .’ Thus, given what the epistemological bias means, and given that others’ intentions are directed to some perceived good, the objection fails. Being open doesn’t mean that we should inhabit Sartre’s No Exit. Why is the failure of this objection important for well-being? First, it relates to well-being instrumentally. Clearly, a person who embodies the two hermeneutic principles will tend to have better relationships. Second, it pertains to the constitutive aspect of well-being concerning self-consciousness. As we shall see in Chapter 6, part of what constitutes one’s self-consciousness of being healthy is one’s ability and willingness to see oneself as a person who is equally real as other people. Third, it allows us to retain the important insight that we developed at the beginning of this chapter, namely, that part of the relational nature of well-being is to be with others as persons. We don’t need to abandon that idea even in the tempest or torture of a bad relationship.

Being-in One’s activities and experiences have value in relation to other people: one can do things for others (doing-for) and one can do things with others (being-with). In addition, activities are embedded in a complex set of social relations, which form part of a community or society. Since this is an inescapable and value-relevant aspect of our way of being, it will also be a dimension of our well-being. We are social creatures; there are forms of goodness along this dimension that constitute our being well, and conversely forms of badness that comprise ill-being. One might call this aspect of well-being ‘being-in’. An aspect of a person’s well-being is her being in a community or society in ways that count as doing so well. This is a third factor of the relational nature of well-being pertaining to persons. As Eleanora’s experiences illustrate, part of living well includes how one lives within a

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society and community such that it dovetails with one’s well-being. To repeat, we are concerned with how this dimension of our lives constitutes well-being rather than with how it causes it. We will describe two facets of this specific dimension of well-being. For the first it is important to remember in everyday life that our activities, awareness and self-consciousness are all relational.22 This is so in part because activities are always in relations to some things: we eat the apple, watch the sunset, evaluate the plan, converse with a friend and so on. More deeply, it is also because the activities, experiences and processes can be meaningful because of what it is to be an agent. An action is defined by its content, and this is a form of meaningfulness. At least in the case of linguistic beings, this meaningfulness is ineluctably social. In short, this implies that the meaningfulness of our lives and the living of a life is social. The very substance of our being is social: look into a human heart and mind and you will find a social history23 This doesn’t mean that we aren’t individuals; it means that our individuality must be conceived socially, in terms of the social conditions that permit it. These points are important for well-being because it is possible to live in ways that are more or less consonant with the social fabric of our being. It is something that we can ignore, violate or appreciatively integrate both in our social arrangements or institutions, and in the way we conduct our daily lives. The second facet of being-in is a localised or specific expression of the first. The social nature of one’s being is general, but the communities one lives in are specific. This second facet is that one can live in a community in ways that are more or less well and which are constitutively relevant for well-being. We can define this in three steps. The terms ‘community’ and ‘to commune’ have connotations of shared open intimacy, to which we should add the idea of solidarity or solid mutual care. This means that well-being requires that we are in a community in which open sharing and intimate relationships of mutual care are the norm. Second, being-in means more than just being a member of a community. It requires that one feels part of and that one belongs to a community. In this sense, it is the opposite of intimate being-with in which another person becomes part of one’s life (and vice versa). For being-in, one becomes part of the life of a larger whole: one actively participates in that life. This means that the members of the community share a ‘we’ consciousness that consists in one’s being part of the life of the larger whole of a community and recognizing that others are, too. This recognition will be mutual. Third, being-in modulates both doing-for and being-with. Part of being in a community is that one does things for others and with others who are also part of the community. Likewise, self-reflective ‘we’-consciousness is modulated by being in a community. For being-in, these elements are fused: the doing-for and being-with are an expression of a special shared ‘we’-awareness: we are in a community insofar as we do things for others and we are in relationship with others because of a shared ‘we’-consciousness that consists in one being part of the life of the larger whole of a community, which has a history.

Relationships 115 It is important not to confuse this belonging with one’s identity, which will be the subject of the next chapter. To claim that a person belongs to a community in a way that is partly constitutive of her well-being isn’t necessarily the same as asserting that this is her identity. To belong to a community doesn’t require that one self-identifies non-derivatively as a member of it. To see this, suppose that a good community would be small. The fact that one has a sense of belonging to a village doesn’t imply that one’s self-identifications should be parochial. Notice that we haven’t described this aspect of well-being in instrumental terms. Typically good communities are characterised as such also in instrumental terms: for example, in terms of safety and the means for achieving of common goals. Such instrumental characterisations are not mistaken, but they are out of place when one is trying to define what constitutes well-being.

Notes 1 This puzzle has been noted by other writers such as Shelly Kagan (1998) and Thaddeus Metz (2001). 2 This problem is discussed in Martin (2012: 114) who notes: ‘the mere appeal to the happiness of givers is unsatisfying, or at least incomplete, as moral justification. It misses the primary moral point of helping others.’ 3 We assume that meaning is a kind of non-instrumental value. 4 ‘Intrinsic’ here means non-instrumental, not non-relational. 5 We say ‘usually’ because there are activities that are valuable as means for which the relevant end is entirely self-regarding. I might enjoy cooking for myself or having a bath. (Note: some self-regarding goal-defined actions might be activities that are also instrumentally valuable as means and others, such as playing, might be intrinsically valuable but without being intrinsically valuable as means.) 6 As well as our own income, but the same point applies. 7 Notice that the problem and its solution arise at the level of the constituents of wellbeing and not at the level of its causes. As we explained from the outset, the questions, ‘What constitutes well-being?’ and ‘What causes well-being?’ are fundamentally different. In this work, we concentrate on the first to avoid an impoverished conception of well-being. 8 Or more clearly, part of the self-regarding non-instrumental valuable nature of the activity, experience or process in part consists in connecting appropriately to something of non-instrumental value that is other-regarding. 9 The intrinsic valuable nature (pertinent to well-being) of one’s experiences, activities and life’s processes is partly constituted by their being performed or undergone with other people. 10 Not reducible but dependent. Typically, human motivation is such that we have deslogo interests pertaining to the ‘need’ for certain relationships. Also, appreciation or awareness is an important aspect of one’s relationships. The value of relationships isn’t reducible to these two factors but it is dependent on them. 11 Some philosophers argue that well-being and meaningfulness are mutually exclusive. In other words, they would deny the claim that one’s well-being is greater if one engages in activities that are more meaningful. See Metz (2002, 2013). 12 The best explanation of a certain kind. 13 Philosophical aside: to claim that typically one feels very happy or even elated on becoming a mother or father misidentifies the point. One can see this by considering the point that the parents feel elated because a new person has become part of their lives. Therefore, one could recognise the baby as a primary bearer of value and recognise that

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this value has become part of one’s own life and not feel elated (because for instance one is too tired or too anxious). The feeling of happiness isn’t the main point. The cause of it is. The cause is that this person or valuable being has become part of one’s life. Perhaps a better alternative explanation is that when parents see their newly born baby, they are genetically programmed to have a tendency to feel immediate love of the newborn. This wouldn’t count as an alternative explanation if the concept of loving includes the idea of making someone part of one’s life in a way that imports the value of the other into one’s own life. This is indeed what we shall argue. However, we can already see the insufficiency of the genetic psychological explanation. It explains why we care for the baby. It doesn’t explain why it is important to care. Because they are intensional verbs, it means that they are referentially opaque. ‘The Big Picture: The Meaning of Life: Philosophers, pundits and plain folk ponder what it’s all about’, (Answer by Armand Hammer), Life, 1988, December, Page 89, Column 2, Published by Time, Inc, Chicago, Illinois and New York. In this discussion, we are not referring to the causal impact of relationships on one’s well-being. Relationships with persons can have a positive or negative instrumental impact on one’s well-being. This would require some classification of relationships as well as a definition of what counts as non-instrumentally good in well-being-relevant ways for each type. Given a good quality relationship. This point has its origin in the thought of Socrates and Plato (Thomson 2016). This doesn’t mean that such self-perceptions are immediate and infallible. For more detailed argument see: Thomson (2002b) and Gill and Thomson (2019: Chapter 3). This bias has deep implications for morality. It means that we are morally obliged to be careful and generous in the way that we construe others. This is because the four aspects of well-being are melded. This implies also that our activities, awareness and relations are suffused and structured by self-consciousness, and so on. Or, perhaps more accurately, what you will find is constructed through a social history.

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Evaluative self-awareness

It is time for a lightning review. In the first chapter, after outlining some preliminaries for the proposed framework, we described four facets of well-being. In the second chapter, we defined a broadly Kantian element of this framework, according to which any account of well-being should not instrumentalise the person, and instrumentalising oneself would count against one’s well-being. In the third, we explained the non-instrumental value of the activities, experiences and processes that constitute a life in such a way that it can avoid the dilemma of the desire theory versus objective list theory. In so doing, we indicated what kinds of empirical evidence would be relevant for claims about what is non-instrumentally valuable for a being. The fourth chapter showed how appreciative awareness is relevant to well-being without embracing a monadic view of happiness. We showed how a pleasure theory transforms into a theory of cognitive appreciation that has emotional aspects. A flourishing life or being well requires appropriate kinds of evaluative selfperception. We introduced the idea of evaluative perception in Chapter 4. The content of our perceptions is defined by a set of descriptions that capture how we see what we perceive. For instance, I see a person’s behaviour as friendly, and ‘friendly’ will be part of the content of the perception.1 Furthermore, the content can be evaluative. When a person perceives an accident as gruesome then, to describe the content of his perception accurately, one needs to use evaluative words such as ‘gruesome’ or ‘awful’. Her perception has evaluative content. These same points apply to self-perception and self-awareness: our perceptions of ourselves can be and are often richly value-laden. That they can be so should be beyond dispute, but how can our self-perceptions be appropriately value-laden? What does appropriate mean in this context? And how does this relate to the constitution of well-being? One’s life is in part made up of one’s almost continuous self-perceptions. It is an ineradicable aspect of a person’s life. Therefore, good self-consciousness will be an unavoidable feature of a good or well-lived life. In saying this, we are not asserting that positive selfconsciousness causes well-being, even though this is certainly true. We are affirming that a good or appropriate self-awareness is partly constitutive of well-being. Since one’s sense of oneself is a constant companion and all pervasive influence on one’s life, this aspect of well-being is important. In the next chapter, we

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will articulate this importance in relation to the other aspects of well-being, and reserve this one for articulating what this dimension amounts to: How should we define ‘good self-consciousness’ as relevant to well-being? If good living requires good self-consciousness, what counts as good in this second context? There are four preliminary points, prior to delving into this key question. First, contemporary writers are prone to think of self-consciousness purely in terms of consciousness of the self. In turn, ‘self’ is often characterised in terms of identity and narrative (McAdams and McLean 2013). With these two moves, the issue then quickly becomes: how do we construct our identities? How do our narratives construct the self? As an antidote to the hypnotic effect of this monolithic picture, we can remind ourselves that reflexive self-consciousness almost continuously permeates our lives even in the tiny and fine details. As I drink coffee, I am aware of myself doing this in several different ways, many of them quite commonplace. At the simplest level, I can attend to my activities as mine. For example, as I drink the coffee, I can be aware of my awareness as such. This reflexive self-consciousness can accompany any particular experience (Kant 1999: Transcendental Deduction sections 16–19). I can also be aware of myself as a coffee-drinker or as a person who likes to frequent coffee shops. Awareness of oneself, under some description or other, is usually interwoven into the micro-fabric of one’s daily life. For instance, it is not only that moods can infect one’s experience of one’s activities, for such influences can occur without one being conscious of them; it is rather that one can be aware of one’s mood and that this awareness of oneself can affect one’s experiences. In short, we can contrast global self-perceptions (such as ‘I am a happy person’) with more local ones that transform the felt quality of everyday life. In a rush to understand the more glamorous global, we might overlook the importance of the more mundane local. Second, the threefold distinction between activities, awareness of them and awareness of that awareness is an abstraction. In everyday living, they are constantly joined and co-form, even when self-consciousness waxes and wanes. This point helps us to see how local self-conscious perceptions can constitute wellbeing. As we saw in Chapter 4, one’s appreciation of life’s activities is appropriate when it tracks the desirable features of the activity. One appreciates what is good about the activity. A similar point applies to self-awareness: it needs to be appropriate to the appreciation. For example, I can be aware of myself enjoying the taste of the coffee. A person who is thinking about his appearance to others, or who is overanxious to impress, will not be able to appreciate properly walking on the beach. He will be too anxious about his hair. Local self-awareness modulates the appreciation of activities. In so doing, it can enhance the appreciation or it can destroy it. We can take this point further. In Chapter 4, we saw that one’s awareness of one’s environment and of one’s activities inadvertently constructs a phenomenal world that one inhabits or that one is saddled with. If I attend to the beautiful then I will live in a beautiful ‘world’. If I attend to the material wealth of others, then I will inhabit a world that provides affordances for envy and feelings of superiority. A similar point applies to self-awareness: one’s local self-consciousness does the

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same. Through one’s awareness of one’s phenomenal ‘world’, one inadvertently constructs a sense of oneself: I am the kind of person who lives in this kind of world. This isn’t to assert that one constructs oneself (for who would do the constructing?). It is rather to recognise that one builds a complex sense of oneself: oneself as perceived by oneself from moment to moment. This seamless mosaic of local self-perceptions partly constitutes one’s well-being. The quality of local self-perception defines the quality of one’s inhabited phenomenal ‘world’. Let us back up a bit. The important theme of narrative identity has tended to dominate discussions of self-consciousness. We have offered a quick antidote to that by illustrating how self-consciousness can be salient to the concept of wellbeing in local or minute ways. Third, we need to distinguish self-awareness and self-consciousness. By definition, the latter is conscious. However, it is important to recognise that not all self-awareness is conscious. For example, a person may accept important and damaging assumptions about herself without being conscious that she does so. Indeed, a person can be subject to an emotive self-perception without being aware of it. For instance, people can suffer from insecurity without knowing it. Insecurity is more than a mood because it involves a set of self-perceptions that the person needn’t be conscious of. Thus, evaluative awareness of oneself needn’t be self-conscious. Fourth, in this chapter we are examining ways of being well with oneself. We are investigating well-being at the level of self-awareness and self-consciousness. At this level, negative and positive feedback loops become an important issue. For example, the selectivity of self-consciousness tends to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. For instance, by noticing and paying attention to one’s anxiety, one thereby reinforces the perceptions of oneself as anxious, and one reinforces the feeling that one is living in a world that is full of things to be anxious about. In a similar vein, one of the tragedies of poverty is not only that it limits the range of desirable activities and experiences that a person can live through, but also that it damages the perception a person may have of herself at the local level of selfawareness, especially concerning the future. These kind of feedback loops mean that a distinction that we insisted on at the start of our work becomes more complex: the distinction between constituent and cause. Earlier, we said that the two questions ‘What causes well-being?’ and ‘What comprises well-being?’ are distinct. Now because of the feedback loops inherent in self-consciousness or the self-fulfilling prophecy feature of selfawareness, this distinction needs to be modulated. We need to introduce the idea of internal causes of well-being as partial constituents. We can do this through the negative principle that if some factor internally causes harm to a person’s well-being then it cannot be a constituent of well-being. For example, we might want to claim that a person’s self-image is part of her well-being. In general, that people have a self-conception is an integral and inescapable aspect of our way of being. Thus, it is appropriate to discuss well-being and ill-being in this context. However, if a person’s specific self-image is internally damaging to her life then one cannot count that self-image as a component of the person’s well-being. We

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used the qualification ‘internally’ for a reason. These feedback loops don’t depend directly on external circumstances. When a person perceives herself as free of anxiety, this may cause her to attend less to what would otherwise be considered as anxiety producing factors in her life, and this reinforces her tendency to regard herself as free from anxiety. Let’s take a brief look at Martha’s stories and see the working of some feedback loops. In summary, self-awareness is global when it addresses one’s life as a whole, or oneself as a whole person. It can take the form of judgments about one’s character, for instance in Martha’s case, with the judgments ‘I am a worrier’ or ‘I am not the kind of person who would do that.’ It can also take the form of narratives that one would tell oneself and others about one’s life and/or bits of it. For example, Martha’s narratives seemed to be selected to support her selfdescription as ‘a worrier’. It can also take the form of perception of one’s potential or future, such as the uncertainty Martha felt about her future. Then there is also self-consciousness in the present. This variety of judgments partly define one’s relationship to oneself.

Martha was in her late 40s when she took part in our research interviews. She introduced herself as a single mother with two daughters aged 17 and 18. For five years, she was studying part-time for an undergraduate degree in environmental sciences. Martha describes herself as a ‘worrier’. It started when she was a child. Born out of wedlock in Ireland, Martha always felt unwanted and disliked by people around her, including her own mother, her stepfather and his family. Her parents ran a family business which got into trouble after 10 years, and anxieties about the business brought alcohol, rows, fights, and even violence. So, throughout her teenage years, Martha was anxious and tried to make herself invisible because she would be ‘too sick with worry’ about being identified as the cause of the family’s problems. Martha quit education at 15 to help out the family. At 21, she got married. Her husband worked in the Airforce, and soon they moved abroad. It was a comfortable life, and Martha had the opportunity to travel, and to see a great deal of the world. However, beneath all the whirlwind romance and happiness lay Martha’s anxiety that her husband was going to find out that she was no good for anything, and that he would soon leave her. She couldn’t let herself enjoy the natural beauty of Asia and Africa during their holidays, or appreciate the arts and history of the European cities in which they lived. Therefore, it didn’t come as a surprise to her when they divorced after seven years of marriage. Almost immediately, Martha moved in with Tom, with whom she was already acquainted. After three years, they had two beautiful daughters. The children took Martha out of her usual anxieties and worries because

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they were delightful and demanding, and Martha hardly had time to worry. While Martha occupied herself with two babies, however, Tom moved on, and moved in with a new partner. Suddenly Martha found herself once again worried about everything, being a single mother, living abroad, children’s health and well-being, housing, money, food, education, work, and more. She was so worried that she literally worried herself sick physically, and as a result, the family of three they returned to England and thereafter became subjects of social welfare. Strangely, for the first time, Martha (and her daughters) had some stability – council housing, schooling, child benefits, and occasional parttime work. Martha embraced life ‘as if watching it from outside and waiting for something (bad) to happen’. When it was still uneventful, Martha gathered her courage to return to education, by first taking access courses to qualify to apply for university courses, and then studying for an undergraduate degree in environmental sciences. Unfortunately, her decision coincided with the government’s extended period of austerity, and once again, Martha was thrown into the deep pool of anxiety and worry. This time, it is a long list of things all to do with money – child benefits, tax credit, student finances, housing benefit and a host of other issues. Learning has been such a dream for Martha since 15, and now when it is finally within her reach, all the worries seem to prevent her from fully engaging in it: ‘I am just not sure if I am ever going to carry on with my studies.’

Forms of self-awareness To explain how these global judgments are (partly) constitutive of well-being, we need to look at their relationship to time. Global self-awareness has different functions in defining well-being according to whether it is awareness of oneself in the present, past or future. a) In the present In the immediacy of the present moment, I can be aware of my awareness or conscious of my consciousness. We can call this phenomenon ‘reflexive selfconsciousness’ to distinguish it from other forms of self-consciousness or awareness of oneself. One can perceive oneself under many kinds of descriptions. For example, Martha is often aware of herself as a single mother and sometimes as a citizen of the UK. In contrast, a person can be aware of herself under no specific description (or predicate) but simply as ‘I’. This is reflexive self-consciousness. It is an idea that is close to the Stoics and Kant. This is the simplest form of self-consciousness and is a prerequisite for other forms of self-awareness and for being a person.2 Because of this, it is an inescapable part of our way of being: being an I. Being an I includes the idea that one

122 Evaluative self-awareness is capable of reflexive self-consciousness. As an inescapable and fundamental aspect of our way of being, being an I is a non-instrumentally valuable state. This follows from the conclusions of Chapter 2 in which we argued that the fundamental bearer of prudential non-instrumental value consists in living as a human person. From this it follows that being an I is non-instrumentally valuable and that appreciation of this is an indispensable aspect of well-being. To put this in plain language, an essential ingredient of well-being is to take pleasure in one’s consciousness. To take pleasure in one’s consciousness is to have appreciative reflexive self-consciousness; that is, it is to feel happy being an I in its simplest and most immediate form. We can call this ‘joy’. We say ‘simplest form’ because taking pleasure in one’s consciousness is different from, for example, taking pleasure or appreciating that one is an engineer (which is different again from taking pleasure in doing engineering). To repeat the point, to appreciate the value of being an I is to take direct pleasure in one’s own consciousness as such. This is different from taking pleasure in seeing oneself under various descriptions, such as being an undergraduate student, being a single mother, being clever. These are more complex forms of self-appreciation, which we will discuss later. The kind of appreciative self-reflexive consciousness that we have mind is similar to what the Epicureans call ‘passive pleasure’. Their idea is that there is a kind of pleasure that doesn’t come from having one’s desires and ego satisfied, but which consists in a state of serenity or tranquillity. They characterised this as absence of pain (Thomson 2016). We are characterising it as the simple pleasure of being or as the joy that is being aware of one’s awareness. Despite some differences, the two accounts are similar because, as the Epicureans recognised, pain and other disturbances can distract one from feeling passive pleasure. The blockages to joy are various. We already discussed four kinds of obstacles to appreciation in Chapter 4: we can instrumentalise; we can allow our awareness to be overcome by desires or wants; we can be numbed by habit and our awareness can be coloured by emotions and moods. These also apply to our capacity to feel joy at being alive or conscious. To these, we now add the ways in which one’s perception of oneself can become an obstacle to good immediate self-consciousness or joy. For instance, when she was younger, Martha was plagued by insecurity and worries about how others perceived her (as the cause of problems in the family); she tended to be extremely cautious about being too self-assertive. Such a person will tend to take insult quickly. This self-perception will drown out the ability to feel the joy of the present moment. In this list of obstacles, we also need to include the elements of self-awareness discussed later in this chapter. If a person is aware of herself most of the time under predicates related to her past and future (e.g. in the case of Martha), then she will have fewer opportunities to be aware of herself simply as an I in the present moment. Furthermore, if these forms of self-awareness are emotionally laden then they will contribute towards patterns of self-awareness that become an obstacle to the joy of ‘I’ awareness.

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In conclusion, we can describe appreciative self-reflexive consciousness negatively as being free from disturbances or positively as the joyful appreciation of simply being conscious of one’s consciousness. If this is correct, then the Epicureans were right to think that damage to one’s ability to appreciate this mode of being would count as direct harm to one’s well-being. b) In the past It is often claimed that narratives provide unity to the self.3 They unite me as I am now with the ‘me’ of the past. They are supposed to do this in a way that is meaningful or significant for me now, and that adds potential to the ‘me’ of the future. In this sense, such narratives have a good claim to be essential aspects of well-being. They add value by unifying the past, and by linking it to one’s present experiences and one’s plans or possibilities for the future. This claim implies that a person who lacks such integrating narratives will be ipso facto deficient in well-being. Such a person would be fragmented or lack integrity. The aim of this section is to evaluate these claims, and to conclude about the role of narratival self-awareness in constituting well-being (concerning self-consciousness of one’s past). Narratives are stories that one tells self-consciously about oneself, to others or to oneself. In this sense, they are essentially about one’s past, even if they have a function and importance in terms of present perception of oneself and one’s perception of one’s future. They are a way to relate meaningfully to one’s past (Strawson 2004). However, they may not be the only way because one might remember isolated past events with affection without placing them in the context of a wider narrative. These are claims that lie beyond the scope of this inquiry, which is focused on the importance of narratives insofar as they partly constitute well-being. If they are an essential aspect of our being, then they are essential aspect of our being well. (This, of course, is in addition to their ability to contribute and enhance well-being, or the opposite, to harm.) There is one consideration that supports the claim that narratives are an essential aspect of our being regarding self-consciousness of one’s past. Our lives are embedded in a web of narratives of our own and of others (Taylor 1989). Since people are tellers of stories, it is difficult to imagine it otherwise (McIntyre 2007). This line of argumentation relies on the assumption that narrative should be conceived first and foremost as a process rather than as a product, and that the power of this process consists in its capacity to extract meanings from what might otherwise appear to be a set of isolated events and random acts. The process enables a person to develop an account of her life. This process can be imbued with creative potential, especially when it offers the narrator an opportunity to articulate what she values and might pursue in her ongoing life. It thus becomes possible for the person to thematise her life as if the process were life-making. As the narrator reorders the events in her life, she perceives her memories and experiences with a new significance. In this way, she is able to make new connections between the various encounters and happenings in her life.

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This does not imply that life was meaningless prior to a narrative-process of self-reflection. Rather it means that such a process may enable a person to understand better her past and, because of this, articulate new meanings, which were previously no more than latent possibilities. Furthermore, this does not entail the conventional claim that people live the stories which they tell (McAdams and McLean 2013). Rather it means that a person might employ the insights developed through narrating her life’s processes in deciding or guiding her future. As an important aside, there is a wealth of literature on narratives and wellbeing, which we will quickly relate to the main theme of this chapter. The literature tends to characterise three ways in which narrative processes (such as telling one’s life as a story to another person) can contribute (causally) to well-being. First, narrative interpretation can help a person make better sense of who she is, and thereby better articulate a personalised conception of her well-being. The interpretation and resulting analysis can help a person identify why she cares about some things more than others and consider whether these things really matter significantly more. Such self-conscious attention can enable a person to see in what ways their life could be better lived. Through such interrogation, the narrative process can accentuate meaningfulness and inspire growth as a striving for higher levels of purposefulness and richness in life and in one’s relationships with the world (Bauer, McAdams and Pals 2008). Such processes have been described as ‘narrative growth’. Second, some writers have maintained that narrative-processes enable one to critically examine one’s daily life from new angles (Gill 2013). They allow people to encounter something novel and meaningful in the mundane and ordinary. In articulating one’s experiences, a certain canonicity of narrative can be uncovered, interrupted and breached, thus making the familiar strange (Bruner 2004). This is why narrative-processes can enable us to question and transcend lived experience on a number of levels, such as the personal, cultural and political. The process of narrative reflection involves developing a personal life-story within overall cultural expectations (McLean 2008). As a field of inquiry, narrative can ‘pose dilemmas, subvert obvious or canonical “truths” that force incongruities upon our attention’ (Bruner 1986: 127). Furthermore, as with phenomenology, it is possible to focus narrative analysis on the social and political through the lenses of lived human experiences as the sites where self-knowledge and critical understanding are generated. For example, through such processes, people can become more aware of how the limitations imposed on them by their circumstances, such as family background, have constricted their lives. Others may see how their character and personal attributes have prevented them from appreciating life more fully. The third is that, as an interpretative process, narrative allows a person to increase her capacity to understand, resolve and discover a different set of meanings to the traumas and difficulties in her life, and to integrate this set within an overall narrative of one’s life; this is sometimes called ‘narrative resolution’. Once a traumatic experience is told to an audience, its significance and impact are externalised, thus creating an opportunity for resolving the trauma and healing

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(Navaez 2010). In this way, psychotherapy has long integrated narrative healing in its methodologies for helping individuals deal with difficult periods and traumatic experiences in their life. Finally, bringing all these different aspects of narrative together, writers have maintained that narrative-processes free the person to see life-changes as possible. Whilst narrative tends to highlight the boundedness of our narratives (for instance culturally) at the same time, it can also enable metamorphosis. One can realise that improvements and transformations are possible on a personal level or even on a wider scale. This is possible when narrative processes highlight what we love, care about and value. These strands within the literature emphasise the potential of narrative-processes to causally facilitate well-being. They do so under the assumption that changing narratival self-consciousness will affect corresponding changes at the other levels of well-being. They leave unanswered a few important questions, especially those concerning the claim that narratives be harmful, and the idea that a person might form misleading or erroneous narratives about herself. However, the question that we face is fundamentally different. It isn’t ‘Can narrative-processes improve wellbeing?’ It is rather ‘Assuming that one’s consciousness of one’s own past consist in narratives, then in what ways can such narratives in part constitute well-being?’ The first is about narrative-processes; the second is about narratives as the content of self-consciousness. The first concerns the causes of well-being; the second what constitutes it. We shall assume that one’s self-consciousness of one’s past does inescapably consist in narratives, at least in part. Given this assumption, we need to ask in what ways such narratives can be constitutive of well-being. Before we answer this question, we need some cautionary points. We need to remind ourselves that not all narratives are global. For instance, there are narratives about events in my life that might be interesting (or boring!) to recount at dinner parties or in family reunions. Such stories, however, are fragments. Thus, they do not qualify as unifying principles of selfhood. The idea is that certain kinds of stories that one might tell about oneself provide a unity of self. These are stories told in very special circumstances when someone asks you: ‘tell me about yourself . . .’and one is supposed to answer with the story of one’s life. Second, there are an indefinite number of different kinds of narratives that one could tell about oneself. For example, there are those that concern one’s relationships to one’s parents and other close family members, one’s friendships, working life, one’s fears and hopes. But there are also more obscure narratives about things that hardly matter to one, such as one’s relations to insects or to boats. This indicates the necessary intentionality of self-perception, and hence selectivity of such narratives. This reminds us that a person’s life isn’t a narrative. The latter is a complex perceiving of the former.4 The term ‘narrative’ includes those that don’t help one to make sense of one’s life, as well as those that do. We shouldn’t simply assume that any specific narrative will help a person to make sense of her life and, furthermore, the phrase

126 Evaluative self-awareness ‘making sense of one’s life’ isn’t yet clear. The general idea is that we selectively interpret our own past, which of course includes one’s relations with others, with social groups and with externally defined goals. These interpretations consist in fragments, which are largely about oneself in the extended sense of including what is one’s own.5 Such narratives have many psychological functions that come under the umbrella term ‘making sense of one’s life’. Making sense of one’s life include attempts to explain one’s current life situation, to set one’s life into a wider context, to understand how one came to be what one is and to gain deeper comprehension of oneself and one’s life. As we have seen, such forms of selfknowledge may function as therapy, but they also can comprise a state of noninstrumental value insofar as they constitute being well with one’s life in the past. Therefore, we shouldn’t assume that there is a single hugely complex narrative of one’s life that unites all these different facets into one all-encompassing vision of one’s past. Even if such an ideal made sense, it would require a godlike perspective on one’s past life, and even if that idea also made sense, one does not have access to it. We can conclude tentatively that there is no such thing as the narrative of one’s life. In perceiving one’s life, one will privilege certain kinds of descriptions over others. But then, one should do so according to what criteria? Finally, we need to distinguish between the narrative-like content of one’s selfperceptions of one’s past and a narrative as an artefact, which we can call ‘an autobiographical story’ (Curry 2010). Such story is an artefact that is created to be digested or contemplated, perhaps by the person herself. This implies that such a story is a construction shaped by the concerns and interests of the potential readership, even when that potential readership is oneself. It would be a degrading mistake to think of oneself as an object that exists mainly for the sake of pleasing an audience. It is equivalent to thinking of oneself as a film or as a set of images. This is a sophisticated and insidious way of instrumentalising or commodifying oneself. The failure to distinguish between a person’s past life, the content of her selfperceptions of that life and an autobiographical story that represents some of those self-perceptions will imply confusions regarding authorship. If my life were a story, then who is the author? A story could not write itself, and so the view that my life is a story requires that there are at least two distinct things present: me as the author, and the thing authored, the story. Given this, we cannot identify a person with her story. This supports the conclusion that a story is a linguistic representation of a set of self-perceptions of a life.6 Therefore, it is not a life. Furthermore, the relationship between a person and her life is much more intimate than the relationship between an author and a story that she authors. My life is not a thing distinct from me in the way that a story about me is distinct from me. In sum, we need to distinguish the life of a person in its infinite complexity from a selected narrative self-conscious perception that highlights some aspects of this infinite complexity at the expense of others. We are concerned with the second, so long as it is a generally truthful or not misleading perception of the first. We are interested in self-consciousness of one’s past. So, a person’s well-being is in part constituted by how she selects those narrative contents, given that they are broadly truthful. To cut to the quick, we need to assert that one’s that well-being

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is partly constituted by appropriate narrative self-awareness of one’s past. The problem is to articulate the criteria for ‘appropriate’ in this context. We can answer this in three steps. We need to return to the previous two levels of well-being. Whatever ‘appropriate’ means in the above context, it must include being consonant or in harmony with the two other levels. In other words, a person’s conception of her life must be broadly consistent with the idea that the living of a valuable life consists partly in the appreciation of non-instrumentally valuable aspects of the activities one engages in. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the person would articulate it in this way! Nevertheless, her narrative-self conscious perceptions of the past will have that shape. More specifically, the person’s conception of herself in the past must express appreciative connection to significant events of her past. So, for example, if a person expresses an attitude of shunning other people in her narrative of the past, when in fact her life was full of friendship, then this is likely to be inconsistent with the specifics of the first two levels of well-being. A person’s selfawareness must broadly reflect the realities of her life, without self-deception. There is considerable room for narratives to be self-deceptive. This selfdeception can be quickly crystallised into a feature of one’s personality and sense of oneself. Sometimes, people perceive themselves in ways that are misleading and damaging. For example, one may sense that one’s life has been a tragedy because of a series of events that one hasn’t been able to overcome. Sometimes people perceive themselves with flattering narratives. Both forms of exaggeration are self-deceptive. As it stands, the word ‘narrative’ encompasses self-perceptions that are faithful to one’s past as well as those that are deceitful or based on fantasy. Such fictitious narratives don’t count towards being well. Even if a fictitious narrative brings psychological benefits to a person, insofar as it is fictitious, it won’t partly constitute being well with oneself. Therefore, appropriate narratives about one’s past must be broadly speaking true. Of course, they will still be selective, biased and inaccurate in their details. This is unavoidable. Nevertheless, they can be broadly speaking true rather being inventions or fabrications. Second, narratives can vary with respect to their autonomy. Life narratives can be more or less scripted. Not only are we prone to be scripted by the implicit injunctions of our parents, but also we are also susceptible to having the fundamentals of our narratives defined by the society around us and by its history, as well as by peer pressure (Goodson 2018). Specifically, there is a psychological temptation to make one’s love of oneself hostage to whether others like us. There is a perceived need to be special or unique, and to unwittingly draft one’s narratives around this perceived ‘need’. Such are the dreams of fame and of being a hero. Such are the nightmares of individualism. In each case, these can be fundamental decisions that can warp or ruin a person’s life. If one looks at the obsessions that drive us to drink or to work too much or that push us to hurt the people we love or to sabotage ourselves, then there often lies behind these urges a set of stories that we unknowingly have swallowed from elsewhere. In such cases, the person must struggle to become free of such narratives. In this way, we are regularly trying to reframe ourselves, to come to

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a better understanding of ourselves. For such self-understanding to constitute an improvement, it must be subject to at least three conditions: it must be truthful; it must be towards greater freedom from being scripted; and it must free the person from harm. The very last point isn’t simply that such narratives are detrimental to well-being, but rather that they constitute a form of ill-being. To be well with one’s past is in part to be free from the sufferings of the past. When people have had a traumatic or painful experience, or when people have felt humiliated or unloved, or generally hurt by life, then many will tend to have unresolved issues regarding their past. The person may be stuck, unable to move on past their past. Such blocks can pervade a person’s sense of herself and infuse her life with a rupture and suffering. For example, a person who has been deeply humiliated may easily carry that suffering into their everyday sense of themselves and this will greatly reduce their capacity to appreciate the activities that they engage in and to enjoy the present moment of being-an-I. Quite apart from their harmful consequences, such states constitute being unwell with one’s past. In contrast, to be well with one’s past is to be reconciled and happy with it. It is to have accepted deeply the hurts, the limitations and the contingencies of one’s life. In this sense, we can characterise it as being at peace with oneself. c) Towards the future What is it for a person to be well or ill in relation to her own future? In theory, the future is an open field of possibilities. In practice, it can’t be indefinitely open; it must be circumscribed. The manner of its closure defines ‘ill’ and ‘well’ in this context. In short, a person is well in relation to her future when that future is open in appropriate ways. There are ways in which one’s future can be appropriately closed. Otherwise, it should be open. Let’s consider the story of Gabriella. First, it is closed appropriately by death. The process of coming to terms with one’s own mortality is integral to one’s understanding of oneself in the future. However, the point is more general than simply reconciling oneself to one’s own death. In a sense, part of growing self-awareness is coming to terms with important changes in general, including ageing and death. Not only will one die, but so will one’s parents, spouse, children and friends. Not only do we all die, but also we all change dramatically before that happens. And sometimes, these changes occur very rapidly and unexpectedly. Therefore, part of having a healthy relationship to one’s own future is to have the capacity to accept changes. The term ‘accept’ here does not indicate passivity. Gabriella just survived an operation following the recurrence of breast cancer, and she was eager to take part in our research interview. These conversations took place while she recovering from radiotherapy. She was 54 years old at the time, happily married, with three adult children. Growing up in Mexico, Gabriella had a care-free childhood. At age 12, two years after the death of her father, Gabriella arrived in the UK with

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her mother, who raised her single-handedly while working as a carer. When Gabriella completed her secondary education, her mother could only suggest two options for her: to look for a job, and next to look for a husband. With little awareness of what she could do, Gabrielle took on jobs such as waitressing and serving in shops simply to avoid staying at home. Within a few years, Gabriella met her future husband, a successful electrician who had emigrated from Portugal. After marriage, she lived a comfortable life. She became a ‘home-maker’, and she knew that she was expected to be a devoted wife and a loving mother. As time went on, she learned to ‘play’ these parts. For instance, she learned to host great dinner parties for families and friends, and she was the go-to person when other parents needed help with childcare. Gabriella accepted her parts in life and played them well. However, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 43, her entire perspective shifted. Although she responded well to surgery and treatments, Gabriella continued to be acutely aware of her mortality. Questions such as ‘What have I done in my life?’ and ‘How should I live my life now knowing that I may die?’ became constant companions. Following advice, she made some dramatic changes to her life, including adopting a vegan diet, practicing yoga and mindfulness, and training to run for a marathon. She said that these changes were not just for her physical health, but that they also helped her feel that her life could become ‘bigger’. The awareness of finitude also urged Gabriella to reflect about herself, such as her interests, her talents, and what she would like to do as work. She realised that she had seldom thought about these questions, and she was now open and willing to explore. To everyone’s surprise, Gabriella found a passion for horticulture, and she enrolled in a course on organic horticulture. She further surprised everyone, and herself, not only by completing the highly challenging certificate course, but also by taking the study to the next level – a postgraduate diploma in organic farming and horticulture. Just before the recurrence of the cancer, Gabriella was working as a tutor in a community college, teaching vocational students. Once again, cancer brought Gabriella to face her own mortality. She said that she was not afraid of death and that she had prepared herself to face it when it comes. Gabriella called her cancer ‘a blessing in disguise’ because it inspired her to look at her life in new ways, and to learn about herself in ways that she wouldn’t have done otherwise. Gabriella concluded her interview by affirming ‘My well-being is to live my life to the fullest, and nobody could do that for me but myself.’ As illustrated in Gabriella’s life, there is an interesting relationship between one’s sense of one’s mortality and one’s feeling of responsibility for one’s own life (May 2005). The feeling that one has only one life to live and that it is short may bring one to feel that one should try to make the most of it. Such feelings spur the

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desire for greater self-understanding, which may lead the person towards wellbeing with respect to her future. Second, one’s future possibilities may be open in ways that are naïve and express a lack of self-understanding. Gabriella took time to reflect on the kinds of activities that suited to her temperamentally, and as she was open, she learned that her horizons did not include a host of activities, even though she could have been interested in them. In short, one can close off one’s future for good reasons related to one’s abilities and capacities. Of course, the point shouldn’t be painted in black and white. It is usually a question of degree. Third, most people have sets of commitments that structure, delineate and give meaning to their future. These may include a life-plan, a dream or a mission, even if it is not explicitly articulated. We are not implying that a person must have a life-plan or that greater well-being requires that a person have a life-plan. In some cultures, many people do have something akin to a life-plan or a set of projects, and they explicitly use such concepts or ideas to conceive of their own future. In other cultures, such ideas are quite alien. In any case, if a person does have commitments that close off her future possibilities, then these can be treated as a given but only insofar as these are not themselves harmful. Thus, for example, commitments that narrow our sense of our future unnecessarily will in this respect be harmful. Furthermore, life-plans can lead to an instrumentalisation of life, and in that sense, chop off appreciation at the root. In general, a person’s sense of her own future is ipso facto better insofar as it is open. For instance, one’s future possibilities can be closed prematurely and harmfully by one’s own limited sense of oneself. In the case of young Gabriella, she followed her mother to define her future mainly in terms of obtaining a job and getting married. Their vision of Gabriella’s future was limited in terms of its material ambition, but also in that it largely consisted of material ambition. In a similar vein, a farmer’s son may unconsciously assume that his future is limited to being a farmer. If he becomes aware of this then he may unconsciously limit his future to not becoming a farmer (anything but that!). Perhaps, he is well suited to becoming a farmer, or such a life could be full and happy for him. But in which case, his self-conscious decision to follow the path of his father, in the face of knowledge of the alternatives, constitutes a form of being well with his future. This returns us to the intersection between self-awareness qua one’s past and qua one’s future. When one uncritically accepts other persons’ or society’s version of oneself then one unwittingly denies a sense of one’s future possibilities. The extent to which one’s sense of oneself with regard to the past is scripted, or defined externally by others, is likely to determine the extent to which and the ways in which one’s future horizons are prescribed. In conclusion, while in general a person’s sense of their own future is ipso facto better insofar as it is open, nevertheless there are three caveats to this. The first is that self-understanding will naturally tend to close off certain prospects, and this is appropriate. The second is the set of commitments that a person has. The third is that the person’s self-awareness concerning the future must include the willingness to come to terms with one’s death, and to come to terms with all sorts

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of changes in one’s life. This is part of what it means to have a future. We live in contingency.

The synthesis of the three The unity of the self through present, past and future is one’s overall sense of oneself. It consists in the unity of one’s awareness of oneself in the present, as someone with a past and who will live in and have a future. Often this is called ‘identity’. However, in a way, the term ‘identity’ is misleading because, strictly speaking, one’s identity is what one must be to be at all. One’s identity consists in the necessary conditions for being oneself. To lose one’s identity is to no longer be; such a loss would be death. Now, many aspects of oneself that are often called ‘one’s identity’ fail this test. For example, one’s nationality, gender, race and profession are sometimes considered part of one’s multiple identities, but strictly speaking they are not. A man from New York could have been a woman from Gambia. Let us indulge in some fiction: suppose that his parents inform him that they have been hiding the truth from him: he was born to Gambian parents in Gambia, and that in his infancy he was given a sex change. Ludicrous, but logically possible. But if that had happened, he would not cease to exist. In this sense, being a male from New York is not part of his identity. He would not cease to be even if his real parents were aliens from another planet. Consequently, when someone affirms that their gender or nationality is part of their identity, there must be some other meaning. Following Appiah, the idea might be that one’s identity is how others perceive me and how I perceive myself (Appiah 2005). However, this cannot be exactly right for two reasons. First, how others perceive me is up to them. Although it may delight, distress or destroy me, it is not directly integral to the constitution of my well-being. For instance, others thinking less of me may cause me to think less of myself. Even when the first is an important source or cause of ill-being, it isn’t constitutive of ill-being. Additionally, claiming that how others perceive me isn’t integral to the constitution of well-being doesn’t contradict the thesis of the previous chapter that well-being is relational and social. The point under consideration now is different: it is the overall sense of oneself as oneself. We may reserve the word ‘identity’ for this but, in this sense of the term, it isn’t constituted by how others perceive me, although it may well be affected by it. Second, both in the case of how others perceive me and how I perceive myself, there are many perceptions under descriptions irrelevant to this kind of identity. They may be irrelevant because they are trivial. For instance, consider the numbers of the telephones one has owned. There are countless types of potential selfperceptions that are trivial and unimportant, and which do not constitute part of one’s identity. Nevertheless, how one perceives oneself can be integral to one’s well-being. We need to specify the relevant kinds of description. To make progress requires we reframe the word ‘identity’. It doesn’t consist in a set of essential attributes nor in how one is perceived by others. Rather it consists

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in what one identifies with. It is better to switch from the noun form of the term ‘identity’ to the verb form ‘to identify’. What does it mean to say that one identifies with a description of oneself in such a way that it constitutes part of one’s so-called ‘identity’? What is it to identify with some description of oneself? In a sense, it is to take a decision about oneself. A person who identifies herself as a kind person has ipso facto decided that she will try to be kind and generous. Likewise, the person who identifies herself as an athlete has decided to judge her life in part in terms of a certain set of values, defined (albeit roughly) as constituting athleticism. One advantage of this kind of idea is one doesn’t have to think of identity solely as a narrative. Often in the literature concerning these issues, writers employ the phrase ‘narrative identity’ as if the two terms were ineluctably linked. In contrast, we are trying to avoid simply assuming a person must identify solely with a set of narratives about her past. She may do so or may not. She may also identify with aspects of her character more deeply than she does with her past. She may identify with a social grouping perhaps without that being explicitly narrative-based. What a person identifies with is an empirical question that needs to be settled with observation. Likewise, the identifications that a person makes change through her life, and in any case, they may be more or less healthy or constitutive of wellbeing. These two points give rise to a host of interesting empirical questions. However, our primary concern is with what constitutes well-being rather than what causes it, even when the two overlap. We are concerned with how different aspects of our being may have the kind of non-instrumental value that constitutes (in part) well-being. The issue is ‘what aspects of myself should I identify with?’ where the term ‘should’ is non-moral. It is non-instrumental and prudential, and thus relevant to the constitution of well-being. As we saw earlier, the life of a person has primary value. For a person’s life to be well, she must appreciate that value in the appropriate way: one has to feel and perceive oneself as valuable. This perception is a fundamental form of selfrespect or self-love, which ought not depend on what one does or has done. The conception that a person has of her self-worth is an important component of well-being. Many people have problems with their feeling of self-worth. In large part, perhaps, this is because they make it contingent on something else beyond their control. For example, some people implicitly and emotionally assume that they have to be successful in some way to be or to feel worthy. Others emotionally and implicitly assume that they have to be perceived by other people in certain ways in order to be worthy (or rather to see themselves as worthy). Therefore, they spent much time seeking the approval or deference of others. Such states of being can amount to a form of insecurity. Such states of insecurity may be caused by some past humiliation, but they also result in feelings of humiliation. In contrast, it is possible for a person to have a sense of self-worth that is not hostage to such contingencies, like the perceptions of others. This possibility can be explained as follows. Persons have a special value status, and one can have a sense of that.7 One may also fail to have a sense of that. One can fail to make the appropriate connections in one’s case, as well as in the case of others (as we explored in Chapter 5).

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*(Technical details: In order to avoid misunderstandings, we need to distance ourselves from some Kantian ways of explaining these points. Kant’s argument is roughly that, by having the capacity to choose, persons make values possible. This is because a function of values is to guide choice; without choices to guide, there can be no question of what is valuable. Therefore, persons have a value that is beyond the mere desirable. Kant calls the complex capacity to make choices and to be responsive to reasons for action ‘autonomy’. Autonomy in this Kantian sense cannot be taken away from a person, for instance, by putting him in jail. Other people might fail to recognise my autonomy for instance if they enslave me. But they cannot take it away because it defines in part what kind of being I am. Likewise another person cannot give one one’s autonomy; he or she can recognise it and respect it (or not) through his or her actions. In the previous chapter, we argued that a person is essentially relational. Now we seem to be claiming that a person is autonomous. These two claims may seem contradictory because of the assumption that if something is essentially relational then it can’t be autonomous. One reply to the objection is to deny that assumption. In this context ‘autonomy’ doesn’t refer to a state of independence; it refers to the capacity to perform actions and choose. Those capacities exist in a social setting and are defined as such within a network of social relations. In other words, one’s well-being can be (in part) relational without this excluding the idea that one is an agent in a socially relational manner, too. Consequently, one’s being autonomous in this sense doesn’t mean that one is like an atom that can exist unchanged on its own. However, the idea that persons have a worth, which they can sense and which can constitute self-worth, need not be locked into the specifics of the Kantian conception of autonomy. Kant’s notion of autonomy has (or may have) at least five aspects that we don’t need to accept.8 First, it is tied to the metaphysics of transcendental idealism. Second, it is all or nothing: either you have it or you don’t. If one does, then one is a person; if one doesn’t, then one is equivalent to an object. There are no degrees in between. Third, Kant’s notion of autonomy is intertwined with a sui generis conception of free-will. Fourth, Kant’s conception of autonomy is essentially tied to reason and rationality. While there may be wildly different readings of what ‘reason’ means in this kind of context, for the sake of simplicity, we can put these issues into suspension. Fifth, for all of the above reasons, Kant’s notion of autonomy seems to require what one might call ‘an absolutist conception of the self’. We need to remove these Kantian assumptions from the table.) Let us step back. We are trying to explain what it means to be well with regard to one’s self-consciousness in a holistic sense that integrates the more specific senses of what it means to be well in relation to one’s past, future and present. The key idea is how a person identifies herself. This must be done in a way that is consistent with a person’s self-worth as a person. This means that this identification should not be hostage to certain kinds of contingencies. We were trying to explain this idea of the self-worth of a person without handcuffing it to the specifics of certain individualistic interpretations of Kant.

134 Evaluative self-awareness As we saw in Chapter 2, having the right kind of relationship to oneself is not just a moral issue. It constitutes an aspect of being well. And as we have insisted throughout, this does not reduce to the idea that such a relationship is conducive to feelings of happiness, even though the latter may be true. One can recognise and respect one’s own worth, for instance, by recognizing one’s responsibility for the course of one’s own life or by not blaming others for how one feels (‘You made me feel sad’ apparently fails to acknowledge my responsibility for my feelings). We can fail to respect one’s intrinsic worth. As we saw in Chapter 2, we can instrumentalise ourselves by having the wrong relationship to one’s own goals and desires, for instance, by treating oneself purely as instrumentally valuable to the attainment of some goal. Likewise, one can be more or less aware of oneself as a person who has this special value-status. This is the idea that one’s perception of oneself can be infused with dignity and self-respect. Since being a person is an inescapable mode of being, it must enter well-being. We need to ask the questions: ‘How can such a state of being be valuable non-instrumentally in a way that is relevant to well-being?’ and ‘How can one be appreciative of this state in such a way that is salient as a contributing part of well-being?’ We have already seen the answer to the first question. The value of being a person who makes choices is fundamental, as we saw in Chapter 2. Therefore, if a person identifies with anything she must identify with herself as such. This isn’t to argue that one should only identify with this mode of being. To identify oneself as a being of primary intrinsic value is ipso facto to not instrumentalise oneself. Insofar as a person instrumentalises herself, she is not identifying herself as such a being. This is because to identify with oneself as a such a being is to regard oneself essentially as a type of being who makes choices and for whom other values exist. To instrumentalise something is to treat something non-instrumental valuable as if it were of purely instrumental value.9 To summarise, a person has well-being insofar as she identifies herself as a being that has primary non-instrumental value. This general claim unifies the three types of self-consciousness discussed earlier: to past, future and present. Other identifications that the person makes (or which she treats as her identity) must be compatible with this primary one. For instance, when one views oneself primarily according to the dislikes and likes of other people then this is an especially intimate way of treating oneself as an object. This isn’t compatible with the primary idea, as we shall now see.

In community with others There is another aspect pertaining to the unity of self-awareness (i.e. to selfawareness as the synthesis of past, present and future). As we saw in Chapters 2 and 4, our activities point inwards and outwards in terms of their meaning or non-instrumental value. Our lives are essentially other-regarding. We amplified this idea in Chapter 5. This point applies to self-awareness. This may initially sound absurd: how can self-awareness be other-regarding? However, it is not paradoxical. As we have

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seen, the self is not like an alleged atom that exists independently of its relationships. Therefore, self-understanding and self-awareness are also relational. Therefore, an aspect of good self-awareness will include how one is aware of oneself in relation to others. The nature of our integrated self-understanding must reach to what we might call loosely ‘our place in the world’. This is a mode of being that can be well or ill. In relation to this, we shall discuss two ways to be ill. First, we have just seen that to have an identity is to identify with something. We have also seen that the minimum for well-being with respect to this feature of human life is to identify with oneself as a being who is a primary bearer of intrinsic value. We have also seen that to identify oneself thus is ipso facto to not instrumentalise oneself. This applies to one’s relationship to how others view one. Insofar as one identifies oneself with how others view one then one is hostage to their view, such as showed in Gabriella’s case. If one were to identify with the view of others and thereby make it part of one’s identity, then one would be instrumentalising oneself. Self-consciousness that ranks oneself as an object constitutes a commodification of the self. This applies to us insofar as we identify ourselves with a self-image formed according to the likes and dislikes of others. Indeed, often a critical factor in a person’s life is how she feels about how others perceive her. People typically hate to be judged negatively or categorised according to prejudices and assumptions. When one feels that one has been judged unfairly, generally it makes one feel upset. Continual negative perception by others can damage one’s self-esteem. However, quite apart from these effects, the person who is vulnerable to being slighted by the judgments of others has ipso facto made her self-worth dependent on the opinion of others, and in this way has instrumentalised herself. In this manner, preoccupation with the opinion of others about oneself constitutes a form of ill-being insofar as it defines one’s self-identifications. Indeed, freedom from such preoccupation or anxiety will be not only a cause of well-being, but it will be partly constitutive of well-being. This doesn’t mean that a person shouldn’t care about the opinions of others or should be indifferent to one’s views of oneself (where the ‘should’ is of the relevant kind). It means that well-being requires that one should not identify oneself in such a way. Of course, to go more deeply into this point would require a clear distinction between caring and identifying oneself. To return to the main theme: we are looking at the final general aspect of wellbeing, self-consciousness, and we are examining that with regard to the synthetic unity of the self-consciousness concerning the present, past and future. We defined this feature of well-being in terms of identity. However, we also argued that an aspect of good self-awareness must include how one is aware of oneself in relation to others. The second way to be ill in this regard is to be self-absorbed to the extent that one is in practice denying that fundamental principle that other people are equally real as oneself. In this regard, a person has well-being insofar as her conception of herself is consistent with the claim that she is as real as the other people around her (Livingstone Smith 2011: 31–34).

136 Evaluative self-awareness The principle that other people are as equally real as oneself is ethical. We take this to be a fundamental egalitarian principle. It is a morally important claim that the life of an Iranian in Tabriz matters equally as the life of a person living in Windsor or Brazzaville and vice versa. Intrinsically one cannot claim that the life of the chief executive of the UN is more valuable than the life any person in Lagos, even if one is inclined to say that the life of the Secretary General of the UN matters more instrumentally. This principle means that no individual human life is intrinsically more valuable than any other. Simply stated, the relevant ethical requirement is that a person should act, perceive and will in ways that are consonant with this principle. Although it is by no means clear what this principle means in detail in practice, nevertheless, it is clear that it requires of us some kind of impartiality. This fundamental principle stands in conflict with the epistemological asymmetry mentioned in the previous chapter. In our personal lives, we can fall prey to this asymmetry, and also fail to see what others will or desire must be good in some way. Under these psychological conditions, we contradict the fundamental ethical principle of equal reality of all persons. This is because falling prey in these ways amounts to ignoring or discounting the subjectivity of the other person. It amounts to the incapacity or unwillingness to see the situation from the point of view of the other person. In effect, we are succumbing to the childish illusion that I am more real and more important than the other. This is an ethical principle. How does it relate to well-being? We are not asserting that well-being requires one to conform one’s actions to this noble but demanding ethical principle. However, we are affirming that one’s well-being constitutively requires that we identify ourselves as a person among others, who are equally real as oneself. Insofar as we do that, our way of being will be well. In a way, this requirement is simply an extension of the condition argued for in Chapter 5. In the previous chapter we contended that the relational aspect of well-being requires that we relate to others as persons. Now we are extending this requirement to the way in which we are self-conscious. We need to be aware of ourselves as one among many. Why is this part of well-being? One way to see why is to consider the relevant forms of ill-being. There is a group of illnesses that includes being closed in on oneself, being obsessed with one’s own self-importance, not being well connected to the reality of others and not being open to others. Once again, we are considering these states of being as intrinsically bad rather than merely bad instrumentally. At root, the issue is that a person who is well must be in tune with the fundamental lived realities of human life. The root issue is living harmoniously with how things are for the kind of beings we are. In this context ‘how things are’ means not only recognizing emotionally that one is the kind of being that has primary intrinsic value, but also appreciating that one is a member of a community that includes many other people that have the same status. The meaning of the first implies the second: I am a member of a kind, but only one of a kind. In other words, there are others.

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Fair enough, but why is this an aspect of well-being? If it isn’t obvious, then to answer this question, we need to return briefly to basics. We have argued for a framework of well-being that isn’t thin and hedonistic. Among many other things, this means that we must give up the individualistic and hedonist assumption that for something to be part of well-being, the lack of it must feel bad. Once we give up this assumption, we have to find another set of bases for well-being. We found these in the idea that there are structurally constitutive features of any human life in virtue of which we can live well or badly. These are the dimensions of wellbeing. These are kinds of non-instrumental value. Among these four dimensions is one that includes the relational aspects of well-being. This dimension requires that we relate to others as persons and, in this minimal sense, their value as a person becomes part of our life. If I live with others then I must appreciate them as persons. This in turn has implications for my self-awareness: I must be aware of myself as one among many. Hence, we arrive at the conclusion that a requirement of well-being is that one regard oneself as one, but only one, member of a special kind of being.

Notes 1 There is no reason to think that the content of our perception should be captured with a single proposition. Proust teaches us that it may require several pages to describe how someone sees a tree, let alone the behaviour of a person. Our perceptions are phenomenologically rich. 2 This doesn’t mean that other forms of self-awareness are not also prerequisites for it. 3 Ricoeur claims that narratives provide unity to the self. 4 Thus, we need at least a fourfold distinction between narrative-processes, the narratival content of self-perception, narratives as artefacts and finally the life of a person. 5 This is similar to the Stoic notion of oikeiôsis (see Thomson, 2016, p. 351) 6 Indeed, such a confusion would not make sense because the audience of a story would itself consist only of films or books. Universalise ‘I am a film’, and the conclusion is everyone is a film, including the audience. 7 This doesn’t mean that other species are not persons; furthermore, we are ignoring the claim that the difference between persons and non-persons is one of degree. 8 Of course, this claim is simplistic and problematic because there are many different interpretations of Kant on these points. There may well be a sophisticated reading of Kant’s texts that escapes these quick brush problems. 9 We need a term for the opposite error which is to treat something that is only instrumentally valuable as if it were non-instrumentally valuable. These two errors have the same root, which we explored in Chapter 2.

7

Towards a definition of well-being

The heart of this book is that being well is constituted by non-instrumental goodness along the necessary dimensions of our way of being. These define living well. Well-being is understood in terms of four artificially distinguished levels or dimensions along which we live. First, we live through our outer activities, which aren’t merely discrete experiences and actions; they are also complex webs of activities nested within wider engagement and life’s broader processes. The value of these activities consists in the extent to which they accord with the deslogo interests defined as patterns of desirability in our desirings. The term ‘deslogo’ indicates that we are referring to the logos or account of our basic non-instrumental desires. Second, we also simultaneously live through or in our awareness. For the value of our activities to count towards our being or living well, we must be aware of them as valuable in relevant ways. In other words, I live well (in part) by being connected appropriately to the valuable nature of the activities that I engage in. Because of this, the quality of our lives is partly constituted by the quality of our awareness, a concept consisting of three elements. The first is that awareness shouldn’t be fragmented, for example, by being distracted by anxieties, desires and thoughts. Second, it is a function of our general capacity to be aware. The more one is conscious, the greater one’s capacity to appreciate. A person whose awareness is vivid lives in a different phenomenological world from someone whose awareness is dull. These first two parts are independent because a person might be attentive but dull, or might have a vivid awareness that is directed elsewhere, away from the valuable features of her living processes. The last element is that awareness is also a function of our capacity to feel emotions. Appreciation typically requires that one feels emotions, and therefore, a person who does feel emotions appropriately ipso facto will not be appreciating with high-quality awareness. An incapacity to feel emotions counts as a form of ill-being. Third, we live in relationships, which typically involve doing things for other people and being with others. Concerning the former, as means, activities such as helping others can have an intrinsic value when we connect appropriately to them as conscious beings, and this value can be part of our well-being. Regarding the latter, it is part of our well-being to be with others. Minimally, other people are part of my life simply insofar as I relate to them as people. However, this doesn’t

Towards a definition of well-being 139 require relationships with them; people are part of my life in a fuller sense insofar as I have good quality relationships with them such that I no longer regard and feel them as others but rather as constituting an ‘us’. The quality of one’s relationship depends directly on how the other person treats one, as well as vice versa. It is reciprocal. Insofar as I am appropriately connected to other people, my life is better in ways that are constitutive of my well-being. Fourth, our lives are also constituted by our self-consciousness. It is part of my life that I am aware of myself in local and global ways. Locally, I am aware of myself in my daily actions and experiences as I live them. I also have a general sense of my past and of my future. Together these aspects form the self-perceptions and the self-relations or the sense of oneself that we typically call ‘identity’ but which is better thought of as how we self-identify. The distinctions between these four levels or aspects are artificial in the sense that they all are present in any moment of living. They are abstractions. Part of the work of this chapter is to reunite them. This is the theme of the first section of this chapter. However, let us return briefly to the basic aim of this work. We are fashioning a conception of well-being that serves social as well as individualistic evaluations. We aren’t only interested in the question ‘How can a person A improve her life given the conditions she lives in?’ We are also interested in the question ‘What might count as an improvement in those conditions?’ This means that we need to characterise the dimensions of well-being in a way that permits such cross-social comparisons. This is the theme of the second and third sections of this chapter. It takes us right to the heart of questions concerning well-being indices and measurement, which is the concern of the remainder of the chapter.

Towards a definition To define the concept ‘well-being’, we must reunite these components of wellbeing as delineated by the necessary dimensions of human living. This task is complicated because they are interlaced. We will do this in five stages; the first two introduce the core, and the last two, the entwined complications. The fifth injects a meta-constraint. a) There are two core components of well-being: first, the valuable activities, experiences and processes that inter alia make up a life; second, the person’s appreciation of them. Given these two components, we can provisionally define ‘well-being’ as follows: a person lives well insofar as she undertakes activities and undergoes experiences and processes that are non-instrumentally valuable, and which she appropriately appreciates with a high-quality consciousness. We have defined non-instrumentally valuable activities etc. in terms of their having desirability features that accord with the person’s deslogo interests, and we have defined ‘appropriately appreciates’ in terms of the person’s experiential awareness tracking the desirability characteristics of the activities. (We resolved ‘highquality consciousness’ into three sub-components. First, one’s awareness will tend to be focused on the relevant desirable characteristics, and not distracted and

140 Towards a definition of well-being fragmented. Second, well-being is a function of our general capacity to be aware: the more conscious one is, the greater can be one’s appreciation. Finally, awareness is also a function of our emotional state.) b) To this core, we can add self-consciousness as elaborated in Chapter 6. Given this, we can now provisionally define ‘well-being’ as follows: a person lives well when she undertakes activities and undergoes experiences and processes that are non-instrumentally valuable, and which she appropriately appreciates with a highquality consciousness and with good self-awareness. By ‘good self-awareness’, we mean that the person’s sense of themselves integrates the following elements: a spontaneous and immediate joyful feeling of one’s own present moment experience of being an I; a peaceful or accepting relationship to one’s past; and a realistically open and hopeful relationship with one’s future. This integration requires that a person engages in self-identifications that don’t instrumentalise herself and which are consistent with the equal reality of other people. This is how Chapter 6 fits with Chapters 3 and 4. c) The fourth component is relationships. To introduce this, we need to step back and raise a problem: Chapters 3 and 5 appear to be in contradiction. The first tells us that non-instrumental value of activities is defined in terms of deslogo interests, which includes relationships and belonging. In contrast, Chapter 5 indicates that relationships have a different kind of value insofar as other people become a part of one’s life and insofar as one becomes part of the life of a community. If all activities have non-instrumental value in relation to deslogo interests, then isn’t this how we should conceive of the value of relationships as well? In short, Chapter 3 claims that all activities have non-instrumental value in relation to deslogo interests, but Chapter 5 apparently contradicts this by asserting that relationships have a different kind of value (insofar as other people become a part of one’s life). The reply has three parts. First, we pinpoint a common root. In Chapter 2, we saw that the principle bearers of value are conscious beings. Because of this, their lives matter, and because of this, the quality of their lives matter, and because of this, that their lives accord with their motivational natures (or their deslogo interests) matters. The desirability of living a life that dovetails one’s deslogo interests is an expression of the value of the conscious being who lives that life. The value of the person is manifest (in part) as the desirability of the fact that her way of life matches her deslogo interests. This reminder of the relation between Chapters 2 and 3 shows how the value of relationships has a similar axiological root. This is because in a relationship, one is directly connecting to the value of another person. That it is valuable that my life accords with my deslogo interests is an expression of the value that I have as a person or conscious being, as we just explained. In contrast, that it is valuable that another person is a part of my life is a manifestation or expression of the value that she has as a person or conscious being. In sum, the value pertaining to deslogo interests and to relationships are axiologically similar in that both pertain to the value of a conscious being. In conclusion, Chapter 5 on relationships does not contradict Chapter 3 on interests because the thesis of Chapter 3 about the

Towards a definition of well-being 141 value of deslogo interests is subsidiary to that of Chapter 2 regarding the primary value of conscious beings. Yet this same point also explains how the two kinds of value are radically different. The value of a relationship lies along a different value-dimension to that of deslogo interests because the ‘source’ of the relevant value is distinct. As we have just seen, in the first, the value comes from me, and in the second from the other person. The value pertaining to deslogo interests and to relationships are profoundly different because the latter involves connecting to another conscious being such that the value of the other person has become part of one’s life. In a sense, I become more than one insofar as others become a part of my life. It is more like an insertion than an attunement. In this manner, the value of a relationship is orthogonal to that pertaining to the relevant deslogo interests. It is a different kind of well-being-relevant non-instrumental value. This highlights another aspect of this difference, namely, while the object of value arising from deslogo interests is general, the object of value in a relationship is particular, that is, a person. The deslogo interest is to love, which is general, but the person who becomes part of my life when I love is a particular. I need to love, but I love her: she is part of my life. As such, she is not an instrumental means for the satisfaction of my deslogo interests. Third, despite all this, it remains true that if (per impossible) there were solitary beings who had no social deslogo interests (or needs to be with others) at all then for such a being, the whole range of relevant activities would not be intrinsically valuable. Indeed, the whole idea of others entering one’s life would have no meaning. We can only describe a life as solitary insofar as the being in question has social deslogo interests. We haven’t quite finished. There is an extra complexity which, however, makes perfect sense when one thinks about it: this relational value can only compose part of the well-person insofar as it too enters the awareness and self-consciousness of the person herself. In this sense, Chapter 5 modulates both Chapters 4 and 6. Since we are dealing with complexities, it is apt to remind the reader that a more complete conceptual account of well-being than we have provided would include all the relevant relationship kinds inherent in our activities, as mentioned at the start of Chapter 5. Given that we are right to insist that the relational is a distinct dimension, we can provisionally define ‘well-being’ as follows: a person lives well when she undertakes activities and undergoes experiences and processes that are noninstrumentally valuable, which involve good relations, and which she appropriately appreciates with a high-quality consciousness and with good self-awareness. Of course, we have endeavoured to provide criteria for the uses of ‘good’, ‘appropriately’ and ‘high quality’ in this definition. d) Now we need to discuss a potential fifth component: instrumentalisation. In the course of this book, we have seen how not-instrumentalising is fundamental to each dimension of well-being. To avoid repetition ad nauseam, we won’t rehearse those points. However, this intertwining indicates that not-instrumentalising shouldn’t be considered as a distinct fifth facet of well-being but rather as a quality integral to each of the four already-defined dimensions.

142 Towards a definition of well-being In addition to the four dimensions, there is a super or meta-dimension, consisting in the harmonious and synergetic functioning of the dimensions (Hooker 2015). This is a dynamic meta-requirement with respect to the causes of well-being. For example, the activities, experiences and processes that constitute well-being in the first dimension should also facilitate well-being with respect to the other dimensions (awareness, relations and self-consciousness). Likewise for each dimension. Although this is a requirement with respect to the nature of well-being, whether it is causally satisfied or not is an empirical question (Bishop 2015: 8–12). To the previous definition, we can now add ‘in a synergetic manner’ at the end. Note that we have only established a conceptual framework for an empirical theory of well-being. Empirical study is needed not only to discover what causes well-being but also to understand better what constitutes it. The theory has implications about the variety of causes of well-being: different approaches and types of causes might be required for the various dimensions and for their elements. So, for instance, perhaps we shouldn’t contrast meditation with psychotherapies or relational approaches with those that improve one’s relationship with one’s past as if they were rivals because they apply principally to distinct dimensions. And none of these would touch the restricting effects of poverty along the first dimension (Henry 2008: 121) and its scars along the fourth. Indeed, we might be wary of referring to the causes of well-being when we should be talking about the causes of well-being along this or that dimension. One of the most important investigative need regarding the constitution of well-being is the empirical specifications of the deslogo interests of persons or groups. The rest of this chapter supplements the conclusions of Chapter 3.

Inescapable interests across societies 1) We started this book by drawing attention to the need to re-envision the variety of possible human ways of living. One tends to take for granted the idea that people will live in societies like the ones we live in now. One tends to assume as a given the social institutions that we live in and that shape our lives. We ignore their contingency; we overlook the vast unexplored space of value possibilities of human life, including those of the past. In the language of Chapter 1, in everyday life, we make value judgments with a narrow scope. One of the purposes of this book is to provide a framework for the concept of living well that allows us to widen this scope so that we can evaluate our social institutions and ways of life with respect to well-being. This would provide the criteria for statements of the form ‘It is better to live in society of kind Z than society of kind Y.’ In this endeavour, we want to avoid the kind of subjectivism that affirms that different societies will be simply different and ultimately cannot be compared. We also we want to avoid the kind of absolutism that requires that certain things are good independent of anything else. We need a kind of non-absolute non-subjectivism, or in other words, a relational objective theory (McDowell 1998; Thomson 2002b). A key to this kind of third alternative is to characterise the limits to the variety of human ways of living.

Towards a definition of well-being 143 We need a conception of well-being that is apt for social critique but has sufficient empirical clarity that it could in principle be measured. However, these demands are in conflict. On the one hand, if we want to quantify the well-being of different groups within a society, we must take for granted the ways in which activities, desires and practices are typically shaped by that society (Dolan and White 2007). On the other hand, insofar as we demand of a conception of wellbeing that it can be employed to evaluate the ways in which societies sculpt desires and practices, we cannot take for granted that moulding or shaping. We will need a conception that bridges different societies, and this precludes taking specific mouldings for granted. Consider friendship. On the one hand, measuring requires judgments like the following: ‘given that friendship typically consists in the following kinds of interactions, then people in group A tend to have higher levels of friendship than people in group B.’1 On the other hand, if we were concerned about, how consumerism shapes friendship, one might not be able to make the required socially specific assumptions about friendship. One would not be able to make the cultural assumption that friendship will tend consist in specific behaviours and feelings if the critique were that these are precisely the ways in which consumerism tends to engender in us superficial understandings and shallow forms of friendship. Measurement requires cultural specificity, and critique requires that we transcend it. One mustn’t take for granted desires and understandings are shaped by a society when we employ the concept of well-being to critique society or to envisage alternative societies. Critiques require inter-societal comparisons. 2) How are such comparisons concerning well-being possible? The notion of deslogo interests has an indispensable role in this regard because it doesn’t require similarity in terms of what is wanted; rather it requires likeness in terms of why what is wanted is wanted.2 In that sense, it is deeper and because of this, under certain conditions, such interests can be used to cross social boundaries (or so we shall argue). Let us briefly revisit the argument of Chapter 3 that introduced the need for this concept. Inter alia, life consists in nestings of experiences, activities and processes, and we need to understand what comprises the non-instrumental value of these activities etc. We cannot do so in terms of object-individuated desires or in terms of an objective list. We need the idea that basic desires are grouped together in kinds according to their motivational nature in ways that reveal the desirability features of the activities. We coined the term ‘deslogo interest’ for this idea partly to avoid the misleading suggestions of other words such as ‘fundamental needs’ and ‘basic drives’ (Thomson 1987: Chapter 4; Hamilton 2003).3 However, we employed this term of art with the cautionary note that it denotes a non-instrumental value and is not like the terms ‘self-interest’ and ‘in one’s interests’ which indicate instrumental values. As we saw in the second section of Chapter 3, one benefit of this account is that it shows how what counts as a noninstrumentally desirable activity is contingent for any being, but without appealing to a vague concept such as that of human nature.

144 Towards a definition of well-being 3) Let us return to the question ‘How are inter-cultural comparisons concerning well-being possible?’ How does the notion of deslogo interests help? As we have seen, it helps because it provides a deeper basis for evaluative comparison than desire, and a less inflexible one than objective lists. Nevertheless, even granted this, there may be significant differences between people in different societies in terms of their deslogo interests. Such interests are partly socially determined. For this reason, the question remains ‘What could be the bases for such inter-cultural comparisons?’ The answer requires introducing a new element. In the sixth section of Chapter 3, we provided some empirical conditions for identifying deslogo interests, except for one; the missing component was relative inescapability. We now need this element. To introduce it, we begin by noting that there are facts about a person that she cannot do anything to escape, such as the dependence on food. This doesn’t mean that such facts can’t change; consider, for example, the amount of food one needs as one’s body grows in childhood. Rather it means that the changes are something that one has limited control over (Thomson 1987: 25). Some of the inalterable features of a person pertain to her motivational nature and, as such, they may be directly relevant to the constitution of her well-being.4 For instance, as we grow older, among other things, the nature of our desires change. Sexually motivated desires and the desires for achievement become more prominent during certain stages of life (in certain societies). Insofar as these changes are inalterable, and insofar as they pertain to what kinds of activities count as non-instrumentally good for the person, they will be directly relevant to the constitution of well-being. The central point is that inescapability is important because, with respect to inescapable features, the question of whether a person ought to alter them just does not arise (Thomson 1987: Chapters 2 and 4). For instance, concerning inescapable needs, there is no question whether we should change them because we just cannot. In this manner, inescapable features can be treated as a given in thinking about practical concerns.5 If a person has a deslogo interest that is inescapable then there is no point in questioning whether she ought to have it. Such an interest thereby gains a certain kind of practical immunity.6 This is important because prudence can require us to transform ourselves and our social conditions, and thereby what has primary value for us. This means that we might reshape our natures (by changing social conditions, perhaps over the course of several generations) so that we no longer have desires motivated by certain interests.7 To evaluate whether we should do so, we need to appeal to relatively inescapable features of our motivational makeup.8 These features form an aspect of the concept of well-being that can be used for critical evaluation of different cultures or societies. This is a bit abstract; so, before we proceed, let us examine some examples. a)

In contemporary society, people have a huge range of desires pertaining to the consumption of material goods that people didn’t have in medieval times. This constitutes a shift in our desire patterns or deslogo interests. Is it merely different? How could it be regarded as a deterioration or as an improvement?

Towards a definition of well-being 145 b) Some religious groups believe that desires pertaining to friendship are an obstacle to union with the divine, and they are best reduced or eliminated. In a society without such interests, friendship would no longer even be a good that one would forgo for the sake of the divine. It would be more like shedding an addiction. This hermit view is (at least in part) an empirical claim about the nature of motivation and well-being. c) The claim that work would be less alienated in production conditions X (say of cooperative ownership) than it is currently requires a concept of the interests that aren’t altered through the relevant social changes. In this way, inescapable deslogo interests are significant because they set limits to how radically and deeply we can change; they help to determine primary goods that must be taken as given in prudential deliberation and life evaluation. d) A person who is aggressive might come to think that his life would be better off if he lessened or rid himself of his aggression. However, he recognises that it is too late for him personally to change, but he claims that people would be less aggressive and more peaceful if they lived in a society that was less competitive. His interlocutor challenges his reasoning by arguing that we are collectively better off with the more aggressive sides of our natures intact so long as the aggressive deslogo interest is expressed in certain ways. e) In Plato’s Republic, Cephalus reports that when someone asked Sophocles whether he could still make love, the old poet replied, ‘I am very glad to have escaped from all that, like a slave who has escaped from a savage and tyrannical master.’ Cephalus agrees with Sophocles, claiming that when the appetites relax, ‘we escape from many mad masters,’ but adds that this is not a question of old age but rather ‘the way people live’ (329b–d). Is Cephalus right about sexual desires? Do the same points apply to other deslogo interests? 4) The examples illustrate how the inescapability of deslogo interests is necessary for making evaluative judgments across cultures. It defines the limits to which we can change our motivational nature. Such an idea is necessary for comparing radically different social arrangements with respect to (this dimension of) well-being (without appealing to a reductive conception of well-being). We can make judgments about whether person A would be better off in society Z rather than society Y (inter alia) in terms of the deslogo interests that she would have in both Z and Y. Those interests allow us to claim that it would be better for A to be in society Z rather than Y (or not) relative to those interests. When a person would have a set of deslogo interests in almost any social conditions then we can call those interests ‘inescapable’ because there is nothing the person could do to alter or escape them. In this manner, inescapable interests allow us to compare different social contexts: we can appeal to the interests that the person would have in a wide range of social conditions. The argument for this conclusion is as follows. Evaluations must proceed from criteria of relevance and selection. Any sentence of the form ‘X is better than Y’ is relative to a criterion or set of criteria C. But any such set of putative criteria will themselves be subject to evaluation: ‘is criterion C good?’ If it fails this kind of

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meta-evaluation, then it will not count as criteria for other evaluations. If C passes then this must be in virtue of further criteria, which themselves must be subject to evaluation. This threatening regress is halted by criteria that are not subject to further evaluation, and this requires that some are (relatively) inescapable.9 Without an idea like inescapability, we could not make sense of claims such as ‘friendship tends to be degraded in consumer societies.’ Without relevant inescapable deslogo interests in common, we could only affirm that friendship is different in these societies. We might describe those differences, but ultimately there could be no basis for ever claiming that one situation is better or worse than the other. It would be like comparing pack animals such as wolves with more solitary animals such as jaguars. In short, motivational inescapability is required for prudential evaluation; any piece of practical evaluation requires that some things of primary values are treated as given, which determines what is relevant in deliberation. Without some given, evaluation cannot begin; it has no criteria of relevance and of selection.10 The relative inescapability of deslogo interests provides something akin to a naturalised framework for evaluations. Without such a framework, evaluation would be impossible. Relative inescapability partly determines which primary goods must be treated as a given. The more inescapable a primary value or deslogo interest is, the more redundant it becomes to ask whether we ought to have it. At the limit, we neither ought nor ought not to have an interest that is inescapable. Inescapable deslogo interests themselves are beyond good or bad.11 Thus, we are justified in treating primary goods defined by such inescapable interests as given. Because of this, inescapable ends can form a resting place for evaluative justification. In summary, we need a concept of well-being that allows us to critically evaluate different societies with regard to well-being. We make demands of the concept of well-being that are in potential conflict. On the one hand, we need it to be culturally specific in part to enable it to be a measurable concept. On the other hand, to enable it as social critique, we need it to transcend the culturally specific. One ingredient necessary to resolve this dilemma is the relative inescapability of desire-patterns. The difficulty that this appeal solves is that people may have different deslogo interests in such societies: deslogo interests are constitutive of well-being but they are partly socially determined.12 If well-being is differently constituted in different societies, then how can we compare those societies’ wellbeing?13 Non-instrumentally, the answer is that we can do so by appeal to the deslogo interests that are inescapable in both societies. Those can be taken as an immune given, and from them, we can include escapable interests (see below). Qualifications The main claim that the inescapability of deslogo interests is necessary for intersocietal evaluations needs several qualifications. First, here we are only referring to the first dimension of well-being, and this is not the only way in which inter-societal evaluations can be made. We can also

Towards a definition of well-being 147 make inter-societal comparisons along the other dimensions of well-being such as awareness, the relational and self-consciousness. For instance, a social arrangement that makes us less conscious would be ipso facto less desirable. Second, we need to distinguish the claim that a desire pattern is inalterable for a specific person given her specific history and the social conditions that she happens to be in from a broader claim about what is inescapable for her. For example, a person might be addicted such that she cannot alter her dependency. Given this, she must treat her addiction as a given. But this doesn’t mean this addiction is a given in general for her and for others like her. Indeed, her addiction was avoidable earlier, and she would have been better off without it. This is part of why we call it ‘an addiction’ as opposed to ‘a need’ (Thomson 1987: Chapter 2). Thus, we require a broad notion of inescapability, as opposed to the more specific notion of inalterability, to be able to affirm that an addiction is escapable even if it is inalterable for a specific person at a given time. Third, the inescapability of interests is not an all-or-nothing affair. What counts as inescapable might be dependent on social conditions that themselves are escapable. For a person brought up in a specific society, certain desire patterns might be inescapable. However, in contrast, for the purposes of social critique, it might be the case that those patterns should not be treated as a given. Although an individual may not be able to change her social conditions, nevertheless, the collective could do so. From a wider perspective, social conditions are contingent and can be changed, and so can the broad features of well-being that depend on them. Thus, from the wider perspective, these cannot be treated as givens: they are changeable or escapable, and they need to be evaluated.14 Thus, from this perspective, the question ‘Is it better for us to be living within a consumer society?’ makes sense.15 In answering the question, we cannot take for granted the ways in which consumerism tends to mold our subjectivities and the patterns of our desires. These themselves need to be evaluated. Fourth, we need to relativise the notion of inescapability: a feature F is inescapable for a being B for a range of conditions C1 to Cn if there is nothing non-discountable B can do to rid herself of F in any of those conditions. ‘Non-discountable’: a way of escaping having feature F is discountable if it involves B’s being harmed more seriously than not escaping F. For example, an addict can escape his affliction by killing himself, but this escape route is discountable because it harms him more than the addiction! The ultimate point is that, insofar as an interest is non-discountably inescapable, it can be treated as a given. (From now on, we will not employ the term ‘non-discountable’ before the word ‘inescapable’ and the phrase ‘relatively inescapable.’. We shall assume it.) Fifth, from these relatively inescapable ends, we can assess whether we ought to change the more optional sides of our motivational nature or not. The conception of given primary value needn’t be restricted to inescapable deslogo interests. It can include optional deslogo interests, so long as well-being does not require us to change them. Thus, starting from inescapable interests, we can build a more full-bodied picture of the types of primary values relevant to our well-being.

148 Towards a definition of well-being To see this, contrast three possibilities. First, suppose aggressiveness is an inescapable part of our natures, as some writers such as Konrad Lorentz have advocated. In which case, we must live with those kinds of motivations as best we can, and our well-being will include activities that meet or express such deslogo interests (Lorenz 1974). Second, in contrast, suppose that aggression is an escapable side of our nature. If this were the case, and also given that our lives are worse because of such aggressive interests then, ideally, we should either train ourselves to live without aggression or construct social conditions that don’t encourage aggression. There is also a third more complicated possibility: aggression is escapable, but ineluctably tied to other facets of our nature. For instance, suppose that losing aggression would cost us our creativity or would make us passive. In such a case, it would be better to channel our aggressive aspects of our natures into less harmful forms rather than train ourselves out of it. The interest would not be strictly inescapable, yet there would be nothing non-discountable to evade it.16 The digression regarding aggression shows that we needn’t suppose that an interest can be treated as a given only if it is inescapable. Even if it is escapable, it could enter as a given when it is not detrimental to well-being defined in terms of inescapable interests (or defined recursively in terms of other escapable interests that are non-detrimental).17 In contrast, it would not enter as a given if it were escapable only in ways that are detrimental to well-being. Sixth, in asserting the thesis about comparisons of well-being between societies, we are not denying that there might be incommensurable evaluative differences between societies (i.e. when there are no relevant inescapable deslogo interests in common) (Gray 1995).18 Furthermore, we are not denying that the concepts employed to pick out and describe the relevant deslogo interests will differ between societies. We are affirming that evaluative judgments regarding well-being across cultures are possible, and when they are possible, they are so in virtue of the relative inescapability of deslogo interests (among other things). Seventh, note that we have been careful not to utilise a vague notion of human nature (Gewirth 1998: 11–13). This is important partly because we haven’t appealed directly to what is a shared or common between humans, but instead to what is inescapable for a specific being. The fact that most humans might share a specific characteristic doesn’t mean that it is relevant for a particular person. This is one of the root errors we attributed to perfectionist theories and to Foot (Chapter 3 Appendix I). Furthermore, we have deliberately avoided appealing to some idea of an innate human nature as opposed to social features.19 We have not fallen into a natural/ social dichotomy. For example, we have not claimed that inescapable deslogo interests are natural. Instead, we have employed the idea of the relative inescapability of features given different social contexts. In other words, inescapability is always relative to a set of social conditions and thus it cuts across the nature versus nurture debate. As we said in Chapter 3, human nature shouldn’t be conceived as having a determinate content independent of social conditions. Rather it defines the limits to a field of possibilities, set by what is inescapable. There is no human nature independent of social conditions. For example, when someone

Towards a definition of well-being 149 claims that human beings are by nature linguistic creatures, this means that raised in appropriate social conditions, a human baby will acquire linguistic capacities. Indeed, in terms of practical reasons, what is important about the nature versus nurture debate is precisely its relevance to inescapability (Thomson 1987: Chapters 2 and 4). On the one hand, there isn’t a fixed (socially-neutral) content to the concept of human nature that we could appeal to. On the other hand, we don’t want to be stuck in the idea that inter-societal comparisons are impossible or necessarily indeterminate because what counts as good in one society won’t count as such in another.

Measurement: an antinomy We have provided a provisional framework for well-being. Those whose profession is to quantify well-being and define indices for policy purposes may not be sympathetic to the general approach adopted in this book for several reasons, and they may not yet see its relevance to their own work. Their main objection would be that measurement requires clear empirical specifications, and there are too many normative or non-empirical concepts in our framework, and that these render it immeasurable. For example, we argued that well-being requires appropriate appreciation of the value of the activities. But, contends the objection, this cannot be measured because the notion of appropriate is normative, and hasn’t been empirically specified. We shall reply to this objection in a couple of ways: first theoretically and second practically. We shall begin with the theoretical by outlining an antinomy that haunts the social sciences. On the one side of the antinomy: social phenomena are usually both intentional and normative, and this suggests that they are not amenable to quantitative methods. On the other side, it is preferable to employ concepts and methodologies that in principle can be quantified. (Later, we shall discuss the more practical answer to the objection.) The first side of the antinomy: insofar as social practices have content, they are intentional, and they are described as such with intensional sentences.20 This means that they cannot be counted. To see this, consider the question ‘How many beliefs do you have?’ The difficulty in answering isn’t merely epistemological; it isn’t merely that one doesn’t know how to count beliefs. It is much more deepseated. It is that a person’s beliefs depend on how the content is described. For instance, is the belief that ‘1 + 2 = 3’ different from the belief that ‘2 + 2 − 1 = 3’? Is the belief that water is liquid at room temperature distinct from the belief that H2O is? These questions show us how the notion of what counts as one belief depends ineluctably on the content of the belief, which depends on how it is described. Without simplifying assumptions, this puts the very notion of counting in doubt. Additionally, the notion of well-being is thoroughly normative, and this cannot be reduced to what people happen to value: the normative claim that something is good cannot be reduced to the empirical statement that someone regards it as good.21 This, too, suggests that any hope that it might be measurable is forlorn.

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From the other side of the antinomy, one might argue that if a concept isn’t in principle measurable then there is a concern that the concept doesn’t have a definite empirical content. According to such a view, any concept with empirical content is measurable; if something cannot be measured then it isn’t real. Thus, this view contends that, at best, if well-being as explicated in this work is not measurable, then we haven’t completed our job of specifying its empirical conditions. At worst, the outlined conception doesn’t indicate a real feature of human life. The antinomy marks a basic conflict in the social sciences generally and in well-being studies specifically. We need an evaluatively full-bodied conception of well-being that can serve as a basis for social critique and re-envisioning. We also need a conception that does justice to the rich and varied experiential nature of our lived lives. These points indicate the need to pull away from a reductive account well-being in order to account for the fullness of the concept. However, we also feel draw of currents tugging in the opposite direction: normative concepts must have some empirical ground, and likewise, the subjectivity of our experience must be ontologically rooted in the public world. Thus, there is reason to insist that the concept of well-being is empirically specifiable and hence measurable. To resolve this antinomy, we need to free ourselves of some illusions. First, to measure a person’s well-being, we need to distinguish cause and constituent, however difficult this might be in practice. What causes well-being is distinct from what constitutes it. Once we have a working account of the concept of wellbeing, we can give it empirical specifications for people of different ages and in different social conditions. Given this, we can then identify how to best measure it for any given set of purposes. Once we have some ways of measuring well-being then we can begin to correlate that to a variety of causal factors along the different dimensions. The crucial point is that, for clarity, these four steps need to be methodologically separated: definition, empirical specification, measurement and correlation (see below).22 Second, the discussion so far masks a fundamental question: what counts as empirical? One might insist on strict definitions of ‘empirical’ that require mathematical specifiable or extensional criteria of identity, as in the basic natural sciences.23 This insistence might apply, for instance, to ‘particle collision’. However, as we describe the world in increasingly rich terms, the required concepts will involve intentional and normative elements. For example, we want numerical data about traffic accidents or ‘vehicle collision’. In this request, we do not lay down as a requirement that the notion of a traffic accident should be definable in a purely extensional manner. We accommodate the need for mathematical data to the everyday concept as best we can. For instance, if are interested in fatalities and serious injuries to persons then we operationalise the concept in that way. However, if we are interested in property insurance claims then there are other ways to operationalise the concept. The idea that we can measure social phenomena doesn’t entail the ludicrous idea that all social phenomena can be characterised in purely extensional terms. ‘Traffic accident’ can’t. It is an error to identify the empirical with the extensional, even though we may do so in some of the natural sciences. Let us put this another way: it is not a requirement of empirical

Towards a definition of well-being 151 investigation or of the concept ‘empirically specifiable’ that it should be extensionally stated. In this manner, we liberate the social sciences from inappropriate constraints that apply only to the natural sciences. Third, from the outset, we have insisted that a definition of well-being should be sharply distinguished from the measurement of well-being because such a distinction is logically necessary for any judgement as to whether the approach to measurement is well or badly specified (Gasper 2004: 1). Operational definitions fail this simple criterion because they identify definition and measurement. Once we free ourselves of the myth of operationalist definitions, we can argue that anything can be measured. Disabused of the idea that the measurements are the things we are measuring (i.e. that the indices are well-being), the issue of how to measure becomes liberated from the requirement that it be a definition. Measures presupposes definitions; they don’t provide them. This simple point unfetters us from the alleged need for universally applicable measures. We don’t need to seek a standardised measurement that can be equated with a definition. And once so unshackled, one can make numerical representations of something that isn’t itself numerical. We don’t need to assume that only the numerical can be measured. Thus, we can avoid the dichotomy that leads us to affirm either one, that because well-being isn’t numerical, it cannot be measured, or two, that because it is measurable, it must be numerical. Emancipated from the myth that identifies measurement and definition, we can affirm both that ‘wellbeing’ isn’t a numerical concept and yet that well-being can be measured. In short, a measurement can be a numerical representation of a state of affairs that isn’t itself numerical. Such a view allows for the idea that some numerical representations might serve some purposes better than others. It destroys the idea of the representation or the measurement. While, of course, for some purposes, standardised forms of measurement will be useful, the demolition of the myth implies that there isn’t such a thing as the standardised measure. Seeking a standardised measure or set of indices may be a useful representation in some contexts, but in others, quite misleading.

Measuring: a brief outline Now for the second reply to the antinomy. We will sketch a method for constructing a measurement of well-being in accordance with the conception argued for in this book. Doubtless the outline will be telegraphic and compact. There will be some hand-waving. Nevertheless, it will show that such measurement is possible in principle, and this is an important result. Our aim is to try to characterise a complex evaluative concept in ways that are empirically specifiable but without being reductive. We are trying to respect both the evaluative and the empirical nature of the concept. If we can show how to measure well-being, at least in principle, then the empirical nature of the concept is to that extent clear. We won’t try to address the difficulties that any account of the measurement of well-being would face, such as the fact that objective measures tend to track GDP (McGillivray and Clarke 2007: 4) and that subjective measures make interpersonal

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comparisons difficult (Elster and Roemer 1993). The main task before us is how to include everything that is significant without double counting. This requires specifying what is to be measured at the right level of generality. To complete this task, we shall construct a broad frame in five steps. The first specifies the core variables, and the second shows how to combine them. The third step introduces self-consciousness into this core. The fourth step introduces more complex factors, and shows how to integrate those into the core. The fifth measures the synergetic factor: the extent to which the other factors are causally mutually supportive. a) First, we build the basic framework. We identify the deslogo interests of a person or group. We make a list of genuinely independent interests. Let us assume that we have 10 interests and each has a maximum score of 10. For any person or group, we assign a value that measures the degree to which their life meets their deslogo interests within a specific time frame. In this way, we construct a list that will become a matrix (Kruger 2009: 14–15). There is also an appreciation variable, which consists in the sum of three values. The first is the appropriate appreciation factor: the capacity to connect appropriately to the desirable features of the experiences, activities and processes that a person engages in. A factor of 1 would be full or perfect appreciation; zero, null. We assign a value to this variable for each of the deslogo interests identified in step 1. How do we do this? It requires finding out how to measure the extent to which a person pays attention to what she is doing in ways that permit her to be directly aware of the non-instrumentally valuable nature of her activities. So, for example, we might test for instrumentalisation, since this is a primary block. The second awareness factor is a measure of the intensity or vividness of the person’s awareness: to what degree is a person conscious. This might be treated as a general measure or as variable specific to each of the deslogo interests identified in step 1. The latter is more accurate because one might be more intensely aware when engaged in some activities rather than others. The intensity of awareness may have neurophysiological markers. The third is the person’s emotional capacity to appreciate emotionally the valuable features of the activities, experiences and processes that she engages in. Again, this can be measured in terms of the person’s general emotional capacities. b) For the second step: How do these disparate measures relate to each other as a composite? A person’s life consists in the experiences, activities and processes she undertakes and undergoes. And insofar as these are desirable, they partly constitute her well-being. However, this assumes that the person appreciates fully the value of the activities. Without any appreciation, it would be as if the desirability of the activities were inoperative. Therefore, we should multiply the scores in the activity list by the summation of the awareness factor. So, for example, if a person engages in very desirable activities during a period, but has very little appreciation of their desirability because she is anxious then her score will be low. In contrast, a person who has a very strong appreciation will score high, even if her activity score is low on many of the counts. For example, suppose that playing is a deslogo interest: within a specific time-period a person needs to play. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the person need have a time specifically set aside

Towards a definition of well-being 153 exclusively for playing; the playfulness might be intermingled with other activities. Setting this complication aside, let us say that we can reasonably assign the numeral 8 to characterise to degree to which the person has satisfied this deslogo interest within that time-period. Suppose that the person has a low capacity to appreciate the activities that involve playing during the time-period. Let us assign this the value 3. So, the sub-total score would be 8 × 3 = 24. c) We assign values to the various variables concerning self-awareness. Once we have assigned a composite value for the person’s self-awareness and the procedure would be to take this as an additive value on the awareness multiplier. A composite self-consciousness variable would be an addition to this multiplier effect.24 Following the previous example, suppose the person has a low selfconsciousness score, say of 4 out of 10, then their new sub-total score will be: 8 × (3 + 4) = 56. Please remember that the variables are supposed to capture the non-instrumental value of the relevant components or aspects of well-being. For example, the issue of how self-confidence causally affects a person’s well-being is not in play at this stage. d) The fourth step involves integrating two complex factors: relationships and non-instrumentalisation. These are complex because in part they may be already included in the core, but in some regards, they may be genuinely independent. We don’t want to double count nor leave them out. Instrumentalisation or the lack of it should already be included in the measurement of appreciative awareness and self-awareness. If this is the case, it should not figure as a distinct variable. Concerning relationships, in Chapter 5, we defined three categories as follows. The first is doing for others. The second is the capacity for the person to be with others as persons. The third is being-in, one’s capacity to be part of a community group. Some aspects of these relationship-categories are already included in the core measurement framework outlined above. For instance, the list of deslogo interests already includes some aspects of relationships as desirable activity kinds (see Chapter 3). Additionally, some will be included at the level of awareness. For example, in terms of being-with, insofar as one is perceiving a person instrumentally, one cannot properly appreciate their company as a friend (see Chapter 4). In these regards, one’s relationships with others are already included in the core measurement framework for well-being. Nevertheless, there is an aspect of our relationships that is not included. This is the idea that other persons become or are part of one’s life. Therefore, this would be assigned a value. e) Finally there is the synergetic aspect of well-being, the mutual causal reinforcement or positive feedback loops. This requires specifying the relevant coefficients. The idea is that increasing well-being along one dimension will not involve diminishing it along another, or positively, would facilitate its increase along the other dimensions.

Beyond numbers Hopefully, we have answered the objection that the conception of well-being outlined here isn’t sufficiently clear to be in principle measurable. There is still more

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to be done because, now, we must face the protestations from the opposite side of the antinomy, namely that well-being isn’t measurable at all. One argument to this effect is that being well is pluralistic; it consists in living various irreducible non-instrumental goods. This pluralism will entail that such goods are incommensurate, and thus well-being would be immeasurable (Raz 1988; Gray 1995). In short, measurability requires monism (that there is only one thing of non-instrumental value), and monism is false (Chan 1997). Indeed, we have argued in favour of the claim that being well is pluralistic, that it is composed of irreducible non-instrumental goods. Moreover, we have advocated irreducible plurality in at least two ways. There are four dimensions along which we live, and with respect to the first of these, we have desirability characterizations defined in relation to non-substitutable deslogo interests that can’t be reduced to a set of preferences or rankings. So, there is plurality concerning both the four dimensions and the deslogo interests. So, given this double pluralism, how can we also maintain that well-being can be measured? A second argument against the possibility of measuring well-being (from this side of the antinomy) is that measurement requires the comparison of like with like, and that this condition is irredeemably violated in the case of well-being measures. For example, when we measure the distance between two objects, we do so with something fundamentally alike, such as the length of a measuring rod. Likewise, with durations and clock-events. More abstractly, measurement requires the comparison of like with like in the sense that quantitative methods require treating the domain to be measured as consisting in data that is describable in extensional or referentially transparent terms. To be able to count, there must be units that can be counted independently of how they are described or such that equivalents can be substituted. However, contends the antithesis, well-being measures are not like this. Wellbeing is through and through intentional because it pertains to activities, awareness, feelings, relationships and self-consciousness, all of which are marked by uneliminable intentionality. Psychologically, our lives consist in intentional actions, states and processes that are not describable as such with the purely extensional language that is necessary for quantitative treatment.25 Intentional states or facts as such resist being counted because their identity requires mental content or propositions, neither of which should be regarded as countable entities (or even as entities at all; see Chapter 4). Because it is permeated with intentionality, well-being can’t be thought of as consisting in numerically treatable units and therefore, contends the argument, it violates the requirement that measurement consist in comparing like with like. Consequently, measuring well-being isn’t possible. A more intuitive and less technical way to make this point on behalf of this side of the antinomy might be as follows: mental content is essentially qualitative and subjective, and therefore it is not quantitative and objective. But measurement must be quantitative and objective. Therefore, argues the objection, trying to measure intentional states is like trying to box the wind. Given that well-being is infused with intentionality, how can we maintain that well-being is measurable?

Towards a definition of well-being 155 The answer to both challenges is to be crystal clear about the difference between measurement and the thing measured. The map isn’t the territory; the indices aren’t the valuable. Therefore, we can have quantitative measures of the incommensurable. Likewise, we can make numerical representations of the non-numerical. Likewise, we can make extensional statements about intentional states. But in each of these cases, we are not characterising the relevant phenomena as incommensurable, non-numerical or intentional. The distinction allows that even pluralistic, incommensurate goods can be measured. Clearly they can’t be measured insofar they are incommensurate, intentional or non-numerical. We can devise ways to apply quantitative measures to intentional states, even if they can’t be measured with respect to or qua their intentionality. As we saw in Chapter 3, we can measure a certain kind of desirability with relevantly sanitised preferences.26 For this reason, clarity on the difference between the measurement and the thing measured allows for measurement of well-being, but it will diminish the expectations that we should have of any such measurement system. As we have already seen, the issue of how to measure should be released from the requirement that it be a definition. Measures presuppose definitions and don’t provide them. Thus, we can’t have a standardised measurement that can be equated with a definition. Nevertheless, if we want to measure intentional and normative facts in other regards, we can do so. The issue isn’t whether we can do it but rather what this amounts to. For instance, we can measure the value of things in terms of how much people would be prepared to pay for them under certain conditions. We can measure the value of activities and experiences in terms of the relevant preferences. Whether we can do this or not isn’t the issue: we can do it. Rather the concern is to realise how little we have accomplished once we have done this. We haven’t provided a definition of the values or even a standardised measure appropriate for all occasions. More to the point, we haven’t provided a criterion on which practical decisions should be based. By definition, the relevant decisions should be based on the pluralistic values that constitute the criteria rather than on their measurement. Because of this point often overlooked in decision theory, measurement doesn’t provide an automatic decision-procedure. Decisions should be based on what is valuable. Measurements are only a guide to the valuable. What counts isn’t necessarily what we count. Thus, for example, it is a definite decision to base one’s policies on cost-benefit analyses insofar as these are merely measurements of the underlying pluralistic incommensurate values. Standard cost-benefit analyses form a measurement of the relevant well-being values; they don’t constitute a definition of those pluralistic values. In a similar manner, economic development isn’t constituted by growth in GDP. Good decision-making is defined in terms of those values and not in terms of their measurement. These points amount to a cautionary note, which we will now amplify. The cautionary note doesn’t consist only in the claim that measurements don’t always track what they are supposed to measure. There is a potentially more alarming set of points: standardised measures seductively invite us to shoot ourselves

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in the foot in two ways. Suppose we were to construct a standard WB unit, WBU. Suppose that some people and groups would manage their lives and activities by trying to achieve higher WBU scores within specific time periods. This appears to be rational strategy: a higher WBU score is better than a lower one, and we can achieve higher scores by managing our lives and institutions scientifically. Yes: it appears logical. The problem is that it isn’t. Management by such performance scores renders higher measurements the aim or goal of the activities in question. Potentially, this is a double whammy. First, it instrumentalises all the activities. This means that we regard the actions as valuable only because (or insofar as) they increase some end-state, namely in this case, well-being. As we saw in Chapter 2, this claim leads to absurd implications. Among other things, it implies that none of the activities we engage in and experiences we undergo are constitutive of well-being, because their value is purely instrumental. It thereby strips the concept of any such content. Insofar as management by performance scores instrumentalises, it makes our lives instrumental to some goal in a way that renders the goal emasculated, leaning towards the vacuous. The second curse is that the aimed-at-result is only a measurement of the value; it isn’t what is valuable per se. WBUs are only a measure of well-being, and cannot be identified with the value measured. Therefore, insofar as management by performance scores makes increased scores its goal, it connects only to signs or to ghostly shadows of well-being. This point isn’t simply the claim that measurements needn’t track well what they are supposed to measure (albeit that this is an important point). It is rather also the additional point that, either institutionally or psychologically, we have made our goal what is only a sign. We can intuit the absurdity of making these identifications by reflecting on the practice of teaching to the test.27 First, teaching to the test instrumentalises learning. On this conception, students will regard learning as valuable only for the sake of some result, and thereby the activity becomes something that one would wish away, as a cost to be minimised in the name of efficiency. This destroys the possibility of appreciating learning about anything as a non-instrumentally valuable process, and it disenables attending to the interesting aspects of what one is learning. This is a logical consequence of the argument of Chapter 2. Second, teaching to the test makes the aimed result a mere score. But the score is only a measure of learning: a measurement (such as a grade) acts like a sign of the values that it is supposed to measure, and so teaching to the test makes the goal of learning a mere sign – not the real thing. The net effect of these two errors combined is that educational activities become drained of value. A set of activities that could be appreciated for themselves becomes performed for the sake of getting the numbers right. If we devise a measurement and make that our goal, then ipso facto we are no longer responsive and connected to the original valuable activities and experiences, but rather to some measurement targets. We can sense the absurdity of this by imagining a person worried that his instrumentalising score is too high and saying to himself: ‘I need to live differently and stop instrumentalising, so that I can get my I-score down.’ To make the absurdity appear logical, we only need to reward him financially for having lower instrumentalising scores.

Towards a definition of well-being 157 These cautionary notes don’t mean that we cannot aim to improve our lives. Of course, our actions will include those whose goal is such improvements. What the above warnings mean is that we must eschew the automatic habit of adopting an instrumental conception of rationality or of thinking that the valuable nature of any action or activity resides in its goal. Once we free ourselves of the fetters of instrumental rationality, we can distinguish between means/ends and instrumentally/non-instrumentally valuable, and thereby liberate ourselves from goal-tyranny and from the instrumentalisation of our lives. As explained in Chapter 2, we thereby learn a new relationship to goals. As an implication, well-being is not defined as a goal but as a way of being. For social policy, none of the above means that we shouldn’t measure wellbeing. Nor does it mean that we shouldn’t use the empirical information contained in studies that employ such measures. That would be foolish indeed! Policies need to be well-informed. And data about what is causally conducive to people living well will require quantitative studies. What it does mean, however, at the policy level, for institutions, is that we must eschew the lazy habit of making the better score the aim. It means that we shouldn’t be thinking that the policy aim is to raise WB scores. Well-being measurements shouldn’t be our policy goals or targets. It also implies that the policy aim shouldn’t even be to increase well-being. Rather the aim is to provide socio-economic conditions that permit people to live in better ways with respect to certain well-being relevant criteria. Perhaps this is a subtle point. But, when it is thought through, it undermines much policy discourse on well-being. We can only increase quantities. Thus, an improvement isn’t necessarily an increase. Of course, improvements in well-being would be reflected in increased well-being scores, hopefully. But the scores aren’t the improvement, and the improvement per se isn’t an increase in some quantity, namely the amount of well-being. Well-being consists in people living better with respect to certain criteria. As we have seen, such a notion is normatively pluralistic and intentional. It isn’t quantitative, even though its measures are. Better social conditions help improve the ways in which people live; in so doing, they increase well-being scores. But the improvement per se isn’t an increase in some quantity. In short, numerical language applies only to well-being measures or scores and not to how people live per se. Or, quantitative verbs such as ‘increase’ and ‘maximise’ apply to people’s being well only insofar as these are measurable. We now have closure with respect to the antinomy with which we begun. We can draw some methodological conclusions from the resolution of the antinomy. First, as alluded to earlier, one needs to distinguish four different processes in the investigation of well-being. First, there is the conceptual work required to explicate the framework for the notion. Second, we require empirical studies to characterise what empirically constitutes well-being for different age and social groups. Third, we specify the relevant markers, construct the indices and measure well-being in different social contexts. Fourth, given this, we can establish significant correlations between levels of well-being as measured and social-economic and personal conditions with the aim of identifying causal relationships relevant for policy. The second, third and fourth processes could be dimension-specific.

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Concerning causality in the last of the last phase, please note the import of Chapters 3 and 4. When we refer to ‘causal relationships’ in this context, we are not indicating the kind of mechanical causation pervasive in the natural sciences. Rather, we are denoting some type of intentional causation. One might explain the difference as follows. When one billiard ball hits another, or when water molecules collide, or when an electrical current runs through a wire, the causality is content-independent. It doesn’t depend on content; it is purely mechanical. In contrast, when a person’s wanting something causes her to perform an action, the causal relationship depends on the content of the desire and of her action. In this way, we explain the action as an action. We make sense of the action with regard to its content in terms of the content of the relevant beliefs and desires of the agent. The action of grabbing the umbrella is defined by its content (namely grabbing the umbrella) and the causes of this action (i.e. the relevant desires and beliefs of the agent) are causally effective in virtue of their content (Davidson 2001). Intentional action-causation isn’t mechanical billiard-ball causation. Why is this relevant for the causes of well-being? It is tempting to think of the way socio-economic conditions affect the well-being of persons on the mechanical model. This is especially seductive when we are considering extensionally defined or quantitative measures of well-being. And it is even more so, if we fail to distinguish measurement and value. Succumbing to these temptations amounts to ignoring the intentionality of the causation in question, which this amounts to ignoring the people affected. This difference can be hugely important. Consider the claim ‘raises in the minimum wage increase well-being levels in poor communities more than increased levels of policing.’ Expressed in this manner, the claim sounds like Boyle’s law: raises in the volume of a given mass of a gas at a given temperature will decrease the pressure of the gas. The causation behind Boyle’s law is purely mechanical. However, how economic and social conditions affect people’s well-being is not like that. Changes in such conditions affect what people can do, how they perceive their activities, how they feel, how they relate to others and how they perceive themselves and their relationships. Abstracting away from the intentionality of such changes depersonalises the people involved. ‘Lowering the minimum wage will cause a decrease in well-being’ fosters the illusion that what is at issue is simply how diminishing one quantity causes a decrease in another. Clearly the core issue at hand is very different from this: it concerns what it is like for the people involved. It concerns the subjectivity of their lived experience: how they will suffer; how they become anxious; how their family relationships will become strained; how they will tend to perceive themselves as worthless. This point was made originally back in Chapter 1 when we discussed the fourth misconception. These reflections indicate the indispensable need for qualitative investigations of people’s lives concerning their well-being in order to supplement quantitative studies. How so? What the deliberations show us is that quantitative correlations specify relations between measures of non-numerical phenomena (in the case of well-being). The correlations are between measures only. As such, they abstract away from the intentional and hence the personal aspects of what is actually going

Towards a definition of well-being 159 on. The numbers are only important insofar as they reflect relevant truths about peoples’ lives as lived. But the numbers only pinpoint one aspect of this. Thus, a second methodological conclusion from the resolution of the initial antinomy is that we need qualitative investigations of well-being to complement quantitative studies. It is for this reason that we advocate an important role for narrative studies of well-being in the appendix to this chapter, where we shall also describe the methodology employed for our own empirical study. APPENDIX: UNDERSTANDING WELL-BEING THROUGH LIFE NARRATIVES When we piloted the research methodology, Amy eagerly asked to be interviewed. She had recently completed a standard well-being survey and she was curious as to how our project might differ. When we asked her about her experience of the other survey, she replied: To be honest, I don’t know what to make of it. You see, after the survey, I felt somewhat confused about my life. It posed a lot of questions that I haven’t thought of. For example, I hardly compared my salary with anyone else’s, I don’t know much about my neighbourhood security issues, I haven’t got a garden, I don’t have time to volunteer because the little free time I have, I spend it on walking in the countryside. Why do they ask these questions? Is my life going well or not? How do they measure my well-being against that of others? Amy’s comments articulate some interesting concerns about the approaches of traditional surveys. First, one might be concerned about what the standard approaches are trying to achieve: are they defining well-being or measuring it? And what is this ‘well-being’ that they are trying to measure? And why are they doing this? Second, it seems that Amy is expressing frustration and confusion that the questions she was asked didn’t fit well with her own perceptions of her life. These are not the questions she would have asked herself. Furthermore, Amy suggests that the questions sparked a process of self-reflection hut this process wasn’t brought to some completion. The survey left her hanging. As we shall now see, Amy’s concerns indicate the need for a quite different but complementary methodology.

Four kinds of well-being measures Current approaches to well-being research can be divided broadly into four groups. The first consists in the indicator-based studies which focus on measuring external factors to gauge the overall level of wellness of various target groups. These external factors include the causes and conditions of well-being. Sometimes they include symptoms of social well-being, such as the suicide rate.

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A good example of this general approach is the Human Development Index (HDI), a set of social indicators used to measure well-being, which was developed by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP 2010), based on Amartya Sen’s (1999) theoretical work on the capabilities required for an individual to function optimally. Three kinds of indicators represent the key dimensions of human life that impact well-being: longevity and health (e.g. life expectancy at birth), access to knowledge (e.g. expected years of schooling) and a decent standard of living (e.g. gross national income per capita). The second group involves studies of so-called subjective well-being which centre on self-reports of one’s sense of wellness and degree of satisfaction with life. This approach is influenced by the work of Diener (1984) who defines wellbeing as a state with an affective and a judgmental component. The first is when a person experiences a high level of the positive affect and a low level of the negative affect, and the second consists in a high degree of satisfaction with her life as a whole. Other such measures include the Temporal Satisfaction with Life Scale (see Diener and Suh 1997; Pavot, Diener and Suh 1998). We discussed and criticised this general approach in Chapters 1 and 4. The contrast between these two data sources is roughly that indicator-based studies collect data that are external and presumed to be objective, in order to achieve a more robust measure of well-being, whereas subjective studies solicit self-reports which are contextualised, subjective and personal. It is important to see that both groups of studies are concerned primarily with factors that are assumed to lead to well-being or with markers that track well-being, such as selfperception. In short, both measure well-being but neither define it. More recently, both economists and psychologists have developed a third approach that combines objective and subjective measures, intending to gauge external elements that affect person’s quality of life (objective) and how individuals experience these elements in their everyday reality (subjective). Once again, these integrated surveys tend to measure factors that are supposed to lead to wellbeing and how happy or content people are about these factors. They don’t define well-being. Despite these advances, one may still feel unease that such measuring approaches continue to be detached from the detail of daily human life and, for this reason, there is a more recent addition, a fourth approach to well-being surveys that asks people directly how much pleasure they feel over the course of a day (very satisfied – fairly satisfied – not at all satisfied). The underlying idea is that these questions help identify those activities that contribute to feelings of happiness. We also discussed the limitations of this hedonistic approach in Chapter 4. In these different ways, well-being surveys are becoming more complicated, as seen with the much-celebrated survey designed by scholars in Bhutan that is over 55 pages long and that takes many hours to complete. Measuring well-being almost becomes an industry, but that is a different matter (to be discussed in the next chapter). From these observations, with the support of the main body of the chapter, we can tentatively draw some preliminary conclusions: (1) causal factors are not

Towards a definition of well-being 161 equivalent to well-being and yet we see that they tend to be interchanged or muddled up. (2) In consequence, indicator-based research tends to confuse: (a) measuring elements of well-being; (b) measuring the causal conditions of well-being and (c) well-being itself. (3) The need to supplement objective measures tends to drive well-being theories towards hedonism and subjective preference theories.

Towards a new approach Despite their best intentions, indicator and psycho-social approaches tend to overlook how the lived realities or subjective experiences of the person constitute her well-being, as we saw in Chapters 1 and 4. They pay little attention to the richness and variety of lived experiences, being wont to reduce them to pleasure and ranking scores. This leads to one-dimensional conceptions of well-being, which are conveniently more conducive to numerical treatment. At the same time, they also tend to shy away from the evaluative aspects of the notion of well-being, that is, what makes well-being good. Integrating these phenomenological and evaluative concerns into our understanding well-being requires a more holistic and multidimensional framework. For these reasons, we have developed our own theory by arguing how well-being ought to be conceptualised, but without following the existing divisions, such as objective versus subjective well-being; hedonic versus eudaimonic (Ryan and Deci 2001) and Parfit’s trichotomy: pleasure, preference and objective list theories (Parfit 1984). As the argument at the end of Chapter 7 indicates, given such a framework, one cannot rely on a purely quantitative research methodology to understand better what well-being is, and what facilitates and causes it. Psychologically, our lives consist in intentional actions, states and processes that as such are not describable as such in purely quantitative terms. This means that quantitative approaches inevitably omit the ways in which (say) lower income will decrease well-being scores. It will leave out what people feel, think and perceive. Additionally, purely quantitative approaches take for granted the relevant categorisations, and hence cannot identify the empirical constituents of well-being for different groups or persons. Such an investigation would involve specifying the relevant desirepatterns, states of awareness and self-consciousness and relationships of the pertinent groups. One methodology that can help in both regards is a narrative and life history approach (Goodson and Gill 2010, 2013). We see that life history is, first and foremost, a narrative process, the essence of which lies in its potential in developing an overview of one’s life through an account of one’s lived experience, including one’s activities, processes, relationships, key incidents and important encounters that constitute one’s life as a whole. Before describing the benefits of such a methodology for the overall project of this book, it is important to recognise the limitations and dangers of this approach. Even if the participants interviewed feel comfortable and don’t feel judged, it is likely that they will tend to present their personal narrative in a favourable light to make a good impression. A more profound distortion is that people may be

162 Towards a definition of well-being dishonest to themselves, for example, about the breakup of a relationship or about their motivations for performing an action and about how happy they feel. Additionally, existing research recognises that people are ‘surprisingly bad judges of what will make them happy’ (Bok 2010: 5). If people are notoriously bad at judging what make them happy, we may expect them fare badly in judging how well they are living their life. Furthermore, as we recognised in Chapter 6, as products or self-constructions, narratives and life histories are artefacts that are necessarily selective, and cannot be identified with the life lived (or sections of it).

The methodology in application Concurrent with the development of the conceptual framework, we launched a life history research, interviewing a total of 50 people who were living in the UK. In this in-depth qualitative inquiry, we sought the individuals’ perceptions of their life, their overall understanding of how well their life has been going, what they think regarding the important constituents of their well-being and how they might live life better. It would be a sorry mistake to treat the framework offered in this book as an empirical theory that is subject to direct empirical confirmation or falsification through the interviews. Throughout this book, we have presented arguments for the framework and for how key concepts should be understood. While the interviews don’t formally confirm or refute the arguments for the conceptual framework, nevertheless, they do illustrate, specify and reshape it. In this manner, the data collected through the interviews could provide evidence that would be employed in arguments against the framework offered here. Just as the interviews guide the construction of the theory, they could be part of arguments for its deconstruction. The relationship between the theoretical and the empirical investigations should be mutually informative. By analysing people’s narratives, and their evaluations of their own lives, we can see how the different aspects of well-being are experienced by them. This informs the development of a conceptual framework; the life histories and personal narratives provide enriching illustrations of that framework, and help flesh out the theory in application to different social groups and contexts. In this way, the empirical studies should apply, refine and adjust the theory to the lived experience of people’s lives. In this way, they enable us to discover better descriptions of what constitutes well-being for different groups in varying social contexts. (We shall argue below that such information cannot be garnered through purely quantitative methods). Life histories and personal narrative interviews are an opportunity for a person to review their well-being over time. It provides descriptions of a life in the dayto-day, as well as over a longer time span. To integrate snapshots and long-term reflection requires interviews for both life history and personal narrative purposes. They are both important especially for the dimension of self-consciousness. When they are sincere, this is what they report – how people see themselves. They are especially relevant concerning self-consciousness of a person’s past because

Towards a definition of well-being 163 when people narrate they tend to define their present and future in terms of their past. However, in claiming this, we are not defending a narratival theory of selfconsciousness. Rather, we are advocating a narratival methodology to study wellbeing to complement purely quantitative approaches. The importance of life histories and personal narrative interviews is not restricted to the self-conscious dimension or domain of well-being. Because a life history and narratival approach provides space for people to describe and reflect on their lives in their own words, it would be essential for the construction of a phenomenological study, for gaining insight into the second dimension of well-being, awareness, as was discussed towards the end of Chapter 4. The ways in which a person encounters her day-to-day experiences will be reflected in the ways in which she talks about her daily life, and this matters for her well-being: we might be able to see how the person constructs her phenomenological ‘world’. Through open interviews, one can come closer to understanding a person’s wellbeing on her terms, which is not possible with indicator-based research. This respects the intentionality of the person’s experiences which purely quantitative measures cannot. We don’t think that the theory should be employed to make evaluative judgments about people’s lives. It should not be regarded as providing a normative checklist. Such a patronizing or judgmental employment and understanding of the theory would negate the possibility of a mutually informative hermeneutic between the interviews and the theoretical framework. Furthermore, it would not take seriously the idea that the person describe her life in her own terms. Nevertheless, the conceptual framework might help the interviewer make sense of the concerns that the participants have regarding their lives, and the studies may reveal where peoples’ misunderstanding of well-being have been important: for example, when a person instrumentalises aspects of her life. Given one has a well-articulated framework in hand, the interviews might include a third phase, a dialogical stage. This would be implemented only once the open-ended life history and personal narratives have reached completion. In other words, given that the first two phases are complete, the researchers could explain to the narrators the proposed framework (albeit in non-technical terminology). In this third phase, the researchers would then provide the interviewees with an opportunity to draw some evaluative conclusions about their own lives explicitly employing the framework. Since the framework already offers some criteria, inviting people to talk about their life within the defined domains may enable them to come up with a more reflective account of their life. Alternatively, the narrators may express interesting critiques of the relevance or appropriateness of the framework for their lives. In summary, we have argued for a conceptual framework for understanding well-being in a general sense. This framework needs empirical investigation to specify what constitutes well-being for given social and age groups in specific contexts. We will also need empirical research to establish the conditions and causes of well-being. These two tasks cannot be accomplished with purely quantitative methods. We need qualitative methods that allow people to express freely

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in their own words and vocabulary their sense of their own lives, what matters to them and why and their own evaluations of their life to date.

The empirical research process The research method we employed included two steps. The first was an unstructured interview conversation in which we invited the participant to provide a biographical sketch of herself. We asked the participant to take control of this part of the conversation: that is, they could give an account of their life and portray themselves in any way they wished, and in as much detail as they wanted. Most people adopted a chronological approach, which is perhaps the easiest way to give an account of one’s life. The second step of the research consisted in a series of open-ended questions as follows: 1 2

Based on your experience in life so far, what would characterise a good life for you? Why do you think these characterise the goodness in life? What are the things you most enjoy doing and that are integral to your life? How often can you engage in these activities? What is it about the activities that you appreciate most? • •

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In the past, what were the things that characterised a good life for you? For instance, these things might be what you did or you had, the activities you engaged in, the experiences you had. In the present, what are the important things/activities/experiences that characterise a good life for you?

Who are the most important persons/people in your life? Why? Some of the things/experiences/activities that make life good are not given, and you have had to work for them or pursue them. What are these for you? Can you describe how you have done that? Or can you describe how you are doing it? Please give us an example of a moment when you are happiest and why? What do you like about yourself? What don’t you like about yourself? What are the most important things in your life and why? How would you describe yourself and your life to strangers like me? Does it capture who you are? Taking your life as whole, how do you feel about it? Do you have any idea where your life is going? What has made you decide to live that kind of life? What are the causes that you most want to pursue? Why? What aspects of your life that you would like to change most? Why? And how do you think you’d do that? What are the things that are important for you but are currently missing in your life? What would you do to bring that into your life?

We formulated these questions so that they follow the general contours of the conceptual framework. Together, they aim to explore the participant’s perception of

Towards a definition of well-being 165 her well-being both as an integral whole and its components such as: her experiences, activities and relationships; how she has engaged in and appreciated these. With this design in mind, we decided to select up to 50 participants, which is a fairly large size for an in-depth qualitative research. As it is difficult to identify representational populations for this kind of initial study, conventional sampling strategies do not apply here. Biases, anecdotal and individual differences are not likely to devalue the data collected for our research because we didn’t intend to use it to make generalisations about individuals’ perceptions of their well-being. Therefore, we based our selection on the following criteria: a)

Individuals who were willing to explore their life histories and share openly their perspectives. We used a snowballing strategy, that is, inviting existing participants to suggest names for us to contact. b) Individuals of a variety of backgrounds. As we were looking for varieties of people in terms of how they might experience well-being, we sought participants from different backgrounds such as age, social class, ethnicity, gender, religion, profession and education. c) Individuals who were easily geographically accessible. We selected those with whom the face-to-face interview and conversation could be relatively easily set up. For instance, we decided not to make train journeys longer than three hours for the interview. The participants of this research were a diverse group; they included a person who is homeless, university professors, migrants, a housewife, doctoral student, cleaner, clergy, a pensioner, an elderly person with Alzheimer, spiritual practitioners, individuals of different sexual orientations, prisoners on probation, an aristocrat and several middle-class people. The youngest participant was 18 and the oldest, 86. As the fieldwork took place in Southeast of England, most of the people interviewed were either residents of this part of the country or visitors. In total, the data collection took about two years to complete. Fifty people went through the interview process and each interview lasted between two and five hours. The research has yielded hundreds of thousands of words plus our own research notes.

Data analysis After transcribing verbatim the research interviews, the second step was to organise each interview into two texts: the participant’s biographical sketch and the participant’s reflection on the well-being domains, based on the themes developed in the book. The data analysis was performed using a holistic content approach, benefiting from the guidelines provided by the theoretical framework. The personal narratives illustrate how well people think they are living their everyday lives. In organising people’s life histories, analysing and interpreting their perspectives, we took into account three aspects of the empirical investigation:

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Towards a definition of well-being First, people’s narrative of their well-being and their perceptions of how well their life has been going are highly influenced by events in their life and by overall social and political climates. For instance, in Chapter 3, we introduced Stanley whose wish to be financially ‘successful’ is influenced by a neoliberal ideology, competitive societal culture and individualism. These social conditions will undoubtedly have impact on a person’s motivation, attitudes, concerns and values. Second, people’s emotions and other mental states shape and constitute their experience of the world, including their perception of how well their life has been going. For example, Martha’s narrative interviews provided her with the opportunity to explore the role her attitudes and emotions had played in her perceptions of her life. In a similar vein, Adrian often felt depressed, and this dominated his outlook on life to such degree that he often couldn’t appreciate the activities he was engaged in. In narrating, he recognised how his melancholy prevented him from such appreciation. Third, we are interested in understanding what makes things desirable (noninstrumentally) for a person insofar as she regards them as part of her well-being. In other words, we want to find out why people care about something in the way they do, and why they consider that such things matter more than others, from their own perspective. Personal narratives provide some comprehension. For instance, Martha helped us understand how she came to live her life as she did and why she cared about what was important for her.

Conclusion Any empirical research that illustrates and helps us to understand how people live and experience well-being must be contextualised by a rich personal biographical narrative. It also needs to be complemented with a person’s articulation of her perception of well-being and how this pertains to her everyday life.

Notes 1 See Chapter 2 page 41. 2 But only for specific types of desiring: those that are non-derivative and directed towards activities. 3 Lawrence Hamilton (2003) tries to develop a Marxian notion of need based on human functioning (especially pages 53–54). He claims that such a conception is in part noninstrumental. In which case, it should be constituted by activities etc. that embody desirability-patterns. 4 Note that inalterability isn’t absolute but rather relative or conditional: X is inalterable only given certain conditions. 5 Given, but only in some respects. 6 In a parallel way, we need this concept for the interpretation of desire (see Chapter 3). When we interpret a group of non-instrumental desires, we look for relevant similarities and differences (in terms of content) that have explanatory power. However, to have such power, these interests must be relatively inalterable. To see this, consider the natural

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sciences: we explain a pattern P1 by citing a more enduring and inescapable pattern P2. In effect, this condition partly defines what counts as a relevant pattern. The fundamental laws of nature, by definition, are features of physical reality that a person cannot change. For example, I can alter the velocity of a light beam by passing it through a medium, but I cannot change its velocity in a vacuum. That is a physical constant. Likewise, one can change the kinetic energy of an object but to do one must change its mass or velocity in accordance with the equation ½ mv2. This is part of what makes the latter a physical law. In scientific explanation, the explanans should be more inescapable than the explanandum. This requirement is parallel to those in the natural sciences. Physical laws should have both explanatory power and also they should be inescapable. This guideline regarding the nature of explanation directs us towards the relevant deslogo interests cf. Harre 1975. Even hypothetical desires. The evaluation of such changes would be instrumental, but instrumental considerations depend on non-instrumental evaluative claims. In other words, should we change our nature with respect to deslogo interests of kind K? The answer that having such a K interest (or K motivated non-derivative desires) causes us harm assumes a specification of harm in terms of other interests. One might argue that such a regress is halted conceptually by the fact that an activity characterised by (say) aesthetic desirability characterisations (such as ‘enchanting’) will automatically be not subject to further evaluation, that is, by the meaning of the term itself. But this alternative was already ruled out in Chapter 3. The idea that the mere fact that a person has a desire might halt the regress was also ruled out. In this discussion, we are making an important simplifying assumption, namely that translations between cultures are possible (though not necessarily on an individual word-to-word basis). Different societies will have varying concepts to characterise their interests and what is valuable. We shouldn’t assume of any culture that it has developed the appropriate concepts for this purpose. Good or bad as well-being relevant in a non-instrumental sense. This is a simplification. Of course, we can always appeal to purely instrumental considerations in our crosssocietal evaluations, and although these may be practically important and even decisive, they don’t get to the nub of the issue. See Chapter 1 on scope. The answer depends on what the contrast is (i.e. better than what?). In exploring these points, we can separate two claims: one, that aggression morally needs to be channeled, and second, it needs to be channeled for the sake of an individual’s well-being. The concept of well-being isn’t hostage to morality: an organism’s well-being could in principle conflict with moral demands. For a being that needs to eat human flesh, moral concerns about cannibalism wouldn’t be directly relevant to the definition of his well-being. This needs explanation. We are not committed to transitivity of ‘better’ and ‘worse’ all the way down. However, for purposes of measurement incommensurability would be treated as indifference. See Soren Reader (2005) who attributes this error to Garrett Thomson. But, in reply, please see Chapter 2 of Thomson (1987), especially page 32. Or as referentially opaque. Yet, despite this, one cannot regard normative concepts as free-floating. We need to characterise them in clear empirical terms insofar as this is possible. As we saw in Chapter 1, these two claims produce a tension. The two claims are that the normative cannot be reduced to the empirical and that we need to provide empirical specifications of normative concepts. For example, McGillivray and Noorbakhsh (2004: 3) recount that the UNDP has tried to provide a solid basis for the Human Development Index (HDI) through Sen’s

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capabilities approach. They note the difficulties in finding universal claims about ‘basic capabilities required to lead a worthwhile life’. However, they don’t note that this approach involves a circularity because it fails to specify non-instrumental values. Defining well-being in terms of capabilities required for a worthwhile life postpones the question of what constitutes the relevant non-instrumental values. Extensional sentences are referentially transparent. This means that co-extensive or co-referential terms can be substituted in such sentences without altering the truthvalue of the sentence as a whole. For example, ‘2 + 3 = 5’ is extensional because any numeral that refers to the number 5 can be substituted after the = sign and the sentence will remain true. While claims in the natural sciences are extensional, psychological assertions are not. ‘A believes that p’ and ‘p = q’ doesn’t entail ‘A believes that q’. Such intensional sentences are referentially opaque. Fundamentally this is because such sentences are about semantic content. This is insofar as it is a non-instrumental valuable aspect of well-being. Of course, selfconsciousness will affect awareness or appreciation. In this regard, it has instrumental value and thus it is already included in the appreciation variable To measure X, or to give it a numerical representation, requires that it doesn’t matter how X is described. Therefore, quantitative methods require that the domain and data points in question are described extensionally. Psychological states are intentional; they have meaning or content. This implies that they cannot be described as such with extensional sentences. Suppose utility is a measure of substantive preferences (or a subset thereof) (Bermudez 2009: 44–47). We are claiming that such preferences are a measure of the noninstrumental desirability of activities (or an aspect of well-being), fundamentally because they don’t constitute well-being. So, utility is the measure of a measure. This shouldn’t be surprising because constructing preference functions is a way to de-intentionalise the valuable features of the activities in question, in order to make it measurable. This is why the interpretation of desires to find the underlying patterns of desirability (or deslogo interests) as explained in Chapter 3 is a way to avoid this deintentionalising in the definition of the valuable features of the activities in question. The de-intentionalising is necessary for the measurement but not for the definition. Or by watching the Black Mirror episode ‘Nosedive’ Series 3 Episode 1, Oct. 2016.

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It seems that humanity is at the cusp of a transition from a dominant ‘free market’ economy into an all-encompassing ‘market society’ (Sandel 2013). In the 1980s and 1990s, deregulation of government functions and services was the rage, and in less than 20 years, in many countries, the global marketplace has successfully absorbed large parts of what formerly was the realm of the government, including mass transportation, utilities and telecommunications. As Jeremy Rifkin notes, the global economy has turned its attention to the last remaining independent spheres of human activity: culture itself, cultural rituals, community events, social gatherings, the arts, sports and games, social movements and civic engagements are all being encroached upon by the commercial sphere (Rifkin 2001: 10). After making these observations, Rifkin concludes: The great issue in the coming years is whether civilisation can survive with a greatly reduced government and cultural sphere and where only the commercial sphere is left as the primary mediator of human life. (ibid.) In his remarkable study of American life, Robert Putnam documents the atrophying of public purpose (Putnam 2001). He shows how social activities and public purposes are in dramatic decline. To employ an analogy with wildlife, the ‘global warming’ of globalisation is destroying the social ecology at a dramatic and unprecedented rate. These changes have come within one generation, an incredibly short time span in human history. Middle-aged and older people are more active in organisation than younger people, attend church more often, vote more regularly, both read and watch the news more frequently, are less misanthropic and more philanthropic, are most interested in politics, work on more community projects, and volunteer more. (ibid.: 247–8) Putnam notes the change effects, the range of passions, purposes and meanings: Not all social networks have atrophied. Thin, single-stranded, surf-by interactions are gradually replacing dense, multi-stranded, well-exercised bonds. . . .

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Towards social critique Large groups with local chapters, long histories, multiple objectives, and adverse organisations are being replaced by more evanescent, single purpose organisations. (ibid.: 183–4)

These changes reflect a transformation in our social purposes and in the vehicles traditionally used to carry those purposes. It is, as with global warming, a destruction of unprecedented speed and range. Established social and community bonds and purposes are dissolving. Alongside this, the meaning of work, career, love, commitment and overall purpose are subject to seismic change. Since the implications drive into the heartland of personal meaning, mission and motivation, they are likely to transform our understandings of what it is to be a human being. In doing so, they will revolutionise core concepts, such as what constitutes ‘a life’ besides having similarly potent effects on other notions such as ‘love’, ‘commitment’, ‘community’, ‘democracy’, ‘society’, even ‘God’. Given this, we would expect that our understanding of human flourishing and well-being are also being subsumed by this all-encompassing model of the self and society, which for the moment we can call ‘neoliberal’ (Davies 2015).1 The question is: can one provide an account of human well-being that doesn’t succumb to this totalising influence? In this chapter, we aim to show that the characterisation of well-being provided in this book escapes being neoliberal. We will argue this, first, by demonstrating how the conception of well-being developed in this book can be employed to provide a deep and principled critique of contemporary neoliberal society, and second by uncovering the features that a neoliberal account of well-being would have and how our account avoids them.

Neoliberalism and capitalism Let us briefly define the nature of the so-called ‘neoliberal model’. Essentially neoliberalism pursues the constant widening of existing markets and seeks wherever possible to colonise new areas for market organisation: hence those arrangements formerly serviced by public agencies as part of a citizens’ rights or through personal interactions in family or community settings, are increasingly transformed into for-profit market transactions by companies selling services in a market setting. The dominant model involves the ‘privatisation’ of public or common assets and services, what David Harvey calls capital ‘accumulation by dispossession’ (Harvey 2003). Everything is open to be commodified and marketed: water, our genes, body parts, social work and social welfare generally. This marketisation is problematic for well-being because, in a capitalist economy, it involves an inherent tendency towards instrumentalisation. An economic system is capitalist insofar as it exists solely for the maximal accumulation of capital for its own sake (Marx 1976). In such an economy, all other aspects of social life tend to become only instrumentalised means for the maximum accumulation of capital. It is the capitalist imperative of maximum accumulation that drives what is loosely called ‘neoliberalism’. Under such a regime, all use value

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ultimately serves exchange value, and markets become instrumentalising and commodifying. This means that markets per se needn’t be inimical to well-being; it depends on the axioms of the system that governs them. In this way, we can distinguish a market economy from a capitalist one. The privatisation of public assets and services is associated with a drive to reshape cultural and institutional organisations in accordance with the instrumentalising imperative of capitalism. Beyond even this, the form and content of knowledge and narrative becomes lined up with free-market ideology, and this includes its misunderstanding of human well-being. For instance, the profitseeking corporation is presented as the role model for not just the public sector specifically, but also for civil society and the human being generally. A capitalistdriven market colonises human consciousness, and even the unconscious, such that augmenting well-being becomes conceived as a kind of psychological profitmaking. For instance, as we saw in Chapter 3, when well-being is envisaged as a preference function, it becomes akin to an internal market in which we trade less for more preferred options in order to maximise.

Starting points In this book, we deliberately began with a philosophical description of the ingredients that comprise well-being. We supplemented this with a splattering of real-life examples, garnered from an empirical study of peoples’ subjective experiences of living. The argument up to now suggests that many theories of well-being succumb to neoliberal ideological pressures, and it provides a way to show how a properly framed account might escape such invasions and establish standpoints from which we can see them as such. This is what we need to show now. Before we systematically review this argument, we need to set the stage with some preliminary points. First, if well-being doesn’t need to be conceived in the image of neoliberalism then it can be employed not only to criticise society but also to positively evaluate aspects of living in a capitalist society. We can employ the concept of well-being to investigate and think about what is good about living within a capitalist system. The evaluation doesn’t have to be only critical. For example, compared to feudal societies, or compared to state-planned economies, for many people (although not all), a capitalist market economy would constitute an improvement along several of the dimensions of well-being. Criticism is more pertinent for our specific purposes, however, because this more vividly illustrates how the account of well-being given here avoids the neoliberal trap. In other words, we want to show that the conception of well-being offered here is robust enough to serve as a basis for an incisive critique of capitalism. The aim isn’t to provide an overall evaluation of capitalism. When the concept of well-being is employed to assess critically life in a capitalist market society, of course, such assessments typically don’t indicate what a better alternative would be. However, given that evaluations are comparative, even if only implicitly so, when writers such as Bauman, Sennett, Rifken, Stiglitz, Mirowski and Sandel, point out how work has become instrumentalised, how our

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lives are becoming more commodified, how increasing levels of competitiveness provoke greater anxiety, there is an implicit comparison with an undefined society that lacks those ill-being features (Freud 2010). This point is significant because it indicates that social critique of contemporary society requires the imaginative work of constructing functionable alternatives. Such critiques are the attempt to indicate something better, even though diagnosing the illness is easier than designing the remedy. The envisaging of better alternatives requires, however, an analysis of the ills and their causal conditions, and this bring us to another interesting point. When people disagree in their evaluations of capitalist society, their base comparisons might be different. For instance, one might think that a society based on a capitalist economy would be better in many regards than one based on a state-planned economy. But such a thought wouldn’t negate the idea that there is an alternative future economic system that is better than a capitalist one (if it had yet to be envisaged based on some unspecified set of principles or axioms). Third, these points highlight the nature of the comparative and aspectual nature of evaluative judgments: X is better than Y (comparative) with respect to F (aspectual) (as emphasised in Chapter 1). This means that our assessment of a social institution from the perspective of well-being will be multi-dimensional and nuanced. It rules out the polarising for-and-against judgments that pollute political polemics. It is this all-or-nothing approach to evaluations that turns critical assessments into ideological wars. Fourth, we have rejected the subjectivist approach to evaluative judgments that is apparently inherent in contemporary scientific and economic thinking. One can make mistakes and be ignorant in one’s judgments about what is valuable, including about one’s own well-being; subjectivism of this kind is erroneous. This means that ‘this feels good’ is not an adequate criterion for well-being, even though good feelings constitute part of our well-being, as well as being conducive to it. It also means that we live in a world of untapped value-possibilities about which we might be ignorant. One might feel good in conditions that are limited, when there are other highly valuable possibilities about which one is ignorant. Fifth, we have avoided a tendency that is arguably present in some positive psychology: to treat the individual as the main cause of her well-being or ill-being, thereby ignoring structural features of society (Davies 2015: 18). This predisposition culminates in the tendency of the so-called new science of happiness to assume a liberal political framework and a market economy in which individuals are social atoms who pursue their own happiness (Abbinnett 2013). We are arguing that the notion of well-being can be liberated from such assumptions and when it is, it becomes an indispensable part of critical theory. In this regard it can be employed not only to criticise actions, practices and institutions, but also the ways in which institutions are systematically related to each other, or in other words, the structural features of society.2 The tendency to ignore the structural features of society and to assume that the individual is the main cause of her well or ill-being can adopt a scientific garb. For

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example, according to psychological set-point theory, each person has a set point of happiness determined by genetics and personality and objective life circumstances have a negligible causal role (Easterlin 2005: 3). We have avoided this kind of discussion by insisting that the framework advanced here is not an empirical theory about the causes of well and ill-being.3 This means that we haven’t tried to address the complex relationships between individual and systemic causation. Finally, there is a plethora of critical commentary of contemporary society; these tend to be disparate and fragmented, and not based on an explicit theory of well-being. For example, Oliver James describes the ‘Affluenza Virus’ which blights those who highly value money, possessions and appearances and who are consequently at a greater risk of being emotionally distressed – depressed, anxious, substance-abusing and personality-disordered (James 2007: xiv). In his earlier book Britain on the Couch based on data from more than a decade and a half ago he showed that in the case of British people nearly one quarter suffered from ‘serious emotional problems such as depression, anxiety or psychosis’ (James 2010). He attributes such phenomena to a ‘nasty form of political economy’ that he names ‘selfish capitalism’. From our point of view, this kind of analysis has two major shortcomings. Because it is not based on a holistic account of well-being, the diagnosis is partial; it focuses on emotional well-being. And because of its partial nature, there is no attempt to map such ills systematically. Furthermore, James’ portrayal of selfish capitalism doesn’t trace well the causal route from political economy to personal ill-being. He characterises selfish capitalism in terms of four features: privatisation, deregulation, the idea that business success should be defined in terms of current share price and the conviction that market forces can meet human needs of almost every kind (James 2007: xviii). This definition doesn’t explicitly include the defining, and hence offending, features of capitalism and because of this it doesn’t pinpoint the main problem.

The argument The exercise that we are about to indulge in is merely a prolegomenon to a properly constructed empirical investigation. Our aim is to identify the stress points at which a capitalist market economy is likely to systematically produce ill-being. In so doing, we want to show that the conception of well-being argued for in this book isn’t subsumed by neoliberal thinking. The evidence for this is that it can be employed in a robust, systematic and principled critique of the key features of a capitalist economic system. The concept of well-being developed in this book can be used as a basis for a comparative evaluation, and if we are right in this contention, then it would not involve imposing neoliberal conceptions implicitly on a non-capitalist society. Furthermore, the comparative assessment wouldn’t involve the covert move of taking neoliberal criteria to try to substantiate a positive evaluation of a neoliberal society.

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1) Instrumentalising The instrumentalisation at the heart of a capitalist society involves overwhelming ‘opportunity costs’, an ironic term for the systematic draining of meaning from our lives. This malaise applies to all the dimensions of well-being, but the instrumentalisation of work is at the heart of the problem. We are accustomed to the idea that the value of what we are doing is fundamentally the results that we attain. But, as we have seen, this idea cannot be correct (Chapter 2). This isn’t merely a question of the nature of the results or ends that we pursue, for example, that we increasingly tend to substitute financial goals and performance targets for social and artistic ends. Rather, the point is the very relationship between our goals and activities inherent in capitalist-conceived production: namely, because the action is for the sake of a goal, we wrongly assume that the goal has primary value. But, as we argued in Chapter 2, this normal supposition is back to front: it is the activity of that has non-instrumental value because it is part of someone’s life; it is the results have instrumental value. We don’t need to let our goals instrumentalise our activities and hence our life. This diagnosis touches the heart of a pervasive social disorder. Many people admit they feel alienated, burnt-out and often profoundly unhappy, and we are hypothesising that a root of such maladies is systematic instrumentalisation. We propose this because activity merely for the sake of results comprises an antiappreciative mode of awareness. Insofar as one instrumentalises, one is incapable of appreciating the non-instrumental value of activities and consequently, its noninstrumental value cannot become part of one’s well-being (because one is connected non-derivatively only to the result). It is like attending a banquet at which one cannot eat. Capitalist neoliberalism ineluctably habituates us to regard our working lives through these instrumentalised lenses and hence shepherds us towards increasing self-instrumentalisation and deeper ill-being. Neoclassical economic thinking, and its managerial derivatives, essentially regard work as grim soulless manufacturing, as a mere factor of production, even when it is sweetened with psychological incentives. Such states are illnesses or afflictions. This is because, in such modes of being, we have fundamental value relationships the wrong way around. It is akin to not being able to distinguish emotionally between the dinner and the cook, or more subtly the role of the cook and the person. When such mistakes characterise important sectors of one’s way of living and one’s relationships to oneself, then the person herself is ipso facto subject to a form of ill-being (p. 21). This type of ill-being is endemic in a capitalist system insofar as a capitalist mode of production is directed by the maximisation of the accumulation of capital for its own sake. This means, first, that capitalism instrumentalises all that it touches, including most obviously both work and consumption and, second, that it is driven by an imperative to encroach upon an ever-increasing number of aspects of human life, as we see in its neoliberal phase. The machine has a need to constantly grow and everything it touches becomes part of the machine.

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Instrumentalisation can be found along each of the four dimensions of human living. It transmutes why we do what we do, the desires that motivate our activities, and thereby it pollutes our sense of what matters. It enters our awareness, and hence severs our capacity to appreciate the processes of living. In this way, it stunts our capacity to relate to other people as people and reduces lived communities to shopping clubs. Finally, insidiously, it can pervade our sense of ourselves, of what and who we are. 2) Desirable activities It ought to be viewed as one of the greatest conceptual scandals of our time that consumption is traditionally defined in terms of expenditure or purchasing. For this shows that what matters economically is only the transaction, the handing over of money. It establishes consumption essentially as a source of income, and thereby throws to the ground any idea that the capitalist economy is for the sake of bettering lives or for the good of consumers. The environmental consequences of this conception are calamitous; the human outcomes, tragic. This instrumentalisation of consumption underlies the claim that advertising shapes and directs our desires. Both phenomena indicate that well-being cannot be well understood in terms of desire or preference satisfaction. We cannot assume that the satisfaction of desires defines well-being (even after cognitive therapy). Such a view surrenders to an impoverished and truncated vision of human possibility. There are enumerable ways that societies can live, and in the face of these anthropological alternatives, the desire theory unimaginatively fixes on idealised versions of our actual desires as the evaluative criterion for defining what counts as a possible better.4 It leaves us logically unable to ask: ‘would be better off having quite different desires?’ and ‘would our state of being be better in quite different social conditions?’ The idea ‘getting what one wants’ is too limited a notion to capture the value possibilities before us. For these reasons, we need to define well-being in terms of the criteria that would allow us to evaluate desires from the point of view of well-being. This turning point or fulcrum, we have argued, consists in abstract features of our motivational makeup, namely relatively inescapable deslogo interests. These define the kinds of activities that comprise being well. They stand to a human life roughly as running to a horse, flying to a bird, pack-hunting to wolf and eating and other activities to all animals. Insofar as she is not engaging in one of the relevant types of activity, then a human person would ipso facto have a lower level of well-being. It is possible that, in capitalist societies, we are numb to the fact that may be missing out on parts of life, akin perhaps to an enclosed horse that can’t run enough or a bird in cage, unaware of what they are lacking. When a person’s life is institutionalised, or chained to routine, or overworked, or stilted by poverty, or restricted by social mores, then he or she may be unable to engage in the kinds of desirable activities that partly comprise well-being. This inability needn’t feel like a deprivation. Furthermore, the lack needn’t be manifest directly in the actual desires the

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person has; the enchained horse may not want to run and the bored bureaucrat may not feel any curiosity. Indeed, the person may desire things that prevent her from, or are incompatible with, engaging in the relevant activities. Therefore, we can be living in conditions of ill-being without knowing or even feeling it. Furthermore, in such circumstances, typically, the person will want false substitutes. As we suggested earlier, social status may stand to belonging roughly as sometimes chocolate stands to the need to be loved: the first is a false substitute for the second. Normally, the content of our desiring expresses the inherent deslogo interests, but cases of false substitutes constitute a breakdown of this expression: the non-instrumental reasons for desire do not match the relevant object of desire. Consumerism encourages and thrives on the formation of such false substitutes, and market ideology makes the very notion nonsense. For example, consumerism profits when a deslogo interest for intimacy is substituted by a desire for success, especially when this general desire expresses itself more specifically as wanting brand-name clothes and other emblems. The very social forces that cause the splintering of families may well also cause the desires for such splintering. An account of well-being must have the conceptual resources to be free of such harmful systematic distortions. Desire-based theories aren’t, and in this sense, they form part of the neoliberal conception of well-being. 3) Appreciative awareness Market ideology has an interest in overlooking the subjectivity of awareness as a defining component of well-being. It profits the market that our purchases systematically outstrip our capacity to appreciate them. For many people, their wealth systematically surpasses their attentive and appreciative ability to enjoy its fruits. Indeed, the central defining role of awareness tends to be overlooked by utility-based theories that evaluate well-being solely in terms of preferences. This stands in stark contrast to the fact that merely having a good isn’t sufficient for an increase in well-being. If one cannot appreciate it, it is as if nothing. Moreover, thus what counts towards well-being is limited by one’s capacity to absorb it or attend to it. A plethora of material goods and desirable activities will have little or no well-being-meaning because, simply in terms of their volume, they outstrip our capacity to appreciate them. Capitalism can insidiously invade our awareness, thereby comprising a whole other set of distinct forms of ill-being. One’s well-being depends directly on one’s capacity to appreciate. This simple point provides the starting point of a whole catalogue of potential stinging criticisms of capitalism. First, strong desires typically undermine appreciative attention, and in an economy that relies on growth, and hence the constant stimulation of desire, it may be very difficult to fully appreciate the value of what one is now doing. A person whose attention is constantly nagged by desires will ipso facto suffer from a diminished well-being. As one’s levels of desire increase, appreciation drops. In a similar vein, appreciation is often destroyed by high and definitive expectations, which help breed feelings of disappointment and complaint.

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Second, appreciative awareness is undercut by negative feelings, especially anxiety and worry, which tend to become a permanent feature of our inner landscape in a capitalist system that needs some unemployment to thrive and that benefits from the status anxiety of potential customers. Third, a capitalist economy requires an ever-decreasing turnover time, and this means that at work we tend to live in an augmented haste that is usually inimical to proper appreciation. The rushed psychology is likely to spread out from the workplace into other areas of daily life, and it is likely to unwittingly train our attention to be more splintered with decreasing span. Fourth, most importantly, as we have already noted, one is unable to appreciate the valuable features of activities insofar as one instrumentalises them because this involves treating an activity as a mere cost, to be minimised rather than cherished. As we showed in Chapter 2, because economic rationality is purely instrumental, this way of thinking tends to pervade our understanding of life’s activities: daily living tends to become an instrument for the realisation of plans and projects. Arguably these apparently disparate phenomena amount to three ingrained forms of ill-being at the level of consciousness. First, there is a systematic degradation of appreciative awareness. Consciousness can be diminished. For instance, insofar as a person is incapable of focusing and has a fragmented awareness, her wellbeing will be systematically decreased. As our attention spans shrink, we can appreciate less. As our awareness becomes more intense, our capacity for well-being increases.5 Second, there is the ill-being that consists in feeling anxious, depressed, angry or rather being in moods that express themselves as such feelings. The quality of one’s day is a direct function of how one feels: emotions enter well-being in that they partly constitute it. Evidence suggests that both poverty and affluenza tend to cause anxiety. Such feelings colour awareness, and in so doing paint the phenomenological ‘world’ that we inhabit. Third, capitalist neoliberalism lends itself to the construction of certain kinds of phenomenological ‘worlds’ that are adverse to well-being. The ways we focus our attention constructs a phenomenological world built of the predominant contents of our awareness (p. 23). A social world based on an economy that needs constant growth and that, consequently, has an instrumentalising Midas touch will facilitate that people construct a social phenomenological world in which, for instance, other people are viewed more or often than not instrumentally. As we said earlier, a person who constructs a lonely world through repeated acts of attention cannot expect to be able to appreciate friendship as such and cannot expect to enjoy the feelings associated with such a relationship. 4) Relationships Our well-being would be undermined by a depersonalised idea of work, a lack of intimacy in personal relationships and a vacuous conception of community-life. Since these points were expounded earlier (in Chapter 5), we can revisit them briskly. The idea now is to indicate how a neoliberal conception of these three types of relationships comprises a misunderstanding of well-being. Work has instrumental value only in relation to people or other conscious beings. A capitalist economic system necessarily frames it in radically differently

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and completely depersonalised terms: work is systemically directed towards the augmentation of capital per se, and this means that we produce brushes to make profit that can be reinvested in the system. One’s work-relation is to the produced article, the meaning of which is defined in terms of the financial system. It isn’t an accidental and revisable feature of the system that work is so conceived: as we just seen, customers are non-derivatively only a source of revenue. This misconceives the relation between exchange value and use value of articles, but, more importantly for present purposes, this feature of the system deprives people the possibility of connecting to the meaningfulness of their work.6 The instrumental meaning of one’s work is how it improves the lives of other people by bettering their activities. In a system that depersonalises and instrumentalises work, one cannot connect to this meaning except perhaps abstractly. Furthermore, in such a system, the institution of work does not facilitate that people connect to the non-instrumental meaning of their work, that is, working as an activity valuable for its own sake (even though it is also a means). This tends to make work drudgery. Work is defined around this instrumentality rather than being designed to be appreciated as a non-instrumentally valuable activity that is also a means. Turning to relationships, in Chapter 5 we stressed that other people become a part of one’s life as beings of non-derivative value through appropriate connections. Let us call this ‘intimacy’. Therefore, if one lives in a pattern that prevents one from being intimately with others fully as persons then this is a form of ill-being. Since this is such an important component of well-being, the seeping of market forces into relationships is a serious form of ill-being, even when it remains largely unrecognised as such because, for instance, we are accustomed to think of relationships largely in transactional or give-and-take terms. This would constitute evidence that socio-economic conditions are not conducive to our understanding close relationships in terms of ‘we’, that is, as a part/whole rather than as an instrumentalised means/ends relation. Such a diagnosis indicates that neoliberalism is antithetical to intimate human relations in at least two ways: instrumentalisation and individualism. Having discussed the former at length, let us turn to individualism, the idea that the primary social unit is the individual person. As Hobbes observed, individualism must construe all relationships on the model of a contract or pact: we remain separate and we trade. This picture is profoundly alienating of intimate relationship for which we require the idea that the person becomes part of one’s life. Turning now to community, one of the defining features of such an inclusion is a ‘we’-awareness. Such awareness transforms the bonds between people from the interpersonal (as a relation among persons) to the collective intrapersonal (as a relation between members of a group). This permits the idea of doing things together as a unit; it allows communal activity, as opposed to the concept of cooperation between separate individuals. It permits that a person belongs to the life and history of a community. Robert Lane argues that the main sources of happiness in western market societies are friendships and family life but that there is an erosion of such relationships

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and of community solidarity in more prosperous market economies (Lane 2001). Lane also discusses the erosion of public trust. In a similar vein, Richard Sennett speaks of’ his own epiphany at the Swiss mountain resort of Davos where, for the last few years, he has attended a winter meeting of the elite of business and political leaders. The World Economic Forum at Davos ‘runs more like a court than a conference. Its monarchs are the heads of big banks or international corporations’ (Sennett 1999: 66). But Sennett finds a dilemma at the heart of the proceedings, namely that the regime is ‘losing the battle for the hearts and minds’ of ordinary people. In a peculiar and deeply disheartening manner, it is almost a re-run of the way that the defeated communist regimes first lost the engagement and commitment of their own people before losing the global battle. Sennett argues that having studied new social and workplace patterns a range of contradictions and unforeseen dilemmas are beginning to emerge which challenge the power of the dominant economic model: One of the unintended consequences of modern capitalism is that it has strengthened the value of place, arousing a longing for community. All the emotional conditions we have explored in the workplace animate that desire; the uncertainties of flexibility; the absence of deeply rooted trust and commitment; the superficiality of teamwork; but most of all, the spectre of failing to make something of oneself in the world, ‘to get a life’ through one’s work. All these conditions impel people to look for some other scene of attachment and depth. (ibid.: 138) 5) Self-awareness Neoliberal capitalism tends to reshape our sense of ourselves in ways that constitute yet another kind of ill-being. To take pleasure in one’s present consciousness is to have appreciative selfawareness. It is like being joyful to be an I. This serene happiness can be drowned out when our attention is drawn elsewhere by unsatisfied desires and feelings of anxiety, anger and sadness, and especially by self-conscious awareness motivated by such phenomena. In this sense, a capitalist economy can drive out joyful immediate self-awareness. Concerning self-awareness of our past, ill-being consists in a general tendency to subsume one’s narratival understanding of one’s past into socially defined templates that may be more misleading than illuminating. For example, our understanding of ourselves may be framed in terms of success and failure that distort our perception of our lives through an instrumental prism. Likewise, wellness concerning one’s perception of one’s future consists in appropriate openness and acceptance, and we can evaluate the influence of capitalism in this regard. The general criterion for well-being concerning self-awareness is one’s experiential appreciation of one’s non-derivative value as a self. Many people have problems with their experiential feeling of self-worth because they make it contingent on something else, such as being successful or being liked by others

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(Chapter 6, pp. 132 and 135). Capitalism has a strong interest in making our sense of self-worth contingent on productive performance, and so we should not be surprised that the educational system tends to work against well-being in this regard. The same point from a slightly different angle: self-awareness that classifies oneself as an object constitutes an instrumentalisation or a commodification of oneself. We would expect this kind of ill-being to be endemic in a society that systematically fails to treat economic activity per se as having only derivative value. A rather different point is that well-being constitutively requires that we identify ourselves as a person among others, who are equally valuable as oneself (Chapter 6, p. 136). This feature of well-being is vital as the root of an equilibrated sense of self. It is part of our well-being that we have a sense of self that doesn’t deny the reality and equal value of other people. Arguably capitalism inherently tends to violate this aspect of well-being. This would be so if it inescapably tends to set up antagonisms between groups of people, such as race, nationality and class, which involve regarding the others as less (Gill and Thomson 2019: Chapter 9). In conclusion, we have shown how a normatively robust and subjectively rich conception of well-being can provide a platform for critically assessing the socioeconomic system and institutions one lives in. We have navigated between two dangers: on the one side, views of well-being that are assimilated into the current neoliberal and neoclassical paradigms, and on the other, the idea that the whole notion of well-being is ineluctably a damaged product of capitalism. We have tried to show how a conception of well-being can be normatively sturdy enough to be a basis for critical evaluation of cultural practices and socio-political institutions but without becoming a free-floating evaluative concept untethered to some facts about us. It needs the elements that we have introduced, such as a rich notion of subjectivity and the idea that instrumentalising can constitute a form of harm. It needs them to be a faithful account of the concept of well-being, and once they have been acknowledged as such, we have a concept that is robust enough to serve as a basis for radical social critique: it matters how we live. In short, properly conceived, the concept of well-being needn’t succumb to a neoliberal paradigm.

Neoliberal conceptions of well-being What features would a distinctively neoliberal account of well-being have? How does the account in this book evade these characteristics? We have already implicitly provided in-depth answers to these questions, but a quick consolidation is in order. We have just seen the various ways in which a capitalist market economy might systematically profit from superficial understandings and misapprehensions of well-being. For instance, it benefits the economy that we instrumentalise ourselves especially at work, that we view desire and consumption as key determinants of well-being, that we ignore the limitations and central importance of awareness, that we treat relationships as deals and that we peg self-esteem to success. Such misconceptions bolster GDP defined growth. Asserting this point doesn’t require a conspiracy theory, but only the observation that a capitalist market society would tend to focus on aspects of human life that directly concern it.

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That these misconceptions sustain economic growth doesn’t make them misconceptions but it is part of what makes them neoliberal. A neoliberal account of well-being would tend to portray persons in terms of the general model, homo economicus. This model depicts humans as beings who act rationally, and defines rationality in terms of the maximisation of self-regarding preferences (Hollis 2015). This last part (that defines rationality) is pernicious in complex ways that need unravelling. Maximising per se is perhaps the most malignant frame of such a definition. Indeed, since maximisation is at the core of both capitalism and neoclassical economics, any definition of rationality in such terms warrants a probing evaluation, which is unfortunately beyond the scope of this work (see Gill and Thomson 2019: Chapter 10). Nevertheless, we can glimpse how such a definition is harmful for well-being by contrasting it with what it excludes. It rules out satisficing conceptions according to which what is rational can be defined in terms of obtaining sufficiency or enough of something good. Simply, it bans the thought ‘this is enough.’ The definition of rationality in terms of maximising bars the idea that well-being requires only a sufficiency of a desirable activity or experience. It forces us to maximise. Thus, it forces us to pursue policies that provide material goods beyond even the most generous conception of need. It compels us to ignore the distinction between needs and desires. Second, the definition leaves out all aspects of well-being that aren’t numerical, that which can’t be maximised or optimised. In this sense, as we explained in Chapter 4, such definitions tend to glide glibly over the hidden intricacies of the intentional and aspectual nature of our mental lives. This is much worse than it might sound because effectively it means that such definitions ignore the phenomenology of life.7 Finally, the definition eliminates all non-consequentialist conceptions of rationality, such as the idea of respect for persons, which formed an evaluative basis of the account of well-being argued for in this book (in Chapter 2). These three alternative conceptions of rationality are deeply inimical to neoliberalism, and the definition of rationality in terms of maximising supports neoliberalism. (Gill and Thomson 2019: Chapter 10). Furthermore, the definition of the rational also contains the instrumental view of rationality described in Chapter 2, which commits the seductive and grave error of not separating means/ends from instrumental/non-instrumental. This failure instrumentalises human life and subjectivises the good by making it always a goal. This fetishises efficiency and achievement as primordial values, both of which support market-capitalist thinking. Another shortcoming of the homo economicus definition of rationality is that it assumes that behaviour and preference is always self-regarding. The mathematical theory called ‘the Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model’ dictates that decisions of one individual cannot be influenced by the behaviour of others, and without this assumption the whole mathematical edifice of the DSGE model comes crashing down like a house of cards, and with it some of the tools of contemporary neoclassical economics (such as marginal analysis, constrained optimisation techniques) (Gowdy quoted in J. Rowson 2010: 14–15).

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As we saw in Chapter 3, a preference-based account treats desire as the ultimate ground of value; one of the deep flaws with this account is the fact that it doesn’t allow for a critique of one’s preferences except in superficial way. Because it tends to treat existing preferences as a given, the theory cannot substantiate a radical critique of the patterns of desire that prevail in market societies. Desires can only be critically assessed in terms of other desires that the person has. As we have argued, the preference model internalises the idea of a market: there are alternatives for the person to trade off as he tries to maximise his return. Another way to construe the well-being of homo economicus is in terms of the maximising of pleasure and minimising of pain. We dedicated a whole chapter to overcoming this view (Chapter 4), arguing that it both objectifies and subjectivises mental states. It objectifies them by ignoring their intentional nature and treating them as objects. Pleasure is mistreated as if it were like a mental entity. It subjectivises them by overlooking the cognitive nature of appreciating. Experiential evaluative perceptions can be instances of error or ignorance. The pleasure conception cannot take that on board and to this extent it involves a subjectivist understanding of value. In sum, this view turns pleasure into the ultimate commodity. Third, a neoliberal theory would adhere to a scientific account that tries to avoid robust evaluative judgments. This means that it would tend towards a reductive or minimalistic view of well-being, for example, in terms of preference functions or pleasure and pain. Other factors, such as friendship, would be treated only as causal conditions of well-being, and hence would be instrumentalised. Such a causal analysis would render well-being more readily measurable, but it would make it less robustly evaluative: the relevant causal patterns would tend to reflect and reproduce existing conditions rather than providing evaluative criteria for a critique. Additionally, such an analysis would also tend towards meta-ethical subjectivism, meaning that evaluative claims have no truth-value; such a view would bar the idea that things can have value independently of our valuing them, therefore, ultimately depriving us of the possibility of there being a ground for a critique of neoliberal valuings. A neoliberal account would be in keeping with some version of individualism, which is the idea that because only individuals exist, all social institutions are reducible to the individuals that compose them. Such an account would require seeing all relationships and institutions as contracts or pacts between autonomous individuals. We have combatted this view in our construal of how relationships and community are constitutively important for well-being, rather than merely being external causal influences. A claim such as ‘close social relations cause happiness’ externalises such relations, as if their importance were only like that of a product. In opposition to this, we have argued that they must be partly constitutive of our being well. We also overcame individualism by insisting on the intentional nature of mental states: such a claim embeds mental states in the world by understanding them as ineluctably relational.8 In contrast, as we just saw, the DSGE model is individualistic. The concept of well-being isn’t individualistic per se. It can be employed individualistically when it used to frame social policies that imply individualism, for

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example, by ignoring cultural and structural features of communities and society. However, as we have argued, individualistic deployments of the concept ignore the public and relational nature of mental states, such as emotions, and the social nature of well-being generally.

Silver bullets The idea that the notion of well-being can be deployed to help frame political policies that improve the well-being of individuals is a double-edged sword. On the one side, within and given the framework of a capitalist market society, this approach is to be welcomed. It can alleviate some of the severely harmful consequences of neoliberal policies and improve the life situation of individuals. On the other side, the new order produces degraded services and demeaning work as a common and everyday reality, and social well-being cannot be pursued in an ad hoc piecemeal fashion: something which affects the whole person will be reflected in the whole system of living and working of a society. If we do not grasp the pervasiveness of the invasion, we will continue to assume the fallacy propagated in many western governmental circles that one can isolate specific issues of well-being and pursue their development as some kind of ‘silver bullet’. This is to profoundly misrepresent the nature of the current period of social change; silver bullets do not reconfigure general features of socio-economic systems. Add to this the following point. Our social imagination is being circumscribed within the narrow confines of a capitalised market society. This means that it is increasingly difficult to imagine social life outside of such a society and to experience moments of consciousness and activities free from such influences. This parsimony of vision is reflected in much work on well-being, which assumes a neoliberal and individualist conception. This indicates that a truncated conception of well-being is inadequate to re-envisage the social institutions that human well-being requires. We need to rebuild human well-being from the foundations; it involves more than silver bullets; it requires new institutions and appropriately shaped spaces. The main problem with silver bullets is the failure to distinguish between reforming and transforming. The structure of a social system consists in the systematic organisation between cooperating institutions as defined by a set of principles. One can reform an institution or even the relations between institutions without changing the structural features of the system, the fundamental operating axioms that define what that system is doing and for whom. In contrast, to transform a system is to change the fundamental operating principles or assumptions (Thomson 2017). In this regard, we might compare the state educational system with alternative schools. Roughly, the state system consists in the synergetic interrelations between schools, the government as a policy body, inspection bodies and examination boards insofar as they are governed by an implicit set of assumptions and principles. Among these axioms would be the assumption that learning activities are performances that should be measured and governed by assessment targets. An alternative educational system might reject that defining assumption. A move to such an alternative system would constitute a transformation, whilst a

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change that, for example, makes the execution of the principle less punitive would constitute a reform (Gill and Thomson 2013). In a similar vein, a capitalist system embodies the idea of corporations as profit-maximising institutions for the sake of capital accumulation (Thomson 2015). A transformation would reject that axiom, while in contrast a reform would impose legislation or practices that might make the symptoms of the axiom less onerous or harmful. If the offending cause of ill-being is the system itself, silver bullets are ineffective because they are aimed at reforming an institution or a practice, while leaving the system itself intact. For example, recognising the need for a more holistic approach to education, schools have introduced courses in emotional intelligence and even mindfulness. Such introductions are welcome; they are good. But they don’t amount to a transformation of the system. At the secondary level, young people are still subject to horrendous stress and to feelings of failure and low selfesteem; schools themselves can be impersonal and unfriendly institutions; the system still tends to perpetuate class divisions and income inequality and at best, it is primarily directed towards preparing young people for the workforce. At its postmodern worst, it is like a machine aimed primarily to attain grade and performance targets.9 Thus, it is no surprise that these courses become quickly instrumentalised as useful for meeting a multitude of performance targets more efficiently. From such examples, we might hypothesise that silver bullets tend to become assimilated by the system. Even silver bullets fall victim to the Midas touch of instrumentalisation. Even if they are intended to effect localised transformations in the system or to alleviate some of its effects, they soon become absorbed into it. Perhaps we must face up to the disarming thought that the early 21st century view of human nature does yet lend itself to clear policy levers, because the very idea of ‘policy levers’ is grounded in a worldview of individual conscious agents rationally responding to financial incentives. If individuals are constituted by evolutionary biology, highly sensitive to social and cultural norms, embedded in and shaped by complex social networks; if their behaviour is largely habitual, if they care about relative rather than absolute value, are bad at forecasting, and are more rationalising than rational, policy-making appears to become even harder than it already is. Perhaps this means we should consider other ways of making good use of this knowledge in the meantime? (Rowson 2010: 15)

Conclusions The critical analysis of this chapter leaves us with some deeply important questions. 1

2

The five pressure points identified earlier are locations of possible selfimprovement. For instance, we can de-instrumentalise our lives and ourselves. We can try to broaden the activities of our lives; we can strengthen appreciative awareness, deepen relationships and clean our self-awareness. Or at least we can try. Such self-improvement needs special social sites to be possible. We need practices, relationships and institutions in which we can escape the

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instrumentalisations that normally atrophy, constrict and harm the dimensions of well-being. For instance, consider work. It usually demands at least half of our waking lives. Most work environments are thoroughly instrumentalised along all four dimensions of life: activities, awareness, relationships and self-consciousness. And these kinds of instrumentalisation usually spread into the rest of our lives outside of the work context and become part of the culture we inhabit. For example, everything becomes a deal. This raises the question of the possible sites of decompression and coexistence in a society. Sites of coexistence are havens in which the people can be well even though surrounded by neoliberal forces. Sites of decompression are institutions or spaces in which people can recover from the detrimental effects of intense instrumentalisation. We have seen albeit informally in this chapter that the political-economic system in which we live has profound effects on our well-being. For reasons explained earlier, we charted the critical pressure points and we didn’t map out the positive. As we saw, such criticisms invite us to imaginatively construct better alternatives systems and modes of life. Although this becomes increasingly difficult as we become more absorbed into the capitalist market system, this re-envisaging of social possibilities might constitute the second volume of this work.

Notes 1 Davies (2015). To answer a challenge implicit in Davies’ critique of the happiness industry, we need to have specified an account of well-being that isn’t neoliberal. 2 Reader (2007: 28–29) ignores structural features of society in her definition of ‘practice’. 3 See Chapter 4, page 82. 4 In this sense, even the hypothetical desires or preferences that we would have if we were more fully informed about what we want are cognitive amended versions of our actual desires. 5 In Chapter 4 (page 151), we separated these two points: the general capacity to be aware and the specific capacity to attend to the desirable features of an activity, experience or process. We also separated them in Chapter 7 (pages 78–79). Now, for the sake of brevity, we lump them together. 6 It misconceives the relation between exchange value and use value because it makes use value servant to exchange value, which can be capitalised. 7 Intentional mental states can’t be counted because their identity conditions depend on how they are described. The question ‘How many beliefs do you have?’ is senseless not because beliefs are things that can’t be counted but rather because beliefs aren’t things at all. 8 For instance, an account of seeing that respects its intentionality would treat ‘A sees X’ as an extensional statement of a relation between a person and an object such as a tree. It would treat ‘A sees that p’ as an intensional (or non-extensional) statement of how (or the way that) A sees X. As we saw in Chapter 4, this allows us to embed mental states in the natural and social world but affirm their subjectivity. 9 ‘Postmodern’ because the grades act as simulacra.

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Index

absolute 19n1, 142 actions 32, 98 activities 17, 45, 61, 114, 175; and goals 30, 39, 44n3, 96; pleasure and appreciation 74, 77, 101; their value 114, 115n8, 115n9, 139 aggression 145, 148, 167n16 ambition 130 appreciation 92n17, 138, 152; as cognition 76–78, 92, 93n19, 94n24; as connection beyond oneself 84, 98, 106; impediments to 80–82, 84, 176; of oneself 117 appreciative awareness 17, 78, 80, 81, 177, 184 appropriate 92n18, 117, 118, 127, 139; connection to oneself 118; connection to others 98, 102, 106–107, 115n8 Aristotle 33, 44n1, 71 art 42 aspects of well-being 17, 139 attention 10, 80–81, 90 autonomy 127, 132 awareness 18, 79, 82, 176; of oneself 118; quality of 82, 138, 177 being-an-I 121, 122 being-in 113 being-with 104 belonging 114–115 benefits 5 blame 134 Bruner, Jerome 124 business 98 Camus, Albert 22 capitalism 170, 174; selfish 173 capitalist market society 171, 180, 183 capitalist neoliberalism 174, 177

caring 97, 106–108, 135; about 84; for 66, 78, 106, 108 causation 158, 167n6 cause vs. constituent 4, 114, 115n7, 119, 125, 150; failure to distinguish 68, 82, 110 children 104, 110, 115, 116n13 choice, limits to 89 cognitivism 93n19 commodification 182; of the self 135, 180 community 114, 170 connecting to value 98, 101, 106–107; see also appreciation consciousness 72, 78–79 construction of phenomenal 88–89, 118–119, 177 consumption 175, 176, 178 content vs. object distinction 73, 75, 91n4 content of desire 52, 54, 59, 71n16 content of mental states 72 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly 87–88 cultural comparisons 144–147 cultural differences 41, 51, 60, 142–143, 167n10, 175 Darwall, Stephen 16, 70 death 128–130 decision procedure 155 dehumanise 21, 42, 43, 113 Dennett, Daniel 92 desirability: characterisations 51, 117–118, 139, 167n9; cognition of characterisations 76, 93n19 desire 49, 52, 54, 80, 144–145, 175; and awareness 80–81; theories of well-being 45–48, 57–58, 59, 65, 86, 182 deslogo interests 53–58, 63; and wellbeing 59, 64–65, 138, 143, 152, 175 Diener, Edward 94n25

Index differences: of degree 43; social 19n2, 142, 161 dignity 14, 22, 39, 42, 134 Dorsey, Dale 67 drives 53 dynamic stochastic general equilibrium 181 Easterlin, Richard 1–2 economics 2, 98, 172, 181 education 156, 183–184 efficiency 24–25, 29, 37, 40, 181 emotional state 83, 85–86, 91, 105, 140 emotions 81–85, 106, 138 ends 27–28, 31, 33 enjoyment 76 environmental 2 empirical investigation 4–5, 7, 12, 157, 164, 173; re desires 46, 52, 60, 68, 142 empirical specifications of wellbeing 2, 9, 12, 46, 62–63, 150 end-state 31, 156 epicureans 122 epistemological asymmetry 112, 136 equality 109, 136, 180 errors, possibility of 8, 127 ethical 136 ethics 22; see also meta-ethical eudaimonism 67 evaluative claims see value-judgments evaluative concept, wellbeing as an 2–3 experience 72; see also lived experience explanation of action 64 expressive value 42 extensional 71, 91, 158, 168n23 feedback loops 119, 120, 153 feelings, negative 61, 82, 177 finger-click test 25–27, 29–30, 75 flourishing 117 Foot, Philippa 67–68, 148 Freud, Sigmund 53 friendship 36, 51, 81, 101, 109, 143 future, relation to 130 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 91 genetic 71, 148–149, 167n19 goals 23–25, 28, 30, 33, 174 goals of others 108 Graham, Carol 4 growth 180 happiness 82, 83–86, 88 harm 93n20 harmony, living in 136, 142

195

Haybron, Daniel 71, 86, 87 health 18, 21, 27, 160; good 4; mental 98 hedonism 36–37, 44n7, 53, 74, 137, 160 history: personal 114, 123, 125, 127, 130; in relationships 108 holistic 17, 58, 90, 98, 133, 161, 165, 173; account 173; approach 184 human development index 160 human functioning 68, 71 human life: in general 19, 45, 95, 118, 175, 183; of an individual 26, 33, 44n6, 126 human nature 13, 19, 53, 67, 142, 143 humiliation 128 Hurka, Thomas 67 Hursthouse, Rosalind 71 hurt 109, 110 identity 115, 118, 119, 131; self 132, 133, 135 i-desire 107 ignorance: re value claims 8, 52, 93n19 ill-being 36, 176; and consciousness 79, 80, 132; as instrumentalisation 36, 174; and negative emotions 61, 78; and relationships 110–111, 178–179; and self-consciousness 128, 132, 135–136 incommensurable 148, 154 indeterminacy 71 indicator 6, 160; based studies 159, 160, 161, 163; happiness 2; well-being 2 individualism 82, 133, 137, 172, 178, 182 inescapability 70, 89, 144–146, 166n4; of deslogo interests 144–147 informed preference account 49, 185n4 institutions 14, 19, 114; and harm 60, 171, 180, 183 instrumental vs. non instrumental 4, 27; desires 54, 96; reasons 28, 96 instrumental conception of rationality: critique of 24–25; defined 22–24; and desire theory 65; escaping the 27–28, 30, 32, 40, 157; and work 100 instrumentalising: activities 24, 27, 29, 65, 75, 79; as a dimension of wellbeing 19, 40, 141–142; and economic system 170–171, 174; oneself 36–37, 134–135; others 104; work 99, 100 instrumentally valuable 16, 22, 24, 25–28, 29–38, 75–78; see also noninstrumentally valuable instrumental value 5, 22, 24–33, 36–42, 54, 59, 95, 100 intensional 104, 116n14, 149, 168n23, 185n8

196

Index

intentionality 9, 52, 72–73, 185n8; of appreciation 87, 92n17; and causation 158, 161; of instrumentalization 40; and measurement 154, 167n26, 185n7 interpretation 54, 58; of desire 166–167; of others 111–113; of self 124–125 interviews 12 intimacy 60, 62, 114, 176–178 intrinsic: as relational 20n9, 43n1, 44n14, 96, 115n4; value 24, 33 intrinsically valuable 27–35, 45, 61, 76, 81, 97, 107; instrumental value 97 joy 122 Kagan, Shelly 77, 97 Kant, Immanuel 22, 39, 44n16, 118, 133 Kraut, Richard 50 life history research 162 life narrative 11, 161 life plan 8, 130 life satisfaction 10–11, 86, 160 lived experience 5, 11, 84, 124, 158, 161 markets 170 Marx, Karl 170 maximisation 180, 182 Max-Neef, Manfred 50 McDowell, John 8 meaning of activities 72, 96, 114, 115n3, 123–124, 178 means: as non-instrumentally valuable 97 measurable: well-being as 7, 87, 151–154, 159 measurement 6, 41, 149–151; antinomy of 149; conditions of 154, 167n25, 167n26; distinct from what is measured 151, 155, 156; subjective vs. objective 151–152, 160 mental: content 11; state 9, 72–74, 76, 166, 182–183 meta-ethical 8, 19n2, 182 methodology 150, 157, 159–160, 162 Metz, Thaddeus 96 midas touch 177, 184 morality 39, 105, 167n16 moral wellbeing: as non-moral 38 motivation 52, 64, 115n10, 144 narrative 123–126; analysis 124, 163–165; as artefact 126, 137n4; identity 119, 132; processes 124–125 natural 148–149 natural history 67–68 natural sciences 19, 150–151, 158

need 71, 143, 166n3, 180 neoliberal accounts of well-being 180 neoliberalism 170 non-instrumentally valuable 30–31, 47, 49, 60–61, 64, 85, 96, 122, 139–140; see also instrumentally valuable normative 3, 46, 67, 149, 155, 163; concepts 150 Nozick, Robert 44n4, 75 Nussbaum, Martha 50 objective claims: method 9 objective list theory: critique of 51; of wellbeing 50 objects: of desire 52, 70; of experience 72 obsessions 127 operationalise 41, 150, 155 other-regarding 101–102, 134 pain 122, 182 paradox: of goals and meaning 96; of selfinterest and altruism 101, 110 part of a life: becoming 102, 104, 106, 110–111, 141; two kinds 104, 107 perfectionist theories 67 performance management 156 persons 28, 33, 64; as of primary value 66, 140–141, 179 phenomenological world 79, 88–89, 105, 177 phenomenology 11, 137n1, 181 Plato 145 Platts, Mark 50 pleasure 74–75, 92n11, 182 pluralism 154 policy 157; making 41, 184; social 3, 41 political implications of wellbeing 46 positive psychology 10, 52, 82, 172 positivism 11 postmodern 185n9 poverty 82, 142, 175 preference(s) 48, 52, 79: functions 79, 155, 167n26; theory (see desire, theories of well-being) private mental states 73, 92n10 psychology 173 purposes 124 quantitative vs. qualitative 52, 154, 157, 158–159, 161 rational vs. irrational 40, 180 rationality 180, 181; see also instrumental conception of rationality Raz, Joseph 77

Index realist theory of value 34, 93n19 reductive accounts 3, 8, 12, 34, 150, 182 reflexive self-consciousness 121 relational 18, 71, 92n16, 137, 142, 153 relational nature of values and wellbeing 44n14, 113, 137–138, 142 relationships 182; good 108, 139, 140 Ricoeur, Paul 137 Rifkin, Jeremy 169 Sartre, Jean-Paul 113 sciences, natural 7n25, 9, 168n23, 182 Searle, John 73 self-centredness 105, 107, 112, 136 self-consciousness 18, 118, 132, 140, 153; vs. self-awareness 119, 139 self-deception 161 self-interest 16, 39, 101 self-perception 118–120, 126–127, 139 self-regarding 101–102, 181 self-worth 38–39, 132–133, 179–180 Seligman, Martin 20n5 silver bullet 183 social: critique 172–173, 180, 182; roles 16 social being 68, 95, 104, 113–114 social science 149, 151 Socrates 116n19 slavery 41 Stoics, the 121, 137n5 story 126 Strawson, Galen 123 structural 172, 180, 183, 185 subjective vs. objective: different senses of 7–10

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subjective theories of well-being 10 subjectivism, as a meta-ethical theory 8, 172, 182 subjectivity of experience 10, 72–73 substitution, of desire 55–56, 59, 61, 64, 176 success 132, 165 Sumner, Leonard Wayne 70n2 Taylor, Charles 123 Thompson, Michael 67–68 Tolstoy, Leo 21 us 107; see also we consciousness unhappiness 174 utility 6 valuable 65–66; nature of others 110 value 34, 43n1 value-judgments 12, 172 wanting 78 ways of life 8, 13 we-consciousness 107–108, 114, 178 web of desire 54–56 well-being, concept of 16–17, 139–142, 161 Wiggins, David 96 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 88 work 60, 61, 98–100, 145; instrumentalized 5–6, 31–32, 174, 177, 178 worthy 132 Wolf, Susan 77