An extensive range of academic work in philosophy addresses how well-being (or welfare or interests) should be conceptualised. I can do no more than offer an
inadequate summary. Broadly, approaches to well-being have been divided into three groups, none of which are agreed to be satisfactory. Parfit (and others) have classified these as hedonistic theories, desire-fulfillment theories and objective list theories. Although other authors may alter the names of the groups the allocations are broadly the same [Parfit, 1984: 493-502; Sumner, 1996: Griffin, 1986; Crisp 2006]. However, others dispute the classification of meta-ethical theories into these groups [Kagan, 1992: 60; Degrazia, 1995]
Hedonism
Hedonism (or mental statism) has it that a person’s well-being is determined by their overall happiness. Some forms of hedonism suggest that pleasure and pain run on a single scale so an overall level of happiness can be generated by a ‘felicific calculus’.
There are many objections to hedonism (as classical utilitarianism). Firstly, no single feature unites all the pleasures and pains that a person can experience. Consider the satisfaction of a hard days achievement digging the garden, laughing at slapstick comedy, the pride in a child’s achievements, the disappointment of failing an exam, the pain of toothache and the dread of the imminent death of a close relative and then devise a single scale that makes them comparable: there isn’t one. One response to this problem is preference-hedonism. Recognising that there isn’t a common scale that unites all experiences in terms of pleasure and pain, preference-hedonism adds desire (and its opposite, avoidance) for these conscious states. The experiences that I choose are good, and those I avoid are bad. Those experiences that are avoided more
strenuously are worse than those that I make less effort to avoid. Importantly, what is preferred (or avoided) is conscious experience. A person’s wellbeing then depends on the balance of good (chosen) and bad (avoided) experiences.
A second objection to hedonism is that there is more to well-being than conscious experience of life. Achievement, for example, may contribute to well-being over and above the pleasure of the achievement. Nozick imagined an experience machine where “super duper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank.” [Nozick, 1974: 42]. You choose the experiences that you want. Nozick allowed that you would emerge to reprogram the machine intermittently, but whilst in the machine your experiences are your reality. He asked whether we would choose a life like this, but answered that we would side with him in declining it. He argued that this is because we want to do certain things, we want to be a certain way and we want contact with a deeper level of reality, not just a man-made pseudo-reality. The conclusion is that “...something matters to us in addition to experience” and that this refutes hedonism [ibid 44].
These arguments suggest that hedonism is at least an incomplete theory of well-being. There are some aspects apart from conscious experience that contribute to a person’s well-being, most persuasively, achievements. Hedonism is particularly unsuitable for children. At least some of a child’s time is devoted to education (and more if education is understood in a broad sense). The aim of education in the child’s interests is to train, develop and teach the child skills or abilities, not primarily to make children happy.
And if so, then hedonism is an unsuitable theory of well-being for children. One response to this objection to hedonism is that although prioritising a child’s education is not justified in the short term by hedonism, over the course of a life, an educated child will have a happier life, than one with less education. This is an empirical claim, and would be difficult to prove, and perhaps difficult even to conceive of how the question could be answered. Furthermore, education and training (again in a broad sense) aim at achievement not at happiness. And by developing desires for
achievement, education develops a sense of discontent, if not of unhappiness, at least of dissatisfaction. It makes children strive towards the solution to academic problems, or implants the competitive desire to win sporting competitions. If the hedonists answer is that happiness comes from achievement, then this may be true, but the solution to one academic problem generates another: the dissatisfaction remains. And in sports competitions there is only one winner. The other competitors will be (to at least some extent) dissatisfied and unhappy. And even the winner may be dissatisfied if they feel that they competed badly or let themselves down.
Hedonism has one thing right for children: that their conscious experience matters. In past times, the happiness or unhappiness of children was often discounted. The stage of childhood was seen only as a time of preparation for being an adult perhaps best summed up by the response ‘it’s character-forming’ in response to a child’s
complaints about unpleasant experiences. Childhood’s concerns were development, not enjoyment. As hedonism recognises that the experiential quality of the child’s life matters, it may correct this bias. However, overall hedonism is an unsatisfactory theory of well-being, particularly for children.
Desire-fulfilment
Desire-fulfilment theories are a second group of theories of well-being. Fulfilled desires contribute to well-being, unfulfilled desires detract from well-being. As desires and their fulfilment are measurable by behaviour in markets and by questioning, this approach appeals to those seeking to measure well-being and have found favour with economists113. An important difference of desire-fulfilment theories from hedonism is
113 A medical application of the desire-fulfilment approach is given by Mazor who, in
that desire-fulfilment theories depend on whether or not the desires have been fulfilled in real life, not whether the person believes that their desires are fulfilled. Desire fulfilment theories may be developed in different ways to account for some of the criticism to which they are subject.
There are several problems with desire-fulfilment approaches. Firstly, unless the desires contributing to well-being are restricted in some ways, then the theory is intuitively wrong. Parfit gives the example of a traveller, meeting an unwell stranger. The traveller forms the desire that the stranger be cured. Although they never meet again, and many years later, the stranger is indeed cured, without the traveller’s knowledge. The stranger’s cure fulfils a desire, but it cannot be argued that this contributes to the traveller’s well-being. Parfit’s solution is that our preferences about our own lives should be considered in assessing well-being, calling this the Success Theory. Parfit acknowledges that the limits that this places on desires relevant to well- being are unclear. Parfit recognises that most parents desire that their children’s lives will go well, but gives two examples that stand in stark contrast. Firstly, he considers an example that a child dies in an avalanche unbeknown to the child’s parent, arguing that this does not affect the parent’s well-being. He contrasts this with an example in which a child is mentally unstable or unemployable as a consequence of the schooling the parent arranged intending that the child would have a good start in life. In this case although the parent is also unaware of the misfortunes, Parfit argues that the parent’s well-being is worsened. The difference (for Parfit) between the cases is that in the first case although “I might claim that I want to live the life of someone whose children’s lives go well...this is not really a desire about my own life.” [Parfit, 1984: 494]. In the
approach this question is by looking at the percentage of men who are not circumcised as children and who voluntarily choose to become circumcised as adults.”[Mazor]. Here Mazor is relying on a desire fulfilment conception of best interests. He does (correctly) discard this approach to determine the relationship between circumcision and well-being. However, even if a desire satisfaction based approach was correct there are many differences between men and boys so that the satisfaction of an adult’s desires need not indicate the correct course for a boy. It may be that the complications of circumcision if delayed to maturity are less than when the operation is performed on a boy, and if so it would be reasonable for an adult to choose be circumcised and yet say ‘I was glad that I was not circumcised when I was younger’. Against this, it is often claimed that circumcision is best done in babies as nerve growth is incomplete and so babies feel less pain. I do not intend to argue the best age for circumcision. My argument is that even if a desire satisfaction approach is correct, the satisfaction of an adult’s desires do not necessarily indicate where a child’s well-being lies. Desire satisfaction theories are unsuitable for children.
second case “...these failure in my children’s lives would be judged on the Success Theory to be bad for me. One of my strongest desires was to be a successful
parent...this desire is not fulfilled. My life failed in one of the ways in which I most wanted it to succeed.” [ibid 495]. I disagree with Parfit that there is a difference in parental well-being between these cases. From the parent’s perspective the parent’s desires are neither fulfilled nor unfulfilled to the same extent - they are unaware of their child’s misfortune. From the perspective of the external world, the children in both examples are faring badly. The difference that he may have intended to draw attention to relates to parental intentions. The avalanche-death was an accident: it just happened, it was unrelated to the life-plans that the parents had made for their child. This can be contrasted with the failure of the carefully-planned education: that the other child be well educated was a core concern of the parent, who had devoted time, energy and resources to their child’s education and so the child’s educational failure is a fact about the parent’s failure in their own life. This is not so for the death of their child in an avalanche.
If this was the point that Parfit intended to draw out, it is wrong. If a child is
unsuccessful, a parent will reproach themselves for choices that they made, but this is much less important than the fact that the child is unsuccessful. And if a parent whose child was unsuccessful was to concentrate on the choices that they (the parent) had made, rather than attending to the child and her troubles, the parent is, and would be seen as, selfish and self-obsessed. Either way, the important point that I want to make is that it is clear that one problem with desire-fulfilment theories is in the restrictions that must be placed on the desires that count towards well-being. Some limit must be placed on the desires that contribute to well-being in a desire–fulfilment theory.
A second objection is that a person’s desires may be wrong. Fulfilment of a desire need not enhance a person’s well-being114. Sometimes, when a desire is fulfilled we do
not like what we get: whatever was ‘desired’ was not really desired. Desires can go wrong at several levels. There may be a factual error: plastic strawberries look real, but taste awful, however much you may desire them. There may be an error of
114 “There is no more melancholy state than the disillusionment that comes from getting what
reasoning: I thought that I had left plenty of time to get to the meeting, but had forgotten it was rush hour, so I arrived late and flustered and the meeting was a disaster. Another way in which desire fulfilment may fail is if my desire (for a
particular sort of coffee, or film) has changed so that when my desire is fulfilled it is a desire that I recognise I no longer hold.
A third problem is that desire fulfilment theory gets the relationship between well- being and desire the wrong way round: desire does not determine whether things will contribute to my wellbeing, my desires depend on the fact that I like and want that which is desired. What is desired will contribute to my well-being. To claim that a successful life is one where desires are fulfilled is an error. Instead of looking at things that are desired we can look (as in objective list theories) for things or experiences or achievements that are good in themselves (these are the things that we desire). A life is successful in so far as we achieve valued ends or things that are themselves valuable, not because we desired and then achieved them. The relationship between value and desire may be still more complex as Griffin explores in Value Judgement, 1998.
Adaptive preferences cause a further problem for desire-fulfilment theories. Griffin notes that “…our desires are shaped by our expectations which are shaped by our circumstances” [Griffin, 1986: 47]. Nussbaum described women in India whose expectations have been stunted by pervasive sex discrimination and poverty [Nussbaum, 2000]. Women are treated less well than men in some parts of India, perhaps best demonstrated by the demonstration of ‘missing’ women [Sen 1990]. The problem for desire-fulfilment theories of well-being is that individuals who have low expectations generated by their circumstances will have a life that is not all that it could be, and yet the individual’s (limited) desires will have been fulfilled. When assessed by desire-fulfilment theories, the person’s well-being will be judged incorrectly.
More troubling is the way that when children of smokers grow to adulthood, they are more likely in their turn to become smokers [Chassin]. Has the child who becomes a smoker been harmed by his parents just because he becomes a smoker? In one sense parents whose choices make it more likely that a child becomes a smoker have harmed their child. Objectively, smokers die younger, and will suffer more illness in their
shortened life than a non-smoker115 [ASH]. But for a desire satisfaction theorist, the child has not been harmed. Providing the child’s desires to smoke are fulfilled, then the child (and the adult she becomes) has benefited (she has more desires that are fulfilled). Perversely, she is harmed only if she develops strong desires to stop smoking, but is unable to do so because she is addicted. She is also harmed if she is stopped from smoking (for example by legal restrictions) even though her health will improve; her well-being is reduced because she has more unfulfilled desires116.
A further problem for desire-fulfilment theories is that desires can change. This presents a particular difficulty for children whose desires change as they mature. Fulfilment of some desires may contribute to a child’s sense of well-being both at the time and as they mature (‘…I’m glad that I went to the Spice Girls concert even though I no longer like their music…’) but the fulfilment of some desires may have only a transient effect on well-being and as desires mature may be seen to be against a person’s interests, (‘...now I can see that it was a stupid thing to do. I wish I hadn’t got the tattoos, I wish I could have them removed but it’ll be painful and expensive…’). That an adult’s desires change through the course of their adult life is not often discussed, but this is a significant problem for an attempt to hang a theory of well- being on desire fulfilment, and it is a particularly important problem for children.
For all these reasons, desire-fulfilment theories of well-being are ultimately
unsatisfactory as theories of well-being. Children cause particular problems for desire- fulfilment theories. Children’s desires can be overruled by their parents, and if so are not a reliable guide to where the child’s interests lie. An adult’s sustained desires are, if not determinative of their interests, at least a strong indicator of where the adult’s interests lie. Buchanan and Brock state “...any standard of individual well-being that does not ultimately rest on an individual’s own informed preferences is both
problematic in theory and subject to intolerable abuse in practice” [Buchanan & Brock, 1986: 33], but children are completely different. Children are immature, with desires that are either unformed (a baby has no desire about the sort of education she
115 Polemically: “Each pack of cigarettes shortens a life by 28 minutes” [Medical News
Today].
should have), inexpressible, or for older children at least correctable (the desires of older children may be overridden by their parents and other adults in authority). Even the most heartfelt desire of a child may be dismissed as a mere childish whim.
Although it is recognised that adult’s desires may be incorrect, and there is much discussion of the extent to which desires may be corrected within desire-fulfillment theories, all of a child’s desires are taken to be correctable: there is an assumption that a child’s desires are correctable (and can be corrected), just because they are children. A child’s desires do not offer a clear indication of where their well-being lies.
Objective Lists
A third approach to well-being is to argue that certain things are intrinsically good or intrinsically bad for a person – some things will make a person’s – any person’s – life go better. And some aspects will make any person worse off. For example any of us will benefit from good health. These theories are named objective list or ideal theories. As with the other approaches, these objective list theories may be developed in
different ways. A start can be made from the goods that are needed for healthy survival. Griffin characterises basic needs as “...what we need to survive, to be
healthy, to avoid harm to function properly.” [Griffin, 1986: 42]. But this does not take us very far. Survival is not enough for a good life, more must be needed on an
objective list for well-being117. But as components beyond those needed for survival are added, the presence of some, but not other, components on the list will be
questioned. A justification of specific constituents of the list may depend on a broader theory such as Aristotelian flourishing, Hurka’s perfectionism [Hurka, 1993] or the capabilities approach developed by Nussbaum and Sen [Nussbaum, 2000, 2011].
It is likely that there will be several different domains to an objective list, for example both personal achievement and happiness are likely to be on any list. More than one
117 And survival may not even be sufficient for a well-being. People make choices that do not
prioritise survival, recognising that their life is better albeit shorter if they make certain choices. Examples of this include the choice to smoke, and as a particular example of those who prioritise achievement over longevity Captain Scott’s wife (Scott of the Antarctic) wrote to him “...if there is a danger for you or another man to face, it will be you who face it, just as