Wellbeing and Experience
Mental state theories of wellbeing (like Mill’s and Bentham’s) and Informed Desire theories of wellbeing (like Griffin’s) contradict each other and require evaluation to see which one more accurately represents the truth.
Mental state theories of wellbeing state that wellbeing depends on our mental states only. Feeling good is more important than being in an objectively good position. Your wellbeing does not depend on your objective circumstance, but solely on your mental states. Informed Desire theories of wellbeing, on the other hand, state that our wellbeing depends on the fulfillment of our Informed Desires. The terms ‘fulfillment’ and ‘Informed’ take on very particular meanings in this context. Generally speaking, what is good for us are fulfilled informed desires. These are desires that we are consciously aware of and that are/were fulfilled whether we know or not. “‘Utility is the fulfillment of informed desires, the stronger the desires, the greater the utility”. ‘Informed’, in this context, means that the desire was formed by “appreciation of the nature of its object [including] anything necessary to achieve it”. ‘Fulfillment’, in this context, means for a desired event to have occurred whether or not the agent of desire is aware of this occurrence.
Nozick presents a mind experiment to try and determine whether mental state theories of wellbeing adequately indicate what is good for us. He sets up a scenario where all mental states can be simulated by an ‘experience machine’ so that once a person plugs into this machine she will have all of its experiences fabricated to her liking. The main idea here is to simulate a perfect life that has a lot of ‘well-being’ for the agent. Nozick stipulates that if mental state theories of wellbeing are true, plugging ourselves into experience machines would be the right thing to do. However, he states that being able to imagine an experience machine (or any modification thereof) that one would not want to plug into is enough to show that aspects of life that do not involve experiences matter to us as well. Namely, being a certain way, doing certain things and experiencing a sense of “deep” reality. Therefore, because we can imagine a scenario where all of our mental-states are satisfied by a simulation but would still feel like we are missing our connection with the ‘real’ world as it most fundamentally could exist to us, there must be more to well-being than just our mental-states.
Griffin’s informed desire account of wellbeing can also be objected to. These objections include situations where fulfilment of a desire occurs unknown to the desirer. For example, the desire that my work becomes famous upon my death would objectively be ‘fulfilled’ if I die and consequently become famous. However (assuming no afterlife) I would not be alive to appreciate the fulfillment of this desire. Because these situations can arise as a result of the theory, it fundamentally differs from mental state theories of wellbeing where you have to be aware of the fulfillment for it to contribute to your wellbeing. The main difference here seems to lie in the contrast between Griffin and Bentham’s/Mill’s conception of ‘fulfillment’. Griffin is willing to admit fulfillment without knowledge whereas Bentham and Mill do not see this as possible. Griffin’s account of wellbeing avoids the above objections to mental state theories of wellbeing by not actually requiring the experience of a fulfillment for an increase in wellbeing. As a result, it does not matter if we're in an experience machine, because even there we could have ‘fake’ desires that upon ‘fake’ fulfilment would contribute to our ‘fake’ wellbeing. In other words, the informed desire account of wellbeing holds even in a scenario where mental state theories of wellbeing fail. Griffin summarizes this concept nicely by saying: “But we desire things other than states of mind; I might sometimes prefer, say, bitter truth to comforting delusion”.
Dropping the experience requirement (which can also be done by expanding the concept of ‘experience’ to include other people’s desires that we now desire too) has threatening consequences. For one, many desires seem to extend beyond the interests of the agent. For example, the agent desires something for the greater good even though it doesn’t really help her (like desiring a stranger you just met on the train, who you will never see again, to be successful). This leads to an extremely broad view where the ‘fulfillment of desires’ occurs too frequently. Griffin’s solution to this problem is to separate general good from individual good. He makes an addition to his original claim and states that only those things that you desire that alter into your life actually influence your well-being. Like this, trivial matters like the fulfillment of your friends desire to have lunch become irrelevant to our well-being again, and the theory retrieves its plausibility.
However, there is another aspect which reduces how believable this theory is. Informed desires, as defined above, could potentially lead to a situation where your desires are misinformed and therefore wrong. Picture a scenario where a reputable authority makes you believe that killing your mother is the right thing to do. You would now have a desire that according to Griffin’s Informed Desire account would contribute to your well-being. Say you then kill your mother and that same authority then points out to you how the information it gave you is actually false. The same situation which previously, according to Griffin’s theory, added to your wellbeing is now absolutely detrimental to your psychological health, and obviously, in its most intuitive sense, false. Griffin accounts for this by carefully defining his use of the word ‘strength’ in describing desires. He states: “(..) the relevant sense of ‘strength’ has to be, not motivational force, but rank in a cool preference ordering, an ordering that reflects appreciation of the nature of the objects of desires”. This seems to mean that stronger desires are ones that are objectively better for us, therefore circumventing the misinformation scenario because these desires are weaker (in the strict sense of the word) and therefore of less to no significance.
It is hard to tell which theory more accurately represents the truth because the presented objections are not strong enough to shake the theories. Do both theories seem reasonable though?
The informed desire account seems to have strange consequences if one has the desire to be famous after death. Although, according to the informed desire account, actually becoming famous after dying should contribute to our well-being, it intuitively seems useless (assuming no afterlife). Upon further inspection one can realize that this fluke is no longer relevant because the death of the agent removes the desire, therefore invalidating the question. On the other hand, if mental state theories of wellbeing are really true, what is stopping us from submerging into a virtual reality, a dream or a binge of happiness inducing drugs? My intuition says that this cannot be the right thing to do, but it is surprisingly hard to formulate why.
Considering the above, I believe that it is harder than it seems to object to both mental state theories of wellbeing and the informed desire account. Although my reasoning is not giving me a clear answer, as all mentioned objections ultimately fail, the consequences of mental state theories of wellbeing are definitely harder to accept than those of the Informed Desire account.
Sources
Griffin, James. 2007. "The informed Desire Account" in Ethical Theory: An Anthology, Russ Shafer-Landau ed.. London: Blackwell Publishers. page 307
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