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Dead Sea Apples and Desire-Fulfillment Welfare Theories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2011

WILLIAM LAUINGER
WILLIAM LAUINGER*
Affiliation:
Fordham Universitywlauinger@fordham.edu
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Abstract

This article argues that, in light of Dead Sea apple cases, we should reject desire-fulfillment welfare theories (DF theories). Dead Sea apples are apples that look attractive while hanging on the tree, but which dissolve into smoke or ashes once plucked. Accordingly, Dead Sea apple cases are cases where an agent desires something and then gets it, only to find herself disappointed by what she has gotten. This article covers both actual DF theories and hypothetical (or idealized) DF theories. On actual DF theories the agent's well-being is determined by her actual desires, while on hypothetical DF theories the agent's well-being is determined by the desires that she would have if she were fully and vividly informed with respect to non-evaluative information. Various actual and hypothetical DF theory responses to Dead Sea apple objections are considered, and all such responses are argued to be inadequate.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , September 2011 , pp. 324 - 343
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

1 Sumner develops his authentic happiness welfare theory in Sumner, L. W., Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics (New York, 1996), pp. 138–83Google Scholar.

2 The welfare literature is full of brief discussions of the Dead Sea apple topic (for a particularly helpful brief discussion of this topic, see Sumner, Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics, pp. 129–33). In my estimation, though, nobody has discussed this topic in sufficient detail.

3 Sidgwick, Henry, The Methods of Ethics (Indianapolis, 1981), p. 110Google Scholar.

4 Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, p. 111.

5 To be clear, Sidgwick seems in the end to have been a welfare hedonist, not a DF theorist (see Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, pp. 111–15 and pp. 391–407).

6 Schroeder, Timothy, Three Faces of Desire (New York, 2004), p. 11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Schroeder, Three Faces of Desire, p. 11.

8 On this point see Griffin, James, Value Judgment (New York, 1996), pp. 19–21Google Scholar.

9 Heathwood, Chris, ‘The Problem of Defective Desires’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 83 (2005), pp. 487–504CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Gilbert, Daniel, Stumbling on Happiness (New York, 2005), p. 87Google Scholar.

11 Griffin, James, Well-Being (New York, 1986), p. 10Google Scholar.

12 Heathwood, ‘The Problem of Defective Desires’, p. 490. Heathwood does not endorse the actual DF theory that he defends in this article. He says: ‘My point here has not been to endorse once and for all the particular actualism presented here. My point rather is to show that the problem of defective desires is, after all, no problem for even very simple forms of actualism’ (Heathwood, ‘The Problem of Defective Desires’, p. 500). Heathwood's official stance on well-being comes out more fully elsewhere – see Heathwood, Chris, ‘Desire Satisfaction and Hedonism’, Philosophical Studies 128 (2006), pp. 539–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Heathwood, ‘The Problem of Defective Desires’, p. 493.

14 There are various differences among particular hypothetical DF theories – for instance, differences regarding first- and second-order desires, and differences regarding information conditions. These differences don't substantially affect my argument. I should stress, though, that over time hypothetical DF theorists have moved toward full information conditions.

15 With regard to this matter, Peter Railton (who is a prominent hypothetical DF theorist) says that ‘insofar as possible, the idealization [the process of fully and vividly informing the individual] holds fixed the individual's non-belief properties, so that the contribution of these features to desire-formation would remain largely the same’. See Railton, Peter, ‘Facts and Values’, in his Facts, Values, and Norms (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 43–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar. (For this particular quote, see p. 58.)

16 Sobel, David, ‘Subjectivism and Idealization’, Ethics, 119 (2009), 336–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar. (For this particular quote, see p. 343.)

17 Sobel, ‘Subjectivism and Idealization’, p. 344.

18 Sobel, ‘Subjectivism and Idealization’, p. 343.

19 Sobel, ‘Subjectivism and Idealization’, p. 345.

20 Thanks to Mark Murphy, Alex Pruss, and Karen Stohr for helpful comments.