Theories of self-interest (Derek Parfit)
December 30th 2006 05:34
The following is an extract from Reasons and Persons (1984).
Apologies for the quoting, in this post and the next, but there really is no more-efficient way to introduce the area...
One note to make, incidentally, is that the first two theories are arguably "monovalent" varieties of the third.
***
What would be best for someone, or would be most in this person's interests, or would make the person's life go, for him, as well as possible? Answers to this question I call theories about self-interest [also called "prudence" or "prudential theories"]. There are three kinds of theory. On Hedonistic Theories, what would be best for someone is what would make his life happiest. On Desire-Fulfilment Theories, what would be best for someone is what, throughout his life, would best fulfil his desires. On Objective List Theories, certain things are good or bad for us, whether or not we want to have the good things, or to avoid the bad things.
Narrow Hedonists assume, falsely, that pleasure and pain are two distinctive kinds of experience. Compare the pleasures of satisfying an intense thirst or lust, listening to music, solving an intellectual problem, reading a tragedy, and knowing that one's child is happy. These various experiences do not contain any distinctive common quality.
What pains and pleasures have in common are their relations to our desires... [A]ll pains are when experienced unwanted, and a pain is worse or greater the more it is unwanted. Similarly, all pleasures are when experienced wanted... These are the claims of Preference-Hedonism...
Consider next Desire-Fulfilment Theories. The simplest is the Unrestricted Theory. This claims that what is best for someone is what would best fulfil all of his desires... Suppose that I meet a stranger who has what is believed to be a fatal disease. My sympathy is aroused, and I strongly want this stranger to be cured...
Another theory appeals only to someone's desires about his own life. I call this the Success Theory...
Because they are thought by some to need special treatment, I mention next the desires that people have about what happens after they are dead. For a Preference-Hedonist, once I am dead, nothing bad can happen to me. A Success Theorist should deny this. Return to the case where all my children have wretched lives, because of the mistakes I made as their parent. Suppose that my children's lives all go badly only after I am dead. My life turns out to have been a failure, in one of the ways I cared about most...
Turn now to the third kind of Theory that I mentioned: the Objective List Theory. According to this theory, certain things are good or bad for people, whether or not these people would want to have the good things, or to avoid the bad things. The good things might include moral goodness, rational activity, the development of one's abilities, having children and being a good parent, knowledge, and the awareness of true beauty. The bad things might include being betrayed, manipulated, slandered, deceived, being deprived of liberty or dignity, and enjoying either sadistic pleasure, or aesthetic pleasure in what is in fact ugly.
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Comment by David my David
In awe of your mind...
In awe of your clarity of thought.
And clarity of expression of your clarity of thought.
In awe of the way you expres yourself.
In awe of your command of the English language.
In awe of your blog.
Love reading it.
Don't comment much.
Read it often ...
Signed: Periphery-Man ....
Been misinterpreted too often ... so often ... so ... I'll just add ...
I'm straight.
Not a gay compliment, okay.
A non-gay one ...
Yet I'm gay ...
in an old-fasioned way ...
When the word meant happy, joyous ...
Have to go now ...
There's a rainbow outside ...
I just want to gaze at it lovingly ...
Smooch it if I could ...
in an un-gay rainbow way ...
Gaily.
Gail?
Gail Bait?
Yeah, knew her at school.
A few grades below me.
Got locked up for 'associating' with her ...
My defence?
Loving someone to death is a crime?
Didn't wash with the Magistrate.
The magistrate?
Knew him well when I was a 'boy' ...
Justice?
In this world?
Hoping against hope I think.
I do think sometimes ...
quite deeply ...
When my mind is buried in a woman's [deleted] ...
Actually I can write the word mind on here ..
I think deeply when my mind is buried in a woman's mind ...
Love your blog ...
Keep the Posts coming, man ..
David ...
Comment by The Voices in my Head
The Voices in my Head
Hey, if you get a good answer to this one, let me know! *smile*
I think when you are pursuing that which makes you happier than anything else in the world...is the key to a good life.
In terms of my life, where I am at now, how my life is going, I am thrilled. I had all of these things before, too, just not as happy. What's the difference? Pursuing writing. To become an author-ity on it...well, that's the goal anyways...long time, if ever, to get that one marked off the list. But a girl can try, huh?
Great post, as always!
The blogger with the "self-titled, tittilating title",
Voices~
Comment by Damo
Am I allowed to vote for the one I like the most?
Perhaps I should say which I think matches my experience the most.
When discussing hedonism my father said he voted for it when God invented the universe but lost by a narrow margin. Hence we are forced to accept a reality we don't actually like much in a stoic manner.
I like the concept of the objective list but I wonder whether beauty can be ever objective.
The eye of the beholder rule may apply here.
Comment by JoshZ
looks like this one is going to shape up really, really well.
Looking forward to it. Ever read any Bertrand Russell by the way?
JZ
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Your comment is embarrassingly undeserved (after all, this post is just a quote), but thanks a lot for making it.
Dear self-titled person,
You write: "I think when you are pursuing that which makes you happier than anything else in the world...is the key to a good life."
Well, partly depends what you mean by happy, I reckon.
If by "happy" you mean a particular state of mind, or desirable states of mind in general:
-- A friend of mine was telling me how his primary drug of choice was dancing. His secondary drug of choice was ecstasy. His wont was to combine the two. But there was at least one occasion when, at a rave, on E, he thought to himself, "But isn't there something more?".
-- In your case, imagine if you had writing and nothing else (and assume, for the sake of argument, that when you're writing, you want for nothing -- you're perfectly engaged -- you experience what some athletes call "flow"). Well, mightn't you still want something more?
Dear Damo,
One clarification I should make is that "Hedonism" in this context is any good life theory that aims at some desirable state of consciousness.
So it's not just about sex and drugs, and does include Epicureanism (which believed that sexual pleasure was mostly destructive), Buddhism and utilitarianism. Arguably, it also includes Stoicism! Stoicism after all is full of teachings directed to attaining mental tranquillity.
Regarding whether beauty can be objective... I'd agree with you that this is a dodgy idea... And that's the problem with any objective list theory, as attractive as they are. They're hard to defend, ground, justify -- while, in contrast, a directive like "Seek to maximize your happiness" or "Seek to fulfil your desires" seems (perhaps deceptively) to be more self-evident.
Dear JZ,
Yep, me and old Bertie go way back.
Incidentally, I think most types of Christian ethics fit into the "objective list" category. Ie, what you should do with life is not search for happiness or fulfil your desires, but follow God's will.
And one of the most prominent objective list people is John Finnis... I think he's Catholic... I seem to remember he has a list of seven or nine competing intrinsic values. Things like friendship, art, rationality...
Comment by Lilla
From The Home Front
Enviro Warrior
Dream Herald
Esoteric Bookshop
Leaving comment for this one, as I really liked it and the way it was put together ... such pertinent points Adrian ... fascinating ... the line between pleasure and pain ... I had never given them the distinction that you have here and am enlightened as a result of you presenting them here ... thank you.
Lilla...
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
So narrow hedonists believe "pleasure" is a distinctive quality; preference hedonists believe it's a state that, when experienced, is wanted... And there is at least one more concept of pleasure to add. This is Epicurean (and perhaps Buddhist) -- pleasure as "absence of pain".
Ie, not necessarily something that you want when you've got it, but something that is free from want...
Comment by Lilla
From The Home Front
Enviro Warrior
Dream Herald
Esoteric Bookshop
Now that's hedonistic...
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Just two more thoughts on this -- not responding properly to your comment, but for anyone who stumbles on this post and wants more precision about the details, because my previous comment was misleading...
-- In the unlikely case that I'm remembering properly, the Epicureans (though this is not in the fragments of Epicurus himself) believed in two types of pleasure: the pleasure of not wanting, yes; but also the pleasure of satisfying a need/desire (called something like "kinaesthetic pleasure").
-- Thinking more about this now, I don't know if not wanting is necessarily a third type of pleasure, in addition to narrow and hedonist. Rather, it (and kinaesthetic pleasure also) might be versions of narrow hedonism...
Comment by beholdtheman
Comment by Nonymous
Philosophy Blog
Not entirely sure; it's an interesting case. But I'd speculate that Parfit would say "No". He'd say you were a desire theorist.
So the definition goes "all pleasures are when experienced wanted". Now, it's not spelled out, but I think the idea is that something internal to the state causes you to want more of it. The "when" in the formula isn't just temporal coincidence, but has some sort of causal force.
It's possible that a hedonist theorist might agree with you -- "No, they're not the only two categories we care about" and still claim "But they're the only two categories relevant for 'the good life'".
Well, the hedonist-desire-objective list category scheme is very broad, this is true. When you start to look at all the theories of the good life posed across the millennia, there's an awful lot of variety.
As to whether it's a possible scheme... There's various ways one could judge this. Does everything one might call a theory of the good life fit into one of the categories? Is the scheme itself conceptually coherent? -- Well, personally, I think it stands up pretty well on both these counts, although I do suggest in another post that "narrative theories" of the good life might be a good addition as a fourth category.
As to whether it's a useful scheme... Well, this just depends on the purpose for which you're using it. Should you have a three-category structure, or one category, or 100 categories...? Maybe it's simply a question of one's taste for the baroque.
Comment by beholdtheman
I think it may be useful to separate 'immediate experience' from 'reflection on experience'. e.g.
- I might have terrible experiences, but upon reflection, I could still stay my life was good, that I wouldn't exchange it for anything.
- I may experience constant pain all my life, but on reflection II wouldn't want you to kill me and have the 'negative pleasure' of death. (Quite absurd to talk of death as 'negative pleasure', I know).
It seems a paradox that an 'objectively' undesirable life is desirable, but in the above cases it is. It's not the content of experience that counts, but how we reflect on it.
- Can we add to the good life theories 'experience in itself', without mentioning any qualitative attributes?
- Can we ignore experience altogether and just talk about the good life as good reflections on life, whether I had my desires fulfilled or not, whether or not I had more pleasure than pain?
- Does Parfit's conceptual framework allow for this? I think he may be missing something vitally important.
Comment by Nonymous
Philosophy Blog
That does seem to be a common idea. People say, "At least it was an experience", they value novel experience, and they wax lyrical about the lows as well as the highs. Sometimes it's as if sheer accumulation of variety of experience is a good.
I think this would come under the catch-all label "objective list" theory. That is, it's one item among many that one might suggest is a component of the good life.
Well, you're implicitly raising the question of one's reasons for thinking that this or that is "the good life". How does anyone know what the good life is...?
Can we talk about the good life as reflections on life... Well, possibly. But I'd want to suggest that this would be an unpopular theory. Among other things, why should everything hang on one's deathbed attitude (if this is what you're suggesting)? Shouldn't life be viewed as a whole? Why should those final reflections outweigh all that went before?
- I may experience constant pain all my life, but on reflection II wouldn't want you to kill me and have the 'negative pleasure' of death. (Quite absurd to talk of death as 'negative pleasure', I know).
One note to add is that you may be talking about when it's better to have lived than not to have lived at all.
Such a life might be a minimally good life (with "good" meaning "better than nothing"), but it's a different thing from "the good life", which is a sort of ideal, best possible life.