1.
Francesco: First of all, it would be odd (prima facie) to buck-pass the concept of well-being. Well-being is "a" good, while the buck-passing account should be used for thin concepts like right or good.
Michele's answer: this may be true if we are dealing with a thik notion of well-being. But SCanlon defines well-being as "what makes a life a good life for the person who lives it" or as a concept at the same level of generality. This concept is quite thin, almost as thin as the concept of good.
2.
Francesco: Second problem. Well-being is constituted or made of of other goods. This may be understood as an identity relation. For example, let us assume that hedonism is right, i.e. well-being is made of pleasure (and only of pleasure). In this case we might have :
property A (X non-derivatively contributes to well-being)
property B (X is pleasurable)
A = B
In the case of good, if a buck-passing account applies, we would have:
(let us assume pleasure is the only good thing)
Property B (X is pleasurable)
Property C (X is good)
Buck-passing (for properties)
C (X is good) = X has a property which gives us a reason to respond to it in a certain way
Hence
C not = to B
3.
Francesco notices that the buck-passing view is sometimes understood as a claim about concepts, and sometimes as a claim about properties.
4.
Michele: It sounds fine that the relation between pleasure and well-being need not be symmetric to the buck-passing relation between good and good things. Even if Scanlon does not provide a "buck-passing account" of the value of well-being, I want to know whether it follows from the buck-passing view and the fact that well-being is an inclusive and transparent good that well-being is valuable.
5.
Michele: moreover I would like to understand if the facts that appear in reasons are intentional or extensional (I do not know really how to use these terms, but here is what I mean:)
"does the conjunction of the following two facts:
1. X=Y
2. I have a reason to desire X
entails
3. I have a reason to desire Y
even if I do not know, and I cannot possibly know that X = Y,
(at least in so far as Scanlon's view of reasons is in question)?"
if the answer is "yes" , it seems that we might have something like the following:
(let us assume, for the sake of the argument, that:
0. A is pleasurable
0a. "X is pleasurable" entails "X constitutes my well-being", or equivalently "X is a part of my well-being")
1a. A = a part of my well-being (follows from 0 and 0a)
2a. I have a reason to desire A (because A is pleasurable)
hence
3a. I have a reason to desire (a part of) my well-being
this holds even if I do not know that 0a, even if I never think about 0a, and even if there is no way in principle for me to know 0a.
6.
Francesco notices that we must distinguish between non-derivative and derivative reasons for something. For example if
X=Maffettone
and
Y= the biggest Italian expert on Rawls
and I am writing a thesis on Rawls, I have a non-derivative reason to visit Y (the major Italian expert on Rawls) and a derivative reason to go to talk with Maffettone.
Michele replies that the buck-passing view seems to apply to non-derivative and derivative reasons as well. In fact, if I have a derivative reason to go to talk with Maffettone, I can say that Maffettone is valuable (has a property, that of being the biggest Italian expert on Rawls) which gives me a reason to respect his opinions about Rawls.
6.
Conclusions:
As Francesco notices, we do not have to interpret the claim that well-being is a transparent good as entailing the claim that we can apply the buck-passing view to well-being. Well-being can be said to be constituted by things that are good for me; or we may have something like (contingent? a-priori but non trivial?) identity among properties.
Michele agrees and adds that, given that Scanlon does not claim to provide a buck-passing account of well-being, we must take his silence at face value and suppose that the relation between well-being and the goods that make it up is one of constitution or something else.
Michele also notices that, if this is true, Scanlon's claim about the transparency of well-being should be read as claims about the uses of concepts in the first-person point of view, claims that may lead, but do not explicitly lead to metaphysical conclusions about properties. On the contrary the buck-passing view can be read as a claim about properties.
Michele also notices another Scanlon's oddity:
Why does Scanlon NOT analyze the relation between well-being and the goods that make it up IN THE SAME WAY as the relation between the good and good things?
After all, the intuition behind the thesis that well-being is a transparent good is very similar to the intuitions that motivate the buck-passing account of good.
In fact what justifies transparency is the idea thatthe property "X is/constitutes/ my well-being" does not give me an (extra) reason to respond to X, beyond the reasons that derive from other properties of X.
and what justify the buck-passing account of the good is the idea that
the property "X is good" does not represent a reason to respond to X, beyond the reasons that derive from other properties of X.
2 comments:
Ok, I have new thoughts.
1. If it's true that: "X contributes to my well-being" means "X makes my life better for me", and if "X makes my life better for me" is roughly analysed as "X makes my life such that I have a reason, provided by X, to prefer for me a life containing X to a life not containing X", then I guess one could analyse "X contributes to my well-being" as "X makes my life such that I have a reason, provided by X, to prefer for me a life containing X to a life not containing X". Note that the reason to prefer such a life is given by the presence of X in it, not by the fact that the presence of X contributes to my well-being (this latter fact amounts to the fact that X makes my life go better). That's a way to buck-pass well-being, and it looks like if one accepts the first premise (as Scanlon seems to do)then it is unavoidable to buck-pass well-being (if we are buck-passers, of course). The alternative is to say there are principled reasons not to buck-pass "X makes my life better for me", but I don't see why one should do this, especially in the light of the transparency thesis. Note that this doesn't empty the concept of well-being of its specificity. I'd say there are many good things, within and without one's life, which fail to contribute to well-being, to make my life go better for me, although their presence makes my life a more valuable entity, more worthy of respect and admiration. I guess one could draw the distinction exactly at the level of the attitudes required. I (and perhaps others) have reason to prefer for me a life of innocent if shallow pleasures, but I (and a fortiori others) have no reason to admire such a life. Perhaps with others components of well-being this is more difficult. I have reason to prefer for me a life of successful rational aims, but, given the right contents for these aims, others may have reason to admire my life. Maybe one can reply that others may admire my life not for the fact that my rational aims ahd success, but for the nature and content of the achievements (imagine they are achievements of high ethical value).
2. Note also that if we do this, it then becomes hard to identify "contributing to well-being" with some naturalistic property like "contributing to pleasure". For then, claims such as "pleasure contributes to well-being" or "pleasure makes my life go better for me" will just mean tautologies as "pleasure contributes to pleasure" or "pleasure makes my life more pleasurable for me" or something like that. It is still possible though to identify "contributes to well-being" with naturalistic properties that are not taken themselves as parts of well-being, such as "contributes to satisfaction of my informed desires".
Francesco
Dear Francesco, your point seems to me to be profound and correct. But let me check if I have understood it well.
Your answer to the question: is well-being buck-passable (provided we accept the buck-passing view)? seems to be yes. Your reason for this I may reformulate as follows. Saying "x contributes to my well-being" is like saying "a life L1 in which there is X is better for me than a life L2 (my present life) in which there is not X, because of X". The next stept is buck-passing the thin property "being better for me than". So we can say that if a life L1 has the “thin” property “being better for me than life L2, L3, ...” then it has the property
“being such that I have a reason to prefer for me life L1 to L2, L3, ...” . This is the move, if I understand you well, that you use to analyze “x contributes to my well-being”. And this is in a way, simply, to decompose "better for me" into "better" and "for me" and to apply he buck passing view to “better”.
In other words: you buck pass “better for me” by buck-passing “better” into “being such that I have a reason to prefer life L1 to L2, etc.” and you add “for me” into the buck-passed formula.
Now two questions:
1)is it true that when X contributes to my well-being I have a reason, provided by X, to prefer for me the life containing X ? Scanlon (and others) seem to believe that many things (and activities) can make my life go better, even if the reason I have to value them is not the self-interested reason that such things make my life better off (take the example you want: loving someone, saving Venice from sinking, helping one's child). Now, suppose that, as Scanlon seems to believe, my life becomes a better life if I dedicate a large part of my energies to saving Venice from sinking, because I think that Venice is valuable and therefore saving it is worthwhile, and, partly as a result of my efforts, Venice does not sink. Now it is not clear to me whether it is correct to say that I have a reason to prefer for me a life in which Venice does not sink to a life in which Venice sinks. What is clear to me, is that it would be correct to say that I have a reason to prefer a world in which Venice does not sink to a world in which Venice sinks. What can it mean, in addition to this, to say that I have a reason to prefer a world in which Venice does not sink for me? There does not seem a distinct reason, to want Venice not to sink for me in addition to the first reason, to want Venice not to sink simpliciter. (Remember that we are not talking about a person owns a house in Venice, but somebody who thinks saving Venice worthwhile in so far as the existence of Venice is something valuable.) Therefore I am not sure that Scanlon accepts (or can accept) the first premise.
2)The idea of drawing the distinction between the point of view of perfection and the point of view of well-being by referring to admiration looks extremely promising. But here is a challenge for you: can you distinguish the concept of well-being from the concept of a life's choiceworthiness by appealing to a distinction in attitudes?
3)I am not sure that your point (2) is correct, because one may think that constitution does not work exactly like, and does not imply, strict identity. I am not so sure about this, but if I remember well Mark Johnston argues that if well-being at t is constituted by various things (e.g. pleasures, accomplishments, etc.), my well-being can survive even if the various things that compose it do not (say I switch from the pleasure of listening to music to the pleasure of conversation.) But I try to avoid these issues, the right person to ask is Gianfranco. This means that I also do not know which exact view of the relation between well-being and its constituents is presupposed by any philosophical theory, if we ask this question at the “metaphysical” level. But still I would not say that there is an argument by elimination to show that Scanlon must be adopting some sort of buck-passing view.
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