Dworkin: challenge and impact

In "Sovreign Virtue", Dworkin distinguishes two kinds of "metric" or "model" of ethical value, which he calls the impact model and the challenge model. The two models are so defined

"The model of impact [...] holds that the value of a good life consists in its product, that is, in its consequences for the rest of the word [...]
The model of challenge [...] argues that the goodness of a good life lies in its inherent value as a performance." (Sovreign Virtue, p. 251)

My impression is that here Dworkin collapses two distinctions which are logically independent and could prove more useful if kept separate:

1. On one hand, the model of impact differs from the model of challenge in terms of what we may call the perspective in which we understand the value of the actions it includes (or is made of). Namely: the value of a life according to the impact model is measured in "agent-neutral" and global terms, while the value of a life according to the challenge model is measure in "agent-relative" and local terms (more explanation to come).
   
2. On the other hand, the distinction between the two models appears to have to do with the distinction between a consequentialist perspective and a non-consequentialist ones.
   

These two distinctions, I shall now show, do not coincide. In fact, they are ortogonal.

Dworkin argues that the impact of a person is "the difference his life makes to the objective value in the world" (ibid, 251.). So far this only tells us that in order to know the ethical value of a life, we need to be able to make some evaluation of value on a global scale: we must look at the total change of value in the world brought about by a life. This evaluation is conceived by Dworkin in terms of "agent-neutral" terms, even if in order to notice this one must look at the way the opposition between the two models is defined. The other aspect of the model of impact is that the value it ascribes to a life is a reflection of the value of the consequences which follow from it. Although Dworking does not state this clearly, they way he speaks about the model of impact suggests that value resides, ultimately, upon the consequences of action, and that the actions of the individual are valuable only instrumentally or at most have a "derivatively" that is to say, they have some value "in themselves" which is the "reflection" of the consequence they produce. This is expressed clearly by several passages:

"A life can have more or less value, the model claims, not because it is intrinsically more valuable to live one's life in one way rather than another, but because living in one way can have better consequences" (252)

and

"The model hopes to dissipate the mysteries of ethical value by tying it to another, apparently less mysterious, kind of value: the value that objective states of affairs of the world can have." (252)

"The model of impact [...] holds that the ethical value of a life [...] is parasitic on and measured by the value of its consequences for the rest of the world."
(252)

According to the model of challenge, on the contrary:

"a good life has the inherent value of a skillful performance.[...] The idea that a skillful performance has an inherent value is a perfectly familiar as a kind of value within lives. We admire a complex and elegant dive, for example, whose value persists after the last ripple has died, and we admire people who climbed Mount Everest because , as they said, it was there. The model of challenge holds that living a life is itself a performance that demands skill, that it is the most comprehensive and important challenge we fact, and that our critical interests consist in the achievements, events, and experiences that mean that we have met the challenge well." (253,)

The model of challenge differs from the model of impact in two dimensions. First of all, it differs from it in terms of the criteria of evaluation of a life's worth. According to the model of challenge the criteria of evaluation we adopt are agent-relative and local , while according to the model of impact they are agent-neutral and global. According to the model of impact the worth of an individual performance or act is a function of an agent-neutral value, the value of the (global) state of affairs that the individual performance produced. On the contrary, according to the model of challenge, it is also a function of circumstances in which that performance took place. The measure of worth is - in a sense - indexed with respect to local aspects of the world, such as the proximate situation in which the performance takes place.

Notice that the difference between the two models does not coincide with the difference between valuing a life in virtue of only its "intrinsic" vs. also "extrinsic" properties. On both models, the worth of a life depends from features that are extrinsic to it: in the model of impact, it is a function of the total change of value brought about in the world, while in the model of impact, it is also a function of the circumstances in which the performance takes place. What really changes is, rather, the dimension of the reality which contributes to determine the worth of an individual life: according to the model of impact the worth of a life depends on features of the world at large, while according to the model of challenge it depends on local features of the world.

The other dimension involved by Dworkin's discussion concerns what we might call as the primary bearer of value. According to the model of challenge the primary bearer of value is the life understood as a performance itself, rather than its consequences. This thought it expreseed by comparing the value of a life to the value of an elegant dive, by saying that it is value "within" a life, and by connecting it to our admiration for people who climbed a Mountain just because "it was there". This aspect of the model of challenge is also stated by the following quote:

[...] a good life has the inherent value of a skillful performance. So it holds that events, achievements, and experiences can have ethical value even when they have no impact beyond the life in which they occur." (253)

Since even according to the model of challenge, the value of a life is not uniquely a function of its intrinsic properties, as we have seen, the suggestion seems to be that lives, according to the model of challenge, have some sort of final or non-instrumental value; this fits the comparison with the activity of climbing Mount Everest, performed because it was perceived to be good in itself, and not as means to a further end.

Summing up, the two models differ along two distinct dimensions. On one hand we have the difference between

A. a "neutral" and "global" standard of value (impact), VS a local and "indexed" one (challenge).

on the other hand we have the distinction between:

B. valuing activity as a means to further consequences and as having at most secondary and dependent intrinsic worth, VS viewing activity as a skillful performance or adequate response, and therefore as an end in itself.

The question we should ask is, therefore, whether these two dimension are independent and orthogonal, and if this is true, why Dworkin thought that they had to go together in the way he envisaged.

In order to discover whether these two dimensions are logically independent and orthogonal, we should attempt to construe a table of this sort:

standard primary locus of value	1. local	2. global
a. activity	a1	a2
b. consequences	b1	b2

We therefore obtain the following four cases:

• a1. the value of one's life, considered as an end in itself, as the quality of a performance or of a response, is measured in relation to local parameters. The amount of worth of a life does not depend from how every other subject in the world has or will react to analogous challenges. So if your artistic performance (regarded as worthy in itself, life diving) is mediocre in a global scale, you do not have to worry about that.
• a2. the value of one's life, considered as an end in itself, as the quality of a performance or of a response, is measured in relation to global parameters. The amount of worth of a life depends from how every other subject in similar circumstances has or will react to analogous challenges. So if your artistic performance (regarded as worthy in itself) is mediocre in a global scale, you have to worry about that.
• b1. the value of one's life, considered as a sum of acts, is only instrumental or at most a reflection of the value of the consequences of those act. However the value of those consequences is evaluated in terms of an indexed or local parameter. So if you do not produce great works of arts and your life did not contribute to the world's cultural heritage, you do not have to feel bad about it.
  
• b2. The value of a life, considered as an activity or sum of acts, is only instrumental or at most a reflection of the consequences of those acts. The value of those consequences is evaluated in terms of global and neutral parameters. So if you do not produce great works of arts and your life did not contribute to the world's cultural heritage, you do not have to feel bad about it.

Dworkin's model of challenge corresponds to A1, while Dworkin's model of impact corresponds to B2. But this choice appears to be quite arbitrary in the light of the fact that he did not even considers model A2 and B1.

Why Dworkin thinks there must be volitional well-being?

As we have seen in my previous post, Dworkin distinguishes critical and volitional well-being. But volitional well-being does not seem to be well-being at all. Volitional well-being is the satisfaction of desires, but the fact that something affects our well-being always gives us reasons, other things equal, to take it into account, while the fact that we have a desire for something does not (the desire might be irrational), unless that affects our ability to enjoy life or gives us pain.

Why did Dworkin felt compelled to introduce and admit the existence of volitional well-being? The idea of identifying well-being with simply getting what one wants is a historically important concept. After the rejection of mentalistic definitions of utility, “volitional” or “preference based” definitions took their place in standard neo-classical economics. (For a brief history and explanation of this process, and of the emergence of an opposite tendency I recommend the following paper by Erik Angner < http://ssrn.com/abstract=957148>.)

A second reason - which is much less apparent, is - I believe - Dworkin's difficulty in accounting for objective values. There must be something like a person's critical well-being, according to Dworkin, because the value of exercizing certain activities and engaging in certain relations does not derive from the fact that someone wants or desires them. Rather one ought to want or desire certain things in so far as they are valuable (or valuable for a person, as Dworkin would put it). This offers a general account of the relation between desire and value: desired because valuable. Philosophers like Scanlon endorse this model of the relation between desire and value in general, and apply it to . But Dworkin does not do that. Why?

Dworkin is impressed by the fact that while certain activities are considered to be valuable for most humans, or for humans in general, other activities seem to be valuable only for particular people, e.g. who have an interest in them. (See the previous post). For example fishing is valuable, but only if you are interested in it What Dworkin did not see, was the possibility of explaining the subject-relativity of these cases without abandoning the "valuable, therefore desired" model of explanation. However, this is pretty simple. You can say that fishing is valuable, but only for some people, because fishing is valuable only in so far as it is enjoyable. But "enjoyment" is valuable in general: and we can say that enjoyment is valuable, and therefore people have reasons to desire it. In terms of its relation to desire, the good which we call "enjoyment" belongs to "critical" well-being, just like parenthood or a minimal grasp of contemporary science (the examples of critical well-being Dworkin often cites). It also follows that going out fishing is part of our critical well-being when it is a realization of enjoyment, even if some people do not have a reason to desire to go fishing, because they cannot enjoy it. Enjoying something is not the same as desiring it: one can desire to do something that one does not enjoy (e.g. going to a medical check), e.g. to get rid of the stress and tension following from some doubts about one's health.

If it seems too strange to you that a person's enjoyment might be part of his critical interests, imagine a person who has a certain "blindness" towards every aspect of enjoyment. (I developed this example in the previous post.) This person goes on through life without really enjoying anything. We might think that this person should rationally revise his life-plan to find some room for this aspect of human experience, whether he desires it or not. (It does not follow that we think that this person should be forced to enjoy his life. Any such attempt would be self-defeating.)

There might be another reason why Dworkin felt he had to distinguish these two species of well-being. For the idea of critical well-being captures those ideas about the human good that are of traditional concerns in perfectionist moral theories. According to a perfectionist theory of the good, there are certain traits, capacities or activities that people should develop. Typically, the fact that someone develops such traits, capacities and activities is regarded by perfectionist as both good in itself and as good for the person whose capacities they are. A perfectionist theory might hold, for example, that humans can have a fulfilled life only if they develop their rational part, for example by participating in some way to the most advanced forms of knowledge of their time. One of the traditional characteristic of perfectionist conceptions is that they tend to find a subordinate or at most dependent place for pleasure. (E.g. in Aristotle pleasure completes an activity which is good, and is not valuable when experienced apart from them.)

The notion of the good (and of well-being, or the good life) that perfectionist philosophers adopt is radically different from the notion of well-being or utility developed in the utilitarian tradition. It seems that Dworkin saw something valuable in both traditions and wanted to account in his theory for the intuitions that support each of them. Clearly, if Dworkin's account of critical well-being was also meant to capture what Dworkin thought it was valuable in the perfectionist tradition of the good life, Dworkin had to define an alternative category of well-being in order to preserve the intuitive distinction between perfectionist theories of the good life and the notion of well-being which corresponds to the intuitions of utilitarian writers. But because of his liberalism, he did not want to conceptualize the "perfectionist" aspect of the good life by appealing to the controversial notion of "human nature". This led him to identify the "perfectionist" aspect of good life in terms of what Griffin calls the "perception model" of value: the theory according to which value precedes desire. Having done this, he had to identify the other aspect of well-being - the one which corresponds to the intuitions of utilitarian philosophers - with the opposite of that model, namely what Griffin calls "the taste model" of value: "desire precedes value". And this explains why he postulated such an odd beast as "volitional well-being."

The distinction between volitional and critical well-being

In his "Sovreign Virtue" Ronald Dworking distinguishes two fundamental species or senses of well-being

Volitional well-being:

“Someone's volitional well-being is improved, and just for that reason, when he
has or achieves what in fact he wants.” (242)

Example:

“Sailing well and freedom from dentistry are part of my own volitional
well-being: I want them both, and my life therefore goes better, in the
volitional sense, when I have them.” (242)

AND Critical well-being:

“[someone's] critical well-being is improved by his having or achieving what it
makes his life a better life to have or achieve.” (242)

Example:

“having a close relationship with my children, for example, securing some
success in my work, and [...] some minimal grasp of the state of advanced
science of my era. These I regard as critical interests because I believe
that my life would be a less successful one if I failed to have, or wholly
failed to achieve, these goals.” (242)

Dworkin argues that we must suppress the reductionist impulse of these philosophers who think that “the success of different lives can be measured and compared in respect of a single elemental carrier of ethical value” (242). There is complexity and structure in the idea of well-being. In fact, Dworkin argues, we must distinguish volitional well-being from critical well-being as two irreducible categories. Dworkin denies that the categories of volitional and critical well-being ought to be considered as “components of a larger, more inclusive category that we might call well-being all things considered” (244). Dworkin argues that this idea makes no sense: “there can be no standards for judging whether the right mix or trade-off has been achieved between volitional and critical well-being except the standards of one of the two modes of well-being themselves.” (244)

Now there are several problems with what Dworking says. I agree with him that there are different senses in which a life can be said to be good for a person, or plain good. But I deny that being good “in the volitional sense” is a way for a life to go well or to be good at all. I doubt, that is to say, that there is any meaningful sense of good life or well-being that corresponds to getting what one most wants, no matter how crazy one's wishes and desires are.

What elements does Dworkin use to justify the existence of volitional well-being? He writes that

“Though I do want to sail well, and am disappointed because I do not, I cannot
think that my life would be a worse one if I had never conceived that desire. It
is important for me to sail well because I want to sail well, not vice-versa”
(243).

Well-being in the volitional sense is the sort of well-being which follows from the mere fact that one gets what one most wants. But this statement can be understood in different ways. It could be understood as the claim that certain activities or conditions, e,g, sailing well, can be turned into goods, or valuable activities and conditions, by the mere fact that I want them. But this argument seems to presuppose the sort of humean picture of the relation between desires and reasons, or desires and value that has attracted so much criticism in the last two decades and that is growing (I believe) increasingly controversial. Fewer philosopher than in the past would now endorse the claim that the mere fact of wanting X turns X into something valuable, or valuable for a person. (See this post)

But why then does the last quote by Dworking sounds so natural in our ears? This claim is made up of two claims. The first claim, that my life would not be a worse one if I had never conceived that desire, is right, but what follows from it? It clearly follows that “desiring to sail” does not make a life better, even if sailing improves the quality of my life only if I desire to. Of course, my life could have been as good without sailing as it is with it, meaning that I could have develop a fondness for, or developed the ability to appreciate, another activity. Or in other words it is both conceptually possible and quite likely that, counterfactually, if had I made different choices, now I would enjoy different things.

But this does not show that my enjoying my life makes my life better in a sense that can only be accounted by postulating the existence of volitional well-being. Imagine a person who is unable, for constitutive reasons, to enjoy good wines, good foods, with a severe physical handicap and no talent for intellectual hobbies like reading or chess, or any other activity except sailing and who has a definite predisposition to find sailing enjoyable. Suppose ignorance about the existence of the sea and of every activity connected to it prevents this person both to form the desire to sail and to satisfy it. For a person with such an improbable psychology, the failure to form a desire to sail, and to practice it, would entail a severe and important loss of well-being, in so far as it would deprive this person with the only form of enjoyment in life that, for some reason, was accessible to her.

The second claim “It is important for me to sail well because I want to sail well, not vice-versa” is also plain common sense, but what does it show? It is important to sail well, of course, only if one has a previous reason to sail. And clearly, most people do not have a reason to sail, and a fortiori, one to sail well. But this is only because a person who can find many different things enjoyable does not have a reason, in general, to try out any possible form of enjoyment. But this, as well, is only because as Scanlon reminds us, there are many valuable activities that we can undertake at any moment in time, but since our lives are finite, some goals must be selected. A person who has elected, as it were, playing chess as the main hobby in her life and is quite successful player may not have a reason to take up the hobby of sailing, especially since this is an expensive one. This person may think that she has most reasons to spend the money devoted to leisure to finance her participation to chess competitions and travel costs. So this person does not have any reason to sail well.

But for the man in our previous example, who can only enjoy sailing, it is important to sail well, at least under the assumption that he can enjoy sailing only if he does it well. If we drop this assumption, we can still say at least that it is important for him to "enjoy himself well", or to look for the "right" amount of enjoyment, and since sailing is the only way in which he can enjoy himself, it is important for him to sail "well" in that sense. (That is to say: it is important for him to devote sufficient attention to his boat and sailing friendships, to exercise those virtues which allow him to put up nice sailing trips, e.g. cooperation, etc, and to be able to refrain from sailing when he has something more important to do.)

Since, I am assuming, some people have sometimes a reason to sail and to sail well, and since everybody has a reason to enjoy himself and to enjoy himself "well" (in the sense explained above) it makes perfect sense to say, of a person who has a reason to sail and enjoy himself well, that the life of this person is made a better life by sailing and enjoying himself "well", in the sense I have explained. So it seems a little arbitrary to draw a neat boundary between activities that we do for the sake of enjoyment, such as sailing, and those goods, like children or some minimal grasp of the state of advanced science of our era, which according to Dworkin contribute to our critical well-being.

What intuitions support the idea that volitional well-being represents a distinct category of well-being evaluations or evaluations of the goodness of a life? Dworkin also writes

“a life in which someone wanted only what he thought was in his critical interest to want would be a sad mess”.

But why should this be the case? It may be the case if enjoying oneself were considered, by definition, outside the possible critical interests of a person. But why should this be assumed? The first definition of a person’s critical well-being is “[someone's] critical well-being is improved by his having or achieving what it makes his life a better life to have or achieve”. It is of course plausible that nobody's life is made a better life by practicing any other activity that other people find enjoyable, but this is compatible with thinking that no one's life can be a good one if one does not find at least one activity within it enjoyable.

In conclusion, it seems very odd to me to consider volitional and critical well-being as two species of well-being. But then why did Dworkin thought that there are these two types of well-being? I shall try to answer to this question in the next post.