A Working Test for Well-being

Tobias A. Fuchs

Utilitas, 2018, vol. 30, issue 2, 129-142

Abstract: In order to make progress in the welfare debate, we need a way to decide whether certain cases depict changes in well-being or not. I argue that an intuitive idea by Nagel has received insufficient attention in the literature and can be developed into a test to that purpose. I discuss a version of such a test proposed by Brad Hooker, and argue that it is unsuccessful. I then present my own test, which relies on the claim that if compassion is fitting towards a person due to her having (or lacking) certain properties, then we know that having (or lacking) those properties affect the person's well-being. I show how my test yields results in cases of deception, which have implications for central questions in the literature on well-being, such as whether what you do not experience can affect your well-being (the so-called Experience Requirement).

Date: 2018
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