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exam 2
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Wellbeing: Bradley - Hedonism | what is non-instrumentally or ultimately good for a person. theories of well-being as either hedonist theories, desire theories, or objective list theories. According to the view known as welfarism, well-being is the only value |
| Hedonism: Bradley - Hedonism | pleasure and pain are the only fundamental components of well-being. (bradley - h) |
| Basic intrinsic value: Bradley - Hedonism | inherent worth that something possesses "in itself" independent of its utility, consequences, or external valuation. Unlike instrumental (extrinsic) value, which is valued as a means to an end, intrinsic value constitutes an end in itself. |
| The distinctive feeling view: Bradley - Hedonism | Pleasure is a feeling that one can be aware of when one is having a pleasurable experience. unique identification falls under a hedonist philosophy of what pleasure is the feeling of pleasure itself. (bradley - h) |
| The desire view: Bradley - Hedonism | Pleasure; experience of desiring a sensation to persist. they are wanted feelings. pleasures are feelings that we want to continue - falls under a hedonist philosophy of what pleasure is |
| The attitudinal view: Bradley - Hedonism | pleasure may be accompanied by a feeling, but is not same thing as feeling. It involves an agent taking an attitude towards a propositional object; i.e., agents are pleased that so-and-so is true. (bradley - h) |
| Motivating hedonism: Bradley - Hedonism | scale model, predicts psychological Facts about well-being provide reasons as do facts about pleasure and pain, non-elitist, It is a simple theory, the core belief aiming for maximum enjoyment and minimum suffering to achieve well-being (bradley - h) |
| Base pleasures: Bradley - Hedonism | refer to primal, sensual, or bodily gratification, such as eating, drinking, or sexual pleasure, which are often considered inferior to intellectual or moral ("higher") pleasures |
| False pleasures: Bradley - Hedonism | experience machine. Pleasures inside it seem inferior to true pleasures. • Reply: Truth-Adjusted Hedonism. False pleasures are worth less than true pleasure |
| The life satisfaction view: Bradley - Hedonism | Pleasure= an individual consciously judges their life to be going well. Unlike hedonism (focusing on momentary pleasure/pain), this view; subjective assessment. It combines the feeling of contentment with belief that life is satisfying. |
| Problems for the life satisfaction view: Bradley - Hedonism | Objections: only one’s own life counts; many never evaluate their whole life; counterfactual reply says well-being = how satisfied one would be if reflecting on life; unclear, risks circularity, and excludes cognitively limited people and animals. |
| The desire fulfillment view: Bradley - Desires | What makes one intrinsically better off is getting what one wants. It explains why pleasure is typically good for one. People want pleasure and more. |
| The experience machine: Bradley - Desires | object hedonism. It asks if you would plug into a simulator providing a perfect, pre-programmed life, to which most answer "no," suggesting that reality, authenticity, and actual doing matter more than just feeling pleasure (hedonism) |
| Motivations for the DF view: Bradley - Desires | good life consists of getting what you want, prioritizing personal preferences over objective. well-being= subjective, satisfaction of desires to explain what makes life valuable, including achievements that may involve pain. |
| The nature of desire: Bradley - Desires | Desires; mental states directed at something. have propositional objects. can be satisfied or frustrated without subject knowing it. intrinsic and extrinsic desires. desire to eat strawberries is extrinsic but desire taste experience is intrinsic. |
| Propositions: Bradley - Desires | non-linguistic, underlying meaning or content expressed by a declarative sentence; either T or F. , propositions are distinct from sentences; for example, "Snow is white" and "Schnee ist weiß" express the same proposition |
| The achievement view: Bradley - Desires | more than how long-lasting and intense a desire is, but the extent of the effort exerted to fulfill it. The more effort you put into achieving a goal, the better it is for you that the goal is reached, and the worse it is for you that it is not reached. |
| The resonance constraint: Bradley - Desires | The best life for a person should be one that she cares to have. Example: Marie could become a great pianist, but since she doesn’t care about piano, that life wouldn’t be best for her. |
| Warm vs. cold desires: Bradley - Desires | Warm: desires person actively feels and emotionally motivated by. ex; spend time with friends because genuinely enjoy. Cold: desires person thinks they should have but doesn’t genuinely feel motivated by. ex: exercise for health, but not wanting to go gym |
| Reflective equilibrium: Bradley - Desires | Reflective equilibrium: justifying beliefs by adjusting general principles and specific intuitions until they consistently fit together, revising each in light of arguments and theories until a stable, coherent balance is reached (high/low pleasures) |
| Simplicity: Bradley - Desires | explanation/solution, requiring the fewest assumptions, is preferred. It is both a scientific principle for evaluating theories and a lifestyle approach to eliminate unnecessary, complex, or trivial elements, allowing focus on what truly matters. |
| Immoral desires: Bradley - Desires | The problem of “Defective” desires • Immoral desires: E.g. The desire to torture something |
| Trivial desires: Bradley - Desires | The problem of “Defective” desires. The desire to count grass blades. insgnifcant |
| Base desires: Bradley - Desires | The problem of “Defective” desires. The desire to eat pizza and play video games all day. let passivity conmume you and be lazy essentially |
| The paradox of desire: Bradley - Desires | Suppose my only desire is to have a bad life. If that one desire is fulfilled, then my life is good for me. But then my life is both good overall and bad overall. But if my life is overall good, then my desire to have bad life is frustrated. |
| The problem of adaptive preferences: Bradley - Desires | Oppressive social structures, manipulation, imprisonment, misinformation, etc. can deform desire. Looking at the extent to which desires formed in such circumstances are satisfied is a bad test for evaluating one’s well-being. |
| Informed desires: Bradley - Desires | desires a person would have if they were fully informed and thinking rationally. The theory holds that well-being depends on the satisfaction of these informed desires, not desires based on ignorance or false beliefs. doctor patient |
| Parfit's hospital case: Bradley - Desires | criticize hedonism: a patient chooses between a treatment with more pain sooner or less pain later. People often prefer sooner pain due to time-bias, suggesting well-being should be evaluated globally across life, not just moment to moment. |
| Posthumous desires: Bradley - Desires | Jerry wants his work displayed at museum but dies before seeing it. Does timing matter? Perhaps it only benefits him if he could be aware of it. Raises the issue: should we honor earlier desires or later ones if the person is incapacitated? |
| Parfit's stranger on the train: Bradley - Desires | Parfit’s stranger on the train: you wish a stranger is cured, and they are, but this doesn’t make you better off. Possibly, desires must be about oneself or believed to be satisfied to affect well-being, though other-directed desires complicate this. |
| belief requirement: Bradley - Desires | a life counts as meaningful only if the person actually believes they are engaging with something valuable; merely doing something valuable by accident doesn’t make life meaningful. |
| Perfectionism: Bradley - Capabilities & Human Nature | the view that what is best for a human is to develop capacities that constitute human nature, such as rational and physical capacities. I.e., developing our theoretical rationality, our practical rationality, and our physical nature. |
| Predicative vs attributive: Bradley - Capabilities & Human Nature | Attributive: “a good knife” → good for its kind. Predicative: “the knife is good” → good in itself. Tests like conjunction-elimination (if “A and B” is true, you can infer “A” and “B” separately) show goodness isn’t just relative. |
| Predication: Bradley - Capabilities & Human Nature | Saying something about a subject, like attributing a property, state, action, or quality to it. Example: in “The sky is blue,” “is blue” predicates a quality of the sky. |
| Monism vs pluralism about wellbeing: Bradley - Capabilities & Human Nature | Monism: One main source of well-being, like developing human capacities. Pluralism: Many sources of well-being—pleasure, achievement, relationships, or knowledge can all contribute. |
| Distinctive function: Bradley - Capabilities & Human Nature | Following Aristotle, the distinctive function of a human being is being rational; i.e., to be responsive to reasons (prudential, moral, and epistemic) and to guide our conduct and beliefs by reason. |
| Essential properties: Bradley - Capabilities & Human Nature | Essential properties are the necessary traits something must have to be what it is; without them, it wouldn’t be that thing. They contrast with accidental properties, which are optional traits, like a triangle’s three sides versus its color. |
| Characteristic properties: Bradley - Capabilities & Human Nature | Properties that are typical or defining features of something. They help describe or identify it, but they might not be strictly required. |
| Nussbaum's capabilities approach: Bradley - Capabilities & Human Nature | A good life involves developing key human capabilities like health, reason, and relationships, but critics say their value comes from actually using them, not just having the potential. |
| Personal and impersonal value: Bradley - Pluralism | Personal value matters to you (hobbies, friendships). Impersonal value exists independently (truth, beauty). Tests like punishment/reward measure impersonal value but miss what matters for your own well-being. |
| The two lives test: Bradley - Pluralism | compares two hypothetical lives to see which is better, holding all else equal. It shows what truly matters for well-being or morality, e.g., preferring a virtuous life over a vicious one even if isolated, proving virtue has value in itself |
| The punishment/reward test: Bradley - Pluralism | checks value by imagining rewarding or punishing someone, but it’s flawed: it mixes intuitions about reward with actual personal value and can’t separate what’s truly good for someone from what seems good. |
| Instrumental vs intrinsic value: Bradley - Pluralism | Intrinsic value: Something is valuable for its own sake. Instrumental value: Something is valuable because it helps you get something else. |
| The pluralist's goods: Bradley - Pluralism | a set of multiple, distinct things that are considered fundamentally and intrinsically good, rather than being valuable only because they lead to a single "super-value" like pleasure or happiness. |
| list of things in pluralist goods: Bradley - Pluralism | Pleasure or happiness. Knowledge or understanding. Achievement or accomplishment. Friendship and love. Autonomy or freedom – being able to make one’s own choices. Health – physical/mental well-being. Aesthetic experiences – enjoyment of art, music, nature |
| Wellbeing vs lives: Bradley - Pluralism | Well-being: How good a person’s life is going—their happiness, health, and overall quality of life. - Well-being = quality of life Lives: Just that people exist or stay alive, regardless of how good or bad their life is. - Lives = existence of life |
| First-order desire - Frankfurt's | A desire to perform some action. A desire to go sailing is a first-order desire; a desire for world peace is not. It must be a desire to act, or do something. Frankfurt |
| Will - Frankfurt's | A first-order desire which is effective, i.e. it causes one to actually do what one desires to do. A desire to go sailing is one’s will if and only if that desire actually causes one to go sailing. Frankfurt |
| Second-order desire - Frankfurt's | A desire to have a specific desire. A desire that I should desire to complete coursework rather than go sailing is a second-order desire. Frankfurt |
| Second-order volition - Frankfurt's | a desire about a desire—wanting a certain desire to actually guide your actions. When first-order desires and second-order volitions align, you have freedom of the will. Having second-order volitions is what makes someone a person. Frankfurt |
| Personhood - Frankfurt's | means having second-order volitions, which sets a person apart from a mere organism. Frankfurt’s idea helps focus on what capacities humans have that, when developed, improve their well-being.Frankfurt |
| Free will - Frankfurt's | The ability to choose your actions yourself, not just follow outside forces. First-order volitions are your immediate desires, and second-order volitions are your desires about which desires to act on, showing you can reflect and choose differently. |
| Advantages of Frankfurt's view | explains free will naturally via desires, distinguishes willing vs. unwilling addicts, shows humans (not animals) have free will, links freedom to wanting and identifying with motives, and supports compatibilism, avoiding common free will problems. |
| Wanton - Frankfurt's | Wantons (babies, animals) which lack second-order desires vs persons (us, we have second-order volitions) |
| The willing vs unwilling addict - Frankfurt's | shows that a willing addict aligns their first-order desire with their second-order volition (they want to want the drug) and has free will, while an unwilling addict lacks this harmony and thus lacks free will. |
| The problem of adaptive preferences for Frankfurt's account | Adaptive preferences are desires shaped by oppression or manipulation, which may mislead what truly improves well-being. Frankfurt’s reply: only idealized desires—those we would have if fully informed and free from manipulation—count toward well-being. |
| The imagination addition - Frankfurt's | pleasures involving imagination, emotions, or intellect (like art or thinking) are more valuable than simple physical pleasures, because humans value higher mental abilities, not just basic satisfaction. |
| Wolf's thesis | A meaningful life is not passive—it requires actively engaging in projects of objective positive value, and lives lacking this engagement are less meaningful or meaningless. |
| Bankrupt lives - Wolf's | lives where someone actively pursues valuable projects but fails, like a store owner going out of business or a person deceived in a relationship—the effort exists, but the outcome is lost or useless. |
| Useless lives - Wolf's | lives where people are active, but their main activities are pointless or empty, like the idle rich or a pig farmer—their lack of meaning comes from what they do, not from passivity. |
| Passive lives - Wolf's | lives where a person mostly receives pleasure or good experiences but doesn’t actively do or accomplish anything meaningful. Like The Blob (couch,beer,TV) |
| Worries for Wolf's view | disagreement over what’s valuable, inability to engage fully, favoring socially “elite” projects, and meaning still feeling small in a vast universe. |
| Internal vs external grounds for meaningfulness | Internal meaning: life matters because of what you do and engage with. External meaning: life matters because of outside sources (God, procreation). Wolf’s view is internal—meaning comes from actively engaging valuable projects. |
| Absurdity- Nagel's | Nagel: the feeling that life seems meaningless or ridiculous because we’re tiny, short-lived, and our efforts may not matter in the vast universe |
| Nagel's thesis | life could be meaningful, but the charge of absurdity argues it isn’t, so absurdity challenges the meaningfulness of life itself. |
| The intuitionist reply - negale | Instead of needing observational proof that a project is valuable, we can rely on intuition as non-observational evidence to recognize objective value. |
| The four noble truths - The Not-self Strategy Thanissaro Bhikkhu | Suffering, Origin of Suffering, Cessation of Suffering, Path to Cessation (Ending) |
| Suffering - The Not-self Strategy Thanissaro Bhikkhu | Life involves existential suffering: pain, impermanence, and conditions (rebirth), leading to frustration, meaninglessness, and desire frustration. dukka |
| Origin of Suffering - The Not-self Strategy Thanissaro Bhikkhu | Suffering arises from causes: ignorance, desire, and appropriation (“mine”), which fuel rebirth and continued suffering. |
| Cessation of Suffering - | Suffering can end by removing ignorance, breaking the cycle that produces future suffering. |
| Path to Cessation (Ending) - The Not-self Strategy Thanissaro Bhikkhu | The Eightfold Path (wisdom, morality, meditation) guides practice to eliminate ignorance and achieve nirvana. |
| Dukkha - (1: Suffering) - The Not-self Strategy Thanissaro Bhikkhu | Life is full of stress, dissatisfaction, and impermanence; clinging to things causes suffering. Example: feeling sad when something you enjoy ends |
| The five aggregates - The Not-self Strategy Thanissaro Bhikkhu | Body, feelings, perceptions, volitions, consciousness. None are permanent or truly “you.” Clinging to them causes suffering; letting go of identification reduces suffering. Aim seemed to be therapeutic.(Bhikkhu) |
| Clinging - Buddhism : Basic Teachings | holding on too tightly to things, people, or ideas, usually because we want them to stay the same or make us happy. It often causes suffering, because everything changes and nothing lasts forever. |
| The eightfold path - The Not-self Strategy Thanissaro Bhikkhu | right; view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, concentration, |
| (Eightfold Path 1) Right View | Understanding the nature of reality, suffering, and the Four Noble Truths. |
| (Eightfold Path 2) Right Intention | Committing to ethical, non-harmful, and compassionate goals. |
| (Eightfold Path 3) Right Speech | Speaking truthfully, kindly, and avoiding lies or harmful words. |
| (Eightfold Path 4) Right Action | Acting morally: avoiding killing, stealing, and misconduct. |
| (Eightfold Path 5) Right Livelihood | Earning a living without harming others or exploiting them. |
| (Eightfold Path 6) Right Effort | Cultivating positive states and preventing harmful ones. |
| (Eightfold Path 7) Right Mindfulness | Maintaining awareness of body, feelings, thoughts, and surroundings. |
| (Eightfold Path 8) Right Concentration | Developing focused meditation to achieve mental clarity and insight. |
| The no-self theory (Anatta) - The Not-self Strategy Thanissaro Bhikkhu | There’s no permanent “I” behind body, feelings, perceptions, volitions, or consciousness. We’re just a changing collection of experiences; identifying with them causes attachment and suffering |
| The argument against the self - The Not-self Strategy Thanissaro Bhikkhu | The self isn’t a single, unchanging thing. Like a basketball game made of many actions, “I” is just a series of changing body and mind events. Seeing this reduces attachment and suffering. |
| Bradley - hedonism | pleasure/pain; sole components of well-being=pleasure/pain intrinsically good/ bad. 3 def of pleasure: the Distinctive Feeling (specific sensation), the Desire (sensation we want to continue), Attitudinal (mental attitude directed at a fact/proposition |
| Ben Bradley – The Desire Fulfillment View | well-being consists in having one's desires satisfied, regardless of whether that satisfaction results in a feeling of pleasure. objective; if person desires that stranger be cured and they are, person's well-being increases even if they never know. |
| Ben Bradley – Perfectionism | Perfectionism is an objective, species-relative theory asserting that well-being is achieved by developing the capacities that constitute "human nature" |
| Aristotle’s Function Argument - bradley well-being | defines the "good" for humans based on our distinctive function—rationality—separating us from plants and animals. (perfectionism,bradley) |
| Ben Bradley – Objective Pluralism and Meaning | there are multiple, non-reducible things that are intrinsically good, enumerative rather than explanatory, meaning it lists what is good without providing a single underlying reason |
| Harry Frankfurt – Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person | personhood lies in the structure of the will; capacity for second-order volitions. distinguishes first-order desires (wanting to do X) and second-order desires (wanting to have a certain desire). A person is an individual who has second-order volitions |
| Susan Wolf — The Meanings of Lives | meaningful life consists in active and successful engagement in projects of objective value. 2 questions often conflated: “the meaning of life” (purpose human existence) and “meaning in life” (individual lives). question 1 likely has no answer |
| Thomas Nagel — The Absurd | absurdity of human life arises from a clash between two unavoidable perspectives: our serious engagement in life and our capacity to step back and see that engagement as arbitrary. response is irony or detached acceptance |
| The Not-self Strategy — Thanissaro Bhikkhu | anatta (not-self) is not a metaphysical doctrine asserting the non-existence of a soul, but a pragmatic strategy of perception designed to facilitate the end of clinging (upadana) and suffering (dukkha) |
| Early Buddhism : Basic Teachings | dukkha (suffering) is an existential "dis-ease" rooted in the ignorance of our true nature and the false belief in a permanent self. organized around the Four Noble Truth |
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