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Facing the Facts and Living Well: Comments on Neera Badhwar, Well-Being: Happiness in a Worthwhile Life

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Notes

  1. As a side note: Railton's (1986) paper, “Moral Realism,” which is sometimes cited as an example of an informed desire satisfaction theory, is really a meta-ethical analysis of ‘the good for’ that makes such goods attitude-dependent. When we write about well-being, underlying meta-ethical commitments are not usually the focus, but I suspect that many subjectivists about well-being have meta-ethical views closer to Railton’s.

  2. The quasi-realist expressivism of Simon Blackburn is notoriously complicated, but there is something about realism that such philosophers reject. See Blackburn 1998 and Gibbard 1992. For different versions of attitude-dependent views see, for example, Railton 1986, Schroeder 2007 and Street 2006.

  3. I am assuming here that prudential reasons, reasons stemming from one’s own good, are motivating (at least under certain conditions). This assumption is widely, though not universally held (see, for example, Rosati 1996). For the opposing view see Sarch (2011).

References

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  • Blackburn, S. 1998. Ruling Passions. Clarendon Press, Oxford.

  • Enoch, David. 2005. “Why Idealize?” Ethics 115 (4): 759–787. doi:10.1086/430490.

  • Gibbard, Allan. 1992. Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgment. Oxford University Press.

  • Railton, P. 1986. “Moral Realism.” The Philosophical Review 95 (2): 163–207.

  • Rawls, J. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

  • Rosati, C. S. 1996. “Internalism and the Good for a Person.” Ethics 106 (2): 297–326.

  • Sarch, Alexander. 2011. “Internalism about a Person’s Good: Don’t Believe It.” Philosophical Studies 154 (2): 161–84.

  • Schroeder, M. A. 2007. Slaves of the Passions. Oxford University Press, USA.

  • Sobel, D. 2009. “Subjectivism and Idealization.” Ethics 119 (2): 336–52.

  • Street, S. 2006. “A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value.” Philosophical Studies 127 (1): 109–66.

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  1. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Valerie Tiberius

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  1. Valerie Tiberius
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Correspondence to Valerie Tiberius.

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Tiberius, V. Facing the Facts and Living Well: Comments on Neera Badhwar, Well-Being: Happiness in a Worthwhile Life . J Value Inquiry 50, 219–226 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-016-9546-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-016-9546-9

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