Desire versus judgment subjectivism about welfare: A reassessment

Abstract

ABSTRACT Subjectivism about welfare is the claim that something contributes to a person’s welfare if and only if that person has in proper conditions a certain pro attitude toward that thing. Dale Dorsey argues that the pro attitude in question is a judgment that the thing is good for one, a welfare judgment, as opposed to a desire for that thing. Eden Lin and Anthony Kelley provide counterexamples in which subjects allegedly have positive welfare without positive welfare judgments. I argue that such judgments are among the several components of prototypical desires. Given this analysis of the concept of a desire as a cluster concept that includes implicit evaluative judgments, we can reinterpret the authors’ sample cases. In some cases we find conflicts in values that include all the usual components. In atypical cases in which judgments oppose other components of desires, or are absent, the components that determine true prudential values are those that belong or connect to the most central rational desires. These desires can be equated with personal values that, when known to be satisfied, determine positive welfare.