The good of today depends not on the good of tomorrow: a constraint on theories of well-being

Abstract

This article addresses three questions about well-being. First, is wellbeing future-sensitive? I.e., can present well-being depend on future events? Second, is well-being recursively dependent? I.e., can present well-being (non-trivially) depend on itself? Third, can present and future well-being be interdependent? The third question combines the first two, in the sense that a yes to it is equivalent (given some natural assumptions) to yeses to both the first and second. To do justice to the diverse ways we contemplate well-being, I consider our thought and discourse about well-being in three domains: everyday conversation, social science, and philosophy. This article's main conclusion is that we must answer the third question with no. Present and future well-being cannot be interdependent. The reason, in short, is that a theory of well-being that countenances both future-sensitivity and recursive dependence would have us understand a person's well-being at a time as so intricately tied to her well-being at other times that it would not make sense to consider her well-being an aspect of her state at particular times. It follows that we must reject either future-sensitivity or recursive dependence. I ultimately suggest, especially in light of arguments based on assumptions of empirical research on wellbeing, that the balance of reasons favors rejecting future-sensitivity.

Social robots and digital well-being: how to design future artificial agents

“…Digital well-being will become an increasingly important measure of the quality of life in the 21st century. While this topic first emerged as a concern over social media use-especially screentime-increasingly theorists are employing the idea to evaluate our interactions with technology more widely (Burr et al 2020;Floridi 2014;King 2019;Snow 2019). Understanding digital well-being involves picturing what the contemporary good life looks like, and focusing on how emerging technologies can best enhance human flourishing.…”

A new well‐being atomism

“…Both of these options strike us as odd, although even if they make sense, we think our approach is preferable. For additional discussion of this question see(King 2020).35 Brown's other main argument against Dorsey is that the only way Dorsey can incorporate the value of the shape of a life is by adding extra welfare to a better-shaped life, which Dorsey can't do because by hypothesis the lives must have equal sums of momentary well-being, or give up the shape of a life hypothesis, but Dorsey wishes to support the hypothesis(Brown 2019, 99-100). Because we explicitly endorse the first option, our view avoids this objection.19331592, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/phpr.12900 by Virginia Tech, Wiley Online Library on [21/11/2022].…”

“…Maybe diligently training for some worthwhile goal, so long as one reasonably expects this to pay off, is a valuable way of spending one's time.18 One might also argue that to believe the sacrifices are redeemed by success would be to require a sort of backward causation, which would be objectionable. For discussion see(Bruckner 2013, 25-26;Dorsey 2013;King 2020).…”