Well-Being and Pluralism

Abstract

It is a commonly expressed sentiment that the science and philosophy of well-being would do well to learn from each other. Typically such calls identify mistakes and bad practices on both sides that would be remedied if scientists picked the right bit of philosophy and philosophers picked the right bit of science. We argue that the differences between philosophers and scientists thinking about well-being are more difficult to reconcile than such calls suggest, and that pluralism is central to this task. Pluralism is a stance that explicitly drives towards accommodating and nurturing the richness and diversity of well-being, both as a concept and as an object of inquiry. We show that well-being science manifests a contingent pluralism at the level of methodology, whereas philosophy of well-being has largely rejected pluralism at the conceptual level. Recently, things have begun to change. Within philosophy, conceptual monism is under attack. But so is methodological pluralism within science. We welcome the first development, and bemoan the second. We argue that a joined-up philosophy and science of well-being should recognise the virtues of both conceptual and methodological pluralism. Philosophers should embrace the methodological justification of pluralism that can be found in the well-being sciences, and scientists should embrace the conceptual reasons to be pluralist that can be found in philosophical debate.

Experimental philosophy of medicine and the concepts of health and disease

“…As I have argued in the case of models for empirical phenomena more generally[60][61][62][63][64][65]. Notions such as 'autism'[66,67] and 'welfare'[65,68] may not be able to be captured within a single concept or model since the underlying phenomena are too disunified, trying to map onto both normative and natural features of the world, and the same may hold in the case of health and disease.…”

“… 15 I have argued for this with respect to models of empirical phenomena more generally [ 61 – 66 ]. It might not be possible to capture notions such as ‘autism’ [ 67 , 68 ] and ‘welfare’ [ 66 , 69 ] within a single concept or model, since the underlying phenomena are too disunified, attempting to map onto both normative and natural features of the world. The same may hold for health and disease.…”

How to Study Well-Being: A Proposal for the Integration of Philosophy With Science

“…More recently, some philosophers (Alexandrova, 2017; Mitchell & Alexandrova, 2020) have argued that the most useful theories of well-being are “mid-level” theories—that is, theories that apply to particular groups or in particular contexts, rather than everyone everywhere. If this pluralistic approach were adopted, clearly many concepts and theories of well-being would be required.…”

How to study well-being: A proposal for the integration of philosophy with science

“…More recently, some philosophers (Alexandrova, 2017;Mitchell & Alexandrova, 2020) have argued that the most useful theories of well-being are "mid-level" theories-i.e., theories that apply to particular groups or in particular contexts, rather than everyone everywhere. If this pluralistic approach were adopted, clearly many concepts and theories of well-being would be required.…”