A Life Worth Living Aaron Smuts (Rhode Island College – [email protected] – http://www.aaronsmuts.com) General Question: What makes a life worth living? Thesis: A life worth living is one net high in various objective goods, principally meaning and well-being. Basic Intuitions BI1: Some lives are more worth living than others: Abraham Lincoln vs. the grass counter BI2: Lives devoted to hideous evil are not worth living: ex. Hitler BI3: Lives spent in persistent, incapacitating agony are not worth living. Welfare, Meaning, and Worth Welfare (aka well-being, prudential value) = what makes a life good for the one who lives it. Three Claims: C1: Welfare != Meaning A1: low in welfare, high in meaning: ex. the proverbial soldier in a foxhole; Achilles after entering the battle A2: plausibly high in welfare, low in meaning: ex. blissfully happy Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, gangsters A3: Experience machine: There are different degrees of uncertainty about levels of welfare and meaning. C2: Welfare != Worth A1: low in welfare, high in worth: ex. the proverbial soldier; self-sacrificing heroes C3: Meaning != Worth A1: low in meaning, not entirely not worth living: ex. happy grass counter; rubber band collector The Pre-Existence Test (PET) Goal: To help track the general extension of the concept of worth. PET: Lives worth living (LWL) are those that a benevolent caretaker with foreknowledge of the facts of that life would allow one to live. Lives worth avoiding (LWA) are those a benevolent caretaker would disallow. Virtues: V1: Superior to both the crib test and the deathbed test. V2: Captures the spirit of Job's wish, Williams' resenting one's existence, and choice worthiness. Problems with the Pre-Existence Test O1: The Problem of Wishing Never to Have Been. O2: The Sacrificial Problem: ex. Frankl's medical ape. O3: The Borderline Problem: The test is binary, but worth appears to be a threshold concept—lives worth neither (LWN). An Objective List Theory (OLT) of Worth [not Welfare] Lives worth living are those high in various objective goods and comparatively low in objective bads. Ex. happiness, loving relationships, knowledge, the appreciation of beauty, virtue, autonomy, and achievement. Objections to the OLT of Welfare O1: Reluctant Cancer Researcher (motivates a Hybrid OLT of Welfare: objective goods + appreciation) O2: Identical Happiness + Greater Knowledge = no better for the person. [supports Kagan's conjecture] O3: Problem of Self-Sacrifice: One can sacrifice one's own good for all plausible objective goods except happiness. Virtues of the OLT of Worth V1: Moral worth doesn't clearly belong on an OLT of Welfare, but it does on an OLT of Worth. A: Hooker's argument: we don't pity the wicked. | O: The indignation objection supports the same conclusion. V2: Posthumous Defamation V3: Non-Discovered Deception: ex. The deceived businessman V4: Base Pleasures: ex. Porky V5: Small Mercies: ex. The overburdened coolie Dialectical Virtues DV1: Defuses objections to mental statism and desire satisfactionism. DV2: Helps move beyond dialectical stalemates. Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress V – 8/12/2012 (10:10-11:25 Rm3)