In its most general sense, welfarism is a
theory about what has value or what matters. It can be defined as the view that
well-being
Well-being, or wellbeing, also known as wellness, prudential value or quality of life, refers to what is intrinsically valuable relative ''to'' someone. So the well-being of a person is what is ultimately good ''for'' this person, what is in th ...
is the only thing that has
intrinsic value. ''Pure welfarists'' hold that this value is directly determined by the individual degrees of well-being of each entity. ''Impure welfarists'', on the other hand, include other factors related to well-being, like whether the well-being is equally distributed among sentient entities. Some authors understand welfarism in a more specific sense: not just as a theory of value but also as a
moral theory
Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns ma ...
. On this view, what one should do is ultimately determined by considerations of well-being. In this sense, it is often seen as a type of
consequentialism
In ethical philosophy, consequentialism is a class of normative, teleological ethical theories that holds that the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for judgment about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct. Thus, from a ...
and can take the form of
utilitarianism
In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for all affected individuals.
Although different varieties of utilitarianism admit different charact ...
, in which the right action, policy or rule is the one leading to the maximal amount of well-being.
It is important for various discussions and arguments about welfarism how the
nature of well-being is understood. Well-being refers to what is good for someone or what makes a life worth living. ''Hedonists'' try to give a more substantial account of well-being by holding that all and only experiences of pleasure and pain constitute someone's well-being. This view is rejected by ''desire theorists'', who equate well-being with
desire
Desires are states of mind that are expressed by terms like "wanting", "wishing", "longing" or "craving". A great variety of features is commonly associated with desires. They are seen as propositional attitudes towards conceivable states of aff ...
fulfillment. ''Objective list theories'', on the other hand, also include objective or mind-independent factors as constituents of well-being.
Diverse arguments in favor of and against welfarism are found in the academic literature. Arguments in favor often focus on general intuitions about the importance of well-being concerning most evaluative judgments. Critics of welfarism frequently concentrate on specific counterexamples in which these general intuitions seem to fail. These include cases of malicious pleasures, the value of
beauty
Beauty is commonly described as a feature of objects that makes these objects pleasurable to perceive. Such objects include landscapes, sunsets, humans and works of art. Beauty, together with art and taste, is the main subject of aesthetics, o ...
and
art
Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas.
There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...
, and the so-called "
repugnant conclusion
The mere addition paradox (also known as the repugnant conclusion) is a problem in ethics identified by Derek Parfit and discussed in his book ''Reasons and Persons'' (1984). The paradox identifies the mutual incompatibility of four intuitively ...
". Some objections are directed specifically at pure welfarism but are avoided by impure welfarism.
Welfarism has been influential in
law
Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...
and
economy
An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with the ...
.
As a theory of value
Understood as a
theory of value, welfarism is concerned with which things have value. It tries to provide a general framework for answering questions like whether a certain thing is good or which of two alternatives is better.
Expressed in terms of
possible world
A possible world is a complete and consistent way the world is or could have been. Possible worlds are widely used as a formal device in logic, philosophy, and linguistics in order to provide a semantics for intensional logic, intensional and mod ...
s, it holds that "the relative value of possible worlds is fully determined by how individuals are faring".
Expressed in terms of a function, welfarism is the thesis that "the relative goodness of alternative states of affairs must be based exclusively on, and taken as an increasing function of, the respective collections of individual utilities in these states".
The value in question is usually understood as a certain type of value: intrinsic value or what is good in itself. This is contrasted with extrinsic value, which belongs to things that are useful as a means for something else. In this sense, welfarism is the view that well-being is the only thing that has intrinsic value.
This can be articulated by stating that the value of outcomes ultimately only depends on the benefits of each one affected.
Welfarism implies that any two outcomes that are identical in terms of well-being have the same value, no matter how much they differ otherwise.
The well-being in question is usually understood in its widest sense, i.e. as the well-being not just of humans but of any sentient being.
Within welfarism, there are disagreements as to the exact way in which well-being determines value. Among the different formulations of welfarism, it is possible to distinguish between pure and impure versions.
''Pure welfarism'' holds that the value of a possible world only depends on the individual degrees of well-being of the different entities in it. Utilitarians, for example, focus on the sum total of everyone's well-being and hold that an action is right if it maximizes this sum total.
''Impure welfarism'', on the other hand, involves other factors related to well-being as well. These factors can include whether the well-being is distributed equally among the entities and to what degree the entities deserve the level of well-being they have.
One of the least controversial forms of welfarism is called weak Paretianism. It holds that one state is better than another state if it is better for everyone involved, i.e. if everyone's well-being is higher in the first state. But this principle remains quiet on cases where a trade-off is involved, i.e. where the well-being of some is increased while it is decreased for others.
Egalitarians, on the other hand, argue that it is most important to increase the well-being of those that are generally worse off.
This idea can be captured by a prioritarianist approach that takes everyone's well-being into account but gives greater weight to the well-being of those who fare worse.
One argument against this type of approach is that it strays away from the original intuition driving welfarism: that well-being is the only thing ''intrinsically'' valuable. But equality is a relation ''between'' entities and not ''intrinsic'' to any of them.
An important requirement usually associated with welfarist theories is that they ought to be agent-neutral. According to agent-neutrality, it should not matter to whom the well-being belongs but only that it is higher or better distributed overall.
Welfarism as a theory of value can be interpreted as one theoretical commitment of utilitarianism together with consequentialism.
Consequentialism is the theory that only acts leading to the best possible overall outcome are morally required or permissible. Consequentialism by itself leaves it open how to evaluate which of two possible outcomes is better. But this topic is addressed by welfarism. Combined, they constitute utilitarianism,
i.e. the view that one should act as to produce "the greatest amount of good for the greatest number".
As a moral theory
Some authors see welfarism as including the ethical thesis that morality fundamentally depends on the welfare of individuals.
In this sense, welfarism is usually seen as a form of consequentialism, which holds that actions, policies or rules should be evaluated on the basis of their consequences.
But it is sometimes also defined in a more general sense as consisting of three theses: that individual well-being exists, that it has
moral
A moral (from Latin ''morālis'') is a message that is conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader, or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim. A ...
significance and that nothing else has moral significance.
It is commonly accepted by many ethical theories that considerations of well-being play an important role for how one should act. For example, by learning that one alternative is better in terms of well-being than another, the agent usually has a reason to act such as to bring about the first rather than the second alternative.
But welfarism, in its ethical sense, goes beyond this common-sense agreement by holding that, ultimately, well-being is the only thing that matters in terms of what one ought to do. This involves not just determining what is best but also includes the factor of what is in the agent's power to do, i.e. which possible actions are available to the agent.
Nature of well-being
Central to many discussions of welfarism is the question concerning the nature of well-being. In many cases, it depends on one's conception of well-being whether a certain argument for or against welfarism is successful.
In its most general sense, well-being refers to what is good for someone or what makes a life worth living.
This is usually taken to imply a subjective component, i.e. that well-being always belongs to an individual and is expressed by how this individual feels.
Despite the common characterization in positive terms, well-being is normally understood as arising in degrees that may also be negative. The term "well-being" is often used synonymously with other terms like personal good, being in the agent's interest, prudential value, eudaimonia and utility.
It is generally agreed that only sentient beings are capable of well-being.
Theories of well-being try to give a more substantial account of what constitutes well-being besides the above-mentioned general characteristics. These theories can roughly be divided into hedonistic theories, desire theories, and objective list theories.
''Hedonists'' hold that all and only experiences of pleasure and pain constitute someone's well-being.
In this context, pleasure and pain are understood in the widest sense, i.e. as whatever feels good or bad.
The paradigmatic cases are sensory experiences associated, for example, with sex or injury.
But it also includes other types of experiences, like the intellectual joy at grasping a new theory or like suffering an
existential crisis
In psychology and psychotherapy, existential crises are inner conflicts characterized by the impression that life lacks meaning. Some authors also emphasize confusion about one's personal identity in their definition. Existential crises are acc ...
.
According to ''desire theories'', well-being consists in desire-fulfillment or getting what one wants.
In many concrete cases, hedonists and desire theorists are in agreement since desire-fulfillment and pleasure often go hand in hand: getting what one wants tends to be pleasurable, just as failing to get what one wants tends to be unpleasant.
But there are a few exceptions where the two come apart. This is the case, for example, when the agent does not know that one of their desires has already been fulfilled.
Another counterexample is due to bad desires, the fulfillment of which would have terrible consequences for the agent.
To avoid these counterexamples, some desire theories focus not on what the agent actually wants but what the agent would want if they were well informed.
''Objective list theories'' stand in contrast to hedonism and desire theories in that they include objective factors that are independent of the agent's mental states. Such factors can include friendship, having virtues or perfecting human nature.
Objections to objective list theories often center on the plausibility of the claim that subject-independent factors can determine a person's well-being even if the person doesn't care about these factors.
For example, it is questionable whether having friends would improve the well-being of someone who does not care about friendship.
Arguments for and against
Various arguments for and against welfarism have been presented in the academic literature. These arguments are sometimes addressed specifically to welfarism itself. But they often arise within discussions of other theories, like utilitarianism or
hedonism
Hedonism refers to a family of theories, all of which have in common that pleasure plays a central role in them. ''Psychological'' or ''motivational hedonism'' claims that human behavior is determined by desires to increase pleasure and to decr ...
, and are directed at welfarism only implicitly by concerning the welfarist aspects of these theories.
For
One argument commonly cited in favor of welfarism is that nothing would be good or bad in a world without sentient beings. So it would not matter whether such a world had clean water, global warming or natural disasters. The reason for this is that, according to welfarism, there would be neither positive nor negative well-being: nothing would matter because nothing had an impact on anyone's well-being.
Another argument is that many of the things commonly seen as valuable have a positive impact on someone's well-being. In this sense, health and economic prosperity are valuable because they tend to increase overall well-being. On the other hand, many things seen as bad, such as disease or ignorance, tend to have a negative impact on well-being, either directly or indirectly.
There are also various indirect arguments for welfarism in the form of criticisms of the theoretical competitors of welfarism. It is sometimes claimed that some of them fail either to properly draw the distinction between what is valuable at all and what is ultimately valuable or to take all consequences into account.
Against
An important argument against welfarism concerns the value of pleasure. There is very wide agreement among welfarists that
pleasure
Pleasure refers to experience that feels good, that involves the enjoyment of something. It contrasts with pain or suffering, which are forms of feeling bad. It is closely related to value, desire and action: humans and other conscious anima ...
is either the only or at least one central constituent of well-being. The problem arises due to the fact that not all pleasures seem to be equally valuable. Traditionally, this debate focused on the difference between lower and higher pleasures.
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, Member of Parliament (MP) and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to ...
, for example, argued that the ''lower pleasures'' of the body are less valuable than the ''higher pleasures'' of the mind.
On this view, the pleasure one takes in studying a philosophical theory is more valuable than the pleasure one takes from eating at one's favorite restaurant, even if the degrees of these two pleasures should be equal. If true, this would pose an important objection to ''pure welfarism'' since it points to a rift between the degree of well-being and value. But this problem may be avoided by ''impure welfarism''. In the contemporary debate, it has been suggested that some forms of pleasure even have a negative value, for example, malicious pleasures like
schadenfreude
Schadenfreude (; ; 'harm-joy') is the experience of pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, or humiliation of another. It is a borrowed word from German, with no direct translation ...
.
Such examples pose even more serious problems for welfarism since the pleasure seems to be good for the agent and thereby constitutes well-being while at the same time having a negative value. One response to this type of counterexample is to contend that malicious pleasures have positive value and to argue that the negative element does not concern the ''value simpliciter'' of the pleasure experience itself but the ''moral value'' of the person's character instead.
Another type of objection focuses on the value of beauty.
In this regard, it has been claimed that beautiful things possess a value that is independent of anyone's well-being.
G. E. Moore
George Edward Moore (4 November 1873 – 24 October 1958) was an English philosopher, who with Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and earlier Gottlob Frege was among the founders of analytic philosophy. He and Russell led the turn from ideal ...
, for example, holds that a world is better if it is beautiful than if it is ugly, even if it does not contain any sentient beings. But not everyone shares Moore's intuition concerning this example. In this sense, it has been argued that the value of beauty lies not in the beautiful object by itself but in the positive experience of it.
A similar argument against welfarism is due to
Susan Wolf
Susan Rose Wolf (born 1952) is an American moral philosopher and philosopher of action who is currently the Edna J. Koury Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She taught previously at Johns Hopkins Universi ...
, who affirms that one cannot account for the value of great works of art by only focusing on the well-being they cause.
Ben Bramble has objected to this line of argument by pointing out that great works of art can cause well-being in a variety of ways. These ways are not just restricted to the pleasure one takes while perceiving them but include other components, like the motivation to discover similar works of art or to share one's experience with friends.
One more problem arises when comparing alternatives in which the well-being at stake does not belong to the same persons in both alternatives but to different persons.
This is the case, for example, when deciding whether it would be better for future generations to have a low number of people, each with a very high well-being, in contrast to a high number of people, each with a well-being that is just slightly positive. According to one perspective, what counts is the total well-being. On this view, having enough people with a slightly positive well-being would be better than having few people with a very high well-being. This view has been rejected by
Derek Parfit
Derek Antony Parfit (; 11 December 1942 – 1 or 2 January 2017) was a British philosopher who specialised in personal identity, rationality, and ethics. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential moral philosophers of ...
, who termed it the "repugnant conclusion". Another solution holds that what matters is not the ''total well-being'' but the ''average well-being''. On this view, the alternative concerning few people with a very high well-being would be preferable.
A different line of argument suggests that welfarism is false since, strictly speaking, there is no well-being. The underlying idea of this thesis is that well-being is what is good ''for someone''. Based on this definition, G. E. Moore argues that there is no well-being since goodness cannot be restricted to a person in this sense, i.e. there is good or bad in an absolute sense but there is no good or bad ''for someone''.
Another criticism, directed specifically at pure welfarism, is based on a common intuition that morally good people deserve a high degree of well-being but morally bad people do not.
In this sense, the well-being of morally bad people would either be less valuable or even have a negative value.
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...
expresses a similar idea by stating that the ''highest good'' is "Virtue and happiness together ... in a person". This point is also emphasized by
W. D. Ross
Sir William David Ross (15 April 1877 – 5 May 1971), known as David Ross but usually cited as W. D. Ross, was a Scottish Aristotelian philosopher, translator, WWI veteran, civil servant, and university administrator. His best-known wor ...
, who holds that "justice", defined as happiness in proportion to merit, is intrinsically valuable. Impure welfarists can accommodate this intuition by holding that the well-being of morally bad people has less value. But this adjustment is not available to pure welfarism.
One more objection that concerns pure welfarism in particular is due to the common impression that it is more important to increase the well-being of those that are worse off.
So when faced with the question of whether to raise the well-being of a happy person or an unhappy person, one should benefit the unhappy person.
This intuition seems to be based on the idea that what matters is not just a high total well-being, as suggested by pure welfarism, but also an equal distribution. One way to explain the initial intuition is to formulate the problem not in terms of well-being but in terms of resources. In this sense, giving one hundred dollars to a poor person would be better than giving it to a rich person. This can be explained by pure welfarism since the same amount of resources would mean more to the poor person and thereby have a bigger impact on their well-being.
In law and economy
''Welfarist'' views have been influential in the
law and economics
Law and economics, or economic analysis of law, is the application of microeconomic theory to the analysis of law, which emerged primarily from scholars of the Chicago school of economics. Economic concepts are used to explain the effects of laws ...
movement.
Steven Shavell
Steven Shavell is an economist who is currently Samuel R. Rosenthal Professor of Law and Economics at Harvard Law School. Shavell is the founder and director of the School's John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business.
Biography
Steve ...
and
Louis Kaplow Louis may refer to:
* Louis (coin)
* Louis (given name), origin and several individuals with this name
* Louis (surname)
* Louis (singer), Serbian singer
* HMS ''Louis'', two ships of the Royal Navy
See also
Derived or associated terms
* Lewis ( ...
, for example, have argued in ''Fairness versus Welfare'' that welfare should be the exclusive criteria by which legal analysts evaluate legal policy choices. Penal welfarism is a theory in the study of
criminal justice
Criminal justice is the delivery of justice to those who have been accused of committing crimes. The criminal justice system is a series of government agencies and institutions. Goals include the Rehabilitation (penology), rehabilitation of o ...
which holds that prisoners should have the right and the positive motivation to gain opportunities for advancement within the criminal justice system.
David Garland, "The Crisis of Penal Modernism", The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society, pp. 53-73, University of Chicago Press (2002).
Economists usually think of individual welfare in terms of utility function
As a topic of economics, utility is used to model worth or value. Its usage has evolved significantly over time. The term was introduced initially as a measure of pleasure or happiness as part of the theory of utilitarianism by moral philosopher ...
s, a perspective in which social welfare can be conceived as an aggregation of individual utilities or utility functions.
See also
*Consequentialism
In ethical philosophy, consequentialism is a class of normative, teleological ethical theories that holds that the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for judgment about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct. Thus, from a ...
*Europeanism
European values are the norms and values that Europeans are said to have in common, and which transcend national or state identity. In addition to helping promote European integration, this doctrine also provides the basis for analyses that charac ...
*Juvenile delinquency
Juvenile delinquency, also known as juvenile offending, is the act of participating in unlawful behavior as a minor or individual younger than the statutory age of majority. In the United States of America, a juvenile delinquent is a person ...
*Social welfare
Welfare, or commonly social welfare, is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet Basic needs, basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refe ...
*Social welfare function
In welfare economics, a social welfare function is a function that ranks social states (alternative complete descriptions of the society) as less desirable, more desirable, or indifferent for every possible pair of social states. Inputs of the fu ...
*Welfare economics
Welfare economics is a branch of economics that uses microeconomic techniques to evaluate well-being (welfare) at the aggregate (economy-wide) level.
Attempting to apply the principles of welfare economics gives rise to the field of public econ ...
*Utilitarianism
In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for all affected individuals.
Although different varieties of utilitarianism admit different charact ...
*Utility
As a topic of economics, utility is used to model worth or value. Its usage has evolved significantly over time. The term was introduced initially as a measure of pleasure or happiness as part of the theory of utilitarianism by moral philosopher ...
References
Bibliography
*Amartya Sen
Amartya Kumar Sen (; born 3 November 1933) is an Indian economist and philosopher, who since 1972 has taught and worked in the United Kingdom and the United States. Sen has made contributions to welfare economics, social choice theory, econom ...
, 'Utilitarianism and Welfarism' in ''The Journal of Philosophy'', Vol. 76, No. 9 pp. 463–489. 1979.
*Louis Kaplow & Steven Shavell (2002),
Principles of Fairness versus Human Welfare: On the Evaluation of Legal Policy
, Social Science Research Network, Working Paper
External links
Theories of Well-Being
in William MacAskill
William David MacAskill (; born 24 March 1987) is a Scottish philosopher and author, as well as one of the originators of the effective altruism movement. He is an Associate Professor in Philosophy and Research Fellow at the Global Priorities I ...
& Richard Yetter-Chappell (2021)
''Introduction to Utilitarianism''
*{{Cite encyclopedia, title=Well-Being, encyclopedia=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (''SEP'') combines an online encyclopedia of philosophy with peer-reviewed publication of original papers in philosophy, freely accessible to Internet users. It is maintained by Stanford University. Eac ...
, url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/well-being/, last=Crisp, first=Roger
Welfare economics
Ethical theories
Consequentialism