Colloquium - Associate Professor Andrew Moore

Well-Being and Self-Connection Well-being or welfare or prudential good is a matter of 'one's own good'. Self-connection is a characteristic feature of this sort of good. This paper examines several accounts of the nature of such self-connection. It also examines the different challenges that such self-connectivity presents to both objectivism and subjectivism about well-being. At a minimum, the self-connectivity of well-being seems to involve good that is had by oneself rather than by someone else or by no-one. For example, it seems that one's non-instrumental good could involve only one's own pleasure, achievement, knowledge, autonomy, or the like. Subjectivist accounts, which claim that add to one's well-being in virtue of being objects of one's actual or idealized pro-attitudes, seem to need to be restricted by some further 'self-connection' condition, to prevent them from including favored but personally distant objects that in themselves are unconnected to one's own good. On the other hand, the rival objectivist accounts of well-being which claim that things in one's life are good for one whether or not they are objects of anyone's pro-attitude, are themselves often criticized for not making the right connection between such goods and oneself.

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Philosophy Department , Mānoa Campus

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Pat Pimental, (808) 956-8649, philo@hawaii.edu, F15-Andrew Moore flyer (PDF)

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