‘The Subjective/Objective Distinction in Well-Being’. With David Sobel, Steven Wall and Chris Heathwood.

42 Replies to “‘The Subjective/Objective Distinction in Well-Being’. With David Sobel, Steven Wall and Chris Heathwood.”

1. I want to take a moment to publicly thank the excellent philosophers at Warwick for taking over PEA Soup and making such a success of it. I helped run Soup for a number of years, before turning it over to this group, and it is gratifying to see it continue on in such a positive direction and to be in such capable hands. Their dedication vindicates David Shoemaker’s immortal credo: “You cannot stop the Soup. You can only hope to store it in a container.”

2. We (Steve and Dave) both want to thank Soup, and especially Patrick Tomlin and Ignacio Pena Caroca, for choosing our paper to discuss, doing the work to set up this discussion, and helping guide us through the process. We are very appreciative of this opportunity and the work others did to provide it for us.

   We are also delighted that Chris Heathwood was willing to play the role of commentator. Anyone who has read his work knows what an excellent and clear philosopher he is. Anyone who knows him personally knows that he serves as an outstanding model of how to combine being kind and generous with being a rigorous philosopher.

   As tempting as it is to focus on Chris finding some of what we say that is quite important to us persuasive, we will follow suit in focusing on his concerns about our positive account of the distinction. Chris expresses three concerns about our positive proposal, all of which are interesting and serve well to open up a productive discussion. We will offer some initial responses here, which should also allow us to get a bit more of our view out on the table.

   First, his main concern about our view is that intuitively “enjoying the good” views are more subjective than maximally stance independent views and that our account of the distinction can’t adequately account for that. Chris must be imagining an “enjoying the good” view which allows no role for warrantless attitudes. We claim that allowing a role for warrantless attitudes is what introduces some subjectivism into a view. Thus, if the “enjoying the good” view allowed such attitudes a role, it would be easy for us to account for and vindicate the appearance that such a view is more subjective than a maximally stance independent view.
   So what we need, to test Chris’s concern, is a version of “enjoying the good” which in the paper we called “exacting” [p. 535]. Such a view holds that there is a maximally stance independent account of what attitudes are warranted by their objects and which holds that to have any well-being upshot at all our attitudes must maximally accurately reflect such fully stance independent facts. Any deviation from maximally accurately appreciating such objects, including comparative attitudes, will destroy the well-being relevant role of the attitude.

   We think, and are at work on a paper arguing, that any minimally plausible version of “enjoying the good” must allow a wide range of attitudes that are less than maximally accurate about their objects a normative role. Note that even a preference between incommensurably valuable options, for example, would be a less than maximally accurate response. As would any specific degree of valuing vaguely valuable objects, etc. We think people have likely tacitly assumed a broad role for less than maximally accurate attitudes when they charitably interpreted “enjoying the good” views. This, we claim, goes a very long way in explaining why we tend to assume such views are more subjective than maximally stance independent views. That is, we think our view rightly categorizes the vast majority of possible such views, and all plausible variants, as more subjective than the relevant alternative.

   However, once we clearly isolate the variant of enjoying the good, as we did in the paper, that allow the agent literally no “creative control” [p. 535] over her own good—that is no freedom to shape it to her own inclinations or idiosyncrasies at all—but rather insist that the agent’s attitudes must perfectly accurately match the stance-independent facts about the value of the options, then we have a good test case. How do we feel about the purported subjectivism of such a view?

   What we said in the paper was in such a case we think the object plays the role of the sun and the attitudes the moon. The moon may add light, but only light that it reflects from the sun. The sun, here, is the fundamental source of value and the relevance of the attitudes is restricted to accurately reflecting the stance-independent facts. That, we thought, felt very reminiscent of the broadly objectivist direction of explanation story where the object completely sets the standards for the attitudes and attitudes which are not enslaved to the value of their object are irrelevant. That is, here the stance-independent object sets precise standards for the correct attitude and only such correct attitudes matter. That feels to us very much like the paradigmatic Euthyphronic objectivist idea—that the object’s value fully sets the standard for the attitudes. Likely for such reasons, we find our own intuitions less than clear about whether such a view counts as more subjective than a maximally stance independent view.

   Thus, while we admit that there is an intuition in the direction Chris suggests, we think we can vindicate the intuition in the vast majority of cases, and all cases that people are likely to be thinking about or that are plausibly true. And that when we clearly isolate the case that would be problematic for us, we find that fundamental commitments of the divide split and that, at least our, intuitions are therefore less than clear. But even if you share Chris’s intuition in such a case, we urge that we championed a great number of alleged benefits of our view and, we think, these would have to be successfully resisted before the reader should conclude that our view is not the most attractive overall package, even if there is a case where it fails to perfectly match some people’s intuitions.

   Second, Chris says it counts against our view that it fails to vindicate as crucial to the subjective/objective distinction the traditional resonance constraint— viz. that something can only be basically good for you if you have some favoring attitude toward it, at least after good deliberation. Certainly, Chris is right that many people rely on the importance of this distinction. But we try to show that the traditional formulations of the resonance constraint “have substantially pruned any intuitive sense of resonance” [531] and fail to mark the importance of the difference between the idea that “your good must be made to fit or suit you and views that claim something is good for you only if you can be made to fit something taken to be independently valuable.” [530]

   The first point is that the necessary condition account of resonance focuses only on a subset of well-being facts, those concerning whether or not a person is benefitted. We think if one was working with an intuitive notion of resonance, one would want all well-being facts, not just some, to respect resonance. For example, working with an intuitive notion of resonance, we should expect comparative facts concerning which of two options benefits more should resonate with a person. The traditional formulation cannot offer that. As we see it, the intuitive notion of resonance should be something like “respecting the agent’s point of view” or “paints a non-alienating picture of a person’s own good.” But a view that says that Y is intrinsically much better for me than X, when I see or feel, even after relevantly good deliberation, absolutely nothing about Y that is in any way as good as what I feel to be the fantastic option X, feels alienating – even if I have some desire for both X and Y. So, we think the technical notion of resonance at play in the literature fails to capture the intuitive notion.

   The second point is that the necessary condition associated with traditional formulations of resonance is rather inarticulate and this makes it a bit hard to interpret and to know how it might respond to troublesome cases. This is what we tried to point out by asking the friend of the traditional notion of resonance if the view we called “objective/substantive” satisfied their requirement. [528] Objective/substantive requires a favoring attitude for any benefit, but here the relevant favoring attitude is one the agent has after being substantively idealized. To be substantively idealized in this sense is to be such that one has all and only attitudes that are accurate to the stance-independent values. Thus, one would, after being substantively idealized, automatically have the correct favoring attitudes toward that which is in fact stance-independently good. Objective/Substantive does impose a favoring attitude as a necessary condition of any benefit. But we very much doubt that it secures the kind of resonance that champions of resonance have had in mind. This is because it fits the agent to the pre-existing good rather than insisting that the good fit the agent. We think this example shows that the traditional statements of the resonance requirement do not capture the idea that friends of the requirement are after. To us, the example highlights the importance of needing to add something in the direction of direction of explanation in capturing the relevant kind of resonance and, again, highlights the clumsiness and inarticulateness of the proposed necessary condition in capturing the intuitive idea.

   Chris’s third concern invites us to imagine a theorist who champions a maximally stance independent notion of what benefits a person but then denies the applicability of the notion of warrant to any case outside the realm of beliefs. Such a theorist, Chris claims, is clearly advocating an objectivist picture, but they do not build a notion of warranted appreciation into what counts as objective.
   Understanding such a view, we think, requires some interpretation, and we are not sure we have gotten to the bottom of Chris’ concern here. Much is going to turn on how we understand the key notion of warrant or warranted appreciation. As Chris points out, we say a view is objective to the extent that it claims that fully stance-independent objects warrant a relevant kind of appreciation. Notice that this characterization leaves it open how relevant appreciation is best understood – whether, for example, it requires conative reactions, belief-like responses, or both.

   The theorist that Chris imagines here, we assume, grants that the relevant objective goods merit the belief that they are good. The notion of warrant as applied to the realm of beliefs thus applies. This no doubt is a good thing; for if the theorist were to deny this, then their resulting view would court incoherence. They would seem to be saying, in effect, that the stance-independent goods at issue are goods, but that the judgment or belief that they are goods is not warranted or correct.

   If they are to have a coherent view, the imagined theorist can agree with us that the stance-independent goods warrant a relevant response. Their view, as we see it, would thus be characterized as objective according to our account of the distinction. But should we think this cognitive response exhausts the relevant appreciation of various kinds of values? Very likely not. If the stance-independent goods the theorist has in mind are like the goods that are commonly found on objective lists, then relevant appreciation will plausibly require a richer set of warranted responses, some of which are likely to be conative. The Grand Canyon warrants awe, not just the belief that it is awesome. Excellent friends warrant love and not just the belief that they are worthy of love. Values warrant being valued, and properly or correctly valuing many kinds of values is not exhausted merely by believing it valuable.
   The theorist in question, then, might just have a false view about what relevant appreciation of various goods consists in. On this interpretation, the view they are proposing is objective in our terms, albeit substantively implausible. So we don’t see the example as a case where our view mislabels a possible view, so much as a problem for the imagined theorist who denies the applicability of warrant outside of the domain of belief.

   Perhaps we are being asked to imagine that the theorist agrees that relevant appreciation of the stance-independent goods requires more than mere warranted cognitive judgments, but then insists that relevant appreciation is not applicable. Can we make sense of this view? In allowing that certain conative responses as well as belief-like judgments constitute relevant appreciation of the stance-independent goods, is not the theorist conceding their applicability to the goods at issue? True, the imagined theorist might insist that relevant appreciation is not necessary for the goods to benefit those who have them, but how could they say that the responses that constitute relevant appreciation don’t apply? Wouldn’t that just be another way of saying that the only warranted responses concerning the stance-independent goods are belief responses and that other responses are not called for by value of the objects? And is this not just saying that relevant appreciation requires nothing more than accurate belief, thus bringing us back to the substantively implausible, but objectivist by our lights, view?

3. Hello Prof Sobel,
   I am not a philosopher (so please pardon my analytic sloppiness and inexactness), I just want to ask a question about the role of procedural rationality in the retrospective determination of a person’s good. You say in your great paper that “[t]he move from the Necessary Condition View to a view that tolerates procedural but not substantive idealization of the relevant attitudes needs to presuppose not only thoughts about alienation but also a picture where attitudes ground value even if they are not responsive to the value of their object or objects lack the sort of value that could guide attitudes in this way. That is, it needs exactly what our own view says is distinctive of subjectivism”.

   I do not understand how procedural rationality could have a final say about what is all-things-considered good for a person. Consider a real life-inspired example:
   Dimitris mistrusts the Authorities so much that he is irrevocably convinced that Covid vaccines do indeed contain those microchips that Bill Gates planted into them so that he will have continuous surveillance and control over his body’s functions. Let’s also assume that Dimitris (a white male, who has no history of having been mistreated by any Authority) has a 90% chance of dying from Covid (because, say, he has those autoantibodies that mess up with his interferon system, on top of myriad other risk factors he has). Doctor attempts first to explain to Dimitris the relevant scientific facts that make it imperative that Dimitris get vaccinated, but Dimitris cannot understand and, let’s stipulate, will never be capable of understanding why the proposition that Linda is a bank teller is more likely than the proposition that Linda is a feminist bank teller. So the Doctor decides to grab and forcibly vaccinate Dimitris. Dimitris is unfazed by the disrespectfulness of his treatment, he does not mind the disrespect of the Doctor at all, but he harbored hyperbolic fear of the vaccine (as his screams prior to getting vaccinated made clear), so he now starts worrying for every second of his subsequent life that now Bill Gates has finally gotten to him and that he (Bill Gates) is at any moment about to harm him. Dimitris wallows in these continuous unwarranted worries and fears for the rest of his now miserable life, a long extension of life that very likely was a gift of the vaccine that protected him from the virus preying on his health vulnerabilities.
   I take it that, given that the attitudes of Dimitris towards his getting vaccinated are totally unwarranted and procedurally (seemingly) irrational (though I think they are deeply rational for him alone, given his false beliefs), we seemingly are forced to conclude that Dimitris was benefitted by the vaccine, because, after all, if he had the procedurally rational attitudes towards his vaccination he would have favored the life extension of his painless-until-the-time-of-vaccination life and he wouldn’t have experienced any subsequent emotional turbulence due to the vaccination. But Dimitris was clearly harmed by the vaccination because of the downstream effects of his unwarranted attitudes, something that (let’s stipulate) was predictable, given his immense fear of the vaccine. One would expect that the unwarranted attitudes of Dimitris should play a role in the determination of what is of benefit to him. Isn’t this a problem for incorporating procedural rationality in deciding what benefits Dimitris? I take it that I am missing something obvious about the intrinsicality of the value or the disvalue here, but I hoped that an analytic philosopher could spell this out for me in a few sentences, if one finds the time.
   Prof Sobel, your paper was extremely useful to me because it gave me concepts for my inarticulate-up-to-now thoughts, and gave me directions of thought for years to come for a subject that has been haunting me for the last years, so much so that I cannot describe to you how intellectually stimulated it made feel. Thank you.

4. Hello again Prof Sobel.
   I would like to post a second question. I read a past discussion of yours with prof Ben Bramble here at PEA SOUP, the one which included discussion in the comments about the ascetic monk who hates the felt comfort that pillows give him and the claim that this shows that all there is to pleasure is the liking of the pleasure (if I remember the case correctly). I was wondering whether the value-grounding role that the Subjectivist wants to grant to conative attitudes can be seen as stemming, in our contingent Universe, from the objective value of the valence of felt experience, on the assumption that some part of each of our attitudes are generated by unconscious utility calculations that our predictive brains regularly perform when prospecting in order to evaluate. Judging from my phenomenology, my conscious representations of the valence of future experiences plays immense role in my decisions (I am representing now the valence that I hypothesize that the future experience will have, and I make the decision based on the valence I experience now due to this representation in my brain) , and I am guessing I also make similar unconscious calculations. If my conative attitudes always track such valences (I guess we should ask philosopher of mind Prof Carruthers who recently repeated his plea for more Cognitive Science penetration in the philosophy of Mind?) in what sense am I a Subjectivist about well-being and not merely an Objectivist who always indirectly (via following my attitudes) tracks the objective value of felt pleasure or pain that I hypothesize that the future course of action will produce in me?
   I mentioned the case of the monk who disliked the comfort of pillows because it seems to me that we can say that even if he dislikes the putative pleasure of the pillow, his felt experience of the pillow is not really identical to a positively valenced experience (as the thought experiment requires in order to prove that it is only the liking of an experience that makes it a pleasure) because, say, unconscious representations of prospective felt pains in the monk’s brain due to his representing unconsciously himself as violating God’s commands get mixed with representations of the hedonic quality of the comfort of the pillow, making the whole experience indeed negatively valenced for the monk; I am speaking off the top of my phenomenological head in a how-possibly mode( and I should stress that it is the how-possibly mode of someone completely ignorant of the terminology used in philosophy of Mind, I use terms I picked here and there in philosophical discussions hoping their referent is the one I think it is, all I have to go on is just observation of my own mental states) but I meant to say that it seems to me that it is Cognitive Science that could have a very useful input here. Maybe the monk’s disliking tracks the negative valence that his brain (unconsciously) predicts will be generated in the brain in case the monk violates God’s will? Maybe the monk’s attitude is unconsciously tracking the instability and hence emotional pain that will be caused in him if he violates his belief re what God commands? Wouldn’t that be tracking objective value and disvalue?

5. Thanks to both of you for an excellent paper. I agree with much of what you say (and will be using the distinction you propose going forward), but I have a few questions.

   The first relates to your discussion of the resonance constraint (and echoes some of what Heathwood mentions above). You consider it as a way of potentially motivating the Necessary Condition View since it is not unreasonable to think that alienation concerns shape that view. You go on to argue that what resonance requires has been widely misunderstood, and that the Necessary Condition View does not guarantee non-alienation. You give the example of a person who likes both basketball and soccer, but who much prefers basketball, and ask your reader to imagine a view which claims that, despite this fact, soccer benefits them more. You argue that this would be a clear violation of the constraint and also a bad way of distinguishing between subjectivism and objectivism.

   I understand (and probably agree with) you that it would not be a good way of marking the divide, but I do not see why you have to assume the (I think substantial) theoretical baggage that comes with making the further claim that this is because resonance has been widely misunderstood. (I agree that it is widely misunderstood, but in the other direction–I argue that it has been taken to be too demanding.) Like Heathwood, I think it important to capture the way in which enjoying-the-good views might be said to resonate. But, unlike him, I do not think that this is motivated by the fact that the resonance constraint counts in favor of views that have typically been understood to be subjective and against objective ones. People (Alwood, Bruno-Niño, Fanciullo, Fletcher, Hawkins, Kauppinen, van der Deijl, me) have pointed out that there is good reason to interpret the constraint in a way that gives objective views a shot at meeting them. I argue that one reason for this is because if the constraint is to support subjectivism, then there should be some theoretical distance between it and the view itself (Dorsey makes a similar point, too).

   More than that, though, is the plausible thought that there is something significantly different about views that can meet a minimal version of resonance and ones that cannot. Compare an enjoying-the-good view, where a favoring attitude is required, with one that says that wearing blue shirts on Tuesdays benefits a person, regardless of what she thinks. If you left some space between your view of the divide and your view of what the resonance constraint requires, you would have the tools at your disposal with which to capture that difference. You might say that enjoying-the-good views (the ones that require favoring attitudes for any kind of benefit) do in fact meet the constraint, but that they do not meet the subjective standard, because subjectivism grants a more robust value-conferring role to warrantless attitudes. That way you can still say that the Necessary Condition View gets it wrong (for the reasons you give), but you wouldn’t have to say (1) that people have all been wrong about the resonance constraint (other than Kelley, maybe, since he advocates for a stricter view of resonance that I think fits nicely with the picture you paint in the paper), and (2) that there is no interesting difference in terms of resonance between enjoying-the-good views and blue-shirts-on-Tuesdays views.

   This leads me to my final point (again, somewhat echoing Heathwood), which is that it doesn’t seem nuts to me to think that the difference between enjoying-the-good views and blue-shirts-on-Tuesdays views has something to do with subjectivism, or at least with the subjectivist intuition–that an individual’s stance matters in the determination of her well-being. You very convincingly argue that it’s not the main difference. But views that count the agent’s stance as important in determining her good in some way–even if they don’t grant authority to warrantless attitudes–do seem to be dipping their toes into the subjectivist pool. In footnote 5, you note that there is a similarly interesting difference between views that count a person’s contingent reactions—whether they be bodily or attitudinal–as important in the determination of their good. Rather than saying that these not-fully-subjective-but-still-subjective-flavored views have nothing to do with the subjective/objective divide, I am wondering if you could somehow accommodate the sense in which they are flirting with subjectivism. It is a very clunky and inelegant proposal, but it seems like you might have a point system or something whereby a view like the ones I discussed in this paragraph gets minimal subjective-points, but a view gets many more subjective-points if it allows warrantless attitudes to ground value.

   In any case, thanks so much for a great paper. I look forward to reading the discussion of it here!

6. Hi all. Thanks for an excellent paper, Dave and Steve, and for such a thought-provoking commentary, Chris.

   I’m straying a bit beyond my own philosophical foxhole here, so forgive me if what I say here is obvious, misguided, or obviously misguided. While I am no expert, the objective/subjective distinction in well-being theories is something that I have sometimes been puzzled about. I have always taken it that hedonism is supposed to be a ‘subjective theory’ of wellbeing, but have always wondered how we square this with the fact that hedonists think happiness is objectively good for us, whether we realise it or not, and whether we value our happiness or not. These sound like things an objectivist would say. This is my starting point.

   I want to expand on this starting point by thinking about grass counting. According to Dave and Steve, it is a relevant data point that objections to allowing that grass counting is a good life are objections to subjective theories. If so, theories that say that grass counting can be a good life should be counted as subjective theories. There is an obvious way to avoid this. We could say that grass counting is intrinsically good for us — this would be an objectivist grass-counting theory, albeit an implausible one. So the data point should probably be: any plausible theory that implies that counting grass is a good life is a subjective theory.

   Now, Dave and Steve seem to be able to classify hedonism as subjective, as the fact that one has a pro-attitude toward grass counting is taken to play a role in making grass counting as good for us.

   We can have favourable attitudes to different things – for want of a better term, let’s call them ‘activities’ and ‘valuable features’. We can see this distinction at play in the trombone example in the paper. We might value ‘playing the trombone’, and/or we might value aspects of it, like how it looks, how it feels, or the exercise of skill.

   Now consider a theory that says that counting grass is valuable for us iff it (a) makes us happy; (b) is valued because it makes us happy (and would not be valued if it did not make us happy). Happiness is the valuable feature here, and it is what is valued. Grass counting is valued only because it makes us happy. Happiness is (this theory states) objectively valuable for us. And so the pro-attitude toward happiness (and thus toward grass counting) is not warrantless.

   Would this sort of ‘reflexive hedonism’ (where it is happiness/the valuable feature that is valued and deemed normative) be an objective theory? How is it different from those theories that say that playing the trombone is valuable only if it is valued *because* it is an exercise of skill (or some other value-making feature).

   Could reflexive hedonism count grass counting as a good life while being an objective theory?

   Sorry if any of the above is confused and/or stupid.

7. Thanks for those excellent responses, Dave. I think what you say about my third concern as I presented it, the one having to do with the concept of warrant, is quite effective. I had overlooked the idea that the relevant sort of appreciation might simply be an evaluative belief.

   However, I think I am still inclined to avoid using the concept of warranted appreciation in defining objectivism. I just don’t think that that concept is a part of the concept of objectivism. To try to establish this, I wonder if I can get some mileage out of a modified version of my objection, which you briefly discuss, where my example is recast in terms of an imagined philosopher who wholly rejects the notion of warrant, even for belief. As you know, some philosophers do wholly reject this notion, though admittedly they tend to be wholesale normative nihilists rather than well-being objectivists.

   You say that this imagined view “would court incoherence.” But I doubt it’s literal incoherence. You support the idea that the view would be incoherent with the thought that the view “would seem to be saying, in effect, that the stance-independent goods at issue are goods, but that the judgment or belief that they are goods is not warranted or correct.”

   The view would NOT be saying that the belief that there are stance-independent goods is not correct — at least if ‘correct’ here means true and is not simply another term for warranted. What the view can’t say is that that belief is warranted. But denying that that belief is warranted is consistent with the view’s main commitment that there are stance-independent goods.

   That is, the view in question is committed to the following two claims:

   – there are stance-independent goods
   – the belief that there are stance-independent goods is not warranted.

   But these two claims are not inconsistent. Holding both may be in some sense self-defeating or Moore paradoxical or some such, but not incoherent. Since this is a coherent view, I think we can use it to test accounts of the objective/subjective distinction. I there there is no doubt that this coherent view is an objective view. An account of the objective/subjective distinction on which being an objective view is defined simply in terms of stance-independence properly classifies this view, but an account that also uses the concept of warrant, it appears, does not.

8. Dionissis,

   Good, as I hear your case it highlights the inadequacy of procedurally idealizing view of, for example, Brandt and, in the case of practical reasons, Bernard Williams. Their views focused on the attitudes that the procedurally idealized person would have for themselves. Presumably the procedurally idealized person would not have residual concerns about the vaccine, and so would not suffer the costs you highlight that befall the non-procedurally idealized person. This motivates a move that Peter Railton and Michael Smith made—which is to look to attitudes that the idealized person has for the situation that the non-idealized person is in. When we make that switch, presumably the idealized agent sees all the terrible costs of a version of themselves that continues to be afraid of the effects of the vaccine, and presumably takes such costs into account. Now a move of this sort, looking at what a person informedly wants for their non-idealized self, is clearly needed. But it introduces its own complications.

   And also, thank you so much for your very kind words!

9. Dionissis (second question):

   If I am understanding your imagined case right, it involves some phenomenological state or set of states reliably enough co-varying with favoring attitudes, at least in this world. By phenomenological state here I assume we are talking about a feeling which does not conceptually involve being favored, even if in fact it reliably is. In such a scenario, were X and Y co-vary, we can ask the Euthyphronic question of which provides the better metaphysical explanation of benefit. To answer this question we might want to look to other possible worlds where these two items do not so reliably co-vary and see what we think in those cases. Do we think the feeling, even if not liked, still retains full normativity or do we think the prudential recommendations follow the attitudes? My own attitude is that, if a feeling keeps feeling the same way, but I stop liking that feeling, I plan to cut down on seeking that feeling for its own sake.

   Additionally, before we can think we have evidence that attitude tracks an attitude independent feeling, we need an account of the allegedly valuable phenomenology if we are to be able to make it an empirical question whether that feeling (or set of feelings) is reliably favored. I don’t know of attempts to provide such accounts of the relevant feelings which the attitudes allegedly track.

10. Sobel and Wall cite me (correctly) as a defender of (what they call) the Necessary Condition View (NCV). I articulated my views on this issue (how to draw a perspicuous subjective/objective distinction for theories of well-being) nearly thirty years ago and have not really returned to it since. Indeed, the issue has been so far out of mind for me that I largely forgot what I once had to say about it. Upon rereading ch. 2 of Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics, I was struck by a few things. First, the amount of attention I devoted to the issue: I go on for several pages trying (like Dave and Steve) to develop criteria of adequacy for a construal of the distinction. Next, I was dismayed by how primitive and simple-minded my treatment of the issue now looks. There has been a lot of water under this particular bridge since 1996, and a lot of very smart people have identified and explored nuances and complications that I did not dream of at the time. The subsequent literature has also thrown up conceptual resources I wish I had been aware of at the time: in particular, the notion of resonance, which nicely encapsulates what I was trying to put my finger on then as the hallmark of a subjective view. My excuse for not having thought of all this useful stuff is that 1996 was relatively early days for writing about theories of well-being (Jim Griffin’s 1986 book was the only thorough previous treatment of these issues). Finally, I was struck by a surprising discovery: I think that my articulation and defence of the NCV stands up pretty well.

    Chris Heathwood nicely summarizes the four criteria that Dave and Steve use to evaluate candidate distinctions:

    According to the criteria that they offer, an account of the subjective/objective distinction is better, all else equal, if

    it “gets at issues that are fundamentally important” (526)
    it doesn’t make either kind of theory (subjective and objective) highly implausible
    it explains why some views are more objective or subjective than others
    it “fit[s] reasonably well with canonical uses of and associations with the term” (526).

    So let me deal with each of these criteria in turn.

    1. I phrased this requirement in terms of salience: a classification should identify “features of competing theories which bear directly (whether positively or negatively) on their descriptive adequacy”. (26) The NCV isolates purely objective theories on the basis of their lack of any reference to the subject’s attitudes. I devote a good deal of space in the book to arguing that it is precisely this lack that is fatal to them. Whether this argument is successful or not is obviously open to debate. But the very fact that the point is arguable shows that the NCV identifies a salient distinction among theories.

    2. The NCV certainly doesn’t make any kind of subjective theory highly implausible. I go on to defend such a theory in the book. As for objective theories so construed, at the time of writing there were several around with significant advocates: the Mooreans (including, at that time, Tom Hurka), who argued that something being good for you just meant that something about you was impersonally good; John Finnis and his various natural law colleagues and followers (including a current US Supreme Court justice), who defended an objective list theory; Amartya Sen, who thought that well-being consisted, at bottom, of functionings (and therefore capabilities); and a few other lesser known folk. That was then, and many of these people are not so much read now (especially by analytic philosophers), but at the time it was these theories that seemed to me most in need of demolition, precisely because they were so prevalent.

    3. Here we reach an important point. As Dave and Steve point out, because the NCV is an either/or distinction it does not itself make sense of theories being more or less subjective or objective. But I say: so what? What the distinction does is to relocate this spectrum: not between subjective and objective theories but within the former class. Nothing prevents the NCV from being supplemented by criteria that sort subjective theories on grounds such as idealization and direction of fit. I raised this issue in my discussion in the following terms:
    “It might be wondered whether this strict duality is a happy result. Would we not do better to array candidate theories along a spectrum in terms of their particular mix of subjective and objective ingredients? The pure cases, if there are any, would then define the two endpoints of the continuum.”
    And then resolved it:
    “Working with a simple on/off dichotomy will not prevent us from attending to further differences among competing theories; some subjective theories may make welfare more mind-dependent. or less world-dependent, than others. However, it will locate these differences within the class of subjective theories, rather than between them and objective theories.” (39)
    It is true that the NCV defines a very disparate and heterogeneous class of subjective theories, ranging from those on which favouring attitudes define values to those on which they merely respond to values. These differences are very important: indeed, it is on this territory that the battles among competing theories have largely been fought. But as long as they can be identified, what does it matter whether they fall on the divide between subjective and objective theories or within the former class?

    4. I take this seriously as well. Before working up a subjective/objective distinction for theories of well-being I tried to show how it is structurally similar to the distinction among theories of the nature of perceptual properties.

    Dave and Steve do an excellent job of developing lines of criticism of the NCV. In this brief comment I have not dealt with all of their arguments. However, I remain unconvinced that my original commitment to the distinction was a mistake.

11. Hello, I read your paper with interest. In my research in the philosophy of work/retirement, I’m exploring the difference between caring about doing a good job (normative/objective) and caring about the job itself (possibly non-normative/subjective, á la Frankfurt’s The Importance of What We Care About). My philosophical context is Perfectionism, which to my view, if we are to look at one’s career as a perfectionist ground project, focuses solely on the caring-about-doing-a-good-job part as the path to excellence in theoretical and practical rationality– which, in thinking of your article, might be a stance-independent warranted object of value? It seems to be missing the care-about-the-job-itself part, which to me is the subjective, and possibly non-normative piece that should be included in a perfectionist career– a career that stretches one’s capacities and skills AND one cares about doing (hard to imagine well-being coming from increasing one’s capacities in a job one doesn’t care about). Again, thinking of your article, might this be more subjective in that it “grants a value-grounding role to warrantless attitudes” (539)? My questions are: 1) do you agree that Perfectionism is an objective ethical theory [of well-being] (Hurka not going so far as to say it is a theory of well-being, though others, myself included, do), and 2) any comment with the distinction I’m trying to find between caring-about-doing-a-good-job and caring-about-the-job-itself with respect to your theory of the subjective/objective distinction in theories of well-being? By adding caring-about-the-job-itself to perfectionism would I be then making it a hybrid, neither solely objective nor solely subjective? I’m early on in my research on this but it seems I’ll need to take a position on objectivism and subjectivism here. Thank you! Well done on the article…

12. Thanks, Dave and Steve, for an important and challenging article.
    I wonder whether the author’s view is really a third possibility, or perhaps better put, doesn’t attend sufficiently an important distinction. Consider the distinction, between what things are good and what things (or which instances of a kind of good) are good for a particular person. The two poles view of the objective/subjective distinction might be fine as concerns what things are good, but inadequate as concerns which things are good for a particular person.
    Those things that are good might be good either entirely independently of stance, mental state, or attitude (and so not grounded in them) [that is, objective], or those that are good may depend on, consist in, or be grounded in a stance, mental state, or attitude, with the object of the attitude being irrelevant [that is, subjective].
    But matters are different when it comes specifically to what is good for an individual.
    The goods picked out by, say, objective list theories are pitched at a very high level of generality, e.g., friendship, pleasure, aesthetic engagement, knowledge, but not just any instance of these goods can be good for any particular individual. We can’t be friends with just anyone. For a particular individual, some instances of knowledge may be inaccessible or yield little real understanding, whereas others are accessible and of interest to that individual. Some kinds of music may leave her cold whereas others move her. Whether particular instances of goods are good-for a particular person depends on what that person is like and what circumstances she is in at a time: some will fit or suit her, some won’t. What is good for a person may include what authors call “warrantless goods,” even if a list of what is good does not.

13. Thanks for the invitation to comment! I wrote this comment before reading Chris’s summary, so if it seems like I’ve ignored what he said, that’s the reason! Also, I’ve just called you guys “S&W”. Hope that’s OK!
    – Valerie

    I’m quite persuaded by S&W’s argument and I think it’s an incredibly constructive contribution to the well-being literature and beyond. As a card-carrying subjectivist, I found myself in the end thinking: yeah, that’s what I’ve always really thought (i.e., thought without ever actually articulating it), which I think S&W would take as a piece of evidence that they’ve hit the target.
    The paper provoked a lot of thoughts and made me wish I could talk to Dave and Steve and ask them what they think about various things. And now – thanks to Pea Soup! – I can do so, virtually. I’m really thankful for that opportunity!

    First, S&W are really insistent that subjectivity and objectivity can come in degrees (e.g., p. 540). I see how that is so, but I wonder if at least for subjectivists there isn’t a lot of pressure toward what they call “pure subjectivism”. S&W say that “A view is objective, we say, to the extent that it claims that fully stance-independent objects warrant a relevant kind of appreciation” (p. 541). They also say at the end of the paper that “subjectivists may harbor metaphysical worries about objective value in general” but that their arguments don’t address this (p. 543). It seems to me that those metaphysical worries are very strong – indeed, for many subjectivists who identify as “Humean”, these worries are the main reason for carrying the subjectivist card. For this reason, it strikes me that there’s an important distinction between “pure subjectivism” and everything else. The way it seems to me, as soon as you admit that there are normative properties in the stance-independent world, according to the subjectivist I’m thinking of, you’ve given up the ghost.

    With all that as background, one question I have is whether S&W would agree that metaethically, the most important distinction is the one between pure subjectivism and any view that is objective to some degree? Maybe it isn’t that important to decide which distinction is most important, but putting that aside, here’s what I’m thinking. It strikes me that objectivists will be more willing to accept a role for warrantless attitudes than subjectivists will be willing to accept stance-independent value properties. I suspect, given the background metaethics, that it will be easier for objectivists to admit warrantless attitudes, because doing so doesn’t require them to fundamentally alter their metaphysical picture of the world. Adding an occasional value-conferring attitude seems less disruptive to the objectivist than adding attitude-independent value properties is to the subjectivist. But maybe this isn’t so? I don’t know what it’s like to be a Platonist, so I’m really not sure and I’m curious to hear your thoughts about this.

    Relatedly, I wonder how much you think that the reasons for adopting a position in the domain of well-being generalize to other normative domains. I’m inclined to think that if you’re a subjectivist about well-being for metaphysical reasons, you’re going to have reasons to be subjectivist everywhere. What do you think?

    Last, there are places where I think you make pure subjectivism seem like it has fewer resources to answer various challenges than it actually has. For example, on p. 540 you say that a fully subjective view limits the role of reason to “detecting not what is worthy of such attitudes but how to get the object of such attitudes that have been fixed on without reason’s guidance”. Whether this is true or not depends (it seems to me) on what you mean by “reason’s guidance”. There are many ways of thinking about such guidance that don’t require stance-independent normative properties that can
    be correctly grasped by our rational capacities. And this matters, especially, if Humeans are (as I suspect we are) compelled to be subjectivists about moral value as well as prudential value. For example, on constructivist views like Jimmy Lenman’s, there are no stance-independent normative properties, but there are constraints on what moral judgments are reasonable. (I try to make a similar case about what values it makes sense to pursue for your own well-being; and there are folks who have made the case for deliberation about ends that are broadly speaking Humean). You can get quite a lot of guidance from norms of consistency, coherence, and agreement, for instance. Of course, these norms themselves have to get their authority, ultimately, from other attitudes, not from stance-independent normativity. (That to my mind, is the Humean project: to see how much of normativity you can make sense of without resorting to metaphysical extravagance).

    S&W, do you think there’s room for a form of rational guidance in pure subjectivism? It seems to me that there is, on your view, because you’ve characterized warrant by reference to stance independent objects and there are other ways of characterizing rational guidance. Rational guidance for Humeans isn’t going to be the kind of thing that compels any valuing agent to accept its recommendations (though Mark Schroeder has a Humean argument for this possibility), but it ain’t nothing.

14. I have two comments, one smaller and one more substantive.

    1. While the paper is officially about the subjective/objective divide in relation to well-being, it says near its start that its arguments are equally relevant to other issues about practical reason and morality. I would say its arguments are equally and unchangeably relevant if the question is about subjective vs. objective theories of what’s simply good in a person’s life, in the sense of simply good used by G.E. Moore and, I would say, most if not all philosophers before him. The divide isn’t just or even especially about well-being.

    2. The paper cites Combo views, which value the conjunction of an attitude to an object and that object, in its argument against the Traditional Euthyphronic View, which it says makes these views objective while the paper’s proposal makes them subjective. But it seems to me there’s a traditional marker of the subjective that the paper doesn’t consider and that makes Combo views, again, objective. It says it’s characteristic of subjective views to make no claims about which attitudes you should have, e.g. to give no directives about which desires to have but to leave that entirely up to you. It involves an analogue of the economists’ idea of “consumer sovereignty,” which I recall Chris Heathwood citing from Harsanyi to explain, in his contribution to the Routledge Handbook, what it means for a theory to be subjective.

    But Combo views don’t have this feature. They give very definite directives about which desires to have: they’re the ones that will lead to the most valuable conjunctions of an attitude and its object, i.e. ones that are maximally intense and maximally certain to be satisfied. Thus they tell you to form intense desires that 2 + 2 =4, that grass is green, and so on. Or if the desires relevant to your well-being must be about your life, then intense desires that you’re self-identical, need air to survive, and so on. I take it these are counterintuitive, even idiotic, directives. But it seems to me Combo views give them and therefore don’t have the “consumer sovereignty” feature of subjectivism. In this respect they’re not subjective, and a criterion of the subjective like the paper’s that makes them subjective seems to leave something out.

    What of Object views? It depends on what they say about Parfit’s case where if he goes to a party he’ll prefer being there to staying home and reading whereas if he stays home and reads he’ll prefer that to being at the party. Parfit says the outcome that’s best for him is the one in which the satisfied preference is stronger, i.e. if he’ll prefer partying to reading more strongly if he parties than he’ll prefer reading to partying if he reads, then he should go to the party. This looks like what the Combo views would say, i.e. choose the outcome with the most intense satisfied desire. But then Object views too seem to lack the “sovereignty” marker of subjectivism; moreover Parfit should think another option he has is even better: stay home and form intense desires to be self-identical, need air to survive, etc.

    Object views can avoid this implication by not telling Parfit to prefer the outcome with the stronger satisfied desire; then they will involve something like consumer sovereignty. But then they also won’t be able to give any advice in situations where different outcomes will involve different satisfied desires, i.e. they’ll be radically incomplete.

    The above about Object views may be too complicated (and even wrong), but the basic idea is that a traditional or at least possible marker of subjective views is that they don’t tell you what desires to have, not just on the ground that some desires are “warranted,” say in virtue of their fit with their object, but on any ground whatever. Combo views don’t have this feature, and some Object views seem not to either. Are they then really or at least fully subjective? I don’t recall Sobel and Wall discussing this possible marker of subjectivism and would be interested to hear what they say about it. Maybe there are just different markers of the subjective and some views have some while others have others.

15. Dear Patrick,

    Thanks for your question, and it is good that you bring up the issue of pleasure/enjoyment, which requires more discussion than it gets in our paper.

    You are right that many writers have classified hedonism as a subjective view. But, assuming pleasure is understood to be a sensation, and not merely a warrantlessly liked sensation, then it is plausibly understood to be an objective good. So your starting point that hedonism can be an objective view is quite congenial to us. It is also presumably congenial to well-being theorists who rely on the resonance constraint to distinguish objective and subjective views, as it is possible that the sensations that are (Benthamite) pleasurable fail to resonate, hence making the view objective.

    As you describe the grass counting example, the grass counter gets pleasure from this activity, and since pleasure is objectively good for him, then the activity is objectively good for him. But the basic good here is pleasure. Grass counting is just instrumental to that good. So, yes, this would be an objectively good activity, as would any activity that delivered the pleasure.

    We didn’t mean to suggest that any possible view that champions the value of grass counting must be subjective. Rather, the reason grass counting was selected, we think, is because it is very plausible that the object of the favoring attitude has little or nothing to be said for it. The point was that even when the object of the favoring attitude is pointless or otherwise not valuable, the fact that it is the object of a favoring attitude was alleged to mean that we benefit from getting it. Or at least we think that was Rawls’s point. So as we see it the point of the grass counting example was to highlight a strong commitment to the role of favoring attitudes, even when their object looks pointless. We would not say that any attempt to vindicate the benefits of grass counting must be subjective.

    Now suppose that the grass counter counts blades of grass because he gets enjoyment from doing so, but the enjoyment/pleasure here is not understood to be a sensation – a warranted sensation, as we would put it, but instead a warrantlessly liked sensation, i.e. the sensation is pleasurable because and in virtue of the fact that is liked and not because it warrants the liking. Here we would have a subjectivist construal of pleasure, and the resulting view about grass counting would be fully subjectivist.

    Next consider a view that holds that pleasure is best understood subjectively, but then holds that pleasure so understood benefits a person, whether or not the person has any further favoring attitude toward that state. We would characterize this view as subjectivist, as it grants that warrantless attitudes can ground prudential value. But some necessary condition theorists (those who accept the combo view) would classify it as objective, since it denies that we must have a favorable attitude toward the good at issue.

    As a side note, we think objectivists often handle cases of mere taste by appealing to pleasure or enjoyment, and that they think doing so does not compromise their objectivism. But they are relying here on a controversial Benham-like understanding of pleasure, which we think will not hold up to scrutiny. Parfit is the interesting contemporary exception, as he understands pleasure in subjectivist terms. But, as we see it, fails to appreciate the implications of doing so for his robust rejection of subjectivism.

    Thanks for pressing us on the hedonism issue!

16. Thanks Chris.
    We are not sure what to think of such a possibility. Paradoxical views are puzzling.
    We agree that the two claims – (1) there are stance independent goods and (2) the belief that there are stance independent goods is not warranted – are not inconsistent. Indeed, if warrant is understood in epistemic terms, both claims may be true. But our notion of warrant, as we say in the paper, is not epistemic, but rather involves a proper or merited recognition of and responsiveness to the true normative nature of the object. While warrant, as we understand it, is broader than truth, beliefs are warranted in virtue of their truth. And with this non-epistemically relativized notion of warrant, we think the view at issue is incoherent.
    But, even if it were allowed that the view at issue is not literally incoherent, we don’t think that is a good method of theory construction to test proposals by seeing how they fare with respect to views that, if not strictly incoherent, are quite close to being so.

17. Hey Nikki,

    Thanks so much for your cool and interesting questions.

    You are right, we think, that many people want to use the resonance constraint as a rationale for getting to subjectivism. And we think you are right that that requires that they be different things. And if they are different things it should be thinkable that the objectivist can account for it. But the necessary condition account of what subjectivism is merges the two in ways that do not heed your warning. This might be remedied by (as we think one should) adjusting the understanding of subjectivism or (as we also think one should) adjusting one’s understanding of resonance.

    We think our objective/substantive example shows that whatever people mean by resonance, it must involve some degree of direction of explanation or, we claim, it becomes too trivial to be a plausible account of what people have been going for. If that is right, then the traditional formulation of resonance just cannot be a good account of what people really have in mind. So perhaps we are happy to accept the baggage involved in claiming that traditional understandings of resonance have been misguided.

    We don’t really have a positive broad understanding of resonance that does work for us. Or at least we are not sure that we do. So we are not sure there is an issue for us about leaving space between resonance and subjectivism. But we would not want to say that there is no difference between enjoying the good views and the blue shirt theory because, as we said to Chris, we think all minimally plausible versions of enjoying the good will allow a broad role for warrantless attitudes. We continue to think that the traditional notion of resonance feels to us to care about the agent and her point of view sometimes and other times not so much. We don’t find the thoughts about the blue shirt theory all that much more compelling than the thought that if all the agent’s attitudes point to X over Y, than saying Y is better for her is just not respecting her point of view and is for that reason alienating. We don’t see why a person would insist that in some cases it is really important that you not ignore the agent’s own point of view, as in the blue shirt case, but in other cases you can.

    We very much like the idea your last question gets at. As we understand it, it maintains that there are cases, perhaps Heathwood’s initial case is one (the alleged difference in subjectivism between a maximally strict enjoying the good view and a fully stance-independent picture), perhaps also allowing Benthamite pleasure in is another (where this allows that how things affect me, and not just how they are independent of me is relevant) both might be thought to tap into ideas in the subjectivist direction. Let’s suppose that is right for a second. Then your idea, as we understand it, is that there are a variety of pretty different threads to the overall subjectivist idea and rather than offering a unified picture we might instead celebrate diversity and allow each thread a role in determining the overall subjectivism of a view.

    In principle that makes good sense to us. And we do feel that it is well worth exploring whether each of the above two moments is, if vaguely, subjectivish in a way our view doesn’t handle as well as potential rivals.

    We feel like everyone should agree that explanatory unity is a theoretical virtue and that fitting more precisely intuitions also a theoretical virtue. The issue is now how much extra fit does the view you outline potentially get and at what costs to explanatory unity. We very much like how much our view can account for in a tidy package. But we encourage exploring a picture that aspires to celebrate the diverse strands of subjectivish features rather than unite around a single feature.

18. Thanks, Dave! That’s quite helpful.

    A quick thing in response to your concern that it doesn’t make sense to sometimes insist that the agent’s point of view should not be ignored (blue-shirt-Tuesday), but to allow that it can be ignored other times (comparative-benefit): I am inclined to say that in the comparative benefit case that you offer, it is not that her point of view can be ignored. It really matters that she likes both basketball and soccer. We should not ignore her point of view in either case. One might say that in both instances, her stance matters insofar as it delineates the pool of potential benefits. Whether and to what extent the thing actually benefits depends on the details of the more fleshed out view. But the important point is that a view that is responsive to the intuitive claim that a person cannot be benefited by that which she does not care about at all (and will never come to care about) is importantly different from one that isn’t. Views that are sensitive to that (I think important) distinction ensure that the person is at least somewhat connected to that which benefits her. It’s not alien to her; she has a favoring attitude toward it. Maybe it’s not what she *most* cares about, but to require that illicitly (I think) assumes a subjectivist picture of the authority of attitudes.

    Also, excuse me for butting in on your back-and-forth with Chris, but I find his point about warrant not being a part of the concept of objectiveness quite plausible. I am not exactly sure whether this adds anything to the conversation, but to try and side-step the incoherence issue, I wonder if it helps to imagine a view that tells that the only goods that benefit are stance-independent ones, but the specific goods in question are ones that require the subject to be unaware of them. Maybe one such good could be something like being in a flow state, where, if you start thinking about the fact that you’re in such a state, it ruins it. Or maybe instead, one might just think to themselves, “x is good for a person, and I don’t care whether or not she appreciates it—should it be appreciated by her? Maybe yes, maybe no, but that’s not part of what I’m talking about when I say that x benefits her. Even if she is incapable of any kind of appreciation, it’s good.” Not sure if that helps, and not sure if that’s misunderstanding the metaphysical-epistemological point.

    In any case, thank you very much for your thoughtful response. I didn’t know that I was so fascinated by this issue, but it turns out that I am.

19. Hey Wayne,

    Great to hear from you!

    A question for you. Are you the first advocate of the necessary condition understanding of what makes a view subjective? We don’t know of any earlier such statements. Indeed, we think of you as the first to make ANY clear and precise attempt at formulating the distinction between objective and subjective views. Thus we very much see you as the pioneer in the project that we are engaged in in this paper.

    Steve and I find it a grandiose ambition that any idea we introduce into the literature might remain the dominant view 30 plus years later. But the necessary condition view certainly does have that status.

    However, we think our example of objective/substantive [529 and surrounding] shows that the necessary condition view, unsupplemented with any direction of explanation component, looks surprisingly welcoming to all types of views. We don’t see how to avoid seeing this as a decisive flaw. Perhaps some of the attraction of the necessary condition view was that it seemed to ensure that an agent’s good, as Rosati might put it, fit or suited her. But we think objective/substantive shows that appearance to be illusory.
    We agree with you that the necessary condition view has sensible things to say about all or almost all the criteria that Heathwood reminded folks that we highlighted. We do think there are criteria that we care about concerning the distinction that Heathwood didn’t mention.

    For example, we think our view captures well what is going on in the Euthyphro, captures Hume’s “slaves of the passions” idea, explains why subjectivism has been taken to be compatible with procedural idealization but not substantive idealization, helps us see why grass-counting style cases have been taken to be counter-examples to subjectivism, helps us see why arbitrariness has been taken to be a central component of subjectivism, etc.

    We hear you about the point about degrees of objectivity and subjectivity and agree that the necessary condition could be supplemented with an independent account that captures that. However, much seems to hang on what that independent account looks like. If, for example, it looks a lot like our view, then that seems an advantage of our view. And it would put some pressure on vindicating the importance of an overall assessment of the category as opposed to an accurate assessment of the relevant gradations.

20. Dear Elie,

    Thanks for your comments.

    You asked about perfectionism. There are a variety of perfectionist views, but we (and others) would generally classify them as objective. Self-development purports to be an objective good, one that warrants caring about, and is alleged to be good not simply in virtue of the fact that the agent contingently desires it or cares about it. Of course, some perfectionists might want to add subjective goods, such as pleasure, to the things that make our lives go better for us, thus potentially compromising the purity of their objectivism.

    You also ask about what we think of your distinction between doing a job well and caring about the job itself. You suggest that the caring about the job itself part introduces a subjectivist component. This could be true, but suppose they care about the job itself because they appreciate that it is a valuable activity. Their caring attitudes are warranted in light of the value of the activity. On this supposition, at least on our account of the objective/subjective distinction, no subjectivism component need be present. Similarly, a person might want to do a job well because they appreciate the value of doing the job well. Thus, as we see it, your case of caring about a job and wanting to do it well could be fully objective.

21. Thanks so much for the thoughtful questions and excellent discussion. The response has been a bit overwhelming. We have to stop for today but will be back at it around 1 pm eastern US time tomorrow. Sorry to not have managed to get to all the questions today.

22. Thank you, Steven. This is helpful. Good luck with tomorrow’s discussion. –Ellie

23. I certainly agree with David Sobel and Steven Wall that, lurking behind the subjective/objective distinction in the philosophy of well-being, there are many important theoretical issues that deserve clarification, delineation, and resolution. However, I am one of those who believe (as they put it) that there exist “a plurality of different, and roughly equally serviceable, understandings of the subjective/objective distinction” (520). These understandings do not all classify theories in the same way. Still, they have roughly equal title to being called “the subjective/objective distinction,” and they pick out genuine and important dimensions of similarity and difference among theories. And so from my perspective, the Sobel / Wall account of the distinction is just one more that is both interesting and valid … given a particular context or set of purposes. We should add it to our well-being toolkit, but it is not the “be-all end-all” when it comes to the subjective / objective distinction.

    The Sobel / Wall view holds that a theory of well-being is “subjective to the extent that it grants a *grounding role* to *warrantless* attitudes” (521). [It is “objective … to the extent that it claims that fully stance-independent objects warrant a relevant kind of appreciation” (541)]. Something plays a *grounding role* just in case it “plays a role in what makes it the case that something is beneficial …” (521, fn. 4). Attitudes are *warrantless* provided that they do not involve “a proper or merited recognition of and responsiveness to the true normative nature of the object” (521). So if a theory says that warrantless pro-attitudes confer welfare-value on their objects (for a given subject), it is to that degree subjective.

    Why do I deny that this is the single best way of drawing the distinction? Well, it focuses on a highly theoretical question about grounding that many welfare-theorists have ignored—one that theorists need not have answered in order to count as “subjectivists” in a legitimate sense. Relatedly, it overstates the connection between subjectivism about well-being and arbitrariness (and/or the Humean theory of Reasons) (see 532-3). It might also misclassify some early modern views (c. 1650-1850) about well-being; it implies they were mostly “objective,” when the theorists involved were attempting to renew emphasis on the personal and subjective aspect of well-being. Finally—if I understand the view correctly—it seems to require one to take a fairly extreme view to count as a full-blown “subjectivist.” One must say that the welfare-value of (e.g.) enjoying a game of tennis is exclusively grounded in one’s warrantless pro-attitudes—not merely that such attitudes a pre-condition for the existence of welfare value (cf. 539). Contrary to this, it seems like a lot of factors count as partial explanations of its value, even if the fact that one enjoys it for its own sake is a leading factor?

    To illustrate some of these concerns, I will sketch some other pertinent, legitimate understandings of “subjective.” Some theories are “subjective” in a legitimate sense because they say that one’s well-being is exclusively a matter of actual one’s *mental states* (“Well-being is just a matter of what’s going on inside your mind”). Broad’s internalist hedonism and Heathwood’s subjective desire-satisfactionism are both “subjective” in this sense. But these theories need not sign on to the Sobel / Wall grounding claim, if that claim is read in the strong way that I believe they intend. These theories might instead be conjoined with a theological voluntarist view which says (e.g.) that pleasure is good for people because God says it is. Or they might be conjoined with a perfectionist view according to which pleasure is good for people because it exercises the highest part of our affective nature. Even if conjoined with these views, these theories would still count as “subjective” in a legitimate sense.

    Similarly, some theories are “subjective” because they say that agents have *very wide discretion* when it comes to what is good for them (“What’s good for you is almost entirely up to you”). On one reading of Hobbes, he believes that the satisfaction of properly-formed desires is good for us because we are survival-seeking, desiring machines. It thus fulfills our nature for us to get what we want in a steadfast, secure way. On this reading, Hobbes denies the Sobel / Wall grounding claim. But obviously, Hobbes’s (process-focused) desire-based theory would leave what is good for individuals almost entirely up to them. All kinds of desires might count as rational, survival-subordinate desires (desires to bake cookies, collect guns and ammo, make people laugh, squat 300 lbs., etc.). Very different people with very different interests and tastes could have equally good lives. (The “subjective” character of Hobbes’s view, here, is related to the creative control agents have in the form of what Sobel and Wall call “shaping power,” because he does seem to believe that death is objectively and independently welfare-bad).

    Yet another serviceable sense of “subjective” corresponds roughly to what Sobel and Wall call “The Necessary Condition View.” Some views require resonance in the form of *actual positive attitudes* at either the whole-life level or the level of individual goods. I agree with Sobel and Wall that, if we allow procedurally idealized attitudes to count here, we end up with a toothless sense of “subjective” that is almost (but not quite?) useless (529). And even if we focus on actual favoring attitudes, this way of understanding the subjective / objective divide initially seems to misclassify Hybrid Theories like Robert Adams’s “Enjoying the Good” view (525). But we can just say that this view is subjective in one sense but not in another. For it also tells us to respond attitudinally in appropriate ways to what is objectively good (it’s a hybrid after all!).

    For these reasons, I think we should still be pluralists about “the” subjective / objective distinction, recognizing several non-equivalent, theoretically interesting distinctions in this vicinity.

24. Hi Dave,

    It’s been a long time.

    As far as I am aware, I was the first to worry about how to draw an appropriate subjective/objective distinction for theories of well-being and to draw it on the basis of attitudes serving as a necessary condition of adequacy. On the latter point, my approach was strategic: since straight objective theories were my main target, I wanted to isolate them as a class in terms of their lacking this requirement for success. Until I read your paper, I had no idea that the necessary condition view still stood as the dominant account after all these years. That’s a bit mind-blowing.

    Where we differ, I think, is in tolerance for including in the subjective category the full array of theories that satisfy the condition, regardless of how grounding (or not) the attitudes in question are. I agree that it may seem odd to count as subjective views that are substantively idealized or require a positive response to what is independently alleged to be good, since in those cases the attitudes in question are no longer doing the heavy lifting. But I’m comfortable with this outcome, since there is still an important difference between these views and a straight objective view of the sort I was trying to discredit in the book. The subject’s attitudes may do less work in these theories, but they still do some. Of course, I don’t think that’s the best route for a subjective theory to take, but that’s another matter.

    Anyway, I found it very refreshing to read your paper, and nostalgic to be cast back into those old controversies. It’s a lovely piece and I’m glad to have engaged with it.

25. Hi Dave and Steve!

    I don’t have time to read all the other comments, so sorry if this is redundant. I plan to read them later but do not have time now and know that threads don’t last forever.

    A question about the positive take on objective views. You say “we also need a positive characterization of objective views. A view is objective, we say, to the extent that it claims that fully stance-independent objects warrant a relevant kind of appreciation. On some objective views such worthy objects benefit us when we get them regardless of our attitude to-ward them. Other objective views will insist that fully warranted appreciation is required for the benefit.”

    I will use fitting talk as I find ” unfit” to be easier to write than “unwarrant”, but I mean use “unfit” to pick out attitudes that an objectivist thinks are inappropriate relative to the object (which I think you call “unwarranted” rather than “warrantless” in the paper).

    Here is the way I might positively gloss objectivism having been persuaded that warrant is the central topic on which to focus.

    A view is objective to the extent that it claims (i) that fully stance-independent facts justify claims about attitudes/feelings of relevant kinds being fitting or unfitting and (ii) that positive and negative fittingness of attitude/feeling explains the degree to which the attitudes/feelings or their objects are good or bad for the subject.

    I think this is better as I think it captures and expresses one main motivation for objectivism, namely the thought that subjectivists count attitudes as good for or good-for making/enabling in cases in which they are not – and they are not because the attitudes are unfit. This seems to be the strong place to start for objectivists, just as “warrantless or warrant-underdetermined” cases seem like the right place for subjectivists to start. Dialectically it also seems to fit the point that sensible objectivists might allow “speilraum” for matters of taste and cases in which agents choose between equally fitting objects, but they will draw the line on cases in unfittingness explains/grounds/what-have-you lower welfare value (or its absence).

    As an example, think of Catholics or Finnis on sex. They think, roughly, that pleasure in married sex expressing loving union is fitting, but that sex between strangers who, like Maude Lebowski, value it as a “natural zesty enterprise” is unfitting or at least much less fitting. And they would say that pleasure in married loving sex is good for you or more good for you, than pleasure in zesty tinder hookup sex between strangers.

    To my mind this “unfittingness undermines or attenuates prudential value” idea is central to historical objectivists who oppose the modern subjectivist trend and also seems to connect with the Humean motivations for many subjectivists (noted by Valerie). If ill-being is different than well-being, “unfittingness grounds or intensifies ill-being” could also be a standard objectivist line.

    I have tried to understand how you would respond to this kind of suggestion by searching for “unwarranted” in the paper but can’t figure it out, so here I am asking.

26. Hi, Dave and Steve!

    Great paper. Here is a question that might have something to do with Chris Heathwood’s third point:

    Suppose I have a view on which reasons are metaphysically prior to goodness. Roughly put, the view says that X is good for me because there is a beneficence-reason for me to have X.

    According to your view, could there be both an objective version of this view and a subjective version of this view? Or would the objective/subjective distinction simply not apply to views like this?

27. Hey Cons (that is Rosati for the rest of you)!!

    We totally agree that there are important differences between what is good (which here we will assume for specificity is something like generic prudential goodness of the sort we assume friends of objective list views have in mind) and what is good for an individual. And we agree that the transition from generic goodness to a benefit for an individual will have to respect a wide range of idiosyncrasies of the individual in question—whether it be her capacities, circumstances, abilities, or just her warrantless likings. We would not see all such reasonable efforts to shape the generic good to the individual as introducing a subjective element. Indeed an austere objectivist could deny that warrantless attitude play any role in fitting generic value to the individual, even if incapacities or circumstantial limitations are thought relevant in that transition. But we ourselves agree that individual good seems likely to be more subjective, because more affected by the agent’s warrantless attitudes, than generic prudential goods.
    But we don’t yet see why any of this is a threat to our understanding of the divide. It may be that different types of values are to different extents subjective. That by itself doesn’t seem to us a problem for our view of the distinction. But while we don’t yet see the threat to our own view, we totally agree that this transition from generic prudential goodness to individual benefit needs and merits much more attention or the sort that you are providing.

28. Hello Dave and Steve.
    I’ve enjoyed your paper a great deal! So much nuance and so many ideas worth thinking about. I especially applaud the effort to throw light on the subjective/objective distinction, so familiar and yet so undertheorized. Bravo! It’s also a great pleasure to read so many fantastic comments and your responses to them. Thanks everyone!
    I have a question about the notion of warrantless attitudes, especially as a subjectivist phenomenon. In the paper, the idea seems to be that these attitudes are warrantless insofar as satisfying them would benefit us regardless of the value of their object and definitely not because of the value of the object. For example, eating cilantro benefits me insofar as I like eating cilantro. The value of cilantro is irrelevant for this benefit. Even if cilantro was the best thing in the world, the benefit qua benefit of the warrantless attitude of liking cilantro wouldn’t increase. However, I wonder about what about those attitudes makes them subjectivist, and more pressingly, what makes them the hallmark of a subjectivist account, such that accepting a role for them separates subjectivist and objectivist views in a key way.
    One question is related to one of Valerie’s points above: can there be a subjectivist criterion of rationality such that it makes sense to adopt some attitudes rather than others? Or are warrantless attitudes completely unconstrained?
    Another question has to do with Cons’s, I mean, Rosati’s, points about personal good. Whatever is good for a specific individual has to do with feature of that individual in particular. What warrantless attitudes this individual has has to do with features of that individual. Suppose that I have the favorable attitude of wanting to eat cilantro. This is a warrantless attitude as sketched above. However, my taste buds are such that cilantro tastes like soap, a flavor I do not like, I must clarify. I know all this and yet I form the desire to eat cilantro. It’s not an uninformed desire; it doesn’t seem defective in any way that it would be ruled out by idealization. I’m just weird that way. It strikes me as a puzzling result that this theory would say that the satisfaction of such a desire would benefit me and even more so that it is precisely because of the warrantless character of this desire that we should consider this view subjectivism. It just seems to me that subjectivists consider themselves as such for other reasons. Jason sketches some alternative ways to be subjectivist that strike me as compelling. What do you guys think about this?

29. Thanks for the response, Sobel (that is, Dave to the rest of you)! When I wrote about good v. good-for, I had in mind intrinsic value, which I don’t think should necessarily be regarded as prudential. At least, that wasn’t what Moore was talking about. On the view that states of affairs are the bearers of intrinsic value, there need not (though ordinarily would be) benefit to individuals. But, as you know, Moore rejected the idea of things being good-for. I suppose that a stern objectivist might insist that even the good-for has no subjective element, but that seems pretty implausible given the nature of goods. I’m fairly persuaded by Fletcher’s arguments on this score. And in any case, what we say would have to be guided by an account of what it is for something to be good-for an individual.

    While I’m here, I’m wondering about warrantless desires. These desires, though not warranted by their immediate objects, might be warranted if they are sources of pleasure, which presumably would be on any objective list.

30. Hey Val!

    First let us say that we will be obsessively re-reading the passage where you say that our view captured how you had always felt about the divide to buoy ourselves up in dark hours.

    As we see it, subjectivists tend to have their own cherished thoughts which they claim any violation of is to make the BIG MISTAKE. This thought might be about resonance or about metaphysical issues. In such a frame of mind, it is tempting to sort views into those that make the BIG MISTAKE and those that do not. Of course objectivists have their own conception of what the relevant BIG MISTAKE is—perhaps allowing warrantless attitudes to ground value as this, they think, was shown to be catastrophic in the Euthyphro. Many, many objectivists in fancy universities will not be happy at all to cross that line. They will want to draw lines that distinguish views that make this BIG MISTAKE and those that don’t.

    What we want to avoid is giving one such anxiety priority over the others by building in one anxiety into how to characterize the divide. We should avoid taking the subjectivist picture (or the objectivist picture) on board of what the relevant BIG MISTAKE is when drawing the distinction. Given our account of the divide, hard-liners such as yourself can say that they deny the existence of any amount of the other kind of value.

    You also ask whether we think there is room for a form of rational guidance in pure subjectivism. And, of course, you are right that subjectivists can appeal to consistency and coherence constraints and pressures. We don’t want to deny that that is a form of rational guidance. We might call it procedural rationality as contrasted with substantive rationality.

    Warantless attitudes playing a role in grounding value is the mark of the subjectivist, on our view. But warrantless attitudes, as we characterize them, lack warrant with regard to their objects. That doesn’t preclude them from being assessed rationally in other terms.

    We are interested in subjectivist views that very substantially constrain what attitudes are rationally permissible. At the limit, there is the Kantian view of the sort championed by Korsgaard and others. These views grant authority to arbitrary attitudes in one sense – they are arbitrary with respect to the value of their objects, but they are not arbitrary in another sense – they do not allow the attitudes to range freely.

    The view in the paper claimed that the former sort of arbitrariness is the mark of subjectivism and that diminished free play due to other types of rational constraints does not diminish the subjectivism of the view. This part of our paper, while not regretted, by our lights needs more attention. But still, our official view makes very wide room for such constraints which do not come from the value of the object.

31. Hey Tom,

    Thanks very much for your thought-provoking questions.

    First, do we flatter ourselves that the way you put your first point showed some sympathy for our account of the divide? Either way, we entirely agree with you that it is the same concept of objective and subjective at play in other domains. And we see it as a serious virtue of our view that it so plausibly generalizes to the other domains. We don’t, for example, see how the Necessary Condition view might plausibly be thought to capture the objectivism or subjectivism of a moral theory. Whereas, we claim, exactly what is at issue with divine command theories or cultural relativism, is that the attitudes that are purported to ground moral distinctions must be warrantless in light of the moral value of their object. This for the simple reason that the objects must be thought to themselves lack all moral value prior to the relevant attitudes conferring such value. And of course many think that there is a general problem, at least in the moral domain, with warrantless attitudes being thought to ground value. The centrality and contested nature of the issue that we highlight– the normative role of warrantless attitudes–thus certainly seems much broader than just in the case of well-being. If it is allowed that it is the same concept of objectivism and subjectivism involved in these other domains, it does seem to us a serious desiderata that there be a unified across domains account of the divide. And we agree that our distinction also seems as applicable to the topic of “simply good” as it does to the case of well-being. Thanks for that.

    Now to your second point. There is a lot going on here. We agree that there are legitimate substantive concerns that some/many versions of subjectivism may have to say silly things. But we take it the key issue for us here is whether an analogue of “consumer sovereignty” might be a key marker of subjectivism, and one that our view fails to take proper account of.

    We are not sure we have a good handle yet on the notion of consumer sovereignty at issue. The formulation you offer is “make no claims about which attitudes you should have, e.g. to give no directives about which desires to have but to leave that entirely up to you.” But consider a standard subjectivist view that tells you to satisfy the desires you would have after a fair degree of procedural idealization. Such a view would direct you to give up desires you have that would not survive the procedural deliberation, and to form desires that you would have after such deliberation. We are not tempted at all to classify such a view as objective because it gives us some directives about what to desire. Similar things might be said about the normative claim that a person’s desires ought to be transitive, for example.

    Another version of the notion of consumer sovereignty, of a sort that might plausibly seem the mark of subjectivism, might be that there are no good reasons in the nature of things to have one set of coherent desires rather than another—no such set is more accurate to the value of their object than any other. Thus there is no grounds on that score for criticizing a person’s procedurally idealized concerns. This version seems plausibly to us a subjectivist thought, but one that our account seems well designed to capture.

    Perhaps another relevant notion of consumer sovereignty, then, might be better expressed in terms of not giving you directives that are not in some way rooted in your current actual desires and concerns – alien directives, we might say. The combo view seems like it can give you alien directives. It can tell you to form desires that you don’t currently have, and are not rooted in desires that you currently have, but can be easily satisfied, for example. Is it a feature of subjectivist views that they must resist this recommendation?
    One thing seems clear. Subjectivist views will need to have something to say about how to assess the well-being of possible future versions of oneself that have different desires than one currently has. Suppose organically my desires change substantially. Might that mean my future will be better or worse for me than if that change had not happened. Surely the subjectivist must think there are facts about this. And if so, then it might be that the change to my desires resulted in my future being better for me than it otherwise would have been. And thus, qua subjectivist, it seems like it will then be true to say that it is better for me that I had those desires rather than these. That seems a picture it is hard to imagine the subjectivist being able to avoid. If that violates consumer sovereignty, then we don’t think we should think of subjectivism as committed to consumer sovereignty.

    By the way, on the Parfit example, we think there is more that the subjectivist can say. You know that if you go to the party you will prefer that to staying home but if you stay home you will prefer that to going to the party. Still, you could ask yourself now to imagine the two situations and compare them. If one was a competent judge about both situations, and one preferred one to the other, then that is what would be best for one, the subjectivist can say. If one is indifferent between them, then either situation would be as good for one as the other.

32. Hey again Nikki,

    To your second point, like D’Arms and Jacobson we would want to distinguish sharply between what is warranted and what is all things considered advisable. A joke might be funny, and so warrant amusement, they say, even if laughing is strongly all things considered inadvisable in a context. So called wrong kind of reasons to not do the warranted thing can be powerful and even decisive reasons. Further one might be too depressed to be amused by a funny joke, yet amusement can still be warranted. The issue is only whether the attitude is warranted, not whether the agent is now able to, or even should, do what is warranted.

33. Hey Jason,

    Thanks for representing the “let a thousand flowers bloom” crowd, which we definitely see out there.

    Jason begins by telling us that “I am one of those who believe (as they put it) that there exists “a plurality of different, and roughly equally serviceable, understandings of the subjective/objective divide.”

    But when he concludes in his own words he writes, “I think we should still be pluralists about “the” subjective/objective distinction, recognizing several non-equivalent, theoretically interesting distinctions in this vicinity.”

    We think the differences in these formulations instructive and important. The former, as we understood it, claimed that given the legitimate desiderata for the distinction, there are several accounts of the divide that score roughly equally and so are on a par. The latter formulation is a much weaker and non-comparative claim. It says only that there are different interesting distinctions in the vicinity. We did not mean to deny this latter point. But we think it all that Jason is best read as making a case for.

    After all, when he brings forth purportedly vindicated accounts of the divide he rests content in explicating an interesting distinction that the account captures. One such account expresses the theoretically interesting divide that “Well-being is just a matter of what is going on inside your head”. He offers no comparative assessment at all of this account as against other accounts of the divide, nor desiderata that we might use to compare.

    Further Jason seems to allow, as we argued using the example of objective/substantive, that the necessary condition view has to say that just about all possible views count as subjective. (We would claim it is all possible views.) Even this allowance does not prevent him from saying that this is a vindicated conception of the divide. For again, it captures an interesting divide, he says. Let it be so. Even if so, an account of the divide that categorizes just about any imaginable view as subjective is not an excellent account of the divide—certainly not as good as ours. There might well be a lot of interesting distinction is this area. But they are not all equally good accounts of the divide. We were making a case that our account scored best, not that the other accounts didn’t even manage to capture an interesting idea.

    Despite offering no comparative assessment of our view with other candidates, Jason doubts that our account is the single best way of drawing the distinction.

    Jason’s criticisms of our view go by quickly, and we would need to see them more fleshed out to properly assess them. Just a few brief remarks in hopes of furthering this more fleshed out exchange.

    Jason observes that our account focuses on a highly theoretical question about grounding that many welfare-theorists have ignored—one that theorists need not have answered in order to count as “subjectivists” in a legitimate sense. Reply: Few have bothered to formulate an account of the objective/subjective divide in the first place—using the terminology freely without such an account. This makes it unsurprising that, whatever the best account of the divide, few will have thought in those terms.

    Jason claims that our view overstates the connection between subjectivism about well-being and arbitrariness (and/or the Humean theory of Reasons) (see 532-3). Reply: This is just assertion. We will need to hear more, as we think it a feature, not a bug, of our account that it captures the significance of arbitrariness for subjectivism.

    Jason worries that our account may misclassify some early modern views (c. 1650-1850) about well-being; it implies they were mostly “objective,” when the theorists involved were attempting to renew emphasis on the personal and subjective aspect of well-being. Reply: We won’t try to address the early modern views referenced here, but notice that a view that is pretty substantially objective on our account might be advanced in a context where the regnant views were even more objective by our lights. The proponent of such a view might well be attempting to renew emphasis on the personal and subjective aspect of well-being, but that wouldn’t show that our account misclassifes him.

    Finally, Jason suggests that our account requires one to take a fairly extreme view to count as a full-blown “subjectivist.” “One must say that the welfare-value of (e.g.) enjoying a game of tennis is exclusively grounded in one’s warrantless pro-attitudes—not merely that such attitudes a pre-condition for the existence of welfare value (cf. 539). Contrary to this, it seems like a lot of factors count as partial explanations of its value, even if the fact that one enjoys it for its own sake is a leading factor?” Reply: This is puzzling. Isn’t it natural to say that a full-blown subjectivist view would be fairly extreme – that is why it is full-blown or 100 per cent. We would say that a view that holds that something, like tennis, benefits you only if it is stance independently good and you warrantlessly favor it over other equally good activities is less subjective than full-blown subjectivism. Doesn’t that sound like the natural thing to say here?

34. Thanks Brad. We appreciate your efforts to think within our framework and to improve it.

    We agree with your assessment of the dialectical situation. “The sensible objectivist,” as you point out, “might allow “speilraum” for matters of taste and cases in which agents choose between equally fitting objects, but they will draw the line on cases in unfittingness explains/grounds/what-have-you lower welfare value (or its absence).” We agree that this is the most sensible objectivist position.

    We are attempting, however, to offer a capacious account of objectivism, whether sensible or not.
    Your positive proposal would not account for objectivists that deny that the attitudes play any role at all in grounding benefit. We want to capture those folks.

    Another quibble with your positive proposal. Your clause (ii) claims that positive and negative fittingness of attitude/feeling explains the degree to which the attitudes/feelings or their objects are good or bad for the subject. However, we don’t think that the benefit to the agent is explained entirely by the fittingness of the relevant attitudes. Much hinges also on the magnitude of the goods or bads at issue. A maximally fitting response to a minor good produces only small benefit, for instance.

    But, we welcome efforts, such as yours, to characterize objectivism in its most compelling form. So thanks again.

35. Thanks to Sobel and Wall for a great paper. Sorry to be late to the party. I just wanted to raise an issue along the Heathwood-Fortier lines above. I sort of thought you (Sobel and Wall) undersold the importance of having tracking control over one’s welfare. When you have tracking control over your welfare, you get to, in effect, veto the prudential value of a thing (via your agential point of view by, say, lacking a desire for it or having an aversion to it) even when it might otherwise be worth valuing. It is plausible that subjective theories should say that agents have at least some tracking control over their welfare. That seems like an important way to respect an agent’s point of view. The kinds of cases that motivate the resonance constraint seem to suggest as much, but I understand the Sobel and Wall way of characterizing the subjective/objective divide as allowing that a fully subjective theory could deny an agent such control. Why not say, then, that whether a theory is subjective depends on whether and the extent to which it gives the agent *both* creative *and* tracking control over their welfare?

36. We now bring this discussion to a close. On behalf of PEA Soup Blog, I want to thank David Sobel and Steven Wall for their excellent paper and Chris Heathwood for his thoughtful précis. We are also grateful to all the contributors whose comments have enriched the exchange.

    The comment box will now be closed, but the authors may continue responding to questions or remarks from the audience.

    Thank you all for participating.

    PEA Soup Blog.

37. We will hope to get to the remaining questions later today. Thanks so much to all for giving our paper such thoughtful attention!

38. Hey Molly!

    Thanks for a great and interesting question! Wish we had a proper answer for you. We are not up on that literature and our intuitive way of approaching things seems to assume a kind of goodness-based approach. We will need to think about how to best translate our thinking into a reason-based approach. We would welcome you or others letting us know how we might carry out such a translation, or reasons to fear that such a translation will prove problematic. We would certainly want to maintain that our approach to the distinction continues to apply (albeit in translated form) within a reason-first picture.

    Thanks for helping us see that we need to do some work here.

39. Hey again Cons!

    We think everything hinges here on distinguishing possible views of pleasure. Some, let’s call them Benthamites, think pleasure is a flavor or set of flavors of sensations which are valuable regardless of any attitudes a person has towards them. Others think pleasure is, very roughly, a current sensation that is liked. Fully objective views are, at least by our lights, free to add the former to their objective lists but not the latter. Additionally, we doubt that Benthamite pleasure captures the goodness grounding nature of pleasure, but that is a separate and long argument.

40. Hey Teresa!

    Can’t wait to see you at KWOW! And many of the rest of you too!

    To your second question, we think you are right that a view that gives weight to such desires for cilantro is unlikely to be the best version of subjectivism. But our divide is meant to distinguish subjective views (even poor subjective views) from other kinds of views. Doesn’t it seem that a view that says that satisfying one’s warrantless attitudes in the cilantro case is subjective, even if a poor instance of such?

    As to your first question, hopefully what we said to Val gestures toward a proper response.

41. Hey Anthony!

    Thanks for the cool question!

    We think you, Chris, and Nikki are converging on a very similar proposal—one that allows the relevance to the subjectivism of a view of both warrantless and warranted attitudes. And, we admitted earlier to Chris, that in comparing the degree of subjectivism of a maximally austere enjoying the good view and a completely stance independent view, the former may seem more subjective in a way that our view cannot account for. We continue to think the heavy lifting in making a view subjective is done by the role of warrantless attitudes, but see that we need to think more about a possible secondary role for warranted attitudes (which, as you say, would give the agent a kind of veto power).

    We think the broad underlying idea is something like this: any requirement of a favoring stance for benefit to occur increases the subjectivism of the view over a comparable view that has no such role for stances. The cases you all have in mind seem to be cases where, broadly understood, direction of explanation goes one way and stance-dependence goes another. And we hear you saying that perhaps both factors are relevant to the subjectivism of a view. That is interesting and worth investigating, as we said to Nikki.

    However, we think much hinges on the nature of the required stance. Our objective/substantive discussion was meant to highlight a case where a stance might be thought required for a benefit, but the stance is not of the right kind to increase the subjectivism of the view. If that is right, our thinking is that to capture the relevant kind of stance, you have to tacitly invoke some direction of explanation into your understanding of the relevant stance. We, of course, have limited the role of stances in a way that we think is responsive to the direction of explanation idea. That much we think is shown to be needed by objective/substantive. But perhaps, as your intuitions seem to suggest, there is a rival way to limit the relevant stances, that we have failed to appreciate.

    Thanks again for a great question!

42. Thanks to you all for so thoughtfully engaging with our work. We benefitted from the discussion and are very appreciative for the comments and criticisms we received.

    Wishing you all a great increase in well-being, however it may be constituted!

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