Ethics- Chapter 4- Value

Perhaps a way to adjudicate the disagreement between the subjectivist and the objectivist is to imagine an______ a person who is impartial and has maximal knowledge of the consequences of all actions. What the Ideal Desirer chooses is by definition the "good," and what he or she disdains is the "bad." If so, we can approximate such an ideal perspective by increasing our understanding and ability to judge impartially. The study of philosophy, especially moral philosophy, has as one of its main goals such an ability

Ideal Desirer

_______ are good because of their nature and are not derived from other goods.

Intrinsic goods

"There is beauty in sky and cloud and sea, in lilies and in sunsets, in the glow of bracken in autumn and in the enticing greenness of a leafy spring. Nature, indeed, is infinitely beautiful, and she seems to wear her beauty as she wears color or sound. Why then should her beauty belong to us rather than to her? Human character and human dispositions have value or worth, which belongs to them in the same sense as redness belongs to the cherry"

JOHN LAIRD, A STUDY IN REALISM

Hedonists such as _____ (1748-1832) argue that although these qualities are good, their goodness is derived from the fact that they bring pleasure or satisfaction. Such hedonists ask of each of the previously mentioned values, "What is it for?" What is knowledge for? If it gave no one any satisfaction or enjoyment, would it really be good? Why do we feel there is a significant difference between knowing how many stairs there are in New York City and whether or not there is life after death? We normally do not value knowledge of the first kind, but knowledge of the second kind is relevant for our enjoyment. The hedonist asks, "What are friendship and love for?" If we were made differently and got no satisfaction out of love and friendship, would they still be valuable? Are they not highly valuable, significant instrumental goods because they bring enormous satisfaction? Even moral commitment or conscientiousness is not good in itself, argues the hedonist. Morality is not intrinsically valuable but is meant to serve human need, which in turn has to do with bringing about satisfaction. And, life certainly is not intrinsically good. It is quality that counts. An amoeba or a permanently comatose patient has life but no intrinsic value. Only when consciousness appears does the possibility for value arrive. Consciousness is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for satisfaction.

Jeremy Bentham

It was these sorts of cases that led______(1806-1873, to be examined in Chapter 7)—in his classic work, Utilitarianism—to modify the hedonic doctrine, admitting that "it is better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied." He suggested that there were different qualities of pleasure and that those who had experienced the different kinds could distinguish among them. Whether the notion of quality of pleasure can save hedonism is a controversial matter, but many of us feel uneasy with the idea that pleasure alone is good. Some broader notion, such as happiness or object of desire, seems a more adequate candidate for what we mean by "value."

John Stuart Mill

Many things that we value are instrumental values. Socrates in our selection from The Republic mentions two instrumental values:_______. ____ is an instrumental good in that it can hardly be valued for its own sake. We can ask "What is medicine for?" The answer is, "It is to promote health." But is health an intrinsic value or an instrumental one? Can we ask "What is health for?" Some will agree with Socrates that health is good for itself and for other things as well, such as happiness and creative activity. Others will dispute Socrates' contention and judge health to be wholly an instrumental good. ____ is Socrates' other example of an instrumental value. Few, if any, of us really value money for its own sake, but almost all of us value it for what it can buy. When we ask "What is money for?" we arrive at such goods as food and clothing, shelter and automobiles, and entertainment and education. But are any of these really intrinsic goods, or are they all instrumental goods? When we ask, for example, "What is entertainment for?" what answer do we come up with? Most of us would mention enjoyment or pleasure, Socrates' example of an intrinsic good. Can we further ask "What is enjoyment or pleasure for?" We examine this question in the next section, but, before we do, we need to ask whether the notion of intrinsic values makes any sense.

Medicine and money medicine money

This was also _____ philosophy in Aldous Huxley's _______. The brave new world is a society of the future where people have been liberated from disease, violence, and crime through immunization, genetic engineering, and behavior modification. They are protected from depression and unhappiness through a drug, soma, that offers them euphoric sensations. Mustapha Mond, the brilliant manager of the society, defends this hedonistic utopia against one of the few remaining malcontents, the "Savage," who complains that something of value is missing in this "utopia." The following dialogue is between Mustapha Mond, the genius technocrat who governs the brave new world, and the malcontent, "Savage," who believes that this hedonic paradise lacks something.

Mustapha Mond's Brave New World

1. Material and physical value: health, comfort, physical security 2. Economic value: economic security, productiveness 3. Moral value: honesty, fairness, kindness 4. Social value: generosity, politeness, graciousness 5. Political value: freedom, justice 6. Aesthetic value: beauty, symmetry, grace 7. Religious value: piety, obedience, faith 8. Intellectual value: intelligence, clarity, knowledge

Nicholas Rescher, though, classifies some basic values into these eight categories:

______ view on values (the absolutist version) was given by ___ (428-348 BCE), who taught that the Good was the highest form, ineffable, godlike, independent, and knowable only after a protracted education in philosophy. We desire the Good because it is good. Philosophers in the Platonic tradition hold to the independent existence of values apart from human or rational interest. For example, _____ claims that the Good is a simple, unanalyzable quality, such as the color yellow, but one that must be known through intuition. Moore believes that a world with beauty is more valuable than one that is a garbage dump, regardless of whether there are conscious beings in those worlds: Let us imagine one world exceedingly beautiful. Imagine it as beautiful as you can ... and then imagine the ugliest world you can possibly conceive. Imagine it simply one heap of filth. Moore asks us whether, even if there were no conscious being who might derive pleasure or pain in either world, we would prefer the first world to exist rather than the second. Moore believes that it is obvious that the beautiful world is inherently better, but the objector asks, "What good is such a world if there is no one (even God) to enjoy it?" Other, weaker objectivist versions treat values as emergent properties, or qualities in the nature of things. That is, just as the wetness of water is not in the H2O molecules but in the interaction of our nervous system with millions of those molecules, and just as smoothness is not in the table that I am touching but in the relationship between the electrical charges of the subatomic particles of which the table is made up and my nervous system, so values (or good qualities) emerge in the relationship between conscious beings and physical and social existence. They are synergistic entities, depending on both our nature and their objective properties.

Objectivist view Plato G. E. Moore

The Greek philosopher _______(ca. 435-366 BCE) espoused the sensualist position; that is, the only (or primary) good was sensual pleasure, and this goodness was defined in terms of its intensity.

Aristippus

Finally, we want to ask what kind of life is most worth living. _____ (384- 322 BCE) wrote long ago that what all people seek is _____: There is very general agreement; for both the common person and people of superior refinement say that it is happiness, and identify living well and doing well with being happy; but with regard to what happiness is they differ, and the many do not give the same account as the wise. For the former think it is some plain and obvious thing, like pleasure, wealth or honor. What is happiness? Again, the field divides up among objectivists, subjectivists, and combination theorists. The objectivists, following ______ & ________, distinguish happiness from pleasure and speak of a single ideal for human nature; if we do not reach that ideal, then we have failed. Happiness (from the Greek eudaimonia, literally meaning "good demon") is not merely a subjective state of pleasure or contentment but the kind of life we would all want to live if we understood our essential nature. Just as knives and forks and wheels have functions, so do species, including the human species. Our function (sometimes called our "essence") is to live according to reason and thereby to become a certain sort of highly rational, disciplined being. When we fulfill the ideal of living the virtuous life, we are truly happy. ____ speaks of happiness as "harmony of the soul." Just as the body is healthy when it is in harmony with itself and the political state is a good state when it is functioning harmoniously, so the soul is happy when all its features are functioning in harmonious accord, with the rational faculty ruling over the spirited and emotional elements. Although we no doubt know when we are happy and feel good about ourselves, the subjective feeling does not itself define happiness, for people who fail to attain human excellence can also feel happy via self-deception or ignorance.

Aristotle happiness Plato and Aristotle "good demon" Plato

_____ put it, "Mere living is not a good, but to live well is a good."

As one Stoic philosopher

"We never strive for, wish for, long for, or desire anything, because we deem it to be good, but, rather, we deem a thing good, because we strive for it, wish for it, long for it, or desire it."

BENEDICT DE SPINOZA, ETHICS

The ancient ______ believed that when life became burdensome, one had the obligation to commit suicide, for it was not the quantity of life that counted but the quality.

Greeks and Romans

hedonists and non-hedonists.

Philosophers divide into two broad camps:

______ treats values as merely products of conscious desire. The American pragmatist Ralph Barton Perry (1876-1957) states that a value is simply the object of interest. Values are created by desires, and they are valuable just to that degree to which they are desired: The stronger the desire, the greater the value. The difference between the subjectivist and the weak objectivist position (or mixed view) is simply that the subjectivist makes no normative claims about "proper desiring," instead judging all desires as equal. Anything one happens to desire is, by definition, a value, a good.

Subjectivism

(from hedon, Greek for "pleasure") asserts that all pleasure is good, that pleasure is the only thing good in itself, and that all other goodness is derived from this value. An experience is good in itself if and only if it provides some pleasure. Sometimes, this definition is widened to include the lessening of pain, pain being seen as the only thing bad in itself. For simplicity's sake, we will use the former definition, realizing that it may need to be supplemented by reference to pain. Hedonists subdivide into two categories: (1) sensualism, the view that equates all pleasure with sensual enjoyment, and (2) satisfactionism, the view that equates all pleasure with satisfaction or enjoyment, which may not involve sensuality. Satisfaction is a pleasurable state of consciousness such as we might experience after accomplishing a successful venture or receiving a gift. The opposite of sensual enjoyment is physical pain; the opposite of satisfaction is displeasure or dissatisfaction.

The hedonist

(1) purely intrinsic goods (of which simple joys are an example); (2) purely instrumental goods (of which medicine and making money are examples); and (3) combination goods (such as knowledge, sight, and health), which are good in themselves and good as a means to further goods.

The question "What things are good or valuable?" is ambiguous. We need first to separate the kinds of values or goods there are. In the above, Socrates distinguishes three kinds of goods:

1. Action. We are entirely passive in the machine, a mere spectator. But the good life requires participation in our own destiny. We don't just want things to happen to us; we want to accomplish things, even at the risk of failure. 2. Freedom. Not only do we want to do things, but we want to make choices. In the Happiness Machine, we are entirely determined by a preordained plan—we cannot do otherwise. In fact, we cannot do anything but react to what has been programmed into the machine. 3. Character. Not only do we want to do things and act freely, but we also want to be something and someone. To have character is to be a certain kind of person, ideally one who is trustworthy, worthy of respect, and responsible for one's actions. In the machine, we lose our identity. We are defined only by our experience but have no character. We are not persons who act out of set dispositions, for we never act at all. We are mere floating blobs in a glorified bathtub. 4. Relationships. There are no real people in our Happiness Machine life. We subsist in splendid solipsism. All the world is a figment of our imagination as dictated by the machine; our friends and loved ones are mere products of our fancy. But we want to love and be loved by real people, not by phantasms.

When I ask this question in class, I get mixed responses. Many students say they would enter the Happiness Machine; most say they would not. I myself would not, for the same reason that I do not use drugs and rarely watch television or spectator sports—because some very important things are missing that are necessary for the happy life. What are these vital missing ingredients?

In a sense, all value is extrinsic, or a product of ____. Many existentialists, most notably________, believe that we invent our values by arbitrary choice. The freedom to create our values and thus to define ourselves is godlike and, at the same time, deeply frightening, for we have no one to blame for our failures but ourselves. "We are condemned to freedom.... Value is nothing else but the meaning that you choose. One may choose anything so long as it is done from the ground of freedom." Even Sartre's condition for choosing a value, freedom, is not a value that we choose but have thrust upon us by our nature. We could override our freedom for other values, but we can no more choose whether to value it or not value it than we can choose whether or not to be hungry or thirsty after being deprived of food or drink for days. It is as though God or evolution preprogrammed us to desire these basic goods.

choosing Jean-Paul Sartre

The _____ view tries to incorporate aspects of both the objectivist and the subjectivist views. One version is John Rawls's "plan of life" conception of happiness: There is a plurality of life plans open to each person, and what is important is that the plan be an integrated whole, freely chosen by the person, and that the person be successful in realizing his or her goals. This view is predominantly subjective in that it recognizes the person as the autonomous chooser of goals and a plan. Even if a person should choose a life plan whose only pleasure is to count blades of grass in various geometrically shaped areas such as park squares and well-trimmed lawns, ... our definition of the good forces us to admit that the good for this man is indeed counting blades of grass. However, Rawls recognizes an objective element in an otherwise subjective schema. There are primary goods that are necessary to any worthwhile life plan: "rights and liberties, powers and opportunities, income and wealth, ... self-respect, ... health and vigor, intelligence and imagination." The primary goods function as the core (or the hub of the wheel) from which may be derived any number of possible life plans (the spokes). But unless these primary goods (or most of them) are present, the life plan is not an authentic manifestation of an individual's autonomous choice of his or her own selfhood. Thus, it is perfectly possible that people believe themselves to be happy when they really are not.

combination

The location of values in the schema of the moral process (box 3) indicates that values are central to the domain of morality. They are the source of principles (box 4) and rooted in the forms of life (box 2). Examples of values are life, loving relationships, freedom, privacy, happiness, creative activity, knowledge, health, integrity, and rationality. From our values, we derive principles (box 4), which we may call action-guiding value "instantiators" or "exemplifiers" (because they make clear the action-guiding or prescriptive force latent in values). From the value "life," we derive the principles "Promote and protect life" and/or "Thou shall not kill." From the value "freedom," we derive the principle "Thou shall not deprive another of his or her freedom." From the value "privacy," we derive the principle "Respect every person's privacy." From the value "happiness," we derive the principle "Promote human happiness," and so forth with all the other values. This schema makes no judgment as to whether values are objective or subjective, intrinsic or instrumental. Neither does it take a stand on whether values or principles are absolute; they need not be absolute. Most systems allow that all or most values and principles are overridable. That is, they are considerations that direct our actions, and whenever they clash, an adjudication must take place to decide which principle overrides the other in the present circumstances. We often find ourselves in moral situations in which one or more principles apply. We speak of making a judgment as to which principle applies to our situation or which principle wins out in the competition when two or more principles apply (box 5). The correct principle defines our duty. For example, we have the opportunity to cheat on a test and immediately judge that the principle of honesty (derived from the value integrity) applies to our situation. Or there might be an interpersonal disagreement in which two or more people differ on which of two values outweighs the other in importance, as when Mary argues that Jill should not have an abortion because the value of life outweighs Jill's freedom and bodily integrity, but John argues that Jill's freedom and bodily integrity outweigh the value of life. Even after we judge which principle applies, we are not yet finished with the moral process. We must still ____ to do the morally right act. Then finally, we must actually ____ the right act. Note the possibilities for failure all along the way. We may fail to apply the right principle to the situation (the arrow between boxes 4 and 5). For example, we may simply neglect to bring to mind the principle against cheating. This is a failure of application. But even after we make the correct judgment, we may fail to make the right choice, deciding to cheat anyway. In this case, we have a perverse will (the arrow between boxes 5 and 6). Finally, we may make the correct choice but fail to carry out our decision (the arrow between boxes 6 and 7). We call this weakness of will: We mean to do the right act but simply are too morally weak to accomplish it. In our example, we meant to refrain from cheating but couldn't control ourselves. "The good that I would, I do not, but the evil that I would not, that I do." A more controversial matter concerns the deep structure in which values are rooted. Some theories deny that there is any deep structure but assert instead that values simply exist in their own right—independently, as it were. More often, however, values are seen as rooted in whole forms of life (box 2) that can be actual or ideal, such as Plato's _____ or Aristotle's ____ or the Judeo-Christian notion of the kingdom of God (the ideal synagogue or church). Ways of life or cultures are holistic and hierarchical combinations of ___, ____, and ___.

decide do hierarchical society aristocracy beliefs, values, and practices

The deepest question about morality is whether and how these forms of life are justified (box 1). Are some forms of life better or more justified than others? If so, how does one justify a form of life? Candidates for justification are ideas such as God's will, human happiness, the flourishing of all creation, the canons of impartiality and knowledge, a deeply rational social contract (Hobbes and Rawls), and the like. For example, a theist might argue that the____________(that is, the ideal form of life) is justified by being commanded by God. A _______ would maintain that the ultimate criterion is the promotion of welfare or utility. A _____ or secular humanist might argue that the ideal system is justified by the fact that it best meets human need or promotes human flourishing or that it would be the one chosen by ideally rational persons. Some ethicists would make level 2 the final source of justification, denying that there is any ideal justification at all. These are the ethical relativists, who contend that each moral system is correct simply by being chosen by the culture or individual. The main point of the schema, however, is not to decide on the exact deep structure of morality but to indicate that values are rooted in cultural constructs and are the foundation for moral principles upon which moral reasoning is based. We could also devise a similar schema for the relationship between values and virtues (to be discussed in Chapter 9). Each virtue is based on a value and each vice on a disvalue.

ideal system of morality utilitarian naturalist

_____ are worthy of desire because they are effective means of attaining our intrinsic goods. Plato makes this distinction in his book, _______

instrumental goods The Republic

Are there any ___ values? Are there any entities whose values are not derived from something else—that is, that are sought for their own sake, that are inherently good, good in themselves? Or are all values relative to desirers— that is, instrumental to goals that are the creation of choosers? Those who espouse the notion of intrinsic value usually argue that pleasure is an example of an intrinsic value and pain an example of an intrinsic disvalue: It is good to experience pleasure and bad to experience pain. Naturally, these philosophers admit that individual experiences of pleasure can be bad (because they result in some other disvalue such as a hangover after a drinking spree) and individual painful experiences can be valuable (for example, having a painful operation to save one's life). The intrinsicalist affirms that pleasure is just better than pain. We can see this straight off. We do not need any arguments to convince us that pleasure is good or that gratuitous pain is intrinsically bad. Suppose we see a man torturing a child and order him to stop at once. If he replies, "I agree that the child is experiencing great pain, but why should I stop torturing her?" we would suspect some mental aberration on his part.

intrinsic

The question, however, is whether moral right and wrong are themselves _____ (as ___ states, the moral law is "a jewel that shines in its own light") or whether rightness and wrongness are defined by their ability to further nonmoral values such as pleasure, happiness, health, and political harmony. To begin to understand this question and to get an overview of the workings of morality, let me offer a schema of the moral process (Figure 4.1), which may help in locating the role of values in moral theory.

intrinsic values Kant

Nonhedonists divide into two camps:____ and ____ Monists believe that there is a single intrinsic value, but it is not pleasure. Perhaps it is a transcendent value, "the Good," which we do not fully comprehend but which is the basis of all our other values. This seems to be Plato's view. Pluralists generally admit that pleasure or enjoyment is an intrinsic good, but they add that there are other intrinsic goods as well, such as knowledge, friendship, aesthetic beauty, freedom, love, moral goodness, and life itself.

monists and pluralists.

The _____ responds that this is counterintuitive. Consider, for example, the possibility of living in a Pleasure Machine. We have invented a complex machine into which people may enter to find pure and constant pleasure. Attached to their brains will be electrodes that send currents to the limbic area of the cerebral cortex and other parts of the brain, producing very powerful sensations of pleasure. When people get into the machine, they experience these wonderful feelings. Would you enter such a machine? If all you want is pleasure or satisfaction, then the Pleasure Machine seems the right choice. You're guaranteed all the pleasure you've ever dreamed of— without frustration or competition from other people. But if you want to do something and be something (for example, have good character or a certain quality of personality) or experience reality (for example, friendship and competition), then you might think twice about this choice. Is the Pleasure Machine not just another addiction—like alcohol, heroin, cocaine, or crack? Once in the machine, would we become forever addicted to it? Furthermore, if all you want is pleasure, why not just hire someone to tickle you for a lifetime? Wouldn't we become tired of being passive blobs—even if it was pleasurable? Most of us would reject such an existence as equivalent to that of a drugged cockroach. Or suppose there were two worlds with the same number of people and the same amount of total pleasure, but in World I the people were selfish and even evil, whereas in World II the people were deeply moral. Wouldn't it seem that World II was intrinsically better than World I? Or imagine two lives, those of Suzy and Izzy. Suzy possesses 100 hedons (units of pleasure), even though she is severely retarded and physically disabled, whereas Izzy enjoys great mental acumen and physical prowess but has only 99 hedons. Isn't it obvious that Izzy has the better life? But, hedonists are committed to saying that Suzy's life is better, which seems implausible.

nonhedonist

The _____ view fell out of favor with the rise of the evolutionary account of human nature, which undermined the sense of a preordained essence or function. Science cannot discover any innate telos, or goal, to which all people must strive. The contemporary bias is in favor of value pluralism—that is, the view that there are many ways of finding happiness: "Let a thousand flowers bloom." This leads to subjectivism.

objectivist

The_____ responds that we can separate the Good from what one desires. We can say, for example, that Joan desires more than anything else to get into the Pleasure Machine, but it is not good; or that John desires more than anything else to join the Satanic Society, where he will pursue evil for evil's sake, engaging in sadomasochistic behavior, but it is not good (not even for John). There is something just plain bad about the Pleasure Machine and the Satanic Society, even if Joan and John never experience any dissatisfaction on account of them. On the other hand, suppose Joan does not want to have any friends and John does not want to know any history, literature, philosophy, or science (beyond whatever is necessary for his needs as a devotee of hardcore pornography or mud wrestling). The objectivist would reply that it really would be an objectively good thing if Joan did have friends and if John knew something about history, literature, philosophy, and science.

objectivist

Do we desire the Good because it is good, or is the Good good because we desire it? The ____ holds that values are worthy of desire whether or not anyone actually desires them; they are somehow independent of us. The _____ holds, to the contrary, that values are dependent on desirers, are relative to desirers.

objectivist subjectivist

The distinction between pleasure as satisfaction and as sensation is important, and failure to recognize it results in confusion and paradox. One example of this is the _________. How can it be that the masochist enjoys (that is, takes pleasure in) pain, which is the opposite of pleasure? "Well," the hedonist responds, "because of certain psychological aberrations, the masochist enjoys (as satisfaction) what is painful (as sensation)." But he or she does not enjoy (as sensation) what is painful (as sensation). There is also a two-level analysis to explain the masochist's behavior: On a lower, or basic, level, he is experiencing either pain or dissatisfaction, but on a higher level, he approves and finds satisfaction from that pain or dissatisfaction.

paradox of masochism.

The ____ version of happiness states that happiness is in the eyes of the beholder. You are just as happy as you think you are—no more, no less. The concept is not a descriptive one but a first-person evaluation. I am the only one who decides or knows whether I am happy. If I feel happy, I am happy, even though everyone else despises my lifestyle. Logically, happiness has nothing to do with virtue, although—due to our social nature—it usually turns out that we will feel better about ourselves if we are virtuous.

subjectivist

Although ____ & ____ views dominate the literature today, there is some movement back to an essentialist, or Aristotelian, view of happiness as a life directed toward worthwhile goals. Some lifestyles are more worthy than others, and some may be worthless. Philosopher Richard Kraut asks us to imagine a man who has as his idea of happiness the state of affairs of being loved, admired, or respected by his friends and who would hate to have his "friends" only pretend to care for him. Suppose his "friends" really do hate him but "orchestrate an elaborate deception, giving him every reason to believe that they love and admire him, though in fact they don't. And he is taken in by the illusion." Can we really call this man happy? Or suppose a woman centers her entire life around an imaginary Prince Charming. She refuses to date—let alone marry—perfectly eligible young men; she turns down educational travel opportunities lest they distract her from this wonderful future event; for ninety-five years, she bores all her patient friends with tales of the prince's imminent appearance. As death approaches at age ninety-six, after a lifetime of disappointment, she discovers that she's been duped; she suddenly realizes that what appeared to be a happy life was a stupid, self-deceived, miserable existence. Would we say that our heroine was happy up until her deathbed revelation? Do these thought experiments not indicate that our happiness depends, at least to some extent, on reality and not simply on our own evaluation? Or suppose we improve on our Pleasure Machine, turning it into a Happiness Machine. This machine is a large tub that is filled with a chemical solution. Electrodes are attached to many more parts of your brain. You work with the technician to program all the "happy experiences" that you have ever wanted. Suppose that includes wanting to be a football star, a halfback who breaks tackles like a dog shakes off fleas and who has a fondness for scoring last-minute game-winning touchdowns. Or perhaps you've always wanted to be a movie star and to bask in the public's love and admiration. Or maybe you've wanted to be the world's richest person, living in the splendor of a magnificent castle, with servants faithfully at your beck and call. In fact, with the Happiness Machine you can have all of these plus passionate romance and the love of the most beautiful (or handsome) people in the world. All these marvelous adventures would be simulated, and you would truly believe you were experiencing them. Would you enter the Happiness Machine? What if I told you that once you were unplugged, you could either stay out or go in for another round but that no one who entered the machine ever chose to leave of his or her own accord, having become addicted to its pleasures and believing that reality could never match its ecstasy. Now you have an opportunity to enter the Happiness Machine for the first time. Will you enter? If not, are you not voting against making the subjectivist view (or even the plan-of-life view) the sole interpretation of happiness?

subjectivist and plan-of-life

For example, if we were not beings with desires, we would not be in a position to appreciate values; but once there are such beings, certain things—such as pleasure, knowledge, freedom, friendship, and health—will be ____, and others—such as pain, suffering, boredom, loneliness, disease, and death—will be _____ or not valued for their own sake. This synergistic view recognizes both a subjective and an objective aspect to value.

valuable disvalued