Location: Conference Room K 7

Welcome and Introduction

09:30 – 10:40:

Brad Hooker (University of Reading, UK):

"Well-Being and Fittingness" Since the time of John Stuart Mill, in the English-speaking countries, most discussions of well-being have ignored the concept of fittingness. For example, while many discussions have considered the impacts on one’s well-being of one’s mental states, these discussions of well-being have ignored whether one’s emotions and preferences are fitting given their subject matters, or objects. (To a large extent, I am among those who are guilty of this accusation.) This paper will investigate the implications for well-being of normative pressures to have only the beliefs and attitudes that fit their objects.Abstract

10:40 – 11:10:

Coffee Break

11:10 – 12:20:

Guy Fletcher (University of Edinburgh, UK) - online:

“All’s Well that Ends Well?” Distinguish how well someone’s life is going at a particular point – their momentary well-being – from how well their life went as a whole, their lifetime well-being. How are these related? The simplest answer is that lifetime well-being is just aggregate momentary well-being. Theories that deny this are forms of holism about lifetime well-being. Recent discussions of holism, inspired by David Velleman, have focused heavily on one particular species of it, the so-called 'shape of a life' hypothesis. This is the claim that having an “uphill” distribution of momentary well-being contributes to lifetime well-being and does so over and above the instrumental effects that such a distribution might have upon momentary well-being. In this paper I outline a set of problems for the shape of a life hypothesis. I then introduce an alternative view which avoids those problems and argue for its independent plausibility.Abstract

12:20 – 14:00:

Lunch Break

14:00 – 15:10:

Ole Martin Moen (Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway):

“Was Aristotle a hedonist about well-being?” Aristotle discusses the value of pleasure extensively in Nicomachean Ethics. In Book 7, he argues that pleasure is intrinsically good. In Book 10, Aristotle considers whether pleasure is the only intrinsic good (i.e. hedonism), and presents a number of arguments against the hedonistic position of Eudoxus. In this talk I make the case that Aristotle can nevertheless reasonably be interpreted as a hedonist.Abstract

15:10 – 15:40:

Coffee Break

15:40 – 16:50:

Susanne Burri (University of Konstanz, Germany):

“Death, Wellbeing, and Morality” In her autobiography, the hospice carer Bronnie Ware recounts how her patients (mostly very wealthy Australians) tended to be plagued by five “top regrets”. According to Ware, many people on their deathbeds regret working as hard as they did; they wish they had spent more time with friends and family. Many also feel that they lived inauthentic lives, giving in to the expectations of others instead of pursuing their dreams. In my talk, I will take it as a starting point that many of our choices in life are choices that we tend to regret once our own death appears imminent. I will investigate what follows from this, particularly for desire fulfilment views of wellbeing, but also for the relationship between wellbeing and morality. Might we, for example, live more moral lives if we focused on minimizing expected deathbed regrets? Abstract

19:00:

Conference Dinner at Constanzer Wirtshaus

Location: Conference Room K 7

Introduction

09:30 – 10:40:

Roger Crisp (University of Oxford, UK):

“The profoundest problem of ethics” The relation of morality to well-being is one of the oldest human questions, in life as in philosophy. Some have seen them as entirely at odds, others as identical, and yet others as partly consistent. This paper will critically consider some important accounts of the relation, focusing on the Socratic tradition (especially Aristotle) and the British moralists. The aim of many philosophers to prove that the life of virtue is the best life for the agent has been one of the most ambitious in the history of philosophy. The paper will conclude that, though the aim has not and could not be achieved, this does not justify the lack of attention to the relation in contemporary ethics.Abstract

10:40 – 11:10:

Coffee Break

11:10 – 12:20:

Lisa Schmalzried (Wittenberg Center for Global Ethics, Germany):

“Why should I care?” We should care! – This demand is at the heart of the ethics of care. Caring means being concerned about a person’s well-being, preventing harm, and helping her grow and flourish. But why should we take on caring, especially considering that caring is time-consuming, requires much attention on the cared-for, and might put the caregiver into a position of secondary dependency? I first argue against an instrumentalist answer. The reason we should care cannot (only) be that caring contributes to the (long-term) well-being of the caregiver despite its costs and risks. Instead, we should care for x because of x’s (situational-systemic) vulnerability. Someone is vulnerable when she is at risk of being harmed or hindered in her flourishing by being dependent, i.a., on the non-interference and/or support of other human beings. Care is the normative answer to vulnerability. If I can care for a vulnerable person, I should care.Abstract

12:20 – 14:00:

Lunch Break

14:00 – 15:10:

Paul Bloomfield (University of Connecticut, USA):

“Self-Respect as the Reward of Morality” Why be moral when you can be immoral, get what you want, and get away with it? Answering this question has been called “the Holy Grail” of moral philosophy. The answer comes in the form of a syllogism: being immoral is harmful to a person’s self-respect; self-respect is necessary for happiness; therefore being immoral is harmful to happiness. So, if one wants to be happy, then one has reason to be moral, even if one can get away with immorality. The reward of morality is that it is the only path to self-respect, and therefore happiness.Abstract

15:10 – 15:40:

Coffee Break

15:40 – 16:50:

Melanie Spangehl (University of Konstanz, Germany):

“The Benefit of Morality is the Quality of Pleasure” In Book IX of the Republic Socrates claims, that due to the quality of pleasure the life of the moral sovereign is exactly 729 times better than the life of the immoral tyrant. This idea of quality differences in pleasure has enriched John Stuart Mill’s and Fred Feldman’s versions of welfare hedonism. While Jeremy Bentham’s Quantitative Hedonism (Q) suggests that welfare solely depends on intensity and duration of pleasure, Mill’s Qualitative Hedonism (Q*) and Feldman’s Desert Hedonism (D) make it essentially dependent on kind or desert. (Q) implies that quantity of pleasure being equal, moral pleasure is as good as immoral pleasure, but in (Q*) and (D) it is insisted that moral pleasure scores higher than immoral pleasure. In my talk, I explore whether the Socratic claim of a benefit of morality in terms of “quality of pleasure” can be vindicated. I argue that this is not possible within welfare hedonism, because (Q*) and (D) vindicate it by violating hedonism. Abstract

19:00:

Conference Dinner at Wessenberg Haus