When hedonism is combined with impartiality, as in classical utilitarianism, hedonism’s scope becomes universal. That is, they are only valued to the extent that they increase happiness and reduce suffering.

Other goods, such as wealth, health, justice, fairness, and equality, are also valued by hedonists, but they are valued instrumentally. Hedonists claim that all of these enjoyable experiences are intrinsically valuable. The hedonistic conception of happiness is broad: It covers not only paradigmatic instances of sensory pleasure-such as the experiences of eating delicious food or having sex-but also other positively valenced experiences, such as the experiences of solving a problem, reading a novel, or helping a friend. For the sake of readability, we refer to pleasant experiences as happiness and to unpleasant experiences as suffering. Conversely, the only basic welfare bads are unpleasant experiences such as pain and misery. On this view, the only basic welfare goods are pleasant experiences such as enjoyment and contentment. Hedonism is the view that well-being consists in, and only in, the balance of positive over negative conscious experiences. The theory of well-being that is built into classical utilitarianism is hedonism. 3 The differences between these theories are of primarily theoretical interest they overlap sufficiently in practice that the practical implications of utilitarianism are unlikely to depend upon which of these, if any, turns out to be the correct view. The three main theories of well-being are hedonism, desire theories, and objective list theories. 2 What things are in themselves good for a person? The diverging answers to this question give rise to a variety of theories of well-being, each of which regards different things as the components of well-being. However, there is widespread disagreement about what constitutes well-being. (We can similarly speak of things that are intrinsically bad for you, like misery, as “welfare bads”.)

In contrast, money can buy many useful things and is thus instrumentally good for you, but does not directly, in itself, contribute to your well-being. For example, happiness is intrinsically good for you it directly increases your well-being. The term well-being is used in philosophy to describe everything that is in itself good for someone-so-called intrinsic or basic welfare goods-as opposed to things that are only instrumentally good.

While consequentialists claim that what is right is to promote the amount of good in the world, welfarists specifically equate the good to be promoted with well-being. Practical Implications of Theories of Well-BeingĪ core element of utilitarianism is welfarism-the view that only the welfare (also called well-being) of individuals determines how good a particular state of the world is.

Define hedonism