Much of my current work concerns the nature and limits of well-being.  For the past two years I have been engaged in an integrated research program that spans topics in aesthetics, ethics, and, for lack of a better term, “analytic” (as opposed to historical) existentialism.  The unifying thread is well-being.

When we reflect on the motivations that we have for engaging in a variety of activities, we find a large number of important cases where we do not seek pleasure, and more importantly, where we are willing to sacrifice our well-being for other kinds of value.  By taking seriously the distinction between well-being and other types of value, such as the value of the meaning of a life, we can solve a variety of problems in value theory. 

I became interested in motivational psychology through the paradox of painful art (e.g., melodrama, horror, and sad music), which can be reduced to a simple question: Why do people seek out artworks that they know will arouse painful feelings?  By looking at a wide variety of works in different artforms and genres I came to the conclusion that pleasure has very little to do with why we value many artworks.  I have published three articles on the issue.  My most recent work concerns sad songs.  I argue that many people listen to sad songs, not to feel better, but to heighten their distress.  Powerful emotions elicited by sad songs help one reflect on events of profound personal significance.  They are often anti-cathartic.  We are far more interested in the value of our relationships than we are in any pleasure that the artworks might afford. 

As I proceeded to reflect on our motivations for a performing a wide variety of other types of actions, it became clear that pleasure was often not of central concern.  More importantly, I realized that often we are not interested in our own welfare.  Predominant motivational hedonism is wrong and horribly misleading.  A huge swath of the motivations for our actions has to do with the good of others—parents, friends, family, other loved ones, and even those to which we have passing obligations, such as our students.  Further, many of our seemingly self-interested motivations turn out to be for various forms of significance that have little or no prudential benefit.  Like Achilles, faced with the choice between a long life without glory and a short life of enduring significance, we frequently choose meaning over well-being.  For many of us, the significance of our lives is as important as our own happiness.  We knowingly sacrifice our own welfare, our own happiness, for meaning.  And this is as it should be.

Many philosophers do not think that a neat distinction can be drawn between well-being and the significance of one's life.  Some go so far as to argue for a direct link between the two: the value of the life for the one who lives it is greater if the life is of greater significance.  I think that this is generally the case, but not necessarily.  It is only by caring about significance that one can benefit prudentially from achievement.  I see the connection as indirect and plan to write a defense of the view in the near future.

I am currently working on a defense of mental statism about well-being.  Mental statism holds that the sole bearers of intrinsic prudential value are mental states.  To put it crudely the theory holds that what you do not experience cannot hurt you.  Mental statism has been subject to a barrage of objections, from experience machines to outer Mongolian pornographers.  But none of the objections stand up to careful scrutiny.  I argue that the principal objections to mental statism confuse conceptually distinct sources of value, typically the value of a life for the one who lives it and the significance of the life.  This style of reply is not unprecedented, but there is no comprehensive defense in the literature.  I am at work on a paper replying to about a dozen objections to mental statism.

Although I defend mental statism, I reject the popular forms of hedonism—the view that the only thing that makes a life better for the one who lives it is pleasure.  In fact, I do not think that pleasure is very important to the good life.  The most plausible forms of hedonism hold that attitudinal, not sensory pleasure is what matters.  I find this style of hedonism unworkable, principally because I reject the distinction between attitudinal and sensory pleasure.  I am working on a defense of a unified theory of pleasure.  My first foray into the area, "The Feels Good Theory of Pleasure," is forthcoming in Philosophical Studies.  In that paper I defend a hedonic tone theory of pleasure, holding that what makes all pleasurable experiences pleasurable is that they feel good.  I plan to further address the attitudinal/sensory distinction.

The major competitor to hedonism is desire-satisfactionism.  It comes in both objective and subjective variants.  I reject both.  The objective theory suffers from a variety of well-known problems.  The principal defect is that it is highly implausible to think that mere satisfaction in the logician's sense (i.e., what we desire comes true) can make our lives any better for us.  The subjective variant fares no better.  It holds that the felt satisfaction of desires is what makes a life go well for the one who lives it.   I plan to develop the following dilemma for subjective desire-satisfactionism.  I ask: to what degree are we made better off?  Is it to the degree of the intensity of the desire or the intensity of the satisfaction?  Neither is a good candidate.  The central problem is that the intensity of desire is frequently unmatched by the intensity of the satisfaction.  Appealing to the intensity of the desire is to affirm the rejected objective theory.  However, if the satisfaction is what counts, then why make reference to desires at all?   Why not just the satisfaction?  But this will not do; it is not plausible that felt satisfaction is the only thing that is good for us. 

The theory of well-being that I find most attractive is a subjective happiness theory.  For complex creatures like use, the kind of happiness that has the most impact on our well-being is that which comes from subjective life-satisfaction.  A person's life is good for them to the extent that they are happy with how things are going.  Neither mollusks nor swine are capable of this kind of happiness.  People are different.  They simply cannot be transformed into pigs without loss of identity.  I plan to develop a defense of this form of mental statism from problems concerning less dramatic forms of inauthentic happiness, such as the small mercies that lead the over-burdened coolie to think his life is going well.  I suspect that although we abhor violations of autonomy, they do not necessarily make our lives less good for us.

Several of my other projects explore the implications of mental statism for issues in the philosophy of death.  Assuming mental statism, I recently finished a paper defending a modest form of Epicureanism—death is never bad for the one who dies.  In the future, I plan on addressing the rational fear of death and the possibility of posthumous harms.