Objective List Internalism and The Double Desire View
One attractive part of ideal-desire accounts of welfare is that they seem to not be paternalistic. That is, the things that are good for someone are always constituted by some property that they have. Namely, the dispositional property to desire that thing under some ideal circumstances. Let’s call this The Endorsement Feature. Moreover, let’s say that views that have The Endorsement Feature are internalist views. The Endorsement Feature has intuitive support. It is odd to think that something could be good for me if I don’t endorse it in some way.
A common objection to objective list theories of welfare is that they don’t have The Endorsement Feature. They hold, that is, that something can be good for you even if you don’t endorse it in some way. But there is no structural reason why objective list views cannot be internalist views. We could have a conjunctive account–objective list internalism. Objective list internalism would be made up of two conjuncts: The first conjunct is some analysis that determines what goes on the list (that is not in terms of desirability) and the second conjunct would express The Endorsement Feature. It would like this:
oli: G is good for A iff (i) G is on the list L and A endorses G.
I think that OLI captures the intuitive idea behind The Endorsement Feature better than ideal desire accounts. Here’s why: According to OLI, in order for something to be good for you actually have to endorse it. This isn’t the case on ideal desire views. On those views, it’s just the case that you have some disposition to endorse it under some ideal circumstances. It might be that, in the actual world, you despise the thing, but in the world where you have full information you endorse it. Although I agree that ideal-desire views capture some of the intuitive features of The Endorsement Feature, I think that OLI better captures the intuitiveness of The Endorsement Feature.
Moreover, it might be able to do so while also avoiding the big problems with actual-desire views of welfare. The main problem being that you sometimes actually desire things that are intuitively bad for you. But OLI might be able to bar those endorsements from counting if the analysis about what goes on the list is extensionally correct. Thus, it might be able to have its cake and eat it too. It might be able to get actual endorsement to count while also barring problems with actual endorsement counting.
There are at least two big problems with OLI. First, it’s not clear how we should weigh the strength of endorsement vs. the weight of things on the list. If you think that things on the list are more or less good for someone, and you think that how much the person endorses the thing matters to how good something is for that person, then you will have to tell a balancing story. That is, you will have to tell a story about how to determine what’s better and best for a person.
But initially I am not convinced that this is a really deep problem. One might think that the first conjunct is satisfied just in case the thing is on L. There aren’t any things on L that are better or worse for you to have. If you did it that way, then the way you determine what’s better or best for a person is to make a preference ranking for all of the things that they endorse that are on the list. Thus, the weighting measure is roughly the same as it is on ideal-desire theories. (You might even think it is better insofar as it is easier to come up with a decision procedure about how to do the ranking; this is because the ranking is based on your actual preferences, not on your dispositional ones).
The second problem is much deeper. It is hard to see exactly what the first conjunct is going to be if the analysis given cannot be in terms of desirability. I simply cannot think of a plausible candidate. Can anyone else? I’m sure some will say pleasure. Perhaps some will say capabilities or functionings. But doesn’t desirability of some type seem better than those options? It does to me.
But this leads immediately to another conjunctive view. The Double Desire View. On The Double Desire View, something is good for you just in case you have the dispositional property of endorsing it under ideal circumstances and you actually endorse it. It looks like this:
ddv: G is good for A iff (i) A has to dispositional property of desiring G under ideal circumstances and (ii) A actually endorses G.
Perhaps this view has all of the virtues of the ideal-desire view and all of the virtues of objective list internalism.
Does it?
Instead of being a ‘best of both worlds’ perspective, the double-desire view (DDV) succumbs to the problems of a desire-satisfaction account of welfare. Having a disposition to desire G under ideal circumstances and actually endorsing G is simply to say that what I ideally want is what I actually endorse. This is not a move in a positive direction. That is, this is not a move that sidesteps the difficulty of coming up with an objective list not formulated in terms of desirability. Instead, it takes on objections leveled against the desire-satisfaction view from both ends–objections to ‘ideal’ and ‘actual’ versions. Problems with actually endorsing ideal desires include the temporal problems of the instability of endorsements over time. Surely what you actually endorse based on being ideally informed will alter, though perhaps less drastically, similar to the way actual desires change over time. Further, actual endorsements may be wrong or misguided. Even if I actually endorse desires formulated under ideal conditions, satisfying those desires still may not enhance my welfare. My beliefs formed at the actual time of endorsement may be false. That is, acting on the actual endorsement, pointed at ideal desires, may not truly (as I believe at the time) bring me satisfaction. This brings up, perhaps, a problem with Errol’s Objective List Internalism (OLI).
The nice thing about an objective-list account of wellbeing is that it fixes the target of what counts as good for a person. Something is good or bad regardless of whether a person actually desires it. OLI adds to such an account a form of internalism that says that a person actually endorses what is on the list. I’m wondering why Errol says, “there is no structural reason why objective list views cannot be internalist views.” Perhaps if the reasoning behind the objective-internalist combo is more spelled-out it will quite my concerns.
However, for the time being, the quickest way to collapse DDV is to point out there is redundancy in its formulation. This is brought out by first looking at DDV. Errrol first casts the Endorsement Feature in terms of having a “dispositional property to desire that thing under some ideal circumstances.” Then, he says that OLI is good because, “in order for something to be good for you [you] actually have to endorse it.” I would argue that this shifting characterization of the Endorsement Feature (from ideal to actual) is unwarranted. This move is the result of confusion about what objective-list theorists are after. They are looking for the nature of wellbeing and what counts as flourishing for a person. Something does not go on the list because people actually desire it or it affects well-being. Objective-list theories are not making a laundry list of things that promote (or detract from) welfare. Instead, they are trying to identify the objective constituents of welfare. This has nothing to do with what people actually endorse (or, even, ideally desire). Thus, when Errol formulates DDV he has either, 1.) inconsistently applied the Endorsement Feature as initially formulated (shifting from ‘ideal’ to ‘actual’ without supplying premises for such a move), or 2.) DDV is redundant because, properly formulated, it says G is good for A iff (i) A has dispositional property of desiring G under ideal circumstances and (ii) A has the dispositional property to desire G under ideal circumstances. And, unless I am missing something, this seems to be a mere tautology?