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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 August 2011
The standard view holds that the degree to which an individual's preferences are satisfied is simply the degree to which the individual prefers the prospect that is realized to the other prospects in her preference domain. In this article, I reject the standard view by showing that it violates one fundamental intuition about degrees of preference satisfaction.
1 See, for instance, Harsanyi, John, Rational Behaviour and Bargaining Equilibrium in Games and Social Situations (Cambridge, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hare, Richard, Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method and Point (Oxford, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Griffin, James, Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement, and Moral Importance (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar.
2 Throughout this article, I shall speak of preferences as roughly synonymous with desires. Importantly, I shall take the degree of preference for one prospect to be the degree to which the individual desires that prospect. For this understanding of degrees of preference, see also Pettit, Philip, ‘Preference, Deliberation and Satisfaction’, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 81 (2006), pp. 131–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Bradley, Richard, ‘Comparing Evaluations’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 108 (2007), pp. 85–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 See also Hausman, Daniel, ‘The Impossibility of Interpersonal Utility Comparisons’, Mind 104 (1995), pp. 473–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 473.
4 One reason is that the preference satisfaction theory is immune from the ‘experience machine’ objection against hedonist theories of well-being. For this objection, see Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York, 1974)Google Scholar.
5 See, for instance, Harsanyi, Rational Behaviour and Bargaining Equilibrium in Games and Social Situations; Pettit, ‘Preference, Deliberation and Satisfaction’; and Bradley, ‘Comparing Evaluations’.
6 See Isbell, John, ‘Absolute Games’, Contributions to the Theory of Games, ed. Tucker, A. W. and Luce, R. D. (Princeton, 1959), pp. 357–96Google Scholar.
7 Hausman makes a similar proposal, even though his goal is not to defend the ‘intensity view’ (Hausman, ‘The Impossibility of Interpersonal Utility Comparisons’, p. 480).
8 See Pettit, ‘Preference, Deliberation and Satisfaction’, pp. 134–8.
9 See Nozick, Robert, ‘Interpersonal Utility Theory’, Social Choice and Welfare 2 (1985), pp. 161–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. pp. 167–8.
10 See Bradley, ‘Comparing Evaluations’, pp. 95–6.
11 See Ramsey, Frank, ‘Truth and Probability’ (1926), reprinted in Philosophical Papers, ed. Mellor, D. H. (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 52–109Google Scholar.
12 To clarify the notation: the prospect (p & q) is the prospect that both p and q are the case, while the prospect ¬p is the prospect that p is not the case. See also Bradley, ‘Comparing Evaluations’, p. 91.
13 More strongly, preference intensity and preference satisfaction will not coincide unless every prospect is ranked the same. This is the only way for the ethically neutral prospect to occupy the bottom position in the individual's preference ranking and, thereby, for the natural zero of preference intensity to coincide with the natural zero of preference satisfaction. Indeed, if there is at least one prospect x that is strictly preferred to the ethically neutral prospect p, then x P p entails that p P ¬x, for x, p ∈ A. The ethically neutral prospect p is not at the bottom of the individual's ranking and, therefore, preference satisfaction and preference intensity do not coincide. Thanks to Richard Bradley for drawing my attention to this point.
14 I would like to thank Richard Bradley, Armin Schulz, Alain Voizard and two anonymous referees for their comments on previous drafts of the article.
