¹ Sumner, L. W., Abortion and Moral Theory, Princeton, 1981, pp. 181–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bond, E. J., Reason and Value, Cambridge, 1983, p. 45.Google Scholar

² The development of their theory, which originated with Grisez, is outlined in GPB, ‘Practical Principles, Moral Truth and Ultimate Ends’, American Journal of Jurisprudence, xxxii (1987) (hereafter, PP), 148–51.Google Scholar

³ Finnis, J., Natural Law and Natural Rights, Oxford, 1980 (hereafter, NLNR), pp. 86–90.Google Scholar A somewhat different list is set out in PP, 107–8.Google Scholar

⁴ In the Humean, rather than Aristotelian sense of the word: Finnis, J., Fundamentals of Ethics, Oxford, 1983 (hereafter, FE), pp. 35 and 44.Google Scholar

⁵ NLNR, pp. 59–61 and 95–6Google Scholar; FE, pp. 44 and 47.Google Scholar

⁶ Objective good theorists might not regard either alternative as better than the other, on the ground that the goods they make available are incommensurable: see, for example, NLNR, pp. 111–18Google Scholar, and FE, pp. 86–94.Google Scholar

⁷ Railton, P., ‘Moral Realism’, Philosophical Review, xcv (1986), 174–5.Google Scholar

⁸ Bond, , pp. 43 and 35–6; Sumner, p. 182.Google Scholar

⁹ One possibility is that neither the fulfilment nor the frustration of his selfless desires would be good for him: it is a case where nothing he can do would do him any good. But this seems dubious: it is surely more likely that one alternative would on balance give him more satisfaction (or, at least, less dissatisfaction) than the other, than that both would be exactly equal in that respect.

¹⁰ Raz, J., The Morality of Freedom, Oxford, 1986, p. 293.Google Scholar

¹¹ Sumner, , pp. 182–3Google Scholar; Thomson, G., Needs, London, 1987, pp. 47–8.Google Scholar

¹² See Smith, M., ‘The Humean Theory of Motivation’, Mind, xcvi (1987), especially at 58–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹³ See Thomson, , p. 46.Google Scholar

¹⁴ This example is mentioned by Parfit, D., Reasons and Persons, Oxford, 1984, p. 494.Google Scholar See also Sumner, , p. 183.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Griffin, , Well-Being, Oxford, 1986, p. 8.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Griffin, , pp. 9–10Google Scholar; see also pp. 19–20. This particular example is considered in detail below, in section III D.

¹⁷ See Crisp, R., ‘Sidgwick and Self-interest’, Utilitas, ii (1990), 271–4 and 279.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Griffin, , p. 8.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Of course, on any view preferences are relevant to well-being: Freud's preferences were relevant to his well-being even on a hedonistic view, because their frustration—for example, by his being involuntarily tranquillized—might have caused dissatisfaction.

²⁰ Mackie, J. L., Ethics, Inventing Right and Wrong, Harmondsworth, 1977, pp. 55–6.Google Scholar

²¹ G. E. Moore's argument that things like beauty would be good even in a universe containing no persons or minds of any kind able to appreciate or be enriched by them involves just such an abstract, hyper-objective sense of good: see Brink, D., Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics, Cambridge, 1989, pp. 218–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²² Griffin, , p. 9Google Scholar; see also pp. 19–20.

²³ See Regan, T., ‘The Nature and Possibility of an Environmental Ethics’, Environmental Ethics, iii (1981), 16Google Scholar; Attfield, R., A Theory of Value and Obligation, London, 1987, pp. 15–19, 31, 40–2 and 234.Google Scholar

²⁴ On this point, R. M. Hare seems to have the better of Philippa Foot. Foot argues that there must be criteria for ascriptions of goodness independent of the subjective attitudes of a particular speaker, because otherwise others might find such an ascription unintelligible. She says that we would not understand the statement that a man was a good man because he clasped and unclasped his hands, and never turned NNE after turning SSW, because we would be unable to see any point to it, anything which could conceivably be a ground for commendation: Foot, P., ‘Moral Beliefs’, reprinted in Hudson, W. D., ed., The Is/Ought Question, London, 1969, pp. 197 and 204–5.Google Scholar (Here Foot is discussing the concept of moral goodness, but the argument can be generalized.) But Hare replies that although such a statement would be bizarre, it would not be unintelligible. We naturally have certain attitudes and concerns, which determine what we commend and condemn, because (in a casual sense) they have contributed to our survival and well-being.Attitudes and concerns wildly different from, and unrelated to, ours, might strike us as absurd, but they are not illogical (Hare, R. M., ‘Descriptivism’Google Scholar, in Hudson, , pp. 240 and 254–6Google Scholar). Hare defends the intelligibility of moral discourse between the members of radically different cultures on this ground: see ‘A Reductio Ad Absurdum of Descriptivism’, in Shanker, S. G., ed., Philosophy in Britain Today, London, 1986, p. 118.Google Scholar

²⁵ The goods of health, knowledge, friendship and so on are all ‘human’ goods (NLNR, pp. 59 and 68Google Scholar) because they are goods ‘for us’ (ibid., p. 86); each is ‘an aspect of authentic human flourishing’ (ibid., p. 64) or ‘well-being’ (ibid., pp. 72, 81, 95 and 103). They are ‘not abstract entities but aspects of the being of persons’ (FE, p. 89Google Scholar). It is ‘good for’ people (NLNR, p. 73Google Scholar)—it makes them ‘well off’ or ‘better off’ (NLNR, pp. 61 and 70–2Google Scholar; FE, p. 44Google Scholar) —to ‘participate’ in these human goods (NLNR, p. 96Google Scholar, where Finnis explains that he prefers the word ‘participate’ because there can be no culmination or complete realization of the pursuit of any good: it is intrinsically a continuing activity. See also FE, p. 46).Google Scholar

²⁶ They say that the basic goods provide reasons for action ‘because they are aspects of the fulfilment of persons’ and ‘in virtue of their being aspects of the full-being of persons’: PP, 114; italics added.Google Scholar

²⁷ NLNR, p. 66.Google Scholar

²⁸ Ibid., p. 72.

²⁹ Ibid., p. 62.

³⁰ In a recent attempt to rebut the criticism that knowledge of some things (for example, ‘there are x letters in the dictionary’) is not intrinsically good, Finnis says sometimes even such normally trivial knowledge is an essential component of the important, worthwhile knowledge…. In a society which superstitiously believes that the number of letters in the Oxford English Dictionary is a key to predicting the future because it mystically corresponds to the outer dimensions of the Great Pyramid in millimetres, it is good to know the sober truth about that number: it doesn't (Finnis, J., ‘Concluding Reflections’, Cleveland State Law Review, xxxviii (1990), 231–2, n. 2).Google Scholar

However, this defence will not do: it establishes not that knowledge of the number of letters in the dictionary is intrinsically good, but only that it might sometimes be instrumentally good (by helping people in some societies avoid mistakes potentially detrimental to their well-being). This appears to concede that whether or not a particular item of knowledge is good—whether or not it affects human well-being beneficially—is a contingent matter, depending on the facts.

³¹ NLNR, p. 70.Google Scholar

³² Ibid., pp. 74–5.

³³ For example, A. Sen argues that someone who is poor, exploited, overworked and ill, but who has been made happy by propaganda and social conditioning, is not doing well just because he is happy: Sen, A., The Standard of Living, Cambridge, 1987, p. 8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar (It does not matter for our purposes that in this passage Sen is discussing the concept of ‘the standard of living’ rather than that of ‘well-being’.) But the question, of course, is not ‘is he doing well?’ but ‘how well is he doing?’ He may be happy, but we expect that he would be even happier if he were less poor, exploited, overworked and ill. Material conditions such as these are inimical to well-being because they tend to decrease happiness, in the long if not the short term. In cases where they do not have that effect (if there are such cases), how can they be said nevertheless to diminish well-being? (Of course, in such cases they can still be objected to on other grounds, such as injustice.) If Sen's objection is to happiness based on delusion, the arguments in the following section apply.

³⁴ Nozick, R., Anarchy, State and Utopia, New York, 1974, pp. 42–5.Google Scholar Those who have used Nozick's thought-experiment to discredit hedonist theories of well-being include Griffin; Brink, , pp. 223–4Google Scholar; Finnis, J., NLNR, pp. 95–6Google Scholar, and FE, pp. 37–12Google Scholar; Grisez, G. and Shaw, R., Beyond the New Morality, 3rd ed., Notre Dame, 1988, p. 36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thomson, , p. 41Google Scholar; and Attfleld, , p. 33.Google Scholar

³⁵ FE, p. 38.Google Scholar

³⁶ NLNR, pp. 95–6.Google Scholar

³⁷ FE, p. 38.Google Scholar

³⁸ Ibid., pp. 39–10.

³³ Ibid., pp. 40–1.

⁴⁰ Nozick, , p. 42.Google Scholar

⁴¹ FE, pp. 37–8.Google Scholar

⁴² J. Glover discusses this sort of ‘active experience machine’ in What Sort of People Should There Be?, Harmondsworth, 1984, pp. 102–3.Google Scholar Different types can be imagined. To ensure that the subject have experiences of success and happiness, the machine would often have to imperceptibly ‘cheat’, by adjusting the fantasy world other than in strict response to the subject's decisions (which might be misconceived, given the pre-existing state of that ‘world’). But this should not be too difficult, especially since—unknown to him—it would determine the responses of all other ‘people’ in that world. It might have to permit occasional, minor, failures and misfortunes to prevent him from suspecting this.

⁴³ It might be objected that our well-being is not independent of these attachments: they are so deeply and firmly rooted in us that they are part of our very identity—we could cut ourselves off from them only by becoming, in effect, different people. This just takes us back to the second good which Finnis argues is forgone by plugging into the machine: the good of being oneself. I have already rejected that argument.

⁴⁴ Glover suggests that active experience machines could be interconnected and synchronized so that by plugging in simultaneously a number of people could remain in contact with one another. Although their impression that they were face to face in a real world would be mistaken, they would be genuinely in communication with one another, and all would be affected by one another's decisions and ‘actions’ in the single fantasy world which all would inhabit. However, the machines would no longer be able to ensure the fulfilment of all of their most cherished fantasies, since these might be incompatible. To remain in genuine contact with the others, each person would have to accept the consequences of their decisions and ‘actions’, although they might not be to his liking; but the fantasy world could still be in other respects much more pleasant than reality. See Glover, , pp. 103–4.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Glover suggests that the only decisive objection to plugging into the kind of active machine he envisages is that the experiences it can provide are limited by current human conceptions: ‘we are part of a universe larger than ourselves, rather than one of our own creation…. There is so much more to find out, and so much more to affect our lives in ways now unpredictable. We cut off all this if we retreat to a world of our own making, where our present limitations become the permanent boundaries of our world’ (p. 112). But this would not be an objection to plugging into a machine which, having been built by some benevolent species vastly more advanced in knowledge than us, could provide as much opportunity for exploration and unpredictable experiences as reality.

⁴⁶ See my ‘Externalism, Internalism and Moral Scepticism’, The Australasian Journal of Philosophy, lxx (1992), 40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁷ Blackburn, S., Spreading the Word, Oxford, 1984, p. 188.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Nowell-Smith, P. H., Ethics, Harmondsworth, 1954, pp. 160 and 178.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ See Smith, n. 12 above, and my ‘Externalism, Internalism and Moral Scepticism’, n. 46 above, text to n. 57.

⁵⁰ Nowell-Smith, , pp. 87, 161 and 179–80.Google Scholar

⁵¹ It is just a short step from this to an objective good theory of well-being such as GFB's, which maintains that well-being is not just one among several objective goods, but the aim and compound of them all. The rationale for that short step is that the objective goods cannot be abstract, platonic entities, but must be aspects of our own well-being: see n. 25, above.

⁵² Bond, , note 1, pp. 2, 7, 18–9, 31, 71 and 94.Google Scholar

⁵³ Ibid., pp. 3, 28–31 and 40.

⁵⁴ Ibid., passim.

⁵⁵ Ibid., pp. 2–3, 32–3 and 90.

⁵⁶ Bond is not straightforwardly anti-Humean: he holds that only desires can motivate action: pp. 11–15 and 40. He reconciles this with his conclusion by arguing that a belief that something is good can give rise to a desire to act, regardless of pre-existing desires: pp. 36, 39, 58–60, 67–8, 71–2 and 92–5. But even this is contrary to the Humean theory of motivation, and is vulnerable to the same objections as more obviously anti-Humean views: see Smith, note 12.

⁵⁷ Bond, , pp. 38–9, 43–4 and 61.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Ibid., pp. 63–5 and ch. 6.

⁵⁹ Bond says that ‘to regard a thing as valuable … [is] not to regard oneself as regarding it as valuable, and no such belief is incorrigible’ (pp. 54–5). But the position he is contesting need make neither claim: it holds that to regard a thing as valuable is simply to value it (not to ‘regard oneself as regarding it as valuable’ or even to ‘regard oneself as valuing it’: to value something need not involve any reference to oneself), and this can be corrigible because what I really value depends on the true nature of things rather than on my corrigible beliefs about them (see the text to n. 50). For this reason he is also wrong to assert that ‘if valuing is really nothing but wanting, then deliberative rationality is a delusion’: deliberative rationality can dispel wants which are based on false beliefs or muddled thinking.

⁶⁰ See Mackie, , pp. 29, 82 and 228–9.Google Scholar

⁶¹ A similar confusion explains much of the specious plausibility of GFB's theory. This is the subject of another article I hope to publish shortly (‘Fact and Value in the New Natural Law’).