10/12/10
PHIL 490 – Minds & Morals
Dr. Daniel Kelly
FINDING A WELL-DEFINED PARADIGM FOR WELL-BEING
Some of the data that have been portrayed as reasons or beliefs for what influences well-being can
often be trivial. According to The Geography of Bliss, the happiest countries in the world—Denmark, Iceland,
Switzerland, the Netherlands—believe in “six weeks of vacation, in human rights, in democracy, in lazy
afternoons spent in cafés, in wearing socks and sandals at the same time. Beliefs we may admire or, in the
case of the sock-and-sandal combo, find utterly abhorrent. But they are beliefs nonetheless” (Weiner, 121).
Tiberius and Plakias have arranged a theory that throws out the trivial data when determining factors in one’s
well-being. They set out to find a kind of well-being that can be measured, compared, and realized, but also
that it makes sense—and it is good—to promote that type of lifestyle. They provide a theory of Values-Based
Life Satisfaction (VBLS) which makes adjustments for inadequacies in the Life Satisfaction Program. It
provides more grounded data in subjectivity and weighted factors of life, which is why it trumps that of
Hedonism and Eudaimonism. Tiberius and Plakias have taken careful consideration to make relevant
adjustments on contextual-based data, and it is to my liking that it should provide the best account of wellbeing on a verbal response-based study.
The theory that Tiberius and Plakias come up with is designed to isolate the factors that people think
are important in their life, why they think they are important, and how happy they are with those factors. The
reason that subjects are asked why they think certain factors are important is because a certain standard of
what counts as well-being needs to be factored into the equation of how satisfied people really are, and it is
done with respect to one’s values (Tiberius and Plakias, 34). It is held that there are three features that are
important for values to be included in accounting for life satisfaction. These include that 1) they must be
normative from the perspective of the subject and take their values as providing good reasons for action, 2)
subjects should be positively affected by their values, and 3) values should be relatively stable since well-being
is relatively stable (35). In order to determine whether the subject’s values are reasonable or not, there are
standards of justification. These include the standard of affective appropriateness and the standard of
information, which check whether a person’s beliefs will be stable. The standards remove a value if it is not
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tested as normative, and thus remove the score in life satisfaction for that question. If the value passes and is
seen as normative, the satisfaction score is kept and used in tabulating the results. There are two ‘tests’ to see
if the score should remain useful, one if the values of the subject match the life satisfaction score, and two, if
the values are justified by the standards set for justification. The way a score can be ‘defeated’ is that life
satisfaction is “not based on one’s values at all” or if “the values that it is based on do not meet the standards
for values, that is, if they are ill-informed or ill-suited to the person’s affective nature” (37). The answers that
remain are part of one’s value-based life satisfaction, which is the full assessment of well-being.
Life Satisfaction
Score
Justified values
(meet standards)
Used in Values-Based
Life Satisfaction score
Values of
Subject
Values Differ From
Life Satisfaction
Values Match Life
Satisfaction Criteria
Unjustified values
Not used in ValuesBased Life Satisfaction
score
Figure 1
The Values-Based Life Satisfaction system that is developed measures one’s overall condition of life
based on the standards of one’s own values. The only way a subject’s self-reported condition is disregarded is
if the subject is influenced by a source he doesn’t care about, he is misinformed, or what he says fits poorly
with her affective nature (43). An example that a subject could be influenced by would be a disabled person in
the room during the life satisfaction questionnaire. In studies that have been done using this scenario,
subjects “tend to evaluate their lives as going better when there is a disabled person in the room than they do
when the disabled person is not there, presumably because the disabled person changes the evaluative
standard that the people use in their judgment” (27). Say, for example, a man has a high Life Satisfaction
score pertaining to marriage. In his self-reported values, family is one of his values. This score then passes the
first test. If in his reasoning why he highly values family, his answer involves acceptance in his church or
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approval of his parents, the reasoning of the values would not be justified because her values are not
normative.
The VBLS is superior to Hedonism for various reasons. VBLS, unlike Hedonism, includes life
satisfaction reports which can “distinguish qualitative differences between pleasurable experiences and count
them differentially as part of a person’s well-being” (16). Subjects may find that certain aspects in one’s life
are more important in determining how their life is going, and those aspects will have more value placed on
them. Hedonism has a collective measurement on how much pleasure and how little pain a subject has
experienced, but doesn’t have a way of weighting the pleasures that valued by the subject, thus contributing
more to their overall well-being. Hedonism depends on how well correlated the subject’s pleasure and pain
are with his belief about his well-being, which are speculative measures that are not reliable (Stich, Doris &
Roedder, 24). Hedonism also does not have a fail-safe that removes any pleasure or pain that the subject does
not value or values for the wrong reasons from their measurement of well-being. In fact, “Hedonism
arbitrarily privileges a particular subjective experience (pleasure) without regard to how important this
experience is from the subject’s own point of view” (33).
Eudaimonism is inferior to the VBLS account because VBLS “does not build in arbitrary external
norms about what must be achieved for a life to go well: it is the subjects own norms that count” (Tiberius
and Plakias, 16, italics in original). In VBLS, there are no universal norms for what constitutes well-being; it is
driven by what drives the subject. Eudaimonism does “not locate well-being in subjective experience at all,
thus creating a gap in the theory’s recommendations and people’s motivations” (33). VBLS is superior to
Eudaimonism because it can be more accurate at picking out the norms that matter on a subject to subject
basis. Eudaimonism also does not have a fail-safe to remove any factor of the assessment that the subject
does not value or values for the wrong reasons. It is important in the assessment of well-being to eliminate
irrelevant data, and the removal of non-normative reasons for particular assessments does just that.
The Value-Based Life Satisfaction is based on Tiberius and Plakias understanding that reasons for
well-being should be based on a “normative authority” that will give people reason to follow the theory.
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These are specifically reasons that are motivating and justifying, and therefore they purport that the two
desiderta that any viable theory of well-being should meet include “(1) that people (everyone to whom the
theory is supposed to apply) will have some motivation to care about what the theory recommends and (2)
that there are standards of justification (correctness and appropriateness) for these recommendations” (32).
The type of theory that is most appropriate to meet these criteria is that of life satisfaction. The point of
finding normative reasons for life satisfaction is to remove the judgments that people make that are highly
context-dependent. This is due to the fact that “judgments of overall life satisfaction and life satisfaction
attitudes are shaped by the information that is accessible to us at the time of making the judgment and by
other factors such as mood” or even the weather (25). To reiterate, “selective attention heavily influences a
person’s subjective point of view, and what people happen to attend to seems arbitrary in a way that other
things do not,” so it is best to remove the select arbitrary influences in judgment (31). Since judgments can be
easily swindled by ones environment, it is important to throw out the unstable, temporary data that plays no
normative role in the assessment of well-being.
The VBLS account satisfies the two desiderata that should be included in well-being because it does
not matter what arbitrary factors are in subjects’ assessments because only the judgments that matter on a
normative basis will count towards their scores. The normative basis—as it has been said—is in an
individual’s values that are justified by the two standards of correctness and appropriateness. In this manner,
only a select amount of judgments will be recorded in a subject’s life satisfaction assessment. The removal of
unfair data—including that of a subject that is misinformed or is not positively affected by his response—
brings about a clearer understanding of what factors are truly playing a role in a person’s well-being. People
are going to be feel a sense of well-being when what they care about—for the right reasons—is going well for
them in their lives. Different criteria occupy goals in people’s lives, thus their well-being is going to be
affected by different criteria—the premise of the first desideratum. Only criteria that truly affect the person
and that the person is accurately informed about will be taken into account as a factor in their assessment—
the premise of the second desideratum. These desiderata have the flexibility to be applied to a complete range
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of individuals, from various backgrounds and outlooks on life. These desiderata idealize the responses of the
subjects to standardize their affect on the subject.
Objectors may suggest that there is a possibility of a gap between subjective experience and wellbeing created by the idealization of the responses. Since there are so many responses that are eliminated
because their failure to meet the various standards, one might be skeptical of the right degree of idealization
in the model. For this reason, some might believe that the way Tiberius and Plakias have altered the life
satisfaction accounts may make them insufficiently grounded (42). They respond by saying they do not
believe so, and it is only an extension of the standard life satisfaction test, which asks people to make
judgments on important domains to them. It is very similar to what has been taking place in other life
satisfaction theories, it just has an adjusting factor for a person’s different values and why they hold those
values. The VBLS only takes out the judgments that are cared about for the wrong reasons. VBLS provides
good reason for using non-self-report measures because self-reports are “imperfect indicators” on how well a
subject is doing according to his own values. They suggest including measures that are likely to meet the
standards test—like “friendship, family relationships, health, and good work”—to their method to account
for the imperfect indicators (43).
Another objection might be that cognitive science may trump the imperfect methods of
questionnaires. Although this may be true, Tiberius and Plakias would stay that that type of methodology is
currently unattainable. When asked the same questions while having their brain scanned, it is not certain that
the activities in the brain would correspond to positive factors of well-being as opposed to negative ones. The
degree of accuracy to questions can also not be measured on a lie-detector test as the results of them are
often not correlated with truth. In the current measurement of well-being, it is best to just modify the current
system to more accurately depict the factors that influence it. This is the reason for tweaking the life
satisfaction accounts with relevant value-based information from each subject. It can narrow down the
correlation of what factors contribute to well-being. Until a breakthrough in cognitive science arrives, it is
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best to not try revolutionary but less accurate tests to that which has become more effective at measuring
well-being.
Tiberius and Plakias currently have the best methodology for measuring well-being because it is not
based on universal norms, but the norms change based on the subject so it in theory can be used universally.
Hedonism and Eudaimonism often leave out aspects of or include aspects in an assessment which may be
important or not important, respectively. The Values-Based Life Satisfaction account “provides an
explanation of the normative importance of well-being without sacrificing the relationship to subjective
experience” (44). These normative, value-based judgments are beneficial to assessment because they are an
accurate portrayal of what factors justifiably influence a person’s well-being. It is better to have norms that are
relative to the subject than generalized norms because “only a fool or a philosopher would make sweeping
generalizations about the nature of happiness. I am no philosopher, so here goes: Money matters, but less
than we think and not in the way that we think. Family is important. So are friends. Envy is toxic. So is
excessive thinking. Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude” (Weiner, 322). Although there
have been assessments of what is beneficial to one’s well-being, the answers, like those in The Geography of
Bliss, may not be justified in their value.
Weiner, Eric. The Geography of Bliss. (2008). New York: Hachette Book Group .
Stich, Stephen; Doris, John M. & Roedder, Erica. “Altruism.” The Handbook of Moral Psychology. (2008). New
York: Oxford University Press.
Tuberius, Valerie & Plakias, Alexandra. “Well-Being.” Anthology of Moral Psychology. (2008). New York: Oxford
University Press.
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