The Structure of Well-Being: Incommensurability, Needs, and Sufficiency

As it is discussed in philosophy, economics, and some other social sciences, well-being is very commonly conceived of and treated in quantificational terms. However, it is difficult, if not impossible to make room in the quantificational conception of well-being for any notion of sufficiency––of having enough in a sense that it is especially ethically significant that people attain. This difficulty with sufficiency is encapsulated by the Threshold Problem: that of non-arbitrarily specifying a sufficiency level on a scale of well-being. This thesis takes this difficulty and this problem as an opportunity to investigate deeper problems with the quantifying approach. One line of inquiry pursued is whether a theory of needs could solve the Threshold Problem. To this end existing theories of needs are surveyed, but found wanting. The central element of the thesis, however, is a critique of the quantifying account of well-being emerging from a discussion of value incommensurability––which in turn provides resources for the development of an account of the structure of well-being. This account presents a new theory of needs, and analyses well-being in terms of needs. It avoids the Threshold Problem, because well-being is no longer a level at which a person is, nor an amount of anything they have. Rather, both having enough and being well are to have everything one needs