We have independent reasons to avoid preference changes that would make our lives worse. (Addictions, undermining valuable relationships, etc., will plausibly make one's life go worse on any plausible account of welfare.) And sometimes we can have commitments to some cherished project or relationship that we prioritize over our own well-…
We have independent reasons to avoid preference changes that would make our lives worse. (Addictions, undermining valuable relationships, etc., will plausibly make one's life go worse on any plausible account of welfare.) And sometimes we can have commitments to some cherished project or relationship that we prioritize over our own well-being, and so resist replacement for other-regarding reasons (even when the replacement would be better for us).
But if someone just wants to count blades of grass (pathologically, without even much enjoying the process), and then a knock on their head causes them to instead pursue different things that are both more objectively worth caring about *and* more subjectively enjoyable to the agent, then that strikes me as a clear and big improvement.
Generally speaking, I don't find preferentism very plausible, in either its unrestricted or "preference-affecting" forms.
I'm stuck trying to make preferentism of some kind work, because I find hedonism and objective list theories, including hybrid accounts, too alienating, and separately, hedonism too Goodharted, and too hard to defend identifying and privileging any (non-subjective) objective values/goods/bads over other things. Preferentism seems to be the only account that aims exactly at what matters to the individual from their own perspective and to do so in the way and the degree to which they matter, like the "Platinum Rule". And then, of preferentist accounts, to avoid further Goodharting and unwanted preference change, I think I'm stuck going in a preference-affecting direction (which may very well be deontic in some way).
To be clear, I use 'preference' quite broadly as any kind of subjective evaluation, and consider pleasure and unpleasantness also kinds of preferences, specifically as "felt evaluations". So, if someone is less happy counting blades of grass, that might be worse in one way for them, even if they desire to do it and/or reflectively endorse it. I'm not confident about the particulars, though.
We have independent reasons to avoid preference changes that would make our lives worse. (Addictions, undermining valuable relationships, etc., will plausibly make one's life go worse on any plausible account of welfare.) And sometimes we can have commitments to some cherished project or relationship that we prioritize over our own well-being, and so resist replacement for other-regarding reasons (even when the replacement would be better for us).
But if someone just wants to count blades of grass (pathologically, without even much enjoying the process), and then a knock on their head causes them to instead pursue different things that are both more objectively worth caring about *and* more subjectively enjoyable to the agent, then that strikes me as a clear and big improvement.
Generally speaking, I don't find preferentism very plausible, in either its unrestricted or "preference-affecting" forms.
I'm stuck trying to make preferentism of some kind work, because I find hedonism and objective list theories, including hybrid accounts, too alienating, and separately, hedonism too Goodharted, and too hard to defend identifying and privileging any (non-subjective) objective values/goods/bads over other things. Preferentism seems to be the only account that aims exactly at what matters to the individual from their own perspective and to do so in the way and the degree to which they matter, like the "Platinum Rule". And then, of preferentist accounts, to avoid further Goodharting and unwanted preference change, I think I'm stuck going in a preference-affecting direction (which may very well be deontic in some way).
To be clear, I use 'preference' quite broadly as any kind of subjective evaluation, and consider pleasure and unpleasantness also kinds of preferences, specifically as "felt evaluations". So, if someone is less happy counting blades of grass, that might be worse in one way for them, even if they desire to do it and/or reflectively endorse it. I'm not confident about the particulars, though.