Life Satisfaction and its Discontents

Great question, thanks for this! Part of the motivation for global desire theories is something like Parfit's addiction case, which I mention in section 3 of the paper and will now quote at length

Parfit illustrates this with his famous case of Addiction:

I shall inject you with an addictive drug. From now on, you will wake each morning with an extremely strong desire to have another injection of this drug. Having this desire will be in itself neither pleasant nor painful, but if the desire is not fulfilled within an hour it will then become very painful. This is no cause for concern, since I shall give you ample supplies of this drug. Every morning, you will be able at once to fulfil this desire. The injection, and its after‐effects, would also be neither pleasant nor painful. You will spend the rest of your days as you do now.31

Parfit points out that on a summative desire theory—on which all your desires count and how your life goes overall is the product of the extent to which each desire is fulfilled and intensity of each desire—your life goes better in Addiction.32 But it is hard to believe one’s life would go better in the Addiction case.

Parfit draws a distinction between local and global desires where a desire is “global if it is about some part of one’s life considered as a whole, or is about one’s whole life”. A global desire theory (GDT), counts only global desires. On this theory, we can say being addicted is worse for us; when we think about how our lives go overall, we do not want to become addicted.

The appeal of a global theory is that, in some sense, you get to make a cognitive choice about which desires count. If you weren't able to choose which desires count, then Addiction would be better for you (once you were actually addicted, anyway).  

You might think that getting addicted really is good for me, in which you've presumably abandoned the global account in favour of the summative one. Which is fine, but doesn't take away from the fact that automaximisation is still a problem for the global view. 

the matrix of the Neef model is pretty cool.

Does this have implications for preference utilitarianism?

Yes, very probably. There are many different types of preference/desire theories ('preference' and 'desire' are generally used interchangeably), depending on which sorts of desires count - I say a bit about this in the paper and provide some links to further reading. If, as I argue, life satisfaction theories of well-being are really a type of desire theory going by another name, that the concerns apply to those life satisfaction/desire theories. I note that my objections are to a particular class of desire theory, so someone attracted to desire theories in general might just switch to a different one (e.g. from a global to a summative desire theory).

Re Maslow and Rosenberg, whether well-being comes from those things depends on what you think well-being is, which is the substantive topic at hand. If the best theory of well-being is that it consists in life satisfaction then whether hypothesised 'universal needs' are, in fact, determinants of well-being is a factual question - we need to go ask people about their life satisfaction, collect some data, and crunch the results. Maybe, in fact, the proposed need for "identity" makes very little difference to life satisfaction. However, if one argues that well-being literally consists in the fulfillment of universal needs, e.g having your need for "identity" met is intrinsically good for you, then that well-being "comes from" those things is true by your definition.

This seems to me much better than a single hedonic scale or global desire rating,

It's not all obvious to me that a pluralistic conception of well-being is theoretically preferable (that is, one where more than one thing is instrinically good for us). As I mention right at the end of the paper, one awkward issue is how to combine different seemingly incommensurable goods - how does one trade-off units of 'identity' vs 'affection' if one wants to have high well-being ? Another challenge is providing a compelling story for why, whatever goods are chosen, it is those, and only those, that are good for us.

On your last point about positive and negative affect, I'd also add that we don't have good reason to believe they're measurable cardinally, either. If we try to use people's intuitive preferred tradeoffs, then there's really no one size fits all. Maybe we could ask people to judge relative intensities.

I also think trying to balance affect won't lead to a prior existence view, since that's too fragile. Just a little higher, and then we're positive; and just a little lower, and then we're negative. Also, it will depend on the population distribution and other morally irrelevant factors to the question of how they should be balanced, some of which we manipulate, e.g. improving quality of life.

Some interesting points here, thanks!

[thinking that] well-being concerns on happiness or affect would lead us to conclude that happiness wireheading as a complete and final solution, and that's intuitively wrong for most people

Yes, I agree many people are against hedonism because of the (at least initially) counter-intuitive examples about wireheading and experience machines. As a purely sociological observation, I've been struck that social scientists I talk to are familiar with the objections to hedonism, but unfamiliar with those to desire theories and the objective list. Theorising doesn't penetrate too deeply into the social sciences. As you say:

Because psychologists are empiricists, they don't spend too much time worrying about whether affect, life satisfaction, or eudamonia are more important in a philosophical or ethical sense

I spend quite a lot of type talking to social scientists and it used to surprise me that they seem to think theorising is pointless ("you philosophers never agree on anything"). I now realise this is largely a selection effect: people who like empirical work more than theoretical work become social scientists instead of philosophers.That social scientists don't spend too much time theorising is, I think, a bit of a problem. The impetus to write the paper came from the fact social scientists have developed this notion that life satisfaction is what really matters, and been running with it for some decades, without really stopping to think about what that view would imply.

Related: optimism and pessimism bias. Even honeybees.

That's a nice point. What life satisfaction views require more specifically is not just that the entity thinks about its life as a whole, but that it thinks about its life as a whole and makes a judgement about how its life is going overall. It's rather implausible animals do that latter thing, which means they have no well-being on this theory.

Is automaximization not an objection to desire theories as well?

As I state above, the first point in the paper is that life satisfaction theories seem to be a particular kind of desire theory, the global desire theory, in disguise. Hence, the two objection I raise are objections to both life satisfaction and global desire theories (which I claim are really just the same view). The two objections won't apply to non-global desire theories; as I say in the paper, that might be reason for people who like desire theories to instead adopt a non-global version.

Or should we accept that we don't get to decide all of our desires or how easy it is to satisfy them?

It's clear we don't get to decide on many of our desires! We simply have urges to do all sorts of things. See distinction in the paper between local vs global desires.

Ah, from the paper:

Addiction: I shall inject you with an addictive drug. From now on, you will wake each morning with an extremely strong desire to have another injection of this drug. Having this desire will be in itself neither pleasant nor painful, but if the desire is not fulfilled within an hour it will then become very painful. This is no cause for concern, since I shall give you ample supplies of this drug. Every morning, you will be able at once to fulfil this desire. The injection, and its after‐effects, would also be neither pleasant nor painful. You will spend the rest of your days as you do now.

A local desire theory, where only local desire counts is, in fact, objectivist—it will claim that I am better off in Addiction even if I strenuously protest that it's my life and I don’t think that I’m better off.

(Personally, though, I don't think creating a desire and satisfying it makes an individual better off on the basis of that desire, assuming a desire theory. I think antifrustrationism and preference-affecting views or mixtures of them are far more plausible. More on this here.)

Glad you raise this: I discuss the possibility of different species having different accounts of welfare in the paper in section 5.2 on the "too few subjects" objection! The main weirdness of such a view is that it's vulnerable to spectrum arguments: it implies one of your ancestors had their well-being consist in (say) happiness and life satisfaction, but whose parents were slightly less cognitively developed and therefore their well-being consists just in happiness.