Can an evidential account justify relying on preferences for well-being policy?

Abstract

Policy-makers sometimes aim to improve well-being as a policy goal, but to do this they need some way to measure well-being. Instead of relying on potentially problematic theories of well-being to justify their choice of wellbeing measure, Daniel Hausman proposes that policy-makers can sometimes rely on preference-based measures as evidence for well-being. I claim that Hausman's evidential account does not justify the use of any one measure more than it justifies the use of any other measure. This leaves us at a loss as to which policy should be chosen in the non-trivial cases for which there is substantial disagreement between the different measures in their assessment of policy.

No Theory-Free Lunches in Well-Being Policy

“…As I have argued in (Hersch 2015), the problem is that Hausman's evidential account does not uniquely justify taking choices as evidence for well-being. Platitudes can also tell us that assumptions that justify treating other measures (e.g.…”

“…However, I argue that this is because Haybron measures in cases like his colonoscopy study (Redelmeier and Kahneman 1996). For a more detailed discussion of these cases, see (Hersch 2015 According to Haybron and Tiberius, pragmatic subjectivism combines the claim that wellbeing policy should be subjective in practice with the claim that the relevant subjective element is the personal welfare values (PWV) people have. Well-being policy should in practice be subjective because it must be justifiable from the perspective of the intended beneficiaries.…”

Daniel M. Hausman's Valuing health. Well-being, freedom, and suffering. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, 267 pp.

“…Yet, this "evidential view" is questionable in different respects, as has been convincingly shown by Sarch (2015) and Hersch (2015). To give an example, Sarch (2015, 157) maintains that the claim that the evidential view holds no matter what account of well-being was actually true, is unsubstantiated.…”

“…If, for instance, an objective list theory of well-being was correct, but most people formed their preferences on the basis of what they think would make them feel good, their preferences would not track what is in fact good for them. Furthermore, Hersch (2015) points out that Hausman's argument does not succeed in justifying the use of preferencebased measures rather than any other measure of well-being. Yet, the most serious problem consists in the fact that the notion of "self-interest" remains unclear.…”

Are Measures of Well-Being Philosophically Adequate?

“…A certain well-being construct may be sound or misguided depending on which theory of the nature of well-being is correct. This latter problem—which I call the problem of conceptual uncertainty —has attracted a discussion in philosophy, in which a number of solutions have been proposed (Alexandrova 2012b, 2015; Hausman 2011, 2015; Hersch 2015; Sondøe 1999; Taylor 2015; Wren-Lewis 2014). The proposed responses to the problem come in roughly two versions.…”