Effort and Achievement

Abstract

Achievements have recently begun to attract increased attention from value theorists. One recurring idea in this budding literature is that one important factor determining the magnitude or value of an achievement is the amount of effort the achiever invested. The aim of this article is to present the most plausible version of this idea. This advances the current state of debate where authors are invoking substantially different notions of effort and are thus talking past each other. While the concept of effort has been invoked in the philosophical analysis of a number of important concepts such as desert, attention, competence, and distributive justice, it has hardly ever been analysed itself. This article makes headway in this regard by discussing three ambiguities in the everyday notion of effort. It continues to develop two accounts of effort and shows how both of them are achievement-enhancing.

Achievement, wellbeing, and value

“…Nevertheless, such considerations might lead to rejecting difficulty as an essential feature of achievements. Or one might take a closer look at the nature of difficulty – perhaps the caprices are difficult in one sense, even if they are not difficult for the virtuoso (von Kriegstein, ).…”

The Competition Account of Achievement‐Value

“…Hurka (), Keller (), Portmore (), Bradford (, ), von Kriegstein (, ), and Hirji (). Bradford (, p. 204) even opens her essay with the claim, ‘Achievements are, if any thing is, on the “objective list” of the things that can make a life a good one.…”

“…2), she proposes to measure effort through tools developed for hedonic metrics. See von Kriegstein () for a detailed discussion of her notion of effort.…”

Not Always Worth the Effort: Difficulty and the Value of Achievement

“…For some recent accounts of achievement, see Arneson (), Bradford (, , ), Hurka (, ), Keller (, ), Portmore (), and von Kriegstein and (,b). Like Bradford, Keller appeals to effort in explaining the value of achievement: ‘the greater the effort required for an individual to achieve her goal, the more her welfare is enhanced by its achievement’ (Keller, , p. 34).…”

“…Like Bradford, Keller appeals to effort in explaining the value of achievement: ‘the greater the effort required for an individual to achieve her goal, the more her welfare is enhanced by its achievement’ (Keller, , p. 34). Von Kriegstein () develops two accounts of effort, ‘percentage‐effort’ and ‘absolute‐effort’ and argues that they are both achievement‐enhancing. Moreover, von Kriegstein () argues that Bradford's account of difficulty in terms of effort must be supplemented with an additional, agent‐neutral dimension of difficulty understood as low probability of success for a human being with average capabilities.…”