Degree Year

2020

Document Type

Thesis - Open Access

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Philosophy

Advisor(s)

Todd Ganson

Keywords

Philosophy, Subjective, Well-being, Subjective well-being, Measuring subjective well-being, Measure subjective well-being, Ethics, Moral philosophy, Morality, Global priorities

Abstract

I will define the meaning of subjective well-being that I believe is the most intrinsic normative good, explain why improving the subjective well-being of sentient individuals ought to be the highest ethical priority, and provide reasons for why finding a way to measure subjective well-being would essentially benefit decision-makers and grassroots altruists. Subjective well-being is a dauntingly nebulous property to attempt to measure with precision, but I will comment on the progress that philosophers and social scientists have made in this field. Although (1) there is no set of well-being criteria that is applicable to every sentient individual (including non-human animals) and (2) most sentient individuals are unable to communicate with us about their level of subjective well-being use or relevant experiential factors, we may yet be able to develop an intrapersonally and interpersonally cardinal method to measure subjective well-being.

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