Philosophical Issues in the Science and Policy of Well-being

One-Day workshop addressing new issues in the science and policy of well-being.

Theme Well-being is measured by many scientific disciplines (e.g. social sciences, health sciences, economics) and many organisations (e.g. WHO, nation states). But what exactly is being measured? How do the various measures relate to each other? Are different measures gauging different attributes? And given answers to these questions, how should measures of well-being influence social policy making?

This workshop assembles philosophers of science to address these and other questions related to the science and policy of well-being. The workshop should be of interest not only to researchers and students interested in philosophy of science, mind, epistemology, and ethics, but also to social scientists and others interested in the measuring of well-being.

Confirmed speakers

  • Anna Alexandrova (Cambridge)
  • Valerie Tiberius (Minnesota)
  • Erik Angner (Stockholm)
  • Willem van der Deijl (Tilburg)
  • Thor Grünbaum (Copenhagen)
  • Victor Lange Nielsen (Copenhagen)

Attendance is free, but registration is required. Please register via email to Thor Grünbaum.

 

Value fulfillment from a cybernetic perspective: A new psychological theory of well-being (Valerie Tiberius and Colin DeYoung, University of Minnesota)

Psychologists studying well-being fall in several camps regarding how it should be defined, but all of them operationalize well-being as something subjective and rely on direct self-report to measure it. Psychology’s subjectivist approach to well-being fails to make contact with many philosophical accounts of well-being that take there to be other criteria involved in well-being beyond satisfaction with life, the experience of positive and negative emotions, or a felt sense of meaning, purpose, autonomy, or quality of social relationships. The challenge is how to make more sophisticated philosophical perspectives on well-being useful to psychologists, and we believe we can meet this challenge by integrating a philosophical theory of well-being, Value Fulfillment Theory (VFT; Tiberius, 2018), with a psychological theory of personality, Cybernetic Big Five Theory (CB5T; DeYoung, 2015). This paper introduces VFT and CB5T, and explores how the two fit together. The integration yields a theory in which well-being is defined in relation to a person’s ability to pursue his or her many goals effectively, without undermining other important goals. We argue that this theory has some advantages over other approaches.

Why the Science of Well-Being Needs the Philosophy of Well-Being — and Vice Versa (Erik Angner, Stockholm University)

In 1976, Mario Bunge advocated a “vigorous and symmetrical interaction between science and philosophy … to close the gap between the two camps and to develop a scientific philosophy and a science with philosophical awareness.” The aim of this paper is to defend both parts of Bunge’s thesis. Drawing on examples from the science and philosophy of well-being, I will argue that the relationship between the relevant science and philosophy is remarkably symmetric: just like scientists cannot avoid making philosophical assumptions, philosophers often cannot help but proceed from empirical premises.

Happiness measures cannot be calibrated (Willem van der Deijl, Tilburg University)

We present an argument that suggests that measures of happiness are not, and at least for now, cannot be calibrated. We first outline the notion of calibration and explain its significance in the context of happiness measurement. We then outline our argument, which relies on the claim that individuals are necessarily a part of the measurement apparatus in direct measures of happiness, and the claim that we have no reason to be believe that the role that they play is similar across individuals and within individuals over time. We consider two objections. A first relies on the possibility of indirect happiness measurement, and a second denies that suggestive claims about 3 possible differences in individuals should play a role in scientific debates. We suggest that our argument does not undermine the measurability of happiness as a whole, but nevertheless has significant implications for establishing quantitative claims about happiness.

Happiness and Technocracy (Anna Alexandrova, University of Cambridge)

Happiness and well-being research burst into high profile visibility about three decades ago. Back then it presented itself and was received as a fresh humanistic alternative to traditional psychology focused on disfunction and traditional economics based on income indicators. No longer the new kid on the block, today this field has fairly established methods, measures, and an array of stylized facts. Researchers in this field spend less time justifying themselves to skeptics and more time showing that they have useful tools to add to other social sciences and to practical endeavours such as impact evaluation, human resource management, and self-help. In this talk I explore the consequences of the recent institutionalisation of this field, arguing that, although it remains diverse and vibrant, some strains of it turned technocratic in ways that run counter to the initial humanistic impulses. I also suggest that the technocratic turn is to some extent inevitable, given the prevailing norms governing evidence-based policy and the social sciences that feed it. Nevertheless these norms and the technocratic turn can and should be resisted.