Many thanks to John Schwenkler for inviting me to outline here at The Brains Blog the main ideas in my book The Self: Naturalism, Consciousness, and the First-Person Stance (Oxford University Press, new in paperback 2015). I’ll sketch the overall picture in this blog and follow up with two more in which I’ll draw …
Before offering some final words, I want to thank the editors for inviting me to share my thoughts this week about The Good Life: Unifying the Philosophy and Psychology of Well-Being. A quick recap of the week’s events:
The network theory explains well-being in purely descriptive terms. But well-being is normative. Tim’s well-being is intrinsically valuable for Tim. Can a purely descriptive theory of well-being account for normativity, for the value of well-being? I’m going to assume that the evidence of science and intuition strongly support the network …
If you were going to describe someone who has a high degree of well-being, it might go something like this: “Felicity is in a happy and fulfilling committed relationship, she has close and caring friends, she keeps fit by playing tennis, a sport she enjoys, and her professional life is …
Positive Psychology is a theoretical mess. For example, it has no consensus definition. Most scientific disciplines can be characterized in terms of identifiable categories in nature that are their objects of study. Cytology is the study of cells. Kinematics is a branch of mechanics that studies motion. The way experts characterize …
To investigate the nature of well-being, let’s start with the basic respect assumption: Most people with a concept of well-being are generally successful in talking about and identifying instances of well-being. The basic respect assumption isn’t very bold. We can talk about well-being even if we’re quite mistaken about what …
Science is descriptive. It tells us what is the case. All matters normative are found within the confines of philosophy. The human sciences can tell us about the content and evolution of our moral practices. But only philosophy can tell us what our moral practices should be. Psychology can tell us …
