Goodness behind Well-Being

Throughout Mill's Utilitarianism he focuses on what will make our lives intrinsically good and moral. I feel that Mill's most defensible theory would be the one that says "good" is concerned with our well-being. Under the well-being theory we have 3 sub-theories that include Mental State Theory, which concerns pleasure, Desire Satisfaction Theory and the Objective List Theory. I find this Well-being theory the most pleasing and defensible for the reason that it has these underlying  sub-theories. I am going to look at each sub-theory and talk about its characteristics and why I believe it is a good theory.

The first theory I will  look at is the Mental State View which considers pleasure to be the backbone of intrinsic good. We looked at an objection in class that said this view would justify even the most outlandish or "piggish" pleasures to be intrinsically good. I would have to argue back and say so what? If that is what makes the person the most happy, then why not? For them it is good; this view is not objective. If living a selfish life is what someone finds pleasure in then fine, I am not saying  it is morally good but in another sense it is good for them. In class we used the Experience Machine as another objection to this view, and I agreed that I would not want to get into this machine since it would not fulfill my pleasure of helping people if I actually became an occupational therapist versus the perfect life I would lead in the machine without actually helping anyone. But once again, it is subjective. I find it empty to live a life like that since it is not what I find pleasurable, but maybe there is some person out there where their only dream to skate through life and this would fit into their pleasure!

The next view we looked at was the Desired Satisfaction View which talks about how intrinsic good comes from out desires coming true. The objection says that this would once again allow any desires to be fulfilled and count as good. However, I must push on the rejoinder that says that as long as the desire is rational, not harming anyone and makes the person in questions life better, then why not? As long as the person is fully informed on what their desire entails and is not infringing on someone else's desire it should be intrinsically good.

The last view is the Objective List  View which I find to be appealing in a strange way. We are given a list of things that if they are fulfilled should make our lives intrinsically better. This list includes but is not limited to Pleasure, satisfied desires, freedom, knowledge, achievement, beauty relationships, etc. If looking at this list in an even more objective way one would say those are very broad categories. However, while it  has these categories one could try and achieve certain things within them; what one person wants from life will never be what another person does. So while trying to achieve this objective list, they could be striving for different things still. An extreme-ish example I am going to try and use is for the relationships category. What is person A wants a life filled with beautiful, strong relationships and person B wants nothing like that, they instead life solitude and maybe one or two friends. They have different expectations for these categories and can still make them subjective while keeping the lists categories. So while it is intrinsically good to have reach relationship goals the goals may vary from person to person.