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Well-Being and Approximation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 September 2025

Eric Wiland
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Abstract

What is the relation between what is good for you and how well you are doing? It is common and natural to think that the latter asymmetrically depends upon the former. I call this the molecular model of well-being, which holds that how well you are doing depends directly upon the presence of independently specifiable welfare goods in your life. Just about every contemporary theory of well-being embodies the form specified by the molecular model. Here I articulate and defend an alternative way to think about well-being, a way based upon the notion of approximation. According to the approximation model of well-being, how well you are doing directly instead depends upon how closely you resemble an ideal way to live. One person is doing better than another just in case the life of the first more closely approximates the ideal life. To make this case I briefly sketch a substantive theory of well-being that employs it: what I take to be Aristotle’s view of well-being, which works as a proof of concept. We see that the approximation model of well-being can explain some patterns of value better than the molecular model can.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 100 , Issue 2 , April 2025 , pp. 249 - 269
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Royal Institute of Philosophy

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