Freedom and Value
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Freedom of the sort implicated in acting freely or with free will is important to the truth of different sorts of moral judgment, such as judgments of moral responsibility and those of moral obligation. Little thought, however, has been invested into whether appraisals of good or evil presuppose free will. This important topic has not commanded the attention it deserves owing to what is perhaps a prevalent assumption that freedom leaves judgments concerning good and evil largely unaffected. The central aim of this book is to dispute this assumption by arguing for the relevance of free will to the truth of two sorts of such judgment: welfare-ranking judgments or judgments of personal well-being (when is one's life intrinsically good for the one who lives it?), and world-ranking judgments (when is a possible world intrinsically better than another?). The book also examines free will's impact on the truth of such judgments for central issues in moral obligation and in the free will debate. This book should be of interest to those working on intrinsic value, personal well-being, moral obligation, and free will.
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Pleasure, Desert, and Welfare (p. 41-42)
4.1 Pleasure and Desert
So far, I have been developing the view that freedom affects the intrinsic value of life atoms, it affects the value of episodes of intrinsic pleasure and displeasure, the sum of these values being a measure of how good in itself a life is for the person who lives that life. With a freedom-sensitive attitudinal hedonism as the relevant axiology, on the view that I favor, free intrinsic attitudinal pleasures are better than otherwise similar unfree pleasures, and free intrinsic displeasures are not as bad as otherwise similar unfree displeasures. In this chapter, I want to lay the groundwork for a slightly different route to the more cautious conclusion that freedom may have a bearing on welfare.
In roughly hewn strokes, the idea is this: deserved pleasures are better than otherwise similar pleasures that are not deserved. Deserved displeasures are not as bad as otherwise similar displeasures that are not deserved. Freedom affects desert, so freedom affects the intrinsic value of pleasures and displeasures. Suppose the value of episodes of pleasures and displeasures are adjusted to reflect the extent to which they are deserved, and suppose that aptly specified atoms of attitudinal pleasure and displeasure whose values have been so adjusted are indeed life atoms - they are the fundamental ""determinants"" of welfare, then, once again, we will have shown that freedom can affect welfare.
Starting with some observations about desert, there are many different desert bases, there are, that is, many different factors that affect the extent to which a given person deserves a certain pleasure or displeasure: excessive or deficient past receipt, moral worthiness or virtue, legitimate claims, established character, etc. (see, e.g., Rescher 1966, pp. 73-83). Consider virtue (or viciousness). Among other things, a virtuous person is a person who habitually acts ""from"" virtue, similarly, a vicious person habitually acts ""out of"" vice. You may be deserving of pleasure if your acts exemplify virtue - you perform virtuous deeds, you may be deserving of displeasure if your acts express vice - you perform vicious deeds. Then it seems that in this fashion, virtuous and vicious deeds (actions or intentional omissions) are ""desert bases."" One's actions, though, need not express virtue for it to be true that, because of these deeds, one deserves pleasure. You may give alms to the poor in the belief that, in so doing, you do what is morally obligatory. You may well be deserving of moral praise for your deed even if this act does not spring from virtue, equally, you may be deserving of pleasure.
A person can deserve pleasure for many reasons: she may have performed many morally good deeds, she is innocent and maybe innocent people deserve pleasure in virtue of their innocence, she has been deprived of food and she deserves the pleasures of a good meal, and so on. Analogously, a person may deserve displeasure for many different reasons. Needless to say, a person may, at a time, deserve pleasure for some reasons and may also, at that time, deserve displeasure for other reasons or may receive pleasure or displeasure that is undeserved. "
