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Hedonism, Desire Satisfaction, and a Good Life

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Hedonism, Desire Satisfaction, and a Good Life

So, would you like to have a good life?

I wouldn't.

Well, actually I would in a sense. After all, for something to be 'good' is to be 'such as to fulfill the desires in question'. The desires in question, in this case, are my desires. To say that I do not desire a good life is to say that I do not desire a life that has those properties that I desire.

However, a good life is not the only thing I want. I want a great many of things. I would like to have a good steak. A good steak is a steak is a steak that has those qualities that I desire in a steak regarding taste and size. However, I want a great many things and often find that i give up other things I would give up a good steak - I would give up the best possible steak - to fulfill sme of those other desires.

I would be willing to give up a good life in exchange for some of the things that I value.

That is, unless we define "a good life" to include everything that I value. In that case, giving up a good life would be impossible. What would I give it up for? It would have to be something I value more than life, but 'life' has been defined in a way that embraces all desires.

We have the same problem with steaks by the way. The best of all possible steaks would be a steak that fulfilled the most possible of my desires. It would fulfill my desires with respect to taste, while leaving unthwarted my desires with respect to gaining weight. However, it would also fulfill my desires regarding, for example, the extended survival of the human species and its descendants.

Note here that I am not using "best" in the moral sense. Different value terms relate different states of affairs to different desires in different ways. When I say, "This is a really good steak," I am not understood to be making a moral judgment - evaluating the steak in relation to

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