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Professor Connie Rosati, "Welfare and Rational Fit"

October 17, 2014
All Day
347 University Hall

Abstract: We commonly talk about what is good for someone or something.  But the expression ‘good for’ has a variety of meanings depending on the context of use.  When we say, “X is good for Y,” we may express the proposition that X stands in an instrumental relation to Y, that doing X will keep Y in the condition standard users would want Y to be in, that X is good from the point of view of Y, or that X contributes to what is variously called Y’s welfare, well-being, self-interest, flourishing, or personal good.  My interest herein will lie with ‘good for’ in this latter, welfarist sense, and my aim will be to present and defend a view about the nature of this type of good-for value.  I begin by discussing the basic structure of welfarist good-for.  I then consider alternative views about how to understand this structure, assessing their relative merits.  According to the view that I favor—what I shall call a “rational fit” theory of welfare—good for is a reason-giving relation of fit between a welfare object and a welfare subject, where a welfare subject is a valuable being.

Connie Rosati is an Associate Professor at the University of Arizona