Against Intuitive Horribleness

Testimony by disabled people concerning the relationship between their experiences and overall well-being has long been an object of social scientific and humanistic study. Often discussed in terms of “the disability paradox,” these studies contrast the intuitive horribleness of certain impaired states against the testimonial evidence suggesting that people in such states do not in fact experience their lives as horrible. Explanations for why such testimonial evidence is suspect range from claims about adaptive preferences to issues of qualitative research methodology. In this paper, I argue that the problem lies not with the evidence, but the intuitions in question. Using the disability paradox as a case study, I further argue against the use of the concept of intuitive horribleness in social epistemology. I contend that testimonial and hermeneutical injustices are baked into most deployments of the concept, and even if one were to justify its use in select cases, it should be accompanied with prima facie suspicion. In conclusion, I discuss the implications of this analysis for the literature on transformative experience and also for the stakes of multi-cultural, historically informed philosophical analyses more generally.

Moral Norms, Adaptive Preferences, and Hedonic Psychology

In a series of important papers published roughly twenty years ago, Professor Robert Cooter developed a comprehensive economic theory of moral norms. He explained the value of those norms, described the process by which norms are adopted, and offered a set of predictions regarding the circumstances under which an individual will choose to adopt a particular moral norm. This brief Article applies behavioral law and economics and hedonic psychology to expand upon Professor Cooter’s path-breaking theory. In particular, understanding welfare in hedonic terms — rather than preference-satisfaction terms — suggests a multitude of further situations in which individuals will justifiably seek to internalize moral norms. The hedonic approach to welfare then further suggests an enhanced role for the government to play in encouraging the adoption of welfare-enhancing norms. Cooter’s theory, combined with modern understandings of welfare and human behavior, thus offers powerful predictive and prescriptive possibilities.

Bioethics, Adaptive Preferences, and Judging the Quality of a Life with Disability

Both mainstream and disability bioethics sometimes contend that the self-assessment of disabled people about their own well-being is distorted by adaptive preferences that are only held because other, better options are unavailable. I will argue that both of the most common ways of understanding adaptive preferences—the autonomy-based account and the well-being account—would reject blanket claims that disabled people’s QOL self-assessment has been distorted, whether those claims come from mainstream bioethicists or from disability bioethicists. However, rejecting these generalizations for a more nuanced view still has dramatic implications for the status quo in both health policy and clinical ethics.

Subjectivism without Idealization and Adaptive Preferences

Subjectivism about well-being holds that an object contributes to one's well-being to the extent that one has a pro-attitude toward this object under certain conditions. Most subjectivists have contended that these conditions should be ideal. One reason in favor of this idea is that when people adapt their pro-attitudes to situations of oppression, the levels of well-being they may attain is diminished. Nevertheless, I first argue that appealing to idealized conditions of autonomy or any other condition to erase or replace adaptive pro-attitudes is mistaken. Second, I show that the most natural version of subjectivism that does not appeal to any such idealizing condition can explain why the well-being of people having adaptive pro-attitudes should not be restricted to the fulfillment of these pro-attitudes. In sum, the existence of adaptive preferences does not militate in favor of the introduction of conditions of idealization but against it.

The Irrationality of Adaptive Preferences: A Psychological and Semantic Account

There is little agreement among moral and political philosophers when it comes to determining what it is that makes adaptive preferences problematic. The large number of competing explanations offered by philosophers illustrates the absence of any consensus. The most prominent versions of these explanations have recently come under attack by Dale Dorsey, who argues that adaptive preferences are a red herring: the problematic nature of adaptive preferences is not explained by the fact of adaptation but by an appeal to some other normative consideration. In this article I offer an account of adaptive preferences that both accommodates the thought that only some of our adaptive preferences are problematic and responds to the skeptical challenge pressed by Dorsey. I argue that some adaptive preferences are prima facie irrational as they exhibit a peculiar error in reasoning where individuals change the semantic content of the reasons underpinning the new preference.

What Can Adaptive Preferences and Transformative Experiences Do for Each Other?

This chapter explores the connection between transformative experience and adaptive preferences, or preferences resulting from the fact that a given option was the best available from within a limited set. Employing the concept of transformative experience can help us to see how a person’s adaptive preferences can be genuinely beneficial for her, and thus to see such a person as a competent judge of her own good. This insight is used to develop an account of adaptive preference with the potential to provide guidance about whether or not to allow ourselves and others to undergo transformative experiences.

Support for Regionalization in Federal Belgium: The Role of Political Socialization

Regionalization, in the form of a dispersion of political power away from national political centers to regional governments, has been a defining feature of European politics since the 1970s. The article focuses on how institutional regionalization changed citizens’ attitudes about the division of competences between the central and regional level. It argues that regional institutions and policies exert a socializing effect on citizens’ preference in favor of these institutions through a mechanism of adaptive preferences. First, attitudes are studied across cohorts in a single population to test whether cohorts that came of age in a context of more institutional regionalization are more favorable towards regional decision-making than cohorts that came of age in a centralized state. The analyses indeed show evidence for a socializing effect of institutional regionalization. Second, the article shows how regional elites’ discourses may moderate the relationship between institutional regionalization and citizens’ attitudes about regionalization. We study Belgium as a crucial case. We use five cross-sectional datasets of the Flemish and Walloon populations during the course of increased regionalization in Belgium (1991–2007).