Eden Lin

The majority of my research thus far has been in the normative ethics of well-being or welfare, which investigates what qualifies as a life that is going well or badly for the individual whose life it is.

Theories of well-being typically purport to identify the basic goods and bads—the kinds of things that it is ultimately in or against an individual’s interests to possess and whose presence in a life makes it go well or badly. Pluralistic theories of well-being, on which there are either a plurality of basic goods or a plurality of basic bads, have been a recurring theme in my work. I argue that the correct theory of well-being is pluralistic in “Pluralism about Well-Being” (Philosophical Perspectives, 2014), and I offer an account of the distinction between pluralistic and monistic theories in “Monism and Pluralism” (The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Well-Being, 2016). In “Pleasure, Pain, and Pluralism about Well-Being” (The Philosophical Quarterly, 2025), I defend pluralistic theories against the objection that they cannot capture just how important pleasure and pain are to well-being. In “The Subjective List Theory of Well-Being” (Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2016), I argue that subjectivists about welfare, who claim that how well things are going for someone is entirely a matter of how satisfied their pro-attitudes are, should abandon the monistic theories that they have traditionally defended and endorse a pluralistic theory instead.

There are three other papers in which I consider how subjectivist theories should be developed. In “Asymmetrism about Desire Satisfactionism and Time” (Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, vol. 7, 2017), I propose a new answer to the timing question: at what times does the satisfaction of one of your pro-attitudes benefit you if the times at which you have the attitude do not overlap with the times at which its object obtains? In “Why Subjectivists about Welfare Needn’t Idealize” (Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 2019), I argue that subjectivists need not maintain that the pro-attitudes whose satisfaction benefits you are those that you would have if you were fully informed and rational or otherwise suitably idealized. In “Two Kinds of Desire Theory of Well-Being” (Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 2022), I discuss the relative merits of two views that subjectivists might accept about the things that are basically good for us: that they are the objects of our pro-attitudes, and that they are combinations of those objects and the pro-attitudes that we have toward them.

The aforementioned work notwithstanding, I do not accept subjectivism. In “Against Welfare Subjectivism” (Noûs, 2017), I argue against nearly all existing subjectivist theories on the grounds that they have implausible implications about the well-being of newborn infants. Because I accept pluralism but reject subjectivism, I believe that the correct theory of welfare is an objective list theory—a pluralistic theory on which at least one of the basic goods is not essentially tied to the subject’s pro-attitudes. But this does not mean that my work on how best to develop subjectivist theories has no implications for the kind of theory that I accept. Even if well-being is not entirely a matter of the satisfaction of pro-attitudes, it is plausible that at least one of the basic goods is something like desire satisfaction or goal achievement. The work that I described above gives us guidance on how best to understand these goods.

Another of my main commitments is a rejection of experientialism, the view that an individual’s level of well-being supervenes on the phenomenal character of their experiences. In “How to Use the Experience Machine” (Utilitas, 2016), I use a thought experiment involving Nozick’s experience machine to argue against experientialism and hedonism, and I explain why this way of deploying the machine is more effective than Nozick’s. In “The Experience Requirement on Well-Being” (Philosophical Studies, 2021), I reply to three arguments for experientialism—including, most notably, that it best explains the apparent fact that only sentient beings (i.e., ones capable of phenomenal consciousness) can have lives that go well or badly for them.

I have also written about the functions and scope of theories of well-being. In “Enumeration and Explanation in Theories of Welfare” (Analysis, 2017), I argue that all of the major theories are both enumerative (in that they list the things that are good for us) and explanatory (in that they explain why the things that are good for us are good for us). In “Welfare Invariabilism” (Ethics, 2018), I argue that the same theory of welfare is true of all welfare subjects, and I use this claim to rule out many of the going theories of welfare.

Although most of my work on well-being has concerned first-order questions, I have also written about the metaethics of well-being. In “Prudential Value and Impersonal Value” (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2025), I argue against the position, often attributed to G. E. Moore, that the concept of prudential value (i.e., goodness for someone in the sense that is conceptually tied to well-being) can be analyzed in terms of that of impersonal value (i.e., goodness “from the point of view of the universe”) and is unintelligible if it is not so analyzed. In “Welfare Subjects” (in progress), I argue that welfare subjects should be defined not as beings capable of having an amount of welfare, but as beings capable of having a positive or negative amount of welfare.

Because it is so plausible that pleasure is among the basic goods, my interest in well-being gives me an interest in the nature of pleasure. Theories of pleasure are traditionally divided into two camps. On phenomenological theories, pleasures are pleasures in virtue of the way they feel. On attitudinal theories, pleasures are pleasures in virtue of how they are related to the pro-attitudes of the subjects who feel them. In “Attitudinal and Phenomenological Theories of Pleasure” (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2020), I answer a common objection to phenomenological theories, and I propose a hybrid view on which the main claims of both types of theory are true. In “Fantasy, Pleasure, Desire, and Morality” (Analysis, forthcoming), I discuss the relative merits of two views about the nature and object of the pleasure that one feels when one fantasizes about something.

A secondary focus of my research has been normative reasons for action—the sorts of reasons that count in favor of, or justify, particular actions. Many theories of reasons invoke the idea of promotion. For example, subjectivist (i.e., desire-based) theories claim that there is reason for you to promote the satisfaction of your desires. But the nature of promotion is controversial. In “Simple Probabilistic Promotion” (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2018), I explore the prospects of an account that has been neglected in the literature: to promote a state of affairs is to cause an increase in the probability that it will obtain.

I discuss the connection between welfare and reasons for action in “Prudence, Morality, and the Humean Theory of Reasons” (The Philosophical Quarterly, 2015). There, I argue that a subjectivist theory of reasons cannot claim that there is always a reason for every agent to act prudently—even if welfare, and thus prudence, is understood in terms of the satisfaction of one’s desires.

Extant discussions of subjectivism about reasons for action have focused on presentist versions of the theory, on which reasons for present actions are grounded in present desires. In “Future Desires, the Agony Argument, and Subjectivism about Reasons” (The Philosophical Review, 2020), I motivate and investigate the prospects of futurist subjectivism, according to which reasons for present actions are grounded in present or future desires. This theory has significant advantages over its presentist counterpart, but it faces a problem: because which desires I will have in the future can depend on what I do now, it must tell us which of my many possible future desires give me reasons to promote their satisfaction now. I propose a solution to this problem, and I extend it to an analogous problem that arises for an important class of idealizing subjectivist views (i.e., views that ground your reasons in the desires that you would have if you were suitably idealized).

My existing work on well-being commits me to the claim that the correct theory of well-being—not only for human beings but for all welfare subjects—is a non-experientialist objective list theory. My main focus over the next few years will be to write a monograph, tentatively entitled On the Plurality of Goods, in which I develop and defend a theory of this kind. This theory will be distinctive in three ways. First, it will claim that all of the basic goods and bads are, in virtue of their natures, accessible only to sentient beings. This will allow it to explain why, although more is relevant to one’s welfare than the phenomenology of one’s experiences, only sentient beings are welfare subjects. Second, in line with my commitment to welfare invariabilism, it will purport to be true of all welfare subjects, not just human beings. Third, it will postulate basic goods that are less demanding and more widely instantiated than the ones typically enumerated by objective list theories (viz., pleasure, knowledge, achievement, virtue, and friendship). It will hold, for example, that while experiences are better the more pleasant they are (other things being equal), and while unpleasant experiences are bad in virtue of being unpleasant, all conscious experiences are basically good as such. (I argue for this view in “Perfectly Balanced Lives and the Value of Conscious Experience”, which is forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind.) It will also hold that the social basic good is not friendship or love but a much less demanding condition, conscious recognition, that one possesses whenever another being is veridically conscious of one as a conscious being. (See “Welfare, Connection, and Recognition”, which is forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.) And whereas objective list theories typically maintain that achievement is the subjective basic good, my theory will accord this status to the satisfaction of one’s desires even when this doesn’t constitute the achievement of one’s goals. (I defend this part of the theory in “The Subjective Good on the Objective List”, which will appear, subject to additional review, in Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics.) Thus, one implication of my theory of welfare will be that, because more things are basically good for us than are commonly recognized, our lives are better for us than they are commonly thought to be.

I am writing two other papers. In “The Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Additivity of Welfare,” I make a presumptive case for the claim that welfare can be added both within and across people. In “Basic Goodness and Derivative Goodness,” I raise problems for existing ways of understanding the difference between basic goodness and derivative goodness, and I argue for a new understanding of this distinction that avoids those problems.

I have also developed an interest in the philosophy of artificial intelligence, and in particular, in the possibility that advanced AI will eliminate or otherwise greatly harm humanity. In “Superintelligent AI, Instrumental Convergence, and Promotion” (a paper in progress), I argue that, contrary to what some theorists have recently suggested, the philosophical literature on the nature of promotion doesn’t undermine the best-known argument for thinking that advanced AI would likely attempt to do things that threaten the survival of humanity. I plan to write other papers clarifying and assessing this argument during the next few years.