Dworkin's "living well" and the well-being revolution

Boston University Law Review

Volumn 90, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 641-655

  Jolls, Christine ^a  

^a YALE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 77954331574     PISSN: 00068047     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (69)

1. HENRY DE MONTHERLANT, COSTALS AND THE HIPPOGPJFF 157 (John Rodker trans., Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 1940) (1937).
2. RONALD DWORKIN, JUSTICE FOR HEDGEHOGS (forthcoming 2010) (Apr. 17, 2009 manuscript on file with the Boston University Law Review).
3. See id. (manuscript at 8).
4. ARISTOTLE, THE NICOMACHEAN ETHICS bk. I, at 17 (J.L. Ackrill & J.O. Urmson eds., David Ross trans., Oxford Univ. Press 1992) (c. 384-322 B.C.E.).
5. DWORKIN, supra note 2 (manuscript at 7).
6. Id.
7. see also id. (manuscript at 122) ("We want to think that morality connects with human purposes and ambitions..., that it is not all constraint and no value.").
8. Thomas Scanlon, Value, Desire, and Quality of Life, in THE QUALITY OF LIFE 185, 192 (Martha Nussbaum & Amartya Sen eds., 1993).
9. A comprehensive survey of this evidence can be found in Alan B. Krueger, Daniel Kahneman, David Schkade, Norbert Schwartz & Arthur A. Stone, National Time Accounting: The Currency of Life, in MEASURING THE SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING OF NATIONS 9, 25-26 (Alan B. Krueger ed., 2009).
10. See generally id.;
11. sources cited infra notes 17, 19, 28. The complete dataset is available at http://www.krueger.princeton.edu/subjective.htm (select 'Tx DRM Stata Data File") (last visited Jan. 20, 2010).
12. See infra text accompanying notes 55-57 for discussion of the question raised about Dworkin's approach.
13. Like a number of the other contributors to this Symposium, I attempt to focus in on one of the many moving and interconnected pieces in Dworkin's ambitious book. See, e.g., Richard H. Fallon, Jr., Is Moral Reasoning Conceptual Interpretation?, 90 B.U. L. REV. 535, 535-36 (2010) ("Because of the interconnections among the topics that Dworkin covers and the mutual support that his various arguments afford one another, it is nearly impossible to assess any of his claims without struggling with, and either accepting or rejecting, the overachieving philosophical position that he, as a self-advertised hedgehog, very deliberately presents as 'one big thing.' To the greatest possible extent, however, I shall... [f]ocus[] ... on Dworkin's claim that moral reasoning is conceptual interpretation...." (citation omitted)). My hope is that by focusing in on a particular aspect of Dworkin's overall edifice - his conception of "living well" - some illumination of this aspect of his work and its implications for alternative approaches will be possible.
14. DWORHN, supra note 2 (manuscript at 124).
15. Id.
16. Id.
17. Id.
18. See infra text accompanying notes 30-54.
19. See, e.g., Daniel Kahneman & Alan B. Krueger, Developments in the Measurement of Subjective Weil-Being, 20 J. ECON. PERSP., Winter 2006, at 3, 6.
20. See generally http://www.krueger.princeton.edu/subjective.htm, supra note 9 (select 'Tx DRM Stata Data File");
21. World Values Survey, http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org (last visited Mar. 9, 2010);
22. General Social Survey, http://www.norc.org/GSS+Website (last visited Mar. 9, 2010).
23. Daniel Kahneman, Alan B. Krueger, David A. Schkade, Norbert Schwartz & Arthur V. Stone, A Survey Method for Characterizing Daily Life Experience: The Day Reconstruction Method, 306 SCI. 1776, 1776 (2004).
24. Id.
25. Id.
26. Id. at 1776-77.
27. Id. at 1777.
28. Id. at 1777 tbl.1.
29. Id. at 1777-78. In addition to the DRM, the Princeton group has conducted the Princeton Affect and Time Survey ('TATS").
30. See Krueger et al., supra note 8, at 34-36. The PATS data are even less burdensome to collect than the DRM data; however, they are also much less closely correlated with experience sampling results.
31. See id. at 39 fig. 1.5. I focus on the DRM, for which, as noted, the full dataset is publicly available.
32. The data appears in Kahneman et al., supra note 19, at 1777 tbl.1. All individuals in the sample were employed. For further details on the sample,
33. see id. at 1777.
34. DWORKIN, supra note 2 (manuscript at 124) (emphasis added).
35. See Daniel Kahneman, Alan B. Krueger, David Schkade, Norbert Schwarz & Arthur A. Stone, Would You Be Happier If You Were Richer? A Focusing Illusion, 312 SCI. 1908, 1908 (2006).
36. See Amartya Sen, Dworkin on Ethics and Freewill, 90 B.U. L. REV. 657, 659 (2010).
37. See Grace Wong, Be It Ever So Humble: Understanding Housing Using Subjective Well-Being Data 18-19 & tbl.12 (Feb. 2007) (unpublished manuscript), available at http://real.wharton.upenn.edu/%7Ewongg/research/swb. pdf.
38. The Wong study does not directly investigate the relationship between home value and DRM measures, though she finds that home value is largely uncorrelated with the gap between DRM "affect" at home versus away from home,
39. see id. at 17 & tbl.9.
40. Jon Gertner, The Futile Pursuit of Happiness, N.Y. TIMES, Sept. 7, 2003, § 6 (Magazine), at 44, 86.
41. BETTY FRIEDAN, THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE 18 (1963).
42. Kahneman & Krueger, supra note 17, at 13.
43. Id.
44. See, e.g., Noni - a 33 Year-Old Victim of R.J. Reynolds' Camel Cigarettes, http://whyquit.com/whyquit/A-Noni.html (last visited Mar. 9, 2010).
45. Cf. George Loewenstein, That Which Makes Life Worthwhile, in MEASURING THE SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING OF NATIONS, supra note 8, at 87, 97-98 (describing Loewenstein's wife's experience of a holiday spent caring for an ill parent, and questioning whether those caregiving tasks increased her perceived well-being in a DRM sense).
46. See generally, e.g., Richard A. Easterlin, Will Raising the Incomes of All Increase the Happiness of All?, 27 J. ECON. BEHAV. & ORG. 35 (1995).
47. See Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Remarks at the University of Kansas (Mar. 18, 1968) (transcript available at http://www.jfklibrary.org/ Historical+Resources/Archives/Reference+Desk/Speeches/RFK/ RFKSpeech68Mar18UKansas.htm).
48. Kahneman et al., supra note 19, at 1779.
49. Id.
50. See id.
51. See id.
52. Kahneman et al., supra note 28, at 1909.
53. Id.
54. See, e.g., Easterlin, supra note 38, at 40.
55. See supra note 42 and accompanying text.
56. See http://www.kraeger.princeton.edu/subjective.htm, supra note 9 (select 'Tx DRM Stata Data File"). As a check on my use of the dataset, I first sought to replicate the Princeton group's published correlations of income with global life satisfaction and net affect. Global life satisfaction in the Princeton group's dataset is measured by "q1," which takes values from "very satisfied," translated numerically as 1, to "not at all satisfied," translated numerically as 4. (The translations carry the potential for confusion because someone who is more satisfied has a lower numerical value of q1.) After dropping observations that duplicate ql and the log of household income (which are the same for each observation corresponding to a given respondent in the Princeton group's dataset), the correlation of q1 with the log of household income ("lghsinc" in the dataset) is -0.20 (N=907). Because global life satisfaction is higher when ql is lower (as just noted), the correlation of global life satisfaction with the log of household income is 0.20, as reported by the Princeton group, see supra note 42 and accompanying text. I was also reasonably successful in my effort to replicate the Princeton group's 0.05 correlation between DRM net affect and lghsinc, though the correlation I obtained, 0.057, is slightly different from the Princeton group's figure. To obtain the 0.057 figure, I first generated an average net affect value for each individual respondent's identification number ("id" in the Princeton group's dataset) by summing the net affect values ("netaff in the dataset) for each id (in Stata, "by id: egen t-netaff=total(netaff)") and then dividing by the number of observations for that id ("by id: gen avg-netaff=t-netaff/(adjusted + adjcode)" in Stata, where "adjusted" and "adjcode" relate to the number of observations for a given individual in the Princeton group's dataset). After dropping observations that duplicate avg-netaff and lghsinc (which, again, are the same for each observation corresponding to a given respondent), the correlation of avg-netaff with lghsinc is 0.057 (N=908).
57. See http://www.kraeger.princeton.edu/subjective.htm, supra note 9 (select "Documentation & Questionnaire"), at 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36, 38, 40, 42.
58. To obtain the correlations, I first generated a dummy variable that took on a value of 1 if the respondent was interacting with another person during a given episode, using the "alone" variable in the Princeton group's data (Stata command "gen nalone=l if alone=0"). (Examining whether the follow-on question about the identity of interaction partners for those who were interacting with someone during a given episode was asked confirms the natural expectation that "alone" in the Princeton group's data takes on a value of 0, rather than 1, if the respondent was interacting with another person during the episode.) Next I generated the proportion of daily episodes spent with others for each individual identification number ("by id: egen t-nalone=total(nalone)" and then "by id: gen f-nalone=t-nalone/ (adjusted + adjcode)" in Stata). The correlation of q1 (the global life satisfaction variable) with the proportion of daily episodes spent with others was -0.002 (N=908), implying a correlation of 0.002 between global life satisfaction and that proportion. The correlation of avg-netaff, see supra note 48, with the proportion of daily episodes spent with others was 0.089 (N=909).
59. For a discussion of the overall importance of sociability to self-reported well-being, including reference to many other studies, see JONATHAN HAIDT, THE HAPPINESS HYPOTHESIS: FINDING MODERN TRUTH IN ANCIENT WISDOM 133 (2006).
60. See Krueger et al., supra note 8, at 35 tbl. 1.2.
61. See id. at 32.
62. See id. at 33 ("With ... some possible differential selection as to who participated in the activities on the diary day, the results should be read cautiously.").
63. DWORHN, supra note 2 (manuscript at 128).
64. Id. (emphasis added).
65. See supra text accompanying note 33.
66. Krueger et al., supra note 8, at 29;
67. cf. ARISTOTLE, supra note 4, bk. X, at 259 ("[T]he pleasures involved in activities are more proper to them than the desires; for the latter are separated both in time and in nature, while the former are close to the activities....").
68. DE MONTHERLANT, supra note 1, at 157. For discussion of Costals's misogyny, see Ordeal by Hippogriff, TIME, Feb. 7, 1969, at 98 (book review), available at http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,838962,00.html.
69. See DWORHN, supra note 2 (manuscript at 125).