Why Subjectivists About Welfare Needn't Idealize

Abstract

It is commonly thought that subjectivists about welfare must claim that the favorable attitudes whose satisfaction is relevant to your well-being are those that you would have in idealized conditions (e.g. ones in which you are fully informed and rational). I argue that this is false. I introduce a non-idealizing subjectivist view, Same World Subjectivism, that accommodates the two main rationales for idealizing: those given by Peter Railton and David Sobel. I also explain why a recent argument from Dale Dorsey fails to show that subjectivists must idealize. Because Same World Subjectivism is a plausible non-idealizing view, subjectivists about welfare needn't idealize.