This Element provides a systematic defense of moral contractarianism as a distinct approach
to the social contract. It elucidates, in comparison to moral conventionalism and moral …

Wellbeing describes how good life is for the person living it. Wellbeing comes in degrees.
Subjective theories of wellbeing maintain that for objects or states of affairs to benefit us, we …

The main question of this paper is how people may agree in their interpersonal comparisons
of wellbeing. These comparisons are important in social ethics and for policy purposes. The …

According to a widely held view, rationality demands that the preferences of a person be
transitive. The transitivity assumption is an axiom in standard theories of rational choice. It is …

Conventionalism as a distinct approach to the social contract received significant attention in
the game-theoretic literature on social contract theory. Peter Vanderschraaf's (Strategic …

In previous work, I have argued that subjectivists about well-being must turn from a
preference-satisfaction to a desire-satisfaction theory of well-being in order to avoid the …

In this article, I argue that desire-satisfaction theories of well-being face the problem of
trivially satisfied desires. First, I motivate the claim that desire-satisfaction theories need an …

This paper takes issue with the widespread claim that positional competitions are zero-sum
games. It shows how the notions of 'positional good'and 'positional competition'have …

One of the key motivations for subjective theories of wellbeing–of which
desiresatisfactionism is the most prominent–is that they seem to fit very well with the …

Subjectivists think that our well-being is grounded in our subjective attitudes. Many such
views are vulnerable to variations on the 'paradox of desire', where theories cannot make …