Despite the significant attention that has been given to developing and defending theories of intrinsic prudential value, or what makes us well off, far less attention has been given to explaining what makes us intrinsically badly off. In Chapter 1, I argue that theories of prudential badness, or ill-being, do not trivially follow from theories of well-being, yet an account of ill-being is necessary for a complete theory of prudential value. In the remaining chapters, I investigate how well the major theories of well-being extend to ill-being. Considering ill-being also makes possible asymmetries between the good and the bad. I show that there are many such asymmetries, involving both structure, such as when a condition of welfare does not apply to illfare, and value, such as when the disvalue of a bad outweighs the value of its counterpart good.
Chapter 2 concerns pain as the counterpart to pleasure. I argue that, in equal intensities, pain is a greater bad than pleasure is a good. Chapter 3 is on ‘adjusted subjective theories’, which adjust the value of pleasure or happiness based on other factors. I show how one theory—L.W. Sumner’s theory of welfare as authentic happiness—fails as an account of ill-being. In Chapter 4, I argue that the most common account of ill-being for the desire theory, that frustrated desires contribute disvalue, should be replaced by an aversion account, according to which there is a negative counterpart to desires. In Chapter 5, I consider two objective goods, autonomy and knowledge. I argue that autonomy has no negative counterpart, while knowledge has many counterparts, only some of which are intrinsically bad. In Chapter 6, I argue that, insofar as achievement is a plausible objective prudential good, there is a state of anti-achievement that is intrinsically bad. Finally, in Chapter 7 I show how the hybrid theory of well-being produces an implausible account of ill-being.Ph.D
