Royal Institute of Philosophy Workshop: time and well-being

Royal Institute of Philosophy, Birmingham Branch

Workshop on time and well-being

• 13.00 - Ben Bramble (Vienna):  “The passing of momentary well-being”
• 14.20 - Tea and coffee break
• 14.40 - Anna Alexandrova (Cambridge): “What is child well-being?”
• 16.00 - Tea and coffee break
• 16.20 - Antti Kauppinen (Trinity College, Dublin): “Improving the past”
• 17.40 - Drinks and dinner

Philosophers are interested in well-being as a measure of how well a person’s life is going. It used to be assumed that you could evaluate how well someone’s life is going at any given moment, for example, simply by considering whether they are experiencing pleasure. It was also assumed that, if we want to know how well someone’s life is going over a long period of time, all we need to do is to add together their momentary levels of well-being. Some of the most interesting recent work in value theory and philosophy of happiness and well-being have challenged these assumptions by exploring temporal aspects of well-being in more detail. The presentations at this workshop introduce some of the new exciting ways of thinking about well-being and time. They consider questions such as: Can future events affect your current level of well-being? How do events contribute to the value of your life-story? How should we understand well-being during different stages of human life? For example, when is a child’s life going well? What is the relationship between momentary well-being and lifetime well-being? Is lifetime well-being a function of momentary levels of well-being, or can we understand momentary well-being only in the context of lifetime well-being?

The workshop is open to all audiences, and there is no attendance fee (refreshments will be free, but drinks and dinner will not be included). For enquiries, please email Dr Jussi Suikkanen.