The Significance of a Life’s Shape
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Issue Date
2015-01Author
Dorsey, Dale
Publisher
The University of Chicago Press
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, publisher version
Rights
© 2015 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
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Show full item recordAbstract
The shape of a life hypothesis holds, very roughly, that lives are better when they have an upward, rather than downward, slope in terms of momentary well-being. This hypothesis is plausible and has been thought to cause problems for traditional principles of prudential value/rationality. In this article, I conduct an inquiry into the shape of a life hypothesis that addresses two crucial questions. The first question is: what is the most plausible underlying explanation of the significance of a life’s shape? The second question is: given its most plausible explanation, what does the shape of a life hypothesis teach us about the nature of prudential value?
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Citation
Dale Dorsey, "The Significance of a Life’s Shape," Ethics 125, no. 2 (January 2015): 303-330.
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