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Martha Nussbaum argues that preferentism, or "subjective welfarism," the doctrine that a person's good consists in the satisfaction of her informed preferences, fails to explain our intuitions in cases of "adaptive preference," where the preferences of individuals in deprived circumstances are "deformed" by poverty, adverse social conditions and political oppression. Nussbaum argues that the satisfaction of such "deformed" preferences does not contribute to well-being, and hence the preference utilitarian's account of well-being is false. Furthermore, she claims, it undermines the motivation for projects intended to improve the material, social, and political life circumstances of individuals who are badly off: since the preferentist account suggests that these conditions are best for them if they are what such individuals prefer, it would seem that there is no reason to work for change.
"Subjective welfarism," writes Nussbaum, "holds that all existing preferences are on a par for political purposes, and that social choice should be based on some sort of aggregation of all of them." Thus she concludes:
Embraced as a normative position, subjective welfarism makes it impossible to conduct a radical critique of unjust institutions ... This limitation is especially grave when we are in the process of selecting basic political principles that can be embodied in constitutional guarantees ... [Tine problem of preference deformation requires us to depart altogether from the utilitarian framework.1
I argue, first, that the deprived individuals whose predicaments Nussbaum cites as examples of "adaptive preference" do not in fact prefer the conditions of their lives to what we should regard as more desirable alternatives, indeed, that we believe they are badly off precisely because they are not living the lives they would prefer to live if they had other options and were aware of them. second, I argue that even where individuals in deprived circumstances acquire tastes for conditions that we regard as bad, they are typically better off having their acquired preferences satisfied. If they are badly off it is because they cannot get what we, and they, would regard as more desirable alternatives.
Preference utilitarianism explains why individuals in such circumstances are badly off whether they have adapted to their deprived circumstances or not. Even if they prefer the conditions of their lives to all other available alternatives, most would...