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A common platitude about prudential rationality holds that we ought always to promote, to the greatest extent possible, our well-being. And while there are certainly some controversial details,1 this principle seems broadly ingrained in our thinking about prudence and prudential rationality. After all, if it's clear that one option produces a better life for me than a second, surely it's imprudent to choose the latter, rather than the former.
However, this platitude yields counterintuitive results for broadly preference-based theories of the prudential good. The problem goes like this. It would seem that if satisfaction of our preferences is the source (or even a source) of prudential value, then (holding all else equal) prudential rationality must be neutral between taking steps to achieve the objects of one's preferences and merely engineering one's preferences to take as their object(s) that which obtains. Either way, one's well-being is promoted to the same extent. But this is counterintuitive. Surely prudential rationality is not neutral between a person who simply engineers herself to desire everything she already has, and a person who is successful at achieving that which she antecedently desires.
This article is an attempt to do two things in light of this puzzle. First, it attempts to show that this result is not forced upon a preference-based theory of the good. To say that we have just as much reason to conform our desires to the world as vice versa requires particular interpretations of the nature of preference-based views and of the constitution of prudential reasons. Second, it attempts to argue that these interpretations are controvertible, and that their denial can be defended from objections.
The plan of this article runs as follows. In section I, I introduce some preliminary terminology and the general conceptual landscape upon which this inquiry is to be conducted. In section II, I discuss the general problem faced by a preference-based theory of prudential value when combined with the standard picture of prudential rationality. Section III introduces two ambiguities, one in a preference-based picture of the personal good, a second in the nature of prudential reasons. With these ambiguities in mind, I argue in section IV that the problem for preference-based views can be avoided. Sections V–VII discuss objections, and section VIII...