Good Life Essay # 3

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Timothy M Fuller Good Life Essay # 3 Prompt: Suppose for the sake of the argument that acquiring knowledge usually makes people better off, at least in the long run. Some people might conclude from this that knowledge is a basic good—that every instance of knowledge is basically good (for the person who possesses it) precisely because it is an instance of knowledge. How might a hedonist argue that knowledge is not a basic good in spite of the fact that acquiring knowledge usually makes people better off, at least in the long run? How might a desire satisfactionist argue that knowledge is not a basic good in spite of the aforementioned fact? Providing arguments for the hedonism and desire satisfactionist against knowledge being counted as a basic good can be accomplished by outlining their respective positions and then show that knowledge need not be a basic good in those systems. In this paper, I will first outline hedonism, then show how knowledge is excluded as a basic good. Then I will outline desire satisfactionism and show how knowledge is excluded as a basic good in that system as well. Hedonism states that a life is good for the person who lives it if that life contains a favorable balance of pleasure over pain.Since this is the case, according to hedonism, knowledge is not a basic good, pleasure is the basic good. The reason why knowledge is not a basic good is because hedonism gives it no value toward the evaluation of lives. Here I will provide an example of how this works. Suppose there are two people. Person # 1 has 100 hedons, 0 dolars, and 10 percent knowledge. Person # 2 has 100 hedons, 0 dolars, and 90 percent knowledge. According to hedonism, these two people have equally good lives. Since this is the case, knowledge for hedonism is not a basic good. If it was, Person # 2 would be better off. Even if knowledge were to make you better off
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