ABSTRACT
If you are satisfied with the picture you have of the arguments in this study, please proceed to Section 11.2.
11.1 Summary
I start this study by asking whether it would be reasonable to demand that preferences should be informed and rational in order to be relevant to a person’s good. Such a demand I will henceforth call an ‘information requirement’. Any theory that assigns some prudential value to the satisfaction of a person’s preferences I call a ‘preferencesensitive theory’ (an expression I borrow from Krister Bykvist). I distinguish between two kinds of personal values: welfare values and quality values. A theory of the former kind of value is a theory of what it means to be well off. A theory of the latter is more general and covers anything that adds to the quality of someone’s life (which does not necessarily imply that it adds to her prospering or welfare). I assume that a considerable number of theories of quality values, that is to say, quality-oflife theories, are preference-sensitive. Analysing the full information account of a person’s good or quality of life, therefore, ought to be of general importance.
