ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book exploes the main challenge to hedonism stems from the results which it reaches in experience machine type cases. Hedonism is committed to the claim that any two lives with the same hedonic level also have the same level of well-being. But there seem to be cases where two agents have the same hedonic level and yet their levels of well-being differ. A happiness theory of well-being is also vulnerable to experience-machine-type worries. There are thus a number of different challenges for those tempted by the view that only happiness and unhappiness contribute to, and detract from, well-being. The limits to intervention in the lives of others are also relevant to well-being through the harm principle. Those who accept the harm principle think that one may only restrict someone's liberty only in order to prevent harm to others.
