In his 2019 paper Two Visions of Welfare,Fred Feldman defends Attitudinal Hedonism about welfare by positing a conceptually pluralist account of welfare. Feldman argues that there are two concepts of welfare: Pure Welfare Narrowly Conceived and Enhanced Welfare Broadly Conceived. In this talk I appraise Feldman’s move to pluralism and his subsequent account of welfare. I proceed in four parts. First, I introduce the idea of moves (such as ‘going pluralist’), how moves might come about, and the benefits that we can get by employing them. Next, I introduce Feldman’s use of a move to conceptual pluralism. Then, I argue that Feldman’s attempt merely collapses into a case of conceptual gerrymandering, a case of artificially shifting the bounds of a concept to rule out one’s less-preferred theories of that concept on conceptual grounds. Finally, I argue that we can learn at least two things from Feldman’s unsuccessful move to pluralism. First, there is a problem that all conceptual pluralist accounts will face: the umbrella problem. Second, there is a plausible solve for the umbrella problem in the case of the concept of welfare: a move to functionalism.
