 We could reconcile either hedonism or perfectionism with the desire-satisfaction claim if we treat the latter as a metaethical claim about what makes good things good and the former as a substantive claim about what things are good. On this reading, what makes something good is that it would be preferred by competent judges, and what competent judges in fact prefer is pleasures, especially higher pleasures (according to the hedonist claim) or higher activities and pursuits (according to the perfectionist claim). But, as we have seen, neither of these claims can accommodate all of Mill’s claims about happiness, and both assume that the preferences of competent judges are constitutive of the superiority of the object of the their preferences. But the dignity passage implies that the preferences of competent judges are evidential, rather than constitutive, of the value of the object of the their preferences.