Historical Conceptions of Happiness

• Happiness is a subject that raises questions about its very nature and components

Hedonism

• Defines happiness a a state where pleasure outweighs pain

Life Satisfaction

• Defines happiness as being satisfied with one's life

Emotional State Theory

• Happiness stems from having a predominantly positive emotional condition

Objectivity of Happiness (Starting Assumption)

• There exists an objective truth about what happiness is
• The goal is to discover that accurate account

Subjectivity of Happiness

• Happiness isn't subjective in a way where one person's satisfaction differs fundamentally from another's preponderance of pleasure over pain
• Subjectivity arises from the fact that different experiences induce happiness in different individuals

Descriptive vs. Normative Claims

• Descriptive claims describe how things are:
  • Montreal has about 1.7 million residents
  • Abortion is permitted at every stage of pregnancy in Canada
  • Justin Trudeau graduated from McGill
  • Happiness is a greater pleasure than pain
• Normative claims cover judgements or how things ought to be:
  • Montreal is a great place to live
  • Abortion should be legal during all stages of pregnancy
  • Justin Trudeau is brilliant
  • Pursuing pleasure should be a priority for everyone

Descriptive Adequacy

• Accounts of happiness should align with descriptive claims about what happiness is
• A credible account of happiness should be descriptively adequate
• Descriptive adequacy means compatibility with and making sense of our existing knowledge

Intuitions and Happiness

• Intuitions are what strike us as true
• Intuitions about happiness originate from a general sense of happiness drawn from everyday experiences
• Examples include understanding, personal experiences, witnessing happiness in others, and correctly using the term happiness

Practical Utility

• An account of happiness needs to align with how we perceive and treat happiness as practically significant
• Happiness has roles like being a practical idea, being something to evaluate ourselves, helping to predict outcomes, and explaining various situations in our lives

Deliberative Role

• Happiness is a factor in deciding what to do
• Choosing an action that will make you or a loved one happier is a consideration in favor of that direction

Evaluative Role

• Happiness plays a role in evaluating oneself or others
• One might assume their friend is doing poorly if they're always unhappy

Predictive Role

• Happiness is a foundation for predicting future behaviours and states
• An unhappy friend would not be a good road trip partner

Explanatory Role

• Happiness explains a person's actions
• A friend quitting their job can be explained if they were unhappy

Emotional State Account of Happiness (ESA)

• In ESA, happiness means your positive emotions outweigh the negative ones
• Emotions include feelings, moods, and emotions-proper
• Happiness isn't just one emotion, it's the total of your emotions

Contrasting ESA with Hedonism and Life Satisfaction

• Haybron contrasts ESA to hedonism and satisfaction to make it clear

ESA and Hedonism

• ESA is both more restrictive and more inclusive than hedonism
• Restrictive: Both ESA and Hedonism allow pleasure have positive affect
• Only pleasures that affect your emotional condition can positively affect happiness under ESA
• Inclusive: ESA counts both conscious and unconscious aspects of an emotional condition, while hedonism only counts conscious experiences

ESA and Life Satisfaction

• ESA: emotional state account of happiness
• LSA is about life affirmation

Dimensions of Happiness

• Historical conceptions of happiness that correlate with unique emotional ranges make up a dimension of happiness
• Emotions on the positive side of each range make up happiness overall

Endorsement Dimension: (Joy → Sadness)

• In this range, positive emotions show an appreciation for the good things in life
• Positive emotions include: joy, cheerfulness, elation, jubilation, and delight
• Negative emotions in this range denote disappointment from the bad things that happen
• Disendorsement emotions: sadness, gloominess, feeling blue, irritability, grief

Notes on Endorsement

• This is the dimension of happiness that gets the most attention in pop culture
• People wear these emotions on their sleeve and can be identified as "smiley-face" emotion
• These kind of emotions can be hard to sustain for long periods of time
• This includes "feeling happy," a kind of cheer or delight

Engagement Dimension: (Passion → Boredom)

• Positive emotions register an active interest
• Emotions include: passion, exuberance, engrossment, feeling energetic, being in-the-flow, feeling enthralled
• Musicians jamming or readers engrossed are real-world examples
• Negative emotions register disinterest and detachment
• Disengagement emotions: boredom, lethargy

Engagement Notes

• Positive emotions in this range can be complex and unpleasant with anger or frustration

Attunement Dimension: (Tranquility → Anxiety)

• Positive emotions registers a sense of mastery over your environment
• Attunement emotions: tranquility, calmness, inner peace, self-confidence, feeling secure
• A meditating monk is a prime example
• Negative emotions register alienation from your environment
• Disattunement emotions: anxiety, stress, insecurity, feeling edgy, awkwardness

Attunement Notes

• This dimension of happiness is the most discussed in historical texts
• it is likely the most important dimension of happiness
• In order to achieve the other dimensions of happiness, you must be attuned - otherwise you are always stressed

LSA: Life Satisfaction Account of Happiness

• You are satisfied with the way your life is going, so you evaluate it
• Happiness is related to your values

Three Problems for LSA

• Cognitive-affective divergence
• Instability
• Reasonable, inaccurate judgements

The Cognitive-Affective Divergence Problem

• There are cases of cognitive-affective divergence that serve as counterexamples to LSA
• If you are satisfied with life, you're happy
• There are people (a) who are satisfied with their lives but don't seem happy and (b) people who seem happy but aren't satisfied with their lives
• LSA is likely incorrect

Polly and Ace

• Polly is a depressed, tortured poet who cares about making good poetry
• Ace is a parent and failed actor who regrets not fulfilling dreams but finds great joy fulfilling his role as a parent

The Instability Problem

• Self-reports of life satisfaction vary based on trivial contextual factors
• Empirical studies show self-reports of life satisfaction are unstable
• If self-reports of life satisfaction are unstable, then either (a) most of us lack judgements about how satisfied we are with our lives most of the time or (b) we normally do have such a judgement, but heavily influenced by trivial contextual factors
• If (a), LSA means that there is no such thing as happy for most of us
• If (b), LSA dictates that happiness is neither well-grounded nor stable
• There are reasons to doubt LSA

Defending Premise 2.a and 3

• Most people don't have pre-existing judgements about how well their life is going
• When asked to judge the merit of their lives, they create on-the-spot judgements from superficial feelings

Defending Premise 2.b and 4

• Most people do normally have a judgement about whether their life is going well for them, but these judgements are heavily influenced by trivial contextual factors
• Reports are based on preexisting judgements that are sensitive to contextual factors
• The judgement at the center of happiness is neither stable nor well-grounded if interpretation (b) is correct

The Problem of Reasonable Inaccurate Judgements

• LSA dictates that happiness doesn't track well if it is reasonable to judge life well, even when it is not
• Happiness serves as a proxy for wellbeing
• LSA is questionable since there is a difference between your life actually going well for you and your judgement that your life is going well for you
• Judgements about life are guided by ethical norms

Hedonism About Happiness

• A preponderance of pleasurable experiences over painful/ displeasurable experiences equal happiness

Implications of Hedonism

• All pleasurable experience increase happiness levels
• The more intense a pleasure is, the more it positively affects happiness levels
• Happiness and pleasure co-vary

Hedonism's Appeal

• People naturally believe happiness comes from getting pleasure

Problems for Hedonism

• Irrelevant pleasures
• Reduction

The Problem of Irrelevant Pleasures

• There are pleasures that don't seem to affect happiness even though hedonism dictates that all pleasures must positively affect happiness
• If hedonism is correct, then any pleasurable experience positively affects happiness
• There are "irrelevant pleasures" that would not contribute to happiness
• Superficial pleasures don't raise your happiness (snacks, boardgames)
• Intensive pleasures may not affect happiness (sexual, getting high)

The Problem of Reduction

• Hedonism thinks that pleasure is the only key factor to feeling happy, but there are others
• If there are aspects of happiness that don't reduce to pleasure, then hedonism is not the correct view of happiness
• A positive emotional state or satisfaction with one's life are not enough for pleasure
• Emotional state and satisfaction cannot be reduced to pleasure

Haybron's Suggestions

• The person's overall emotional state is positive
• The person is satisfied with the way her life is going
• Both partly define happiness

Defense of Premise 3

• Not one's satisfaction nor life satisfaction reduces to pleasure
• Life satisfaction is a mental judgement that your life is going well for you
• Emotional states are stable and deep

Haybron's Diagnosis

• Hedonism reduces happiness to superficial, conscious experiences, while happiness is deeper

Wellbeing

• How well your life is going for you
• Prudential value is what betters you

Is happiness a prudential good?

• One is good for the happy person, but it matters to wellbeing
• In other words, happiness is ingredient to our wellbeing
• Happiness is not sufficient for wellbeing

Reclusive Rex

• An extreme introvert who does not care for friends
• Having friends may not good for Rex

Conflicting Intuitions & The Two Aspects of Wellbeing

• Many conflicting intuitions can be had about cases like Reclusive Rex
• The No-Intuition means that it is not good for Rex to have friends
• The Yes-Intuition dictates that it is good for rex to have friends

The Aspects of Wellbeing

• Subject-relativity aspect, there is a special connection between wellbeing and the individual person whose wellbeing they want for
• Normative significance aspect of wellbeing.

Evaluating the Objective Theories of Wellbeing

Objective theories can easily consider many factors

The Alienation Problem for Objective Theories

• The alienation problem dictates that objective theories say that one is isolated from what makes them "good:
• These theories have trouble explaining Rex's lack of friends
• What is good for humans relies on assumptions and function - social, intellectual, emotional, and physical
• Martha Nussbaum's theory has to do with what S can fulfill

Objective Theories of Wellbeing

• Whether or not something is good for you does NOT depend on your attitude towards it
• Happiness is usually on the list as the way to check off your marks

Eudaemonist Theories

• Not only propose a list of items that constitute wellbeing, but also an explanation of why each of these items is objectively good.
• Since hedonism implies that wellbeing is a function of experiences alone, this gives us good reason to reject hedonism
• The amount that something affects you depends on your views, which is why it depends on your subjective attitudes

Actual Desire Theory

• Your life is going well for you to the extent that your actual desires are satisfied
• Subjective theories cannot easily accommodate
• You want to be happy/ have friends, and that's why it is good for you
• A greater desire leads to a greater sense of wellbeing

Informed Desire Theory

• Your life is going well because of hypothetical desires that you want without any non-evaluative interferences
• You want to be happy or have friends when informed of relevant facts
• It seems that experiences aren't the only thing that matter to wellbeing, but hedonism entails otherwise

The Experience Machine

• Neuroscientists found the experience machine that simulates real experiences
• Subjective theories give you, the individual subject, ultimate authority over what is good for you.
• Adaptive desires: desires based on values and views formed in circumstances of oppression

Hybrid Theories

• In order for something to be considered "good" on both theoretical spectrums, it must be objectively good and have an effect that impacts the "user" subjectively
• If it makes you happy and contributes to your wellbeing

Objectivists

• Dylan recovers from an accident that his friend received, but he wants to suffer the same injuries as his friend Ricky in solidarity
• This is because having objective goods in your life contributes to your wellbeing whether you want or enjoy them

Philosophers

• To determine each set of theories for both upsides and downsides

Subjective Theories

• Whether or not something is good for you depends entirely on your subjective attitudes; X is good for S, iff S wants or cares about X.

Objective Theories

• Whether or not something is good for you does NOT depend at all on your individual subjective attitudes
• X is good for S, iff S is objectively good for any S

Hybrid Theories

• It depends both whether it is objectively good for you AND on whether you want it or enjoy it
• X is good for S, Iff (a) S has a positive attitude towards X and (b) A is objectively good

Explore the relationship between emotional ranges and historical views of happiness. Understand the impact of cultural contexts, societal values, economic conditions, and technological advancements. This involves aligning life with personal values, differing from hedonistic perspectives.