A Philosophical Recount/Rant

I just got back from an exciting RussSoc lecture! (Which I will now proceed to rant about).

It was given by the incredibly engaging Caroline West, and titled (Though wasn't really all that strictly about) "Illusions and Delusions of Happiness."

I arrived, along with a bunch of other people a few minutes late, due to a) The time being misgiven in an email, and b) It behind held in an obscure room, behind a locked door.

The room was also too small to fit everyone that turned up, though some bonus chairs were perloined from the nearby area, and luckily halfway through the lecture I managed to get a packet of the biscuits into easy reaching range.

The lecture itself only really covered stuff she had already talked about in last semester's "Moral Psychology" course, but seeing as it was on just about my favouritest topic in the world, that of Happiness and how it relates to The Good Life, I didn't mind at all.

(Incidentally, I should note that The Good Life, in the context of this lecture, only meant that which is Good for the experiencer of that life... So while most philosophers argue that to truly lead a Good Life there is some moral component required, this discussion is ignoring morality except insofar as some ethical beliefs and actions may be necessary to make oneself have a good life. Some call it the Pragmatic Good Life. So even a violent psychopath could conceivably have one of these, even though he might not be able to have a morally Good Life.)

She started by giving some different accounts of what happiness is...

The Psychologist's account: Self reported feelings of pleasure and satisfaction with life, I think it was, on which basis the happiest people in the world are conservative-voting, narcissistic northen Europeans

The Neuroscientist's account: Certain instances of brain activity in the left hemisphere, where activity in the right hemisphere indicates sadness. (Assuming I have my hemispheres right)

And various Philosophical accounts, such as:

a) The Narrow Hedonist: Happiness is that subjective feeling you get in your mind when you, say, eat some really nice chocolate. You know the feeling? That feeling of happiness.

b) The Preference Hedonist: Happiness is any subjective feeling that, while it is being felt, you desire. Unhappiness is any feeling that, while feeling it, you would rather not be feeling.

And a few others that I don't really remember or particularly care about for the purposes of this discussion.


Then came the part about how this related to what makes a person's life go well, for that person. There are 3 main answers to this.

a) Happiness: The best life is simply that life which features the most Happiness, and the least Pain/Unhappiness.

b) Preference Satisfaction: The best life is that life in which most of the agent's preferences or desires are satisfied. This is, of course, importantly different from the happiness account along with a preference hedonistic theory, because... Imagine I had a desire to write The Great Australian Novel, despite the fact that the act of writing made me very unhappy. (i.e, put me into a mental state which, at the time I was in it, I did not want to be in (Say, frustration)).
If this was my only, or primary desire, then, under the Preference Satisfaction theory, I would be said to have led a good life if I spent 40 years in agonising, unhappy frustration, finally finished the novel, then died a day later before I could derive any happiness from it. After all, my desire had been fulfilled. However, under the happiness system I would've led a pretty bad life, because I was unhappy for the vast majority of it, and never got any kind of happiness dividends from it in the end.

This may seem like a kinda trivial difference, seeing as most people would desire what makes them happy, but... Well, there are plenty of things we desire that won't make us happy.* For example, think about having kids. It seems, and there are good evolutionary reasons to suppose, that most people desire, or will at some point desire, to have kids... But there is some empirical evidence to suggest that having kids tends to make people less happy (For both the philosophical definitions I gave, I would think, though probably not the psychological one). So what would make for a better life? The happiness theory and the preference theory would disagree on this. (That would've probably been a better example to use in the first place, rather than that stupid novel one).


Aaaanyway, the third theory is c) The objective list theory, under which there is an objective list of things that make for a good life, such as Friends, Family, Hard Work, Religion, Virtue, yadda yadda, and all this stuff will make you have a good life, even if you don't want them, and even if they won't make you happy. Obviously I think this theory is hooie. I just used the word Hooie! Wee!

Anyway, the point of the lecture was to push Caroline's favourite, fourth theory, the Idealised Conditions Preference Satisfaction theory. This theory comes from Preference Satisfaction after applying the Brave New World argument: This is that the people in Huxley's BNW are all very happy, and having all their desires met and satisfied, but we still look at them and go "Eww, there's something wrong with those people, they're not leading the good life!"

Hence: What really matters is not having satisfied those desires which you actually have, but rather those that you WOULD have were you to come up with them in idealised conditions of reflections (i.e, you knew all the relevant facts, you were perfectly rational, and you took some time to reflect upon your own desires.) So, the idea is, if those Brave New Worldians knew about Poetry and Shakespeare, they might desire that instead, and stop desiring Soma, so then those things would be good. Alternatively, they might decide, despite learning about Poetry and Shakespeare, that they would still rationally prefer a life of Sex and Soma, so then sticking with them would still be The Good Life.

To tell the truth... It's a nice theory, but I'm not a big fan of it. To lay my cards on the blog, I'm a Preference Hedonist, and a Happiness theorist in regard to the good life. So I believe that the best life is that which consists of a maximum of happiness over unhappiness, where happiness is defined simply as a feeling which, while I'm having it, I desire to have.

And why do I believe this? Well, I find it hard to see how you can say someone has led a better life simply because some of their desires have been satisfied. I mean... Imagine a man wants his son to become a world-class soccer player, and then, his son becomes a world-class soccer player! Now remove any happiness that the father gets from knowing this... Is he any better off for this having happened?

How about this... The son becomes a world-class soccer player, but only after his father dies. Now can the father said to have led a better life? His desire was met, but he never even knew about it!

How about this third scenario for the clincher: The son moves to New York and becomes a wealthy dentist, but sends letters home assuring his father that he has becomes a world famous soccer player, and the father believes him. The father's desire has NOT been satisfied, but he gets all the subjective benefits/experiences of its having been so!

My point is that the objective fact of a desire having been satisfied seems, to me, to make no difference to the quality of a life - I think it's only the subjective fact, the happiness, that matters.

(This, of course, leaves me wide open to the Brave New World argument, but I'm actually quite tempted to bite the bullet on this one, and say that those people, assuming such a society was possible, actually would be leading the good life. Of course, we don't see it as such, as we haven't been conditioned like them, don't believe that life would make us happy, and are probably right about that... But assuming those hypothetical people are genuinely enjoying themselves, I'm tempted to say they are leading a Good Life. Though perhaps not the maximally best life. For example, even a preference hedonist has to consider whether, if they were, saying having fun reading Shakespeare, they might not prefer being in that state even more than they would, in the BNW, enjoy being in the state of taking Soma.)

So anyway, having not been tempted towards Preference Satisfaction, I don't get tempted towards the Idealised Conditions version... But interestingly, it just occured to me that if you believed The Good Life consisted in happiness, then that would logically imply the truth of the Idealised Conditions Preference Theory. After all, The Good Life consists in being happy... And so if you were perfectly rational and knowledgable, you would desire The Good Life, and so would only desire that which made you happy. And therefore to lead The Good Life (To be maximally happy) would necessarily mean getting satisfying all the desire that you would, under ideal conditions, have! Weee!

Aaaanyway, the lecture pretty much ended after the Idealised Conditions thing, and then we had about an hour of Questions And Answers, which were very interesting, raised some nice questions about Hitler, psychopaths, and thousands of ants trapped in a jar, etc, but I think I'm done ranting.

*Incidentally, some studies show that people are pretty bad at guessing what will make them happy. Heck, I know I am. Though I'm trying to rectify that! :D