331: If It Makes You Happy . . .

On Friday, 331 reflected on Julia Annas's claim that some people's "desires are in obvious ways defective," and whether it is possible that "defective desires" might give someone the false impression that they are happy.

To further stimulate our discussion of this issue, we watched a short clip from the 2000 film Traffic, directed by Steven Soderbergh, in which a conservative politician comes home to find his daughter smoking crack.  We went on to imagine a conversation the two of them might have (when the daughter's high wore off) in which the daughter might claim that she is happy with her life, and her dad might counter that she doesn't know what happiness is if she thinks smoking crack makes her happy.

Is happiness purely subjective?  Is there a good reason to think of happiness in a different way?  Could the dad be right?

Move to minute 6:33 mark if you would like to see the clip we watched, but be prepared for "strong language" (you might want to turn down the volume if there are kids around; the film is rated "R"):

331: A Noon class with Annas

On Wednesday, 331 discussed the following ideas that were derived from Julia Annas’s essay “Happiness as Achievement”:
1) J must be determined via a global perspective (as opposed to a linear one)
2) Feeling good and having your desires satisfied is not enough for J (242)
3) J lies not just in having material objects or positions of power; you have to earn them (243)

In the video below, recorded on March 31st, 2011 at the University of Pennsylvania, Annas discusses what it means to "flourish." (Annas herself shows up at the six-minute mark after an introduction delivered by James Pawelski.)

331 Takes on Taylor

Richard Taylor

In Monday’s class, we discussed the following ideas associated with Richard Taylor’s essay, “Virtue Ethics":

1) "There are many ingredients to J, but no one thing causes J (227)

2) J is similar to health, but J is not the same thing as health (230)  (Not all healthy people are J, but all J people are healthy; health is necessary for happiness but sufficient for J) (231)

3) The expression of creative intelligence is necessary, but not sufficient, for J (232-233)

4) “Lesser beings” are not capable of Taylor’s definition of eudaimonia.

5) Defining one’s own self is the main path to J  (223-226) 

Some of us puzzled over Taylor’s claim that J is “not gained simply by choice” (230) and some pointed out that factors beyond an individual’s control may affect his or her ability to achieve J.

The Beat Goes On in 331

Now that the semester is under way, and everyone has at least had a chance to find their way around the Mother Night questions on this website (click “Mother Night assignment” above), I think we can begin adding new posts here designed to stimulate on-line further thought and discussion of issues raised in the various sections of Enduring Questions.  To that end, I’d like to begin by sharing some of the ideas that have been floating around Horace Mann room 331 on MWF from noon to 12:50 this week as well as some of the questions we've been grappling with.

Click on these links to find out more about what we've been up to:

Friday August 19th.:  Daniel Nettle's "Introduction" to Happiness
Wednesday, August 17th.  What is happiness?

Comparison Shopping

In the introduction to Happiness, Daniel Nettle, points out that feelings of happiness are shaped by “comparison with alternative outcomes.” If things turn out better than you expected, you may be happy, even though the results were imperfect.
Consider this insight into the relationship between expectation and happiness as it might be used to think through a political thought experiment.

Which of the three societies would be happiest (assume that everyone works):
a) a society in which half the households bring in more than $70,000 a year, the other half bring in less than $70,000 a year, and neither side expects to ever make more or less;
b) a society in which every household brings in $70,000 a year and no one expects to ever bring in much more or less;
c) a society in which a small number of households earns much more than $70,000; most earn much less than $70,000; and all believe that each year at least some households in the higher-income bracket will trade places with some in the lower income group?

What does your answer say about human nature and happiness calculations?

331 Engages Daniel Nettle

Daniel Nettle

In Friday’s class (August 19), we discussed questions provoked by several passages from Daniel Nettle’s Introduction to Happiness. Among these:

1. “. . . Jefferson’s rights one [life] and two [liberty] may open the stable door, but only number three—the pursuit of happiness—is going to make it go anywhere” (ix). The question: Should happiness be the motor that drives us?

2. “If maximizing happiness is the point of individual lives, then the point of systems of government and economy should be to maximize our collective or aggregate happiness” (ix). The question: If government is in the happiness business, is that its sole purpose or does it have other responsibilities?

Aristippus

3. “The Greek philosopher Aristippus argued in the fourth century B.C. that the goal of life is to maximize the totality of one’s pleasures” (ix). The question: Do people endlessly seek happiness in all that they do?

4. “[Level two happiness] concerns not so much feelings, as judgments about the balance of feelings” (x). The question: How much does perspective affect the balance of feelings?

“[W]e intuitively feel that there is something called happiness, something unitary but not trivial, concrete enough to strive for yet broad enough to be worth striving for” (xi). The question: Is a life spent seeking happiness actually a happy life?

“In addition to the three levels of the ordinary meaning of happiness, some scholars have used the term simply to mean the attainment of whatever it is that people want” (xi). The question: To what extent is happiness derived from what one has already attained and to what extent is it derived from what one strives to have?

Other questions:
To what extent can happiness be derived through one’s association with others? How happy can one be trying to make others happy?

Is “fulfilling your potential” (eudaimonia) ever a realistic goal, given that we only have one life to live?

How does one measure whether or not someone is living up to his or her potential (eudaimonia)? Whose perspective should be trusted? The individual whose potential is being measured? Or those looking on from the outside?

Daniel Nettle on Evolution

Daniel Nettle, the first author in our anthology, talks about teaching evolutionary theory to first-year college students. Click on the video below to hear (and see) him give an hour-long presentation on his experiences in 2009 at UCLA.

We have been convocated!

  

331 Asks: What is happiness?

On Wednesday, 331 addressed the question “What is happiness?” Some suggested that happiness involves “being content” both with “what you have” (your possessions and accomplishments) as well as “what you are” (your identity). Others observed that possessions and circumstances are not sufficient for happiness to emerge; attitude is also important. It was also pointed out that happiness is not merely a state of mind; past experiences affect our potential for current happiness. This observation about the sparked the question: Can an individual simply decide at any moment to be happy? To what extent is happiness a decision?

We also talked about the way happiness can be used to refer to a temporary feeling or a feeling associated with more general, long term, “big picture” concerns.

Another topic of discussion was whether “bad people” (immoral ones) can be happy. On this issue, some suggested that although bad people may appear to be happy at a particular moment in their lives, their bad behavior typically stems from a lack of compassionate feeling for others that may be rooted in previous experiences of abuse and misfortune they may have suffered. Thus, the happiness of the immoral person may be a superficial layer on top of other layers of unhappiness.

Sylvia Plath and Her Children (ca. 1962)

The question of whether or not happiness is necessary for a worthwhile life also provoked some interesting observations. In addressing this question, some of us suggested that accomplishment alone cannot be the single measure of value. Accomplishment is incomplete without appreciation. A happy person appreciates his or her health and family. Others observed that when you are talking about whether or not a life is worthwhile, it is important to differentiate between the feelings an individual may have about his or her own life and the feelings others may have about his or her life. For example, a great poet may feel that her own life is worthless, but others who care for her and her work will disagree (for more on Sylvia Plath, see video below). Others noted that in addition to measuring the value of a life in terms of its impact on society at large (as with the great poet or a political leader), it is also possible to measure its value in terms of its impact on a small community of friends and family.

Finally, we talked about the relation between “being human” and “being happy.” Some suggested that one thing that differentiates human beings from other animals is that human beings depend more on emotional connections to survive. An example was given of the affection babies require in order to survive. (Click here to learn more about Rene Spitz's contributions to this line of thought.; click here for Harry Harlow's thoughts on monkeys need for love.)

If you have thoughts about any of these questions, please leave a comment.

An unhappy poet?

Sylvia Plath.

Humans Need Emotional Attachment

Watch the video below to learn more about Rene A. Spitz's study of the human need for emotional attachment.