Tim Neal
PHIL2647 Philosophy of Happiness
Essay Question 5.
Can someone be happy if her sincere belief that her life is going well is false or
unjustified?
Can you be happy if all of your beliefs about the circumstances of your happiness are
false? An objective theory of happiness would deny you your happiness if your life
circumstances were not what you believed. In this paper I intend to reclaim this lost
happiness by showing that objective state theories of happiness are irrelevant. We will
begin the discission with a classic thought experiment often used in happiness theory
literature (the mislead happy man). This will demonstrate how objective theory ideas
can arise. With this in mind I will describe Aristotles argument (eudaimonian) that
concludes in a narrow inflexible standard in which we are to judge the existence of
happiness. I will describe three subjective theories to contrast eudaimonian theory
before reclaiming happiness for the masses who use the term in their every day
language/communication. It is this issue that I see is the main point, happiness as
described by those who experience it is, not value laden judgements from theorists.
Feldman(2010) and Haybron(2003) help explain this transition back to the individual.
It is not my intention to champion any one theory, but to indicate a possible direction
for a future theory. Happiness is important for people in the world, I hope to reclaim it
in this paper.
The objective/subjective split on happiness can be demonstrated with a thought
experiment. A lovely example of this experiment can be seen in the movie the
‘Truman Show’. In this movie, actor Jim Carey plays a man who has the ‘perfect life’.
He has all that he could dream of needing. He has fulfilling work he enjoys, a loving
wife and healthy children. He enjoys recreational activities with close friends. He gets
up in the morning feeling happy. When he sits in his arm-chair and reflects on his life
so far, he feels content at his achievements. All is well in his life.
Of course Jim is living a complete lie. Jim in fact was born into a television series. All
the people around him are actors. The neighbourhood he lives in and the town centre
where he works are all sets. His work, his relationships, his whole environment is
completely fake. But, it is an illusion he is completely unaware of.
Given the above scenario, the theorist will ask: “Does Jim feel happy?” As a general
rule, empirically, most people will agree that Jim feels happy. When pressed further,
the same group are reluctant to suggest Jim is “living a good life”. When asked “Is
Jim happy?”, silence is the answer. Respondents do not know how to respond.
Something feels wrong. How can this man who is living a complete lie, be happy?
This thought experiment is indicating to us that happiness and living a happy life is
more than just pure internal psychological emotions. It is suggesting that we must also
have an element of truth, veracity and authenticity of experience. These are objective
tests. Did Jim actually come close to reaching his life objectives? Did he really feel
the joy of real love between friends, children and partner? Perhaps he did not - he felt
something delivered like it was love, but it was a lie. People feel that this is indicating
that Jim is not having a happy life. This insight is not new. As described by Aristotle
in ‘The Nicomachean Ethics’, happiness or eudaimona is reached via a way of life.
The good life is achieved through activities, actions and choices (otherwise it may
belong to a man who was lying in bed asleep throughout his life, Book X part 6).
In Book I part 5 Aristotle makes it very clear that the pleasures in life such as those
that emerge from entertainment are not consonant with the good life. In fact Aristotle
calls those whom enjoy these types of pleasures “vulgar”. He goes on to suggest “the
mass of mankind are slavish to their tastes, preferring a life suitable to beasts”. He
then moves on to those who follow a political life – but dismisses this as the way to a
good life as the “fruits are at the behest of others”. For example, others bestow honour
upon me, but the good is something that is of ones own and not so easily taken from
us – and what others give they can also take away. In part 7 it is discussed how we
seek happiness for happiness sake, we seek things like honour and pleasure as these
things will make us happy.
Continuing to chase a proper description of happiness, Aristotle turns to function. His
argument stops when he concludes that the proper function of man is to reason.
Reasoning is the distinctive characteristic that separates us from animals and plants.
This is important because he asserts that for anything that has a function, the good is
to perform that function well. The good life is the happy life. Now he has placed the
pieces he can link them together to conclude that for a human to be happy they must
have a good life. To have a good life they must perform their distinctive function
well. The distinctive function is to reason. Thus man is happy when occupied with
reason. As written by Aristotle in Book X “for man, therefore, the life according to
reason is best and pleasantest, since reason more than anything else is man. This life
therefore is the happiest.”
The first impression of such a theory is that it seems that only the smallest percentage
of the world population will have any right to call themselves ‘happy’. A life of
contemplation can only be achieved by an elite few. As noted by Richard Kraut
(1979), Aristotle demands a strict inflexible standard by which we judge if we make
the grade. Kraut shows a way in which we can see Aristotle’s objective view slightly
differently. Rather than follow that man’s distinctive feature is that of reason, let us
suggest that every man has a set of ideal lives. To be happy we have to come close to
achieving that ideal life which we choose for ourselves.
How will this help us with the problem of Jim? Jim believes he is living the ideal life
that he has chosen for himself. Only this belief is false. He is not living that life. So in
light of these objective view points Jim is not happy. He is not happy under any other
objective theories such as Externalist Desire-Fulfillment or Externalist Life
Satisfaction either. An objectivist will say, to believe one is living a good life is not
enough. One must actually be living a good life.
One may say “but it is true…Jim is not happy. He is being deceived. How could a life
lived like this be happy?” At this I would extend our thought experiment. Let us say
that on Jim’s 60th birthday the television network decides to stop funding the show. It
is too expensive and the actors have all worked a life-time and want to retire. So they
sit Jim down and tell him the truth. At hearing this Jim will feel shock, dismay,
intense sadness, betrayal etc. Once Jim is over all of these, and perhaps after extensive
therapy, we ask Jim had he been happy? The answer he would give is ‘yes’. There
would be no reason to suggest that after discovering that his life was false that it
would change his perception of the true feelings and thoughts that he had been feeling
and thinking up to the day that he was told the truth about his life. All of those
feelings had been felt by him in the most authentic manner. Learning the truth would
cause severe unhappiness from that date and into Jim’s future, but it would not change
his past and the feelings he genuinely experienced in that past.
Objective theories move away from the folk use of the term happiness. As Haybron
(2003) writes: “Happiness is first and foremost a folk psychological concept
employed by ordinary people trying to satisfy their own practical interests in leading
good lives.” He goes on to say that this folk psychological concept is “not up for
grabs”. Thus it cannot be warped or changed to suit a theorist’s latest concept. Our
philosophical concepts and theories must embrace this ordinary use of the term. As
we have seen in the preceding paragraphs objective theories do not embrace this folk
understanding of happiness. Do subjective theories fare any better?
Subjective theories of happiness focus on the psychological state of the person in
question. Broadly there are three main theories that I will briefly describe here (which
split into further specialisations of each). Hedonism, Affective State Theory and Life
Satisfaction Theory.
Hedonism is the idea that a person is happy if and only if she feels more pleasure than
pain at that time. A person will have a happy life if and only if throughout her entire
life the balance of pleasure over pain is positive. The possible meaning of the word
pleasure then splits Hedonism into two classes – Sensation Hedonism and Preference
Hedonism. In Sensation Hedonism as put forward by thinkers such as Jeremy
Bentham and James Mill, pleasure and pain are understood to be distinctive feeling
tones… “a man knows it, by feeling it; and that is the whole account of the
phenomenon.”(Mill, 1869). Preference Hedonism defines pleasure as a desirable
consciousness. The experience is pleasant because it is desired for its own sake,
because of how it feels.
Hedonistic ideas intuitively work. It is all about the subject and the feelings they are
experiencing. In our case of Jim we could say that he is happy using a Hedonistic
theory. However there seems to be some odd claims that emerge. A hedonist would
suggest that even the smallest most fleeting pleasures make a difference to a person’s
happiness. Is this correct? Can the glimpse of a flower in a garden on the way to the
bus stop really go towards creating a happy life? Not everyone thinks so, hence
Affective State Theory.
Daniel Haybron (2001) argues that one can be happy or not happy independently of
pleasurable experiences. He tells us that the hedonistic view lacks causal depth. This
is because our state of happiness is “a deeper psychological condition
incorporating…mental states that determine…the kinds of experiences that will occur.
It (happiness) is a substantially dispositional phenomenon.” Thus I am more likely to
find an experience pleasurable if I am in a happy mood or have a general disposition
to being happy. Our friend Jim would be considered happy in this theory. An issue
with this notion is that just because I am more likely to be gloomy and cranky does
not exclude me from saying I have had a happy life. An oft quoted example is that of
Ludwig Wittgenstein. Considered a grumpy sad man by all those around him, yet as
he lay before his death he declared he had had a wonderful life. Wittgenstein was
indicating the features of a Life Satisfaction theory.
Life Satisfaction Theories say happiness is “satisfaction with one’s life as a
whole”(Tatarkiwewicz, 1966). So when one reflects back on one’s life we can say we
are happy with our achievements, our relationships and the general time that was our
life. This is a widely accepted theory of happiness by philosophers and psychological
researchers. Yet one of the objections to this theory is our friend Jim and his state of
mistaken circumstance. Can you be happy when you are mistaken about your true
circumstances?
When I first described this thought experiment I commented on how people
responded to this case in light of three different contextual uses of happiness. In doing
this we observe respondents having trouble concluding if Jim was happy or not.
Perhaps what is really happening is that we are seeing the demonstration of the
ambiguity of the word happiness? This notion is discussed by Feldman(2010) where
he identifies eleven different definitions of happiness from three writers. Feldman
describes these definitions and then applies a set of tests as prescribed by Quine1. One
must note that there is no hard and fast rule as to whether a word is ambiguous. Quine
offers a set of questions that are applied to the word to help indicate if it is, or is not
ambiguous.
Feldman finds no reason to suggest that happiness as used in ordinary English, is
ambiguous. His view is “that ‘happy’ is used loosely and vaguely in ordinary
1
Willard Quine, Word and Object (1960: 129-34), section 27, ‘Ambiguity of Terms.’
English”. He suggests that when used in most ordinary ways the word happy may be
replaced with “takes more attitudinal pleasure than displeasure in things” (Feldman,
2010, pp135). To illustrate: Jim takes more pleasure than displeasure when eating a
bar of chocolate. Jim is in a mood where he is likely to experience more pleasure than
displeasure. Or, Jim has taken more pleasure than displeasure in living during his life.
Notice that Feldman is putting happiness squarely in the subjective box, not the
objective.
Feldman does distinguish between an ‘evaluative’ and a ‘descriptive’ form of
happiness. He suggests that the evaluative form is a semi technical term used by
philosophers. He reasons that it is possible that this has arisen out of attempts to
translate ‘eudaimonia’. But he maintains that happy in the ordinary use of the word
does not have this ambiguity.
Haybron(2003) agrees with Feldman and his protection of the ordinary English use of
happiness. In an attempt to gain ground on a theory of happiness Haybron puts
forward a set of desiderata that he believes any such theory needs to satisfy. The
desiderata are:
1. Descriptive adequacy
2. Practical and theoretical utility
3. Prudential value
4. Ubiquity
5. Causal depth
6. Efficiency
7. Principled unity
The first desiderata ‘descriptive adequacy’, requires that a theory of happiness must
include the general folk understanding of the concept of happiness. The sixth
desiderata ‘efficiency’, stipulates that the theory “must reflect the role of happiness in
the ordinary deliberation and evaluation that is carried out by people who are working
with limited cognitive resources and information.” (Haybron, 2003, pp 322 )
Using the insight of Feldman and Haybron we can see that Jim can rightly be
described as happy. He is an ordinary man trying to live his life by maximising his
happiness. When he reflects on his day he knows the emotions, the joys, the
disappointments, the frustrations that have passed through as emotional states, he can
give regard to the real world outcomes of his physical and mental activities. A theory
of happiness need recognise his life as a life lived and not disregard his real
experience due to his ignorance. It is in this way that objective theories rob Jim of his
true claim to happiness.
In the body of this paper I have shown that it is possible for a person to be happy even
if that person’s beliefs that her life is going well are false or unjustified. I have done
this principally through the rejection of an objective theory of happiness. While
opening the door to a subjective theory to justify the conclusion, I hope to have shown
that no single theory adequately covers the every day use of the word happiness. It is
through Feldman and Haybron that I can see a clearer more relevant shape of a theory
of happiness emerging.
Bibliography
Aristotle, “The Nicomachean Ethics”, trans. W.D. Ross, revised by J.L Ackrill & J.O.
Urmson, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1980. Reprinted in S.M. Cahn & C,
Vitrano (eds.), “Happiness: Classical and Contemporary Readings in Philosophy”,
Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008, pp. 19-35.
Feldman, Fred, “Appendix C; The Meaning(s) of Happy”, What is This Thing Called
Happiness?, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010, pp. 126-137
Haybron, Daniel M., “Happiness and Pleasure”, Philosophy and Phenomenolgical
Research, 62(3), 2001, pp. 501-528.
Haybron, Daniel M., “What do we want from a Theory of Happiness?”,
Metaphilosophy, 34(3), 2003, pp. 305-329.
Kraut, Richard, “Two Conceptions of Happiness”, The Philosophical Review, 88(2),
1979, pp 167-197.
Mill, James, “Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind”, 1869, Reprinted by
Caroline West, “Philosophy of Happiness Lecture Notes”, Week 2, 2011.
West, Caroline, “Philosophy of Happiness Lecture Notes”, Weeks 2-4, 2011.