There is an interesting op-ed by Katherine Seligman in the San Francisco Chronicle (P-10) about conscientiously using positive psychology to make children happier by instilling healthy habits, skills and virtues, such as gratitude, using, simple, scientifically proven strategies. She acknowledges, "only the passage of time will reveal whether the interventions work in the long run," but points out that "studies of adults and teens have shown that various small interventions can have a measurable influence on happiness" and overall physical health.
Seligman recognizes that the notion of intentionally increasing your happiness isn't historically new. After all, the "examination of what brings satisfaction and fulfillment to humans has been around since ancient Greece. But designing studies that rely on controlled experiments and measures of happiness was a different concept." This, it would seem, is a radical departure from standard, purely philosophical approaches to the study of happiness, welfare and well-being.
Can this work proceed without the assistance of philosophers, or do we still play a indispensable role in the interpretation of the data? Can, for instance, this work be about happiness, welfare or well-being if the types of habits, skills and virtues that conduce mental states of particular kinds that the psychologists measure aren't the kinds of mental states we (the folk or philosophers) agree happy people have?
If not, 'should' we reject the research, invoke a new concept in order to accommodate it, or keep the concept and alter it, in order to accommodate the research? For example, it might turn out that 'we' don't think morally reprehensible, deluded and inauthentic people can be happy. However, the research might show that certain types of people can only be happy, in a certain, specialized, sense of the word, if they are cruel, delusional and phony.
If this is the case, should we dispense of the concepts the psychologists are using? Should the psychologists deliberately avoid this conclusion when they are conducting research, so that they re-affirm our non-reflective or considered judgments about what types of people can be happy? This seems unreasonable. After all, it certainly seems possible to give morally reprehensible, deluded and inauthentic people good prudential advice.
That is, you can show Dexter (the serial killer) how to be a happy, in the sense I have in mind here, even if you consider him a moral monster. A 'good' adviser might even suggest new ways for Dexter to be even more cruel, advice that Dexter would appreciate. Certain things that make most of us happy, such as gratitude, just can't make Dexter happy. It even seems that you could use the same framework you use to evaluate and give positive advice to ordinary people to give advice to Dexter (pictured).
Is there another notion of happiness with which we 'should' be concerned?
Excelsior!
C.L.Sosis
Stephen Darwall: Welfare and Rational Care (Princeton Monographs in Philosophy)
Christopher Peterson: Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification
Richard Kraut: What Is Good and Why: The Ethics of Well-Being
James Griffin: Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement, and Moral Importance (Clarendon Paperbacks)
Culture and Subjective Well-Being (Well Being and Quality of Life)
Bruno S. Frey: Happiness and Economics: How the Economy and Institutions Affect Human Well-Being.
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