Hic Habitat Felicitas

Well-Being: Hodge Podge of Kludges?

Hello y'all,

Recently, Stephen Stitch argued that it may be difficult to come up with a good account of moral judgment--an account of moral judgment that captures the ordinary concept--because there is no coherent concept of morality (indeed, we have no reason to believe that there is, and one might argue, given the persistence of disagreement, reason to believe there isn't). Recent research seems to show that there isn't a single psychological system which generates our moral judgments: there are a hodgepodge of different systems, designed by evolution to address different problems, pushing us in different directions. Josh Greene for instance, has suggested that the psychological systems which generate our deontic moral judgments are distinct from the psychological systems that generate utilitarian moral judgments. Often, these two distinct cognitive processes, designed for different purposes, issue inconsistent moral judgments. 

I think this work provides a realistic framework in which to understand our welfare judgments. In an earlier post, I suggested that the social intuitionist model of moral judgment might also apply to our welfare judgments, but it wouldn't be entirely surprising if we discovered that there isn't a single psychological process that generates our welfare judgments. Instead, it seems we have reason to believe that welfare judgments are the by-product of a cornucopia of kludges. Some of these kludges might be designed to protect our progeny (which would explain why we think that what happens to our children after we die can affect our well-being even though we are dead) and other kludges might be activated in situations in which deception is afoot (as is the case in the experience machine thought experiment). This approach to understanding the intricacies of our moral judgments might also help us understand our strange and contradictory welfare judgments. Once we understand how we think about well-being from a psychological/evolutionary perspective our traditional beliefs about well-being might be altered profoundly (as our traditional beliefs about morality might be)...

  Excelsior!

  C.L.Sosis

Martin Versus Seligman!

Hello y'all,

In the recent issue of Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, Mike W. Martin (author of From Morality to Mental Health: Virtue and Vice in a Therapeutic Culture) takes Martin Seligman to task. He argues that Seligman "needs to pay greater attention to several methodological matters: (1) greater care in defining happiness, so as to avoid smuggling in value assumptions of the sort suggested by the title of his book, Authentic Happiness; (2) more attention to the gap between happiness as overall satisfaction and specific gratifications (enjoyments); (3) the danger of sliding to subjectivism by equating self-assessments of virtue with objectively-justified values of the sort Aristotle had in mind; (4) awareness of how "positive" emotions and attitudes presuppose value assumptions." Check out the article here. Enjoy!

Excelsior!

 C.L.Sosis

Bill James and Positive Psychology...

Hello y'all,

I strongly suggest you check out these abstracts (from the SAAP 2009 meeting) all of which are related to William James and positive psychology in one way or another. The first, by Stephen Fishman & Lucille McCarthy claims that one of the most significant discoveries of positive psychologists is the tight connection between morality, virtue and happiness. The second,  by James O. Pawelski, takes a look at positive psychology from a Jamesian point of view. The third claims (author, unknown) that positive psychologists don't talk about virtues, properly understood (that is, understood the way they think James thought it ought to be understood)...shocking!

 Excelsior!

 C.L.Sosis

"I Don't Mind Being the Smartest Man in the World..."

Hello Fellow Hedonists,

Sorry I haven't been updating the blog more often, I've been busy working on my dissertation. I hope the post before this will make up for my absence.

I'll be attending a conference on Ethical and Social Scientific Perspective on Well-being being put on by the CSULB Center for Applied Ethics this weekend. It should be fun!

Excelsior!

C.L.Sosis

P.S. WATCHMEN is also coming out this weekend! The bloody smiley face in the upper left hand of this page is a mirror image of the bloody smile face found in the graphic novel. The graphic novel resonated with me, philosophically. I don't want to ruin the ending (which has been changed, from what I understand), but Ozymandias is my hero.

P.S.S. Check out this post on PEA Soup on the inverted experience machine.

When Should You Abandon Your Method?

Hello Fellow Hedonists,

According to traditional criteria, outlined by L.W Sumner in the book “Welfare, Happiness & Ethics” the best theory about the nature of well-being “is the one which is most faithful to our ordinary concept and our ordinary experience.”  The relevant experience is “given by what we think or feel or know about well-being, both our own and that of others.” This theory must accommodate “the prodigious variety of our preanalytic convictions.” A good theory of well-being should offer truth conditions which “can support and systematize our intuitive assessments.” In a sense, such a theory is an “interpretation of our preanalytic convictions” thus, “the best interpretation is the one which makes the best sense of those convictions” (Sumner, pg 11). A theory of well-being that satisfies these criteria is descriptively adequate.[1]

 There are many accounts of well-being that aim to satisfy these criteria. Despite this profuse variety--hedonism, present desire satisfaction, summative comprehensive desire satisfaction, global comprehensive desire satisfaction, informed desire satisfaction, authentic happiness and perfectionism to name a few--these accounts can be classified as either subjective or objective. Subjective theories of welfare "make our well-being logically dependent on our attitudes of favours and disfavor" whereas objective accounts "deny this dependency." (Sumner pg 38). In other words, subjectivist accounts of well-being claim that your well-being is a function of the structure and content of your subjective experiences. According to objectivist accounts of well-being, your well-being is not entirely the function of your subjective experiences.

Hedonism, for instance, is a subjective account of well-being. According to hedonism your well-being is entirely the function of the intensity and duration of your positive subjective experiences. In particular, hedonists believe that “welfare consists in happiness and that happiness consists in pleasure and the absence of pain” (Sumner, pg 87). In general, a subjective account, such as hedonism, is criticized by pointing out that there are examples of people who we don’t want to say are well off—the deceived, for instance— which seem to satisfy subjective criteria of well-being. Consider the experience machine, for example:

Suppose there were an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired. Superduper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain. Should you plug into this machine for life, preprogramming your life's desires?...Of course, while in the tank you won't know that you're there; you'll think it's all actually happening. Others can also plug in to have the experiences they want, so there's no need to stay unplugged to serve them. (Ignore problems such as who will service the machines if everyone plugs in.) Would you plug in? What else can matter to us, other than how our lives feel from the inside? (Nozick, pg 43)

The fact that we wouldn’t choose to plug into the experience machine (because we believe our well-being doesn’t entirely depend on what we experience) is supposed to show that hedonism is descriptively inadequate. Accordingly, we ought to modify or reject hedonism in favor of a theory that doesn’t have any (or as many) counterintuitive consequences. We ought to adopt a theory that acknowledges that it seems, to most of us, that whether we are well-off depends at least in part on what the real world is like.

According to objectivist accounts of well-being—such as perfectionism, authentic happiness and all desire satisfaction accounts—the well-being of an individual is not entirely a function of subjective experience. Informed desire accounts of well-being, for instance, suggest that your well-being depends on whether your informed desires are satisfied. In order for a desire to be satisfied, we can’t just think our desires have been satisfied, the external world must be a certain way. So, if I want to win the Nobel Prize, I’m not better off if my dissertation director convinces me I’ve won the Nobel Prize. My informed desire to win the Nobel Prize is satisfied if and only if I actually win the Nobel Prize.  It is in this sense informed desire accounts of well-being are objectivist.

In this case, as in the last, objectivist accounts—such as informed desire satisfaction accounts—are criticized by pointing out that there are examples of people who we don’t want to say are well off—the idiosyncratic, for instance—even though they satisfy objectivist criteria of well-being. For example, imagine a brilliant Harvard Mathematician who has an informed desire to count all of the blades of grass in his front yard (Rawls, pg 379). Assume that he is fully informed; that he isn’t delusional. Now suppose he satisfies this informed desire. Even though his informed desire is satisfied, intuitively, he doesn’t seem better-off because of it. This example is supposed to reveal that the informed desire satisfaction account of well-being is descriptively inadequate. Thus we ought to modify or reject desire satisfaction in favor of a theory that doesn’t have any (or as many) counterintuitive consequences.

You usually modify or reject a theory of well-being when it has counterintuitive consequences. You might also simply ‘outsmart’ your opponent, that is, you might ignore these intuitions if they conflict with a fairly coherent, intuitively plausible, descriptively adequate (though imperfect) theory.[2]It could also be the case that upon reflection, these intuitions evaporate (Crisp, pp 640-1). Philosophers often don’t see eye to eye with each other about these cases, and it would appear we have hit philosophical bedrock. Subjective and objective theories of well-being seem to be at loggerheads and they have been for awhile now. 

If history is a guide here, the prospects for the traditional approach—a methodology that has been used for at least two millennia— leading to a descriptively adequate theory of well-being any time soon don’t look so good. Approaching this problem from another angle couldn’t hurt, right?

   

      Excelsior!

  C.L.Sosis

 

---

[1]Most philosophers seem to think that this is the correct way to come up with an account of well-being, so many, in fact, I can’t list them all here.

[2]The Philosophical Lexicon: outsmart, v. To embrace the conclusion of one's opponent's reductio ad absurdum argument. "They thought they had me, but I outsmarted them. I agreed that it was sometimes just to hang an innocent man."

Bibliography--

Crisp, Roger. “Hedonism Reconsidered.” The Journal of Phenomenological Research. Volume 73 Issue 3, pp 619 – 645, (2006).

 

Nozick, R. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Blackwell, (1974).

 

Rawls, John.  A Theory of Justice. New York: Belknpap Press, (2001).

It's Just Torture...

Hello Fellow Hedonists,

It seems that most Americans believe that torture is immoral, and it has been shown that torture is a terrible way to gather intelligence from a consequentialist perspective, so why on earth do we still use enhanced interrogation techniques on detainees?

According to this article, if we believe a detainee is a bad person we will ignore the evidence that torture doesn't work well and subconsciously use the interrogation as an excuse to punish the detainee!

How can interrogators sleep at night? In general, we believe that the world is just, a priori, so we conclude that a detainee who has been tortured must have deserved it. People are amazing, aren't they?

  Excelsior!

  C.L.Sosis

I'm Back!

Hello Fellow Hedonists,

I've been on a happiness hiatus. Ironically, the only thing getting in the way of my well-being has been my dissertation on well-being! Let's review what has happened on the happiness front in the past seven weeks.

1) It has been shown that your serotonin levels effect how you play the ultimatum game. Apparently, low serotonin levels probilify the rejection of unfair offers.  The researchers concluded that "5-HT plays a critical role in regulating emotion during social decision-making."

2) Check out Will Wilkinson's excellent discussion with Josh Knobe about experimental philosophy, the experience machine, the status quo bias and the endowment effect...

3) Often, when we think about egalitarianism or distributive justice, we think about the distribution of goods, rights or opportunities. In a recent paper, "Happiness Inequality in the United States," Betsy Stevenson and Justin Wolfers discuss...happiness inequality. According to Wolfers, "there is less happiness inequality today than in the 1970’s or 1980’s" even though there have been "large increases in income and consumption inequality." 

 

You can read the trilogy of articles on the topic, here. You can also read a brief summary of these findings, here.

4) Check out this tantalizing tidbit about the well known benefits of smiling.

5) Apparently, for one reason or another, the gender of your supervisor has an influence on how happy you are at work.

6) The August issue of Psychological Science contains a fascinating article by Eugene M. Caruso, Daniel T. Gilbert, and Timothy D. Wilson on the phenomenon known as temporal value asymmetry. 

7) Randy Newman has remarked that "short people got no reason to live."

Turns out, they're pretty miserable too...

This article suggests that "the main reason why taller people do better is because they have higher incomes, they are better educated, and they work in higher status occupations."

8) According to this article, "Between 1980 and 1985, only 2,125 articles were published on happiness, compared with 10,553 on depression. From 2000 to 2005, the number of articles on happiness increased sixteenfold to 35,069, while articles on depression numbered 80,161. From 2006 to present, just over 2 1/2 years, a search found 27,335 articles on happiness, more than half the 53,092 found on depression."

9) According to recent research the experience of positive emotions was more strongly related to life satisfaction than the absence of negative emotions across nations. However, "negative emotional experiences were more negatively related to life satisfaction in individualistic than in collectivist nations, and positive emotional experiences had a larger positive relationship with life satisfaction in nations that stress self-expression than in nations that value survival. These findings show how emotional aspects of the good life vary with national culture and how this depends on the values that characterize one's society. Although to some degree, positive and negative emotions might be universally viewed as desirable and undesirable, respectively, there appear to be clear cultural differences in how relevant such emotional experiences are to quality of life."

10) According to a recent study in the journal, BMC Cancer, women who suffered two or more traumatic events in their life, such as losing a loved one, had a 62 per cent greater risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer, but optimistic women were 25 per cent less likely to develop the disease. This study definitely deserves a closer look.

11) According to this article, conventional retributivist and utilitarian conceptions of punishment must accommodate our ability to adapt to changed circumstances (including fines and imprisonment) and, somehow, must ameliorate the devastating (unintended) consequences of incarceration (such as unemployment, divorce and disease). These phenomena are obstacles to implementing proportional punishment and creating a marginal deterrent, thus they threaten the foundations of punishment theory.

Well, that's all for now. I'll be back soon...

                                                                                                  Excelsior!

                                                                                                  C.L.Sosis

Well-Being, Deontology and Utilitarianism...

Hello Fellow Hedonists,

Drawing on a range of empirical evidence, this essay argues that the failure to include, and to give sufficient weight to, fairness preferences undermines legal economists' policy recommendations. The authors argue that given the growing body of research revealing that individuals value fairness over their own rational self-interests, it is incumbent on legal economists to take preferences for fairness into account. This claim is problematic from the get go. After all, what we value (or what we prefer) isn't necessarily good for us. I think the authors are on to something, nonetheless.

Often, when simple utilitarians calculate the happiness/welfare/well-being of an individual or group, they pretend that people don't care about things such as fairness. When utilitarians, such as Peter Singer, recommend a counterintuitive social policy, they pretend that ignoring our intuitions (of the deontic variety) doesn't have a negative influence on our subjective well-being, but it wouldn't be entirely surprising if people were upset by non-utilitarian considerations even if they shouldn't be. If utilitarians were to take the influence our ineliminable (moral) judgments of right and wrong have on our subjective well-being into account, they might be forced to concede that non-utilitarian concerns (such as justice and fairness) must be respected.

Shouldn't utilitarians simply attempt to accommodate deontic considerations? I don't think so. My deontic judgments are the evolutionary by-product of morally irrelevant processes that were conducive to my fitness. Fitness, from my point of view, is morally irrelevant. Thus, it seems to me that I should ignore my deontic judgments when I try to figure out what I ought to do. However, whether or not I should ignore these judgments depends on whether or not I can. On one hand, it might turn out that I can simply dismiss my own judgments and values as systematic biases that undermine my well-being and be done with it.

On the other hand, it might turn out I can't ignore these judgments, even if I am able to recognize they are biases upon reflection. Ignoring these biases could make me miserable, even if I don't identify with them. If this turns out to be the case, it might be a good idea to chemically or surgically alter my brain to relieve myself of these harmful biases. It might also be a good (and less difficult) idea to trick myself by creating situations in which acting in accordance with these illusions doesn't undermine my well-being (intentionally damaging my brain might not work). Either way, reasoning away my conscience might not be a viable option.

                                                                                                   Excelsior!

                                                                                                   C.L.Sosis

It Is Better To Give...

Hello Fellow Hedonists,

According to a new study in the journal Science, spending money on others promotes your happiness.  People who spent money on others reported greater happiness, while those who spent more on themselves did not, regardless of income level. Professor Stephen Joseph, of the University of Nottingham, said: "Most of the research in the past has said money isn't that important in terms of happiness. The things that are important are things to do with relationships, with other people, and things that help to promote meaning, the purpose in life. I think that's what this study speaks to."

Professor Joseph goes on to say "being prescriptive about how people spend their money, even if it is for seemingly worthwhile causes, is a very dangerous path to go down. Research like this describes society - it doesn't tell us what society ought to be." This claim is obviously false. The study, of course, doesn't show us that we should be happy. However, this claim is prescriptive, in a sense, for those of us who want to be happy but don't know how, isn't it?

Professor Ruut Veenhoven, of Erasmus University, said "this may come as a surprise for economists who have learned that humans are essentially egoists." He might be right, but this study doesn't show that psychological egoism is false. After all, even he acknowledges that "people don't know what really makes them happy." So, it might be the case that people are, as a matter of fact, psychological egoists, or hedonists for that matter, they just don't realize what will make them happy. This study might show that ruthless egoists and misanthropic hedonists are simply ignorant!

                                                                              Excelsior!

                                                                              C.L.Sosis

Don't Judge Me: Moral Reasoning and Well-Being...

Hello Fellow Hedonists,

Templeton Prize winner, Jonathan Haidt, delivered an excellent lecture at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies on the place of harm/care and justice/fairness (as well as other non-western moral sentiments) within the context of evolutionary/moral/folk psychology. It includes an interesting discussion of the moral intuitions of liberals and conservatives.

Haidt catalogs our moral intuitions, and he seems to believe we should use this catalog as a guide to good moral reasoning. This seems to be the wrong way to formulate a good guide to moral reasoning. If we were carefully catalog our epistemic intuitions, for instance, it would be idiotic to use that catalog as a guide to good reasoning. If we did, in epistemology, what Haidt does here, in ethics, we would reason as our forefathers did: poorly. There is a better way! Our epistemic intuitions aren't reliable guides to good reasoning. It would be a miraculous coincidence if our moral intuitions were perfectly reliable guides to human well-being. 

In the end, Haidt is content to kowtow to conservatives and leave everything as he found it. If we were to follow his lead, we would encourage bad moral reasoning, moral reasoning that conforms to our moral intuitions but ultimately undermines our well-being.

                                                                                       Excelsior!

                                                                                       C.L.Sosis