Hic Habitat Felicitas

Evolution, Happy Meals and the Coca-Cola Happiness Factory!

Hello y'all,

M'lady and I went to Atlanta a couple of weeks ago to visit the amazing aquarium. Afterward, we had a couple of hours to kill, so we decided to visit The World of Coca-Cola® where we saw the following video:

Needless to say, we both thought this quasi-provocative video was slightly disturbing (the computer animated talking helicopter has nipple rings). I even entertained the possibility we were brainwashed or subjected to subliminal advertisements (unbeknownst to us, of course). In any case, the video made me think about the dark side of the well-being research this blog is about: it's undeniable that unhealthy behavior can reliably make us happy (in some cases)!

Thus, I found it funny that after we got back, I was perusing the Journal of Happiness Studies and I came across an article which seems to show that Taiwanese kids who eat fast food are fatter and happier than Taiwanese children who don't eat it. This is slightly surprising, given the fact that it's been shown food has a fleeting effect on your subjective well-being. 

As always, confounding variables should be accounted for, but, for the sake of argument, let's suppose that there is a causal connection. If this is so, we might be forced to make a choice between 'objective' and 'subjective' aspects of well-being. The authors point out that we must be aware that an unintended consequence of fighting childhood obesity might be lower overall levels of happiness.

Even though I think we can teach children to choose healthy food, I doubt that we can ever ignore the allure of food which is so sweet, fat and fast. Thank you, evolution! In the age of sugar substitutes and oral contraceptives, do we really need to exercise discipline? When what feels good isn't good for us, we can use technology to bridge the gap between happiness and health. We need not exercise restraint. We can, in short, have our cake and eat it too.

 Excelsior!

 C.L.Sosis

P.S. Beverly is magnificent!

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

Welfart!

Hello y'all,

Lately, I've been wondering how similar our welfare judgments are to moral judgments according to the social intuitionist model of morality advocated by Jonathan Haidt. According to the social intuitionist model, our moral judgments are driven by our intuitions and emotions and our ethical principles are merely post hoc rationalizations of these intuitions and emotions.

The social intuitionist model has interesting experimental consequences. If the social intuitionist model is correct, bizarre factors, such as whether you think somebody just farted, might play a role in the formation of your moral judgments. This is exactly what the research seems to show: it seems disgusted people tend to form harsher moral judgments than their non-disgusted counterparts.

The tail, it seems, wags the dog.

I wonder to what extent welfare principles are merely post hoc rationalizations of our intuitions and emotions. It's often taken for granted that our judgments about well-being reveal the nature of welfare principles, but these judgments might just reveal how we feel about certain lifestyles.  

If our welfare intuitions are the result of the affective factors that moral judgments seem to be, there are ways to show it. For instance, if the odor of the desk which you are using in order to answer a questionnaire about how well off Wally is influences your welfare judgments of Wally, we might take this as some evidence that your feelings of disgust are informing  your welfare judgments. This is just one potential experiment. We need a body of coverging evidence to show that the social intuitionist model is right. The important point is that it's possible to figure out whether your welfare judgments depend on how you feel empirically.

Still, I imagine you might take it that disgust is a relevant consideration in which case your welfare judgments ought to be mediated by what you think is disgusting. This could present a serious problem: if there isn't a fact of the matter about what's disgusting, as most of us seem to believe, there isn't a fact of the matter about who's well off. Then again, that might just be the way well-being (and morality) rolls!

  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

Daniel Gilbert on Affective Forecasting...

Hellow Fellow Hedonists,

I present you, Daniel Gilbert:

                                                                                              Excelsior!

                                                                                              C.L.Sosis

P.S. Thanks for the heads up, Dan Deen!

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

                                                                                                                                                         

Sadness for Sale...

Hello Fellow Hedonists,

Recently, I've noticed a resurgence of articles and books that celebrate sadness. For instance, the book, The Loss of Sadness, points out that the way major depressive disorder (MDD) is defined takes no account of personal circumstances. This, of course, is patently false. Nonetheless, to diagnose a person with MDD, the person must must display at least five of the following nine symptoms over a two-week period (the five must include at least one of the first two symptoms):

1. depressed mood;
2. a lack of interest in activities;
3. change in appetite or weight;
4. insomnia or hypersomnia (excessive sleep);
5. a physical slowdown;
6. loss of energy;
7. feelings of worthlessness or guilt;
8. inability to concentrate and make decisions;
9. recurrent thoughts of death or suicide.

The authors of the book (Allan V. Horwitz and Jerome C. Wakefield) argue that these symptoms happen naturally to a healthy person after a stressful event, and without that context being specified, the authors conclude: "Contemporary psychiatry has inadvertently characterized intense normal suffering as disease."

Hyperperexia and Hypothermia happen naturally in certain circumstances, but we alleviate these symptoms because the costs outweigh the benefits. Our natural responses to a virus or infection often threaten our health. Often, our natural responses to stress also threaten our health. Arguing that we should live with these symptoms because they occur naturally is simply silly.

Mark Rapley argues that we must demedicalise misery. According to Rapley, depression is merely another word to describe being "unbearably sad, so sad that you can't leave the house and you don't think life is worth living. I call that what it is: unbearable sadness. I see nothing wrong with using substances to make yourself feel better." Apparently, psychologists are as vulnerable to silly semantic disputes as us philosophers.

When it comes down to brass tacks, it has been shown that unbearable sadness kills, and always has, no matter what you call it. So, when Rapley says, "the drug industry has made us believe that, when we feel sad, we have something fundamentally wrong with us that needs correcting" I cringe. You 'medacalise' a condition in order to understand it; in order to diagnose and treat it. One could easily argue we have a moral imperative to medacalize misery. After all, doing so can help prevent unnecessary suffering and death, which is obviously, one might argue, a morally good thing.

When an English professor lambastes the attempt to annihilate melancholia, I'm disturbed. MDD is an affective disorder and it is literally a disease insofar as it presents an immanent threat to your physical health. Positive Psychology attempts to make mentally healthy people happier. Doing so might turn out to be ocassionally misguided. So, denounce positive psychology if you will, but be aware that it might help prevent suicide, and please, consider the real world consequences of authentic misery before you compose an ode to it in order to make a buck. After all, unbearably sad people can't write books, organize conferences, or perform monologues. Often enough, truly depressed people kill themselves instead.

                                                                                     Excelsior!

                                                                                     C.L.Sosis

P.S. The Psychology of Happiness and Satisfaction blog has a post on Seligmans efforts to use positive psychology to alleviate depression.

Memento Mori...

Hello Fellow Hedonists,

According to a new study (From Terror to Joy: Automatic Tuning to Positive Affective Information Following Mortality Salience) your automatic, unconscious psychological immune system generates positive associations after you are confronted with existential dread. Apparently, these defense mechanisms help us cope with the paralyzing depression and despair thoughts of our mortality elicit. According to Terror Management Theory (which isn't merely good name for a death metal band), it makes sense from an evolutionary point of view.

I wonder if these findings can really be explained by the fact that approximately 85% of Americans are religious and, presumably, believe in an afterlife which is, I shall assume, something to be happy about. Nathan DeWall, one of the authors of the studies, seems to consider this a plausible hypothesis: "When you ask people, 'Describe the emotions that the thought of your own death arouses in you,' people will report fear and contempt, but also happiness that 'I'm going to see my grandmother' and joy that 'I'm going to be with God.'" Personally, I'm far more concerned with pollution levels in heaven.

Now, consider the following just-so-story. People believe in a pleasant afterlife because when they reflect on death (an unpleasant thought), they inevitably imagine what life after death is going to be like (a neutral thought, initially), and what we imagine is inevitably influenced by the coping mechanisms that are designed to protect us from the negative effects of the unpleasant thoughts that originally inspired us to think about what the afterlife is like in the first place.

Thus, we imagine a pleasant afterlife. These thoughts assist our coping mechanisms, which reinforce our pleasant thoughts about the afterlife, which assist our coping mechanisms, etcetera. I suspect that these pleasant thoughts and coping mechanisms are instigated and reinforced by society in general. These findings might provide a socio-psychological/evolutionary explanation for why most people believe in a pleasant afterlife. These findings might even provide us with a good reason to encourage people to believe in a pleasant afterlife (or, at least, watch more Bergman).

                                 

                                                                                             Excelsior!

                                                                                             C.L.Sosis