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Happiness: a philosophical question
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Dan
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Old Jul 20, 2006, 08:25 PM Local time: Jul 20, 2006, 09:25 PM #1 of 6
Happiness: a philosophical question

The short version of my question: What is the nature of happiness? More specifically, is happiness something that has some degree of rational or logic behind it or is it a purely an illusion created by our own minds.

The long version: I recently finished reading Stumbling on Happiness by Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert. The book deals with the nature of the mind and how it processes this feeling, we call happiness. Most interesting for me is how it deals not only with how we are often very wrong about what will make but that ,objectively speaking, we are often very wrong about what did make us happy. Let me provide an example from his book:
Researchers ask people before an election how they would feel if their candidate lose/won the election, they asked them again just after the result of the elections were revealed and one last time several weeks later. As expected people said, they would be absolutely ecstatic if their candidate won and absolutely devastated if their candidate lost a 9 out of 10 on the happiness/unhappiness scale. I will refer to this as forethought happiness.
Yet when the research asked the same question right after that candidate won or lost, the people only reported a moderate level of happiness/unhappiness, I’ll call this a present happiness. This shows that our predations about what will make us happy can be wrong. Now the interesting part is that when they asked the same people how they felt weeks later the level of happiness jumped back up to the level they predicted they would have, they were wrong about how they felt in the moment. I’ll call this retrospective happiness.
Note: the three terms retrospective, forethought and present happiness and there means as I’m using them are my constructs although they are based on the ideas in Giblets book.

This same concept can be applied to many aspects of our lives for example: researchers studying the effects of having children has on happiness found that although people both predicted it would be the greatest thing in their life,(foresight) and referred to it as the greatest thing in their life (retrospective) the researchers could not find any moment that registered such high marks in the moment itself. (present)

Now, Professor Gilbert starts his book by saying that the present happiness is the measurement that we should focus on, at least when to trying what it is that makes us happy. While it understandable that a scientific mind would like working on such an assumption, there is another assumption, which may hold true. Before I get to that however, I believe I should expand on this idea of present as this most accurate measurement of happiness. Gilbert is not saying we should ignore completely ignore consequences and live as hedonists but rather that if are goal is to maximizes measurements taken in the present moment are more accurate measurements then those based on forethought or retrospection. Example, if you are thinking of taken a job and have one of two people to ask about the job: some who retired from the job and some one or some who currently has the job the latter would be more accurate because he is currently in the job wile the retired individual view is less accurate because it is retrospective in nature.

Now back to the other possible assumptions, Considering how much time humans being spend enter imagining what could be (foresight) or think about what was (retrospective) perhaps these “incorrect” measurements are in fact the measurement we should be looking at. After all, if we accept that present happiness is the best measurement we have we are forced to come to some extremely difficult to believe, such as having children actually being more detrimental to happiness then beneficial. (An ideal the Gilbert himself finds difficult to accept even as he brilliantly explains how it can easily be so. In short ideas like “having kids is great” are extremely efficient at propagating themselves but the ability of an idea to propagate it itself can exist independently of any effect it has on the variable we call happiness.)

So, my question for those patient enough to read the long version of my question is which would be the better description of happiness:
The premise, which agrees with Gilbert that ones present feelings, is the most accurate measure of happiness.
Or
The premises that argues that due to how much time we spend in forethought or retrospection the best measure of happiness would how greatly in something effects ones retrospection and foresight.

For those that still don’t get the difference here is one last example. Note: all numbers here are made up to illustrate the point:
Lets compare having children (Scenario A) with a supposable lesser endeavor such as taking a vacation once every year (Scenario B). Now let say one took twenty measurements of happiness 1 representing foresight (Before the kid is born in scenario A and when your looking forward to your vacation in Scenario B) 1 representing retrospection (After the kid moves out in Scenario A when your looking back at your years of vacationing in Scenario B) and the other 18 represent the present measurements (actually vacationing/raising the kid).

Now let say the measurements came out as so:
Having a kid (Scenario A)
Retrospective and forethought measurements: 10 each
Present measurements: 7 each

Taking a vacation (Scenario B)
Retrospective and forethought measurements: 8 each
Present measurement: also 8 each

Now premise one would look at the measurements taken in the moment and conclude that taking a vacation would be better for happiness then having children an average of seven vs. an average of 8. While the traditional viewpoint, which asks mostly retrospective questions, would look at the other set of measures and conclude children are better for happiness then vacations 10 vs. 8

Now I wanted to post the answer to my question but this post is long enough as is. For now, I’ll say I agree with most of Gilbert’s points but not all.

Discuss.

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Radez
Holy Chocobo


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Old Jul 20, 2006, 08:36 PM #2 of 6
Maybe Gilbert addresses this, but it seems like having children is a poor thing to judge based on any instance of happiness. I imagine if you asked a woman during childbirth how happy she was, you'd get a very different response than say, when she's looking at her child of 5 weeks while he's sleeping peacefully. Peacefully being the operative word here.

I mean, the ramifications of having a kid are so wide-ranging that it seems the only accurate measurement would be in aggregate. Retrospective, to use your terminology. I don't think this necessarily invalidates the reality of whatever happiness you experienced. You just have the perspective to better appreciate it.

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FallDragon
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Old Jul 20, 2006, 09:55 PM Local time: Jul 21, 2006, 04:55 AM #3 of 6
I'd say the child example isn't too accurate. A child is a life long experience. A vacation isn't. I would think any experience that takes a certain amount of time to fully understand isn't going to get high markings until it's nearing the end of it's process/development (such as, when the kid moves out of the house).

And I'm also not sure of the distinction that's being made between retrospective and present happiness, say, in the example of looking back on how you've raised your child. If you feel pride and happiness for what that child has become, and how through the years you've helped them along etc, you are still feeling present happiness. You're not feeling happy only for what has happened in the past, you're also feeling happy for how presently, the child is now a grown adult. I would say it's present happiness for the result of a past process, not happiness for the past process.

To be fair, then, saying "having kids is great" isn't only a measurement of how much happiness the child personally brings to you, but also the personal development you undergo during that process, which is why the "happiness" bar enlarges after the kids have left.

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Last edited by FallDragon; Jul 20, 2006 at 09:59 PM.
Lost_solitude
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Old Aug 14, 2006, 03:00 PM Local time: Aug 14, 2006, 10:00 AM #4 of 6
some of this is obvious and redundant. I mean ofcourse we will predict something different from what really happens most of us arent psychic. It's human nature to hyp yourself up for something more then you might need too ie football, music/video awards,comicons etc.

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JackyBoy
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Old Aug 15, 2006, 11:20 PM #5 of 6
I think Emmanuel Kant sums this up perfectly when he said:

Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

According to Kant, happiness isn't about having the latest MP3 player. Real happiness comes to those who live a moral life.

I was speaking idiomatically.

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Aoie_Emesai
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Old Aug 20, 2006, 04:05 PM #6 of 6
Happiness comes in all sorta of manners, no? But like you said "giving birth to the children is the happiest thing that ever happen in their lives." But i'm pretty sure that by stating that they mean " currently happening in their lives, as in just happen and from that point and before." All of this "happiness" is most likely superficially and just happen to be outputted because of the nature of the enivorment.

Birth of the baby = a ostensibly pleasiable reaction, even though you may not mean it or you do.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?
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