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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