Questions SEP 7

1. According to Haybron, is it credible to claim that genetics render some people incapable of being happier?

2. What do studies show about consumerist materialism and intrinsic motivation?

3. At what $ level do happiness and income "cease to show a pretty substantial link"?

4. What does an Aristotelian nature-fulfillment theory of happiness find objectionable about the experience machine scenario?

5. What do Desire theories have trouble explaining?

6. How might a philosophical theory of well-being settle the strivers vs. enjoyers debate?

Discussion Questions:

• Buddhists say desire and attachment are our great source of unhappiness. William James (see below $) says they're "imperative" and deserve to be fulfilled to the extent they can be, without shortchanging other worthy desires. What do you say?
• Aristotle said living well consists in doing something, over a lifetime, that actualizes the virtues of the rational part of the soul. Agree? What kinds of things do you think you must do, to be happy?
• Do you consider yourself genetically advantaged or disadvantaged, in the happiness sweepstakes?
• Is there anything on your Source List that Haybron omits to mention?
• Do you identify with the Epicureans, Stoics, or Buddhists in their emphasis on simplicity as prerequisite to happiness? 56 What aspects of your life have you simplified? What would you simplify if you could (but you can't)?
• Was your childhood "coddled" and "risk-free"? 58 How risk-averse are you now?
• Is happiness a choice, or isn't it? 59 If it's a "skill," how have you chosen to cultivate it? Can you fly as (relatively) imperturbably as Haybron? 61
• Can those of us who refuse to "accept things as they are" be as happy as those who do? 61
• Have you experienced great joy from volunteer & charity work?
• Do you ever feel chastened by the thought that, though you know you should be happy, you still bicker about petty things? 64
• Do you worry about becoming a "wage slave"? Since many of us must work for wages, how can you avoid that fate? 
• How much of western unhappiness is a reflection of "option freedom"?  65-6
• How important to your happiness is "being in charge of your daily routines"? 67
• Do you have any use at all for an experience machine? 78
• Can you defend watching television and playing video games in a basement as other than rank pleasure-seeking fit only for dumb grazing animals? 80
• Can a Genghis Khan or a Hitler flourish and be happy? Why not? 85
• What do you think of Haybron's remarks on the treatment of animals? 89-90
• What do you think of the School of Life's "problem with our phones" and Franklin Foer's "existential threat"? (See # below)
• Post yours

Happiness wisdom from cousin Mary...

Oliver said: “I’ve always wanted to write poems and nothing else. There were times over the years when life was not easy, but if you’re working a few hours a day and you’ve got a good book to read, and you can go outside to the beach and dig for clams, you’re okay.”
http://writersalmanac.org/

...and from Calvin & Hobbes

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 Cypher's choice in The Matrix
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Aristotle & eudaimonia

The principal idea with which Aristotle begins is that there are differences of opinion about what is best for human beings, and that to profit from ethical inquiry we must resolve this disagreement. He insists that ethics is not a theoretical discipline: we are asking what the good for human beings is not simply because we want to have knowledge, but because we will be better able to achieve our good if we develop a fuller understanding of what it is to flourish. In raising this question—what is the good?—Aristotle is not looking for a list of items that are good. He assumes that such a list can be compiled rather easily; most would agree, for example, that it is good to have friends, to experience pleasure, to be healthy, to be honored, and to have such virtues as courage at least to some degree. The difficult and controversial question arises when we ask whether certain of these goods are more desirable than others. Aristotle's search for the good is a search for the highest good, and he assumes that the highest good, whatever it turns out to be, has three characteristics: it is desirable for itself, it is not desirable for the sake of some other good, and all other goods are desirable for its sake.
Aristotle thinks everyone will agree that the terms “eudaimonia” (“happiness”) and “eu zên” (“living well”) designate such an end. The Greek term “eudaimon” is composed of two parts: “eu” means “well” and “daimon” means “divinity” or “spirit.” To be eudaimon is therefore to be living in a way that is well-favored by a god. But Aristotle never calls attention to this etymology in his ethical writings, and it seems to have little influence on his thinking. He regards “eudaimon” as a mere substitute for eu zên (“living well”). These terms play an evaluative role, and are not simply descriptions of someone's state of mind.

No one tries to live well for the sake of some further goal; rather, being eudaimon is the highest end, and all subordinate goals—health, wealth, and other such resources—are sought because they promote well-being, not because they are what well-being consists in. But unless we can determine which good or goods happiness consists in, it is of little use to acknowledge that it is the highest end. To resolve this issue, Aristotle asks what the ergon (“function,” “task,” “work”) of a human being is, and argues that it consists in activity of the rational part of the soul in accordance with virtue (1097b22–1098a20). One important component of this argument is expressed in terms of distinctions he makes in his psychological and biological works. The soul is analyzed into a connected series of capacities: the nutritive soul is responsible for growth and reproduction, the locomotive soul for motion, the perceptive soul for perception, and so on. The biological fact Aristotle makes use of is that human beings are the only species that has not only these lower capacities but a rational soul as well. The good of a human being must have something to do with being human; and what sets humanity off from other species, giving us the potential to live a better life, is our capacity to guide ourselves by using reason. If we use reason well, we live well as human beings; or, to be more precise, using reason well over the course of a full life is what happiness consists in. Doing anything well requires virtue or excellence, and therefore living well consists in activities caused by the rational soul in accordance with virtue or excellence.

Aristotle's conclusion about the nature of happiness is in a sense uniquely his own. No other writer or thinker had said precisely what he says about what it is to live well. But at the same time his view is not too distant from a common idea. As he himself points out, one traditional conception of happiness identifies it with virtue (1098b30–1). Aristotle's theory should be construed as a refinement of this position. He says, not that happiness is virtue, but that it is virtuous activity. Living well consists in doing something, not just being in a certain state or condition. It consists in those lifelong activities that actualize the virtues of the rational part of the soul.

At the same time, Aristotle makes it clear that in order to be happy one must possess others goods as well—such goods as friends, wealth, and power. And one's happiness is endangered if one is severely lacking in certain advantages—if, for example, one is extremely ugly, or has lost children or good friends through death (1099a31-b6). But why so? If one's ultimate end should simply be virtuous activity, then why should it make any difference to one's happiness whether one has or lacks these other types of good? Aristotle's reply is that one's virtuous activity will be to some extent diminished or defective, if one lacks an adequate supply of other goods (1153b17–19). Someone who is friendless, childless, powerless, weak, and ugly will simply not be able to find many opportunities for virtuous activity over a long period of time, and what little he can accomplish will not be of great merit. To some extent, then, living well requires good fortune; happenstance can rob even the most excellent human beings of happiness. Nonetheless, Aristotle insists, the highest good, virtuous activity, is not something that comes to us by chance. Although we must be fortunate enough to have parents and fellow citizens who help us become virtuous, we ourselves share much of the responsibility for acquiring and exercising the virtues... (continues at SEP)
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From THE STONE-
The Problem of ‘Living in the Present’

These days, many of us would rather not be living in the present, a time of persistent crisis, political uncertainty and fear. Not that the future looks better, shadowed by technological advances that threaten widespread unemployment and by the perils of catastrophic climate change. No wonder some are tempted by the comforts of a nostalgically imagined past.Inspiring as it seems on first inspection, the self-help slogan “live in the present” slips rapidly out of focus. What would living in the present mean? To live each day as if it were your last, without a thought for the future, is simply bad advice, a recipe for recklessness. The idea that one can make oneself invulnerable to what happens by detaching from everything but the present is an irresponsible delusion.

Despite this, there is an interpretation of living in the present, inspired by Aristotle, that can help us to confront the present crisis and the perpetual crises of struggle and failure in life. There is an insight in the self-help slogan that philosophy can redeem...

To live in the present is to appreciate the value of atelic activities like going for a walk, listening to music, spending time with family or friends. To engage in these activities is not to extinguish them from your life. Their value is not mortgaged to the future or consigned to the past, but realized here and now. It is to care about the process of what you are doing, not just projects you aim to complete... (continues... with some good comments)
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Robert Nozick, "The Experience Machine" - original text

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#The Problem With Our Phones - SoL

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#Franklin Foer, World Without Mind - How Tech Companies Pose an Existential Threat - npr

Journalist Franklin Foer worries that we're all losing our minds as big tech companies infiltrate every aspect of our lives.
In his new book, World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech, Foer compares the way we feel about technology now to the way people felt about pre-made foods, like TV dinners, when they were first invented.
"And we thought that they were brilliant because they did away with pots and pans — we didn't have to go to the store to go shopping every day — and then we woke up 50 years later and realize that these products had been basically engineered to make us fat," Foer says. "And I worry that the same thing is happening now to the things that we ingest through our mind." (listen here)

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$ William James's version of "desire theory"

From "The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life"- (Also take a look at his "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings," making the point that we are habitually blind and insensitive to others' desires while inflating the importance of our own, and that we ought to be more mutually accommodating.)

Take any demand however slight, which any creature, however weak, may make. Ought it not, for its own sake, to be satisfied? If not, prove why not. The only possible kind of proof you could adduce would be the exhibition of another creature who should make a demand that ran the other way. The only possible reason there can be why any phenomenon ought to exist is that such a phenomenon actually is desired. Any desire is imperative to the extent of its amount; it makes itself valid by the fact that it exists at all. Some desires, truly enough, are small desires; they are put forward by insignificant persons, and we customarily make light of the obligations which they bring.  But the fact that such personal demands as these impose small obligations does not keep the largest obligations from being personal demands...

Were all other things, gods and men and starry heavens, blotted out from this universe, and were there left but one rock with two loving souls upon it, that rock would have as thoroughly moral a constitution as any possible world which the eternities and immensities could harbor. It would be a tragic constitution, because the rock's inhabitants would die. But while they lived, there would be real good thing and real bad things in the universe; there would be obligations, claims, and expectations; obediences, refusals, and disappointments; compunctions, and longings for harmony to come again, and inward peace of conscience when it was restored; there would, in short, be a moral life, whose active energy would have no limit but the intensity of interest in each other with which the hero and heroine might be endowed.

           We, on this terrestrial globe, so far as the visible facts go, are just like the inhabitants of such a rock. Whether a God exist, or whether no God exist, in yon blue heaven above us bent, we form at any rate an ethical republic here below. And the first reflection which this leads to is that ethics have as genuine and real a foothold in a universe where the highest consciousness is human, as in a universe where there is a God as well. "The religion of humanity" affords a basis for ethics as well as theism does. Whether the purely human system can gratify the philosopher's demand as well as the other is a different question, which we ourselves must answer ere we close...

Every end of desire that presents itself appears exclusive of some other end of desire. Shall a man drink and smoke, or keep his nerves in condition?‑-he cannot do both. Shall he follow his fancy for Amelia, or for Henrietta?‑-both cannot be the choice of his heart. Shall he have the dear old Republican party, or a spirit of unsophistication in public affairs?‑-he cannot have both, etc. So that the ethical philosopher's demand for the right scale of subordination in ideals is the fruit of an altogether practical need. Some part of the ideal must be butchered, and he needs to know which part. It is a tragic situation, and no mere speculative conundrum, with which he has to deal...