Pleasure, Happiness, and Wellbeing

Framing happiness

• happiness = a fleeting mood, welfare = a long term state of being happy

• ‘Happiness’ - what makes life go well FOR THE PERSON LIVING IT

• Instrumental good (e.g. money, as a means)

• Intrinsic good (as an end)

• Substantive component to a theory (E.g. hedonism): welfare consists in pleasurable experiences. Explanatory component: their being pleasurable makes them good.

Bentham’s hedonism

Happiness is pleasure (any experience making me better off) and the prevention of displeasure.

Consequentialist view: experiences with pleasurable consequences will increase the happiness of an individual.

Quantitative view of happiness - value of experiences measured on intensity, duration, certainty, nearness.

Criticism of Benthamite hedonism

Doctrine of the swine objection (Mill notes): crude hedonism likens human fulfilment and satisfaction to that of a pigs.

Haydn and the oyster: you are offered a choice of life between an oyster who experiences mild sensual pleasure for all of time, or a famous successful composer who will die at age 77.

A life of social media addiction, fast food, idleness would be preferable to a life of intellectual pursuits if the former provided more quantitative pleasure than the latter.

Surely continually satisfying base desires cannot provide more happiness than a life in which “higher pleasures are attained.”

JSM’s theory of welfare

• Happiness as pleasure and the absence of pain - pleasures differ in kind as well as quantity.

• Higher pleasures - intrinsically more valuable because they engage our higher faculties: pleasures of the intellect, feelings, imagination, moral sentiments (over bodily pleasures or mere sensation).

  • Humans have higher faculties than animals so can experience higher pleasures.

  • “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.”

  • Discontinuity in types of pleasure: several lower pleasures cannot compensate for the loss of a higher pleasure.

JSM competent judges

• The competent judges test. A pleasure or mode of existence is qualitatively superior to another if:

  • it is preferred by all (though sometimes he only refers to the majority)

  • of those who are equally acquainted with both and

  • equally capable of appreciating and enjoying both over any quantity of the other pleasure of which their nature is capable of,

  • irrespective of any moral obligation to prefer it, and

  • despite knowing it comes with greater discontent than the other.

• “It is an unquestionable fact” that competent judges will, when given the choice, give “a most marked preference to the manner of existence which employs their higher faculties.”

Issues with the higher/lower distinction (competent judges)

• Competent judges often postpone higher pleasures in favour of a lower one.

  • often choose the “nearer good”, even if less valuable. Weakness of will can explain why.

  • Some men lose their intellectual tastes with time if they lack opportunity, thus addicting themselves to inferior pleasures.

• If non-veridical experiences are just as enjoyable as veridical, someone living life in a VR machine will have as good a life as someone having the exact same conditions in the real world.

Issues with the higher/lower distinction (abandons hedonism?)

• If mental pursuits are intrinsically more valuable than lower pleasures, this can only be if it is because they are more pleasurable. Yet if they were equal in quantity of pleasure created, Mill would still suggest higher pleasures are better. This seems that Mill introduces a new value, independent of pleasure, which can make one’s life good.

• If it is the engagement of our higher faculties that makes these pleasures better, that abandons the explanatory component of pure hedonism.

Issues with higher/lower distinction elitism

• Elitism

  • Do competent judges track value or merely ‘refined’ tastes?

  • Access is limited - birth defects/disorders, lower social position, etc can limit access to higher pleasures.

Issues with the higher/lower distinction (other)

Clinical studies: those who exercise higher cognitive faculties are more prone to suffering mental health illnesses and depression.

Can plausibly conceptualise a “higher” (e.g. existential dread) and “lower” (e.g. hunger) spectrum of pains from absence.

Desire-satisfaction theory

• Takes issue with the hedonistic premise that the only subject of desire for people is pleasure. Welfare consists in the fulfilment of desires and what makes the presence of desired items in a life good is their fulfilling desires.

• Parfit notes that we have “self-interested” and “other-regarding” desires; a pure desire-satisfaction view must explain why satisfying altruistic desires counts as my welfare.

Restricted desire satisfaction

• Restricted view: only desires that are ultimately about my own life count.

  • I may choose a life of endless gambling if it is one that I continuously desire and I am given lifetime access to a casino.

  • Unintuitive - we may be fulfilling our desires, but the agent’s life can go badly even if their desires are repeatedly satisfied, say, through financial ruin.

Informed desire satisfaction

• Informed desires

  • Risks collapsing into objective list - we require an independent standard of desires one would have if fully informed and rational.

Global comprehensive desire satisfaction

• Global comprehensive desires: only ultimate desires about the entirety of one’s life matter

  • Our scope becomes too wide, only focusing on satisfaction of desires that affect lifetime happiness. Eating a bar of chocolate doesn’t affect your whole life so satisfaction of that desire isn’t beneficial to you.

Issues with desire satisfaction theory

• One’s desires may not contribute towards happiness. What if the object of my desires is worthless? Desires can be misguided.

  • A pervert may desire to continuously prey on unsuspecting individuals, and might feel benefitted by it, but this doesn’t mean it is good for them, and they themselves might choose a different life over one in which they continuously satisfy this desire.

Objective list theory

• Centres the discussion on core values. Certain goods benefit us whether or not we take pleasure in them.

• Crisp endorses this account.

• Moore believed that some states of mind (e.g. acquiring knowledge) have intrinsic value independent of their pleasantness.

  • knowledge, caring relationships, achievement, pleasure (and aesthetic pleasure), virtue, and practical reason.

Criticisms of objective list theory Ad hoc

• Ad hoc manner of defining happiness - David Brink calls it a “disorganised heap of goods.”

  • Human flourishing is complex - to boil it down to aspiration of a single goal presumes a narrow bound of human capabilities.

  • Captures intuitive notions of a good life on the whole, prioritising elements that are widely accepted as contributing towards one’s happiness.

Authoritarianism criticism of objective list theory

• Authoritarianism

  • Only if we allow that objective goods justify coercion.

  • Consistent to separate claims of what benefits someone from claims about when interference is permissible.

  • The welfare value of practical reason alleviates this objection.

Too objective criticism of objective list theory

• Too objective

  • Imagine someone whose life is filled with achievement, knowledge, virtue, etc, but she is uninterested in them and does not take any happiness in them. Would these states of mind be good if they brought no enjoyment, and if the person hadn’t the slightest desire they continue?

    • Perhaps a ‘good’ being wanted or enjoyed is a precondition for it being good for you, but it is still the good itself that is good for you.

MY OPINION

• In the sense that we ‘desire happiness’, what we typically desire is a life containing several goods - virtuosity, understanding, accomplishment, and pleasure (among others) - rather than a single hedonistic quantity.