This chapter explores policy questions that arise from accepting our moral arguments for happy‐people‐pills. It looks at arguments from the liberty and justice point of view which support the policy prescription that society should permit the development of happy‐people‐pills. The crucial difference is that the justice argument is compatible with paternalism in a way that the liberty argument is not. The chapter then turns to objections to such a policy based on adverse effects on health and society at (...) large. Finally, it addresses the question of how happy‐people‐pills ought to be justly distributed. The chapter examines at length the question of what role, if any, governments ought to have in the creation and distribution of happy‐people‐pills. It argues that happy‐people‐pills are important for the wellbeing of many, but this in itself does not answer the question of just distribution of this good. (shrink)

Happy-People-Pills for All explores current theories of happiness while demonstrating the need to develop advanced pharmacological agents for the enhancement of our capacity for happiness and wellbeing. Presents the first detailed exploration of the enhancement of happiness A controversial yet rigorous argument that demonstrates the moral imperative for the development and mass distribution of ‘happy-pills’, to promote the wellbeing of the individual and society Brings together the philosophy, psychology and biology of happiness Maps the development of the next generation of (...) positive mood pharmacology Offers a corrective to contemporary accounts of happiness. (shrink)

There is evidence from the empirical sciences that >happiness= B understood in the social scientists= sense of >positive affect=B leads to prosocial behaviour: the happiest amongst us are more likely to help others. There is also scientific evidence of a genetic component to positive affect: genetic differences can account for some of the observed variances in positive affect. Let us think of >happy-people-pills= as pharmacological agents, modeled on those with a genetic predisposition for high levels of positive affect, which will (...) promote positive moods and emotions in >normally= happy persons. It is argued that if we want to increase prosocial behaviour then we should (other things being equal) promote the use of happy-people-pills. Since we should increase prosocial behaviour, we should (other things being equal) promote the use of happy-people-pills. In a short paper like this, I cannot possibly show that everything else is equal. However, I hope to establish at least a prima facie case for policy that permits the creation and distribution of happy-people-pills. (shrink)

This chapter canvasses several arguments for happy‐people‐pills. The argument turns on the idea that happy‐people‐pills will promote such fundamental prudential values as happiness, achievement, and virtue. Since happy‐people‐pills will promote wellbeing, this is a powerful reason to permit their use. In the chapter the case is first made that, far from diminishing autonomy, happy‐people‐pills will enhance autonomy. The chapter argues that happy‐people‐pills will increase the prudential good of individuals. After arguing that at a societal level (...) wellbeing is, for the most part, additive, the chapter goes on to examine an argument that happy‐people‐pills can be multiplicative: their use should encourage the acquisition and exercise of pro‐social virtues. So, not only will happy‐people‐pills benefit those who take them, but they should also promote the good of others. The multiplicative effect is a strong moral reason to suppose that we ought to use happy‐people‐pills. (shrink)

A good part of the explanation for differences in happiness has to do with genetics. This chapter reviews the scientific data relevant to a heritable component to happiness, and the prospects for using current and future technologies to alter those who have not won the genetic lottery. The chapter looks at the concept of heritability, and then at the heritability of happiness. The notion of heritability is typically seen as a composite of two factors: genetics and the environment. Three promising (...) technologies could be used to change the biological basis of happiness: pre‐implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), genetic engineering, and advanced pharmacology. Unfortunately, on enhancing the moods of healthy individuals, there is limited research. The fact that two thirds of these “normal and healthy” volunteers felt “better than well” sounds like good news for happy‐people‐pills. The chapter touches upon the paucity of studies of the effects of antidepressants on healthy individuals. (shrink)

This chapter starts with a brief summary of Huxley's fictional dystopia Brave New World. Huxley's work is relevant in terms of its philosophical treatment of the issues and irrelevant in terms of a technological prophecy. Soma is the happy pill of Brave New World. The main theme of bioconservatives who cite Brave New World as an objection to happy‐people‐pills is that turning our world into Brave New World would involve a catastrophic loss of the higher aspects of our humanity. (...) If we are to think seriously about Brave New World as an objection to happy‐people‐pills, then we must factor out extraneous elements such as alcohol stunting, indoctrination via hypnopaedia and ectogenesis. But if we try to factor out these elements from the story, it is not clear what we are asked to imagine, since these elements are critical to the fabric of the society envisioned in Brave New World. (shrink)

In this book Happy‐People‐Pills For All, the author argues for a future where there is a cheap and readily available supply of happiness‐boosting pills for everyone. Knowing all too well that many readers will be skeptical, the author hopes to show in this introductory chapter that the idea is at least worthy of consideration. The happy‐people‐pills for all project has both a means and an end. The means is to use pharmacology; the end is to increase our happiness. (...) The idea of taking pills to increase happiness is one that we are familiar with: it is a common practice of health care practitioners to prescribe various mood‐altering pharmacological agents. The happy‐people‐pills‐for‐all project depends critically on a scientific insight: happiness is rooted in our neurophysiology and neurochemistry, and to a large degree, in our genes. Our distinction between happy‐people‐pills conservatives and happy‐people‐pills progressives is made in terms of a therapy/enhancement distinction. (shrink)

This chapter examines some of the social science data concerning the relationship between happiness and achievement. The chapter explores further the idea that there are causal links between happiness and achievement, focusing on what common sense has to say about these matters. Reflective common sense supports a bidirectional model of causation: good moods often cause achievement and achievement often causes good moods. Before looking at the studies in support of the claim that happiness promotes achievement, the chapter considers the notion (...) of ‘effect size’. The question of whether positive affect causes achievement can be addressed by two sorts of studies. One type is longitudinal studies; the other is laboratory studies. Correlation, longitudinal, and experimental studies converge to show that positive moods and emotions cause achievement. Social science research suggests that those who are happier than average will be doubly blessed: they are happier and, on average, they will achieve more. (shrink)

The focus of this chapter is on ethical objections to happy‐people‐pills. The objections form something of a mixed bag; they include the claims that happy‐people‐pills will lead to emotional inappropriateness, to instrumentalizing our emotions, false happiness, inauthenticity, loss of identity, and unfair distribution. The goal in creating happy‐people‐pills should be to make sure we are still emotionally sensitive (but not too sensitive). The chapter notes that there is no reason to suppose taking happy‐people‐pills will automatically lead (...) to achievement. A frequently expressed concern is that by taking a pill one would achieve only a “false happiness”, not the “genuine happiness”. The just distribution objection is that if happy‐people‐pills were developed, they would be too pricey for the average consumer, or at least too pricey for the poor. This chapter considers the strongest objections to happy‐people‐pills. Showing how these criticisms may be dispatched should strengthen the case for happy‐people‐pills. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:72 Reviews RUSSELL VERSUS THE HAPPINESS INDUSTRY Chad Trainer 1006 Davids Run Phoenixville, pa 19460, usa [email protected] Tim Phillips. Bertrand Russell’sThe Conquest of Happiness; a Modern-Day Interpretation of a Self-Help Classic. Oxford: Infinite Ideas, 2010. Pp. 118. 978-1906821 -27-2 (pb). us$11.95. German translation as Bertrand Russells Eroberung des Glücks in a “Business Classics” series (gabal Verlag, 2012). he popular writing Bertrand Russell undertook to make money has long roused (...) the indignation of those interested in his more technical specialized work, and his 1930 The Conquest of Happiness ranks among the more extreme examples of this pot-boiling genre. Ludwig Wittgenstein denounced Russell’s Conquest of Happiness as a “vomitive.” And the best ways of understanding Russell’s own assessments of his book are unclear, owing to the various sentiments his biographers report. According to Ronald Clark, he said: “… The Conquest of Happiness … I am not very proud of”;1 whereas Caroline Moorehead reports “he was later to say that, of all his books, he felt this had done the most good”.2 In his autobiography, Russell allows us how he wrote The Conquest of Happiness at a stage in his life “when I needed much self-command and much that I had learned by painful experience if I was to maintain any endurable level of happiness.”The emotional challenges to which he was subjected at the time he wrote the book “introduced an intolerable tension into every moment of daily life.” Beacon Hill School, which Russell had started with his second wife, Dora, in 1927, was in such dire straits financially by 1930 that Russell was compelled to resort to much popular writing and lecturing in order to remain solvent. In 1930, Dora gave birth to a daughter fathered by the American journalist Grif- fin Barry.This marked the beginning of the end to Russell’s marriage to Dora. Add to the foregoing Russell’s strained relations with Wittgenstein, when the ______ 1 The Life of Bertrand Russell, p. 448. 2 Bertrand Russell, p. 383. q= Reviews 73 former was asked to be one of the examiners for Wittgenstein’s phd at Cambridge. Although the phd was awarded and Wittgenstein secured a grant to conduct research at Trinity College, Cambridge for five years, Russell and Wittgenstein’s interaction at the time resulted in an end to their friendship. In general, however much control Russell may have had over matters at earlier points in his life, 1930 was a time he was largely at the mercy of unstable circumstances.The repose and leisure on which he had depended for his philosophic activity were not then available to him. Personal problems came to the fore and he was more prone to depression than usual. About The Conquest of Happiness, written primarily with the American market in mind, he remarked to the publisher Stanley Unwin: “I think they [Americans] mostly share Al Capone’s ideas of happiness, which are in a somewhat different vein from mine.”The book became a bestseller in America. Tim Phillips writes on business, technology, social change and innovation, and he has published more than a dozen expositions of other famous authors’ works. His book Bertrand Russell’s The Conquest of Happiness is a faithful tour through this Russell classic. Phillips provides a readable account of the original ’s lucid points. The treatment is certainly not pretentious or obfuscatory, as it abounds with examples of Russell’s points from contemporary pop culture. It features corroborating quotations from other authors and is salted with some results of modern surveys. Bertrand Russell’s The Conquest of Happiness has good reminders of the differences between the nature of Russell’s times and lifestyle and that of our own, the most notable being the absence during Russell’s day of a happiness industry. Nowadays, we are bombarded with “self-help” books “encouraging us to obsess about ourselves or manipulate others” (p. 9). Moreover, when Russell wrote The Conquest of Happiness, “the idea of an antidepressant pill was as likely as someone walking on the moon and the idea that people could ‘suffer from stress’ was thirty years into the future. For all... (shrink)

Most people believe it would be wrong to bring a child into the world if in all likelihood its life would be miserable. But if pain and suffering count against bringing someone into existence, why do pleasure and happiness not count in favour of bringing them into existence? Recently in this journal Michael Tooley has re‐affirmed his rights‐based explanation for this asymmetry. In a nutshell: to create an individual whose life is not worth living would be to wrong that individual (...) – to create an obligation that cannot be fulfilled – but it is not possible to wrong an individual who is not brought into existence. In the same issue of this journal, in an article covering a range of arguments for and against the claim that it would be good for additional people to exist, Stuart Rachels objects to Tooley’s account on the ground that it has counterintuitive implications. His most interesting argument involves a Parfit‐style counterexample: a woman is about to take a fertility pill that will result in twins, one of whom will be healthy and the other of whom will not. Does it make a difference, morally speaking, if the woman knows which of the twins will be healthy and which will not? In this paper I argue that both Rachels’ criticism of Tooley’s rights‐based account, and Tooley’s own defence of it, are unsuccessful due to their failure to come to grips with the semantics of names for possible individuals. Both of them implicitly assume that it is possible to have a potential person in mind, in a way that misleads them about the fairness of actions that involve possible people. The significance of this extends to other areas such as abortion, population policy, and embryo experimentation, where examples involving possible people are common. (shrink)

The chapter aims to provide at least a partial analysis of the word ‘happiness’ as it is used in everyday language. The author tries to make clear exactly what we are looking for in a theory of happiness and then goes on to argue for a particular theory. The theory that the author endorses is a composite of affective and cognitive elements. The chapter looks at four monistic theories of happiness before showing why each is insufficient. It considers two affective (...) accounts of happiness: sensory hedonism and emotional state theory. The chapter then discusses two cognitive accounts. It shows that whole life satisfaction is not a constituent of superlative happiness, though whole life satisfaction is perhaps the most common understanding of happiness in both social science and philosophical literature. The author argues for a composite view of happiness that includes sensory pleasure, positive emotional states, and positive propositional attitudes. (shrink)

Many philosophers deny that happiness can be equated with pleasurable experiences. Nozick introduced an experience machine thought experiment to support the idea that happiness requires pleasurable experiences that are “in contact with reality.” In this thought experiment, people can choose to plug into a machine that induces exclusively pleasurable experiences. We test Nozick’s hypothesis that people will reject this offer. We also contrast Nozick’s experience machine scenario with scenarios that are less artificial, and offer options which are less invasive or (...) disruptive than being connected to a machine, specifically scenarios in which people are offered an experience pill or a pill that improves overall functioning. (shrink)

Se valoran críticamente las críticas recibidas en los últimos lustros por el pensamiento positivo, al que se acusa de justificar una concepción de la felicidad individualista. Se pone de manifiesto la idea en que se basan esas críticas: el pensamiento positivo es aliado del capitalismo, deteriora la búsqueda del bien común e impone una normalización que excluye formas de subjetividad anómalas que, sin embargo, constituyen lugares privilegiados para la denuncia. Se muestran los presupuestos subyacentes a dicha idea apelando a la (...) relación circular entre subjetividad y ciencias sociales, la generalización de la psiudadanía y la ambivalencia del individualismo. Se concluye que las críticas también suponen un concepto de felicidad. (shrink)

I very briefly sketch two arguments for the claim that we have significant moral reason to ‘add happy people’ (that is, bring into existence people with lives that are well worth living), independently of any effects on those already existing.

Why do some people always see the bright side, stay positive, and find fulfilment and joy in their lives? Avery outlines fifty key concepts and strategies to help you put the secrets of happiness into practice.

Would it be good, other things being equal, for additional people to exist whose lives would be worth living? I examine and reject several arguments for the answer that it would not be good; then I offer opposing arguments that I believe are more successful. Thus, I agree with utilitarians who say that it is better for there to be more happy people. Next I argue for the stronger claim that the happiness of potential people is as important as that (...) of adults. Potential quality of life, then, matters in a host of bioethical issues: abortion, commercial surrogacy, the treatment of defective newborns, and so on. What is the practical upshot of all this? I reject the idea that we must do whatever is necessary to prolong life worth living. But I also reject the view that the side‐effects of overpopulation always outweigh the value of realizing potential happiness. So I advocate a middle position, which I do not identify precisely. Even from this middle position, however, potential happiness is more important than is commonly assumed in bioethics. (shrink)

Happy people often fail to elaborate on persuasive arguments, while people in sad moods tend to scrutinise messages in greater detail. According to some motivational accounts, however, happy people will elaborate a message if they believe it might maintain their positive mood. The present research extends this reasoning by demonstrating that happy people will elaborate arguments from message presenters that convey positive hedonic attributes (i.e., source likeability). In a pilot study, we show that happy people believe persuasive messages from a (...) likeable source will be mood maintaining. The results of Study 1 demonstrate that these expectancies have important message-processing implications. In Study 1, sad participants elaborated arguments from both likeable and dislikeable sources, while happy participants only elaborated arguments from a likeable source. Consistent with motivational explanation of these effects, in Study 2, happy participants elaborated arguments from a likeable source when not distracted, but used likeability as a heuristic when distracted with a cognitive-load manipulation. Implications of these results for understanding the effects of mood on processing strategy, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

This is the fourth chapter of my dissertation, Hedonic Value (Director: Jonathan Bennett), Syracuse University, August, 1998. It is an unpublished revision of my "Is It Good to Make Happy People?" Bioethics 12 (April 1998), pp. 93-110. I systematically lay out and assess all the main arguments on each side and conclude that, Yes, it is good to add individuals to the population who would have lives worth living.

Hoerl & McCormack risk misleading people about the cognitive underpinnings of the belief in a privileged “now moment” because they do not explicitly acknowledge that the sense of existing in the now moment is an intrinsically temporally dynamic one. The sense of happening that is exclusive to the now moment is a better candidate for the source of belief in a privileged now.

Thomas Hurka has recently proposed a utilitarian theory which would effect a compromise between Average and Total utilitarianism, the better to deal with issues in population ethics. This Compromise theory would incorporate the principle that the value which an extra happy person contributes to a possible world is a decreasing function of the total population of that world: that happy people are of diminishing marginal value. In spite of its initial plausibility I argue against this principle. I show that the (...) Compromise theory is actually no improvement over the two original versions of utilitarianism; in particular, it is subject to almost all the objections which are fatal to Average utilitarianism, and more besides. And I attempt to dispell the appearance that intuition supports the Compromise theory as against Total utilitarianism, by arguing that the latter's Repugnant Conclusion, when properly understood, is not intuitively unacceptable. Total utilitarianism remains a plausible ethical theory, while both the Average and the Compromise theories should be definitely rejected. (shrink)

Our topic is food that is "local, ethical, and sustainable." We defend a surprising claim about such a conception (at least, on certain ways of specifying its three central components): namely, that it may lend support to some varieties of “conscientious carnivorism.” We focus on an especially illustrative instance of (potentially) moral meat-eating: the case of Cinta Senese, a once-endangered pig that holds a special place in the cultural and environmental landscape in Tuscany, Italy. In Tuscany, Cinta Senese constitute a (...) robustly local food product (in the genealogical sense of "local"), where plausibly they lead quite worthwhile lives (in a welfarist sense of "worthwhile"). Further, the recent revival of their dwindling populations seemingly represents a “sustainability success” (in a conservationist sense). Thus, we argue that locavores with welfarist and conservationist proclivities may actually find that they have considerable reason to support, rather than to oppose, this form of animal agriculture – as well as others relevantly like it. (shrink)

After considering and rejecting several arguments on both sides of the question, I conclude that it is good to make happy people (and not merely good to make people happy). This is the fourth chapter of my dissertation, Hedonic Value (Director: Jonathan Bennett), Syracuse University, August, 1998.

In Aquinas's account of the beatific vision, human beings are joined to God in a never-ending act of contemplation of the divine essence: a state which utterly fulfills the human drive for knowledge and satisfies every desire of the human heart. In this paper, I argue that this state represents less a fulfillment of human nature, however, than a transcendence of that nature. Furthermore, what’s transcended is not incidental on a metaphysical, epistemological, or moral level.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Invisible HarmKimberly ZieselmanI’m a 48–year–old intersex woman born with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS) writing to share my personal experience as a patient affected by a Difference of Sex Development (DSD). Although I appear to be a DSD patient “success story”, in fact, I have suffered and am unsatisfied with the way I was treated as a young patient in the 1980’s, and the continued lack of appropriate care for (...) intersex people even today.As the Executive Director of the advocacy organization Advocates for Informed Choice and a board member of the AIS–DSD Support Group since 2012, I have heard doctors reference the “silent happy majority” of DSD patients all too often. They speak [End Page 122] of patients who were treated in childhood and went on to live (seemingly) contented lives. It appears however that doctors have drawn this conclusion from the fact that most of their patients have not returned to complain about their treatment. While there is little evidence to support the success doctors claim, there is quite a bit of evidence that suggests my suffering is the norm rather than the exception.Medical professionals would likely include me in that “silent majority,” only seeing a woman who identifies and appears typically female, graduated law school, married for over twenty years, with adopted children and a successful career. And while I have been fortunate in many ways, I no longer want my voice to be presumed buried within that silent majority. Instead, I am speaking out today to tell my story.My StoryAt age 15 I was diagnosed with amenorrhea and referred to a reproductive oncologist who told my parents I had a partially developed uterus and ovaries that would likely soon become cancerous. We were told my vagina was abnormally short and might require surgery in order to have heterosexual intercourse.Neither my parents nor I was ever told I had AIS and XY chromosomes, or that the gonads being removed were testes, not ovaries. I was told I needed a “full hysterectomy” to prevent cancer and hormone replacement therapy. That summer I spent my 16th birthday recuperating from surgery. I spent the next 25 years living a lie.A lie that has had a profound and harmful impact on me.At some level, I knew I was not being told the whole truth. My parents’ and the doctors’ actions signaled to me something more might be going on. But I was afraid to ask questions; my parents were distressed and I didn’t want to cause them any more pain. Over the years I have wondered just how much my parents knew but withheld from me (albeit with good intentions). I sensed something awful was being hidden from me, and I didn’t know whom I could trust.When I asked my doctor if I could meet someone else with my condition, I was told I was different, that there was “nobody” with my medical condition in the world, that my situation was “very rare.” I was told to get on with my life and not talk about my surgery because it wasn’t important; I was healthy and could adopt if I wanted to become a parent. I was told I must take a hormone pill each day for the rest of my life to stay healthy.But what I heard was, “you are not a real woman: you are a damaged freak, so go out and fake the rest of your life and be sure nobody knows your secret.” So that’s what I did. I was a “good girl” and took my pills, didn’t ask questions and did what the men in white coats asked me to do. There was no support provided for either my parents or me. No social workers, no therapists. Perhaps most shockingly, there was no true informed consent.A few years ago I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome caused by anxiety I had been harboring for over two decades about my past surgery and fear of getting cancer. I decided to obtain my medical records from the hospital and discover the truth.Covering several pages of... (shrink)

Introduction With an ageing population, end-of-life care is increasing in importance. The present work investigated characteristics and time trends of older peoples' attitudes towards euthanasia and an end-of-life pill. Methods Three samples aged 64 years or older from the Longitudinal Ageing Study Amsterdam (N=1284 (2001), N=1303 (2005) and N=1245 (2008)) were studied. Respondents were asked whether they could imagine requesting their physician to end their life (euthanasia), or imagine asking for a pill to end their life if they became tired (...) of living in the absence of a severe disease (end-of-life pill). Using logistic multivariable techniques, changes of attitudes over time and their association with demographic and health characteristics were assessed. Results The proportion of respondents with a positive attitude somewhat increased over time, but significantly only among the 64–74 age group. For euthanasia, these percentages were 58% (2001), 64% (2005) and 70% (2008) (OR of most recent versus earliest period (95% CI): 1.30 (1.17 to 1.44)). For an end-of-life pill, these percentages were 31% (2001), 33% (2005) and 45% (2008) (OR (95% CI): 1.37 (1.23 to 1.52)). For the end-of-life pill, interaction between the most recent time period and age group was significant. Conclusions An increasing proportion of older people reported that they could imagine desiring euthanasia or an end-of-life pill. This may imply an increased interest in deciding about your own life and stresses the importance to take older peoples' wishes seriously. (shrink)

Mood has varied effects on cognitive performance including the accuracy of face recognition . Three experiments are presented here that explored face recognition abilities in mood-induced participants. Experiment 1 demonstrated that happy-induced participants are less accurate and have a more conservative response bias than sad-induced participants in a face recognition task. Using a remember/know/guess procedure, Experiment 2 showed that sad-induced participants had more conscious recollections of faces than happy-induced participants. Additionally, sad-induced participants could recognise all faces accurately, whereas, happy- and (...) neutral-induced participants recognised happy faces more accurately than sad faces. In Experiment 3, these effects were not observed when participants intentionally learnt the faces, rather than incidentally learnt the faces. It is suggested that happy-induced participants do not process faces as elaborately as sad-induced participants. (shrink)

This book argues that in order for people to live well, they must develop a virtue of playfulness. Inspired by Aristotle, the book draws on work from philosophy, classics, history, biology, psychology, and media studies to understand the place of play and playfulness in a good life. Many philosophers have written about play, from Presocratics such as Heraclitus to contemporary philosophers such as Bernard Suits. Some champion play as the most crucial value in life. Others deride it and warn strongly (...) against it. This book evaluates the research for how play and playfulness bear on living a good life and becoming a good person. Its main argument is that in order to understand play as an action we must understand playfulness as a virtue in the lives of good people. The author develops a theory of playfulness from an Aristotelian perspective. Like Aristotle sees the virtues as necessary for a happy life, the author argues that playfulness is necessary for living well. And just as Aristotle offers multifaceted characterizations of core virtues, the author argues that playfulness includes aspects of seriousness, creativity, humility, optimism, and sociality. Playful people take play seriously, learn new skills, overcome failure, strive for success, and keep others in mind. As a result, playful people have a better shot at living well. The Virtue of Playfulness is an accessible, empirically-informed, and detailed treatment of the philosophy of playfulness. It will appeal to scholars and students in philosophy and related disciplines who are interested in virtue ethics, moral psychology, philosophy of games, philosophy of sport, and ancient philosophy. (shrink)

Albert Bandura's ideas about the methods people use to avoid feeling guilty about harming others have led to valuable insights about many forms of mass violence, from wartime atrocities to terrorism and genocide. Happy Meat, Humane Animal Research, and Other Myths applies these insights to another form of mass violence: the many ways people harm animals. Each of the first eight chapters discusses how people use a particular method of moral disengagement to feel better about harming animals. The last two (...) chapters highlight the myths that have been developed in this regard, including the Myth of Happy Meat and the Myth of Humane Animal Research. These myths perpetuate the attitudes and actions of modern sexists and racists, further legitimizing their actions. Happy Meat, Humane Animal Research, and Other Myths discusses how different forms of prejudice are interconnected and why we will not be able to eradicate other forms of such violence without eradicating prejudice against animals, too. The Appendix consists of The Omnivore's Moral Dilemmas, an essay that discusses the ethical conflicts faced by omnivores who think of themselves as environmentalists, feminists, humanitarians, humane pescatarians, or humane vegetarians and why they cannot be true to their values without adopting a plant-based diet. (shrink)

나는 『맹자』 「양혜왕」편 전반에 걸쳐 개진되는 ‘여민동락’ 논의를 ‘행복’의 관점에서 비판적으로 논의하고자 한다. 내가 행복하다고 여기는지의 여부와 실제의 삶이 일치하지 않는다는 점에서 주관적인 심적 상태로서의 행복은 좋은 삶과 갈등을 낳을 수 있다. 따라서 우리가 진정한 행복을 추구하는 것은 이미 주관적인 심리상태를 극복하고 어떻게 살아야 좋은 삶인가라는 고전적인 질문으로 회귀하게 된다. 이를 위한 논의의 배경으로 제선왕과의 대화에 등장하는 독락과 여민동락의 내용을 설명하려고 한다. 제선왕의 경우 그에게서 발견되는 욕구의 위계를 통해 독락으로 표현되는 주관적인 행복감이 자신이 지향하는 좋은 삶과 어긋나 있음을 밝힐 것이다. (...) 맹자가 제시하는 여민동락이 즐거운 삶과 좋은 삶을 일치시키는 논리를 설명하고 ‘연대’의 이면에 작동하는 상호이해와 공감의 역동성을 고찰할 계획이다. 측은지심으로 포착할 수 있는 이런 공감의 힘이 어떻게 여민동락과도 이어질 수 있는지 논증하려고 한다. 恕의 황금률로 포착해낼 수 있는 측은지심과 여민동락의 同異를 검토하고 ‘여민동락’이라는 유가적 행복론을 좋은 삶에 관한 이론적 틀로 요약, 정리할 계획이다. 이를 통해 주관적인 행복감이 우리의 삶을 좋게 만드는데 어떻게 기여하는가를 간략하게 설명하려 한다. (shrink)

Christian pro-lifers often respond to Thomson’s defense of abortion that the violinist is allowed to die while the embryo is killed. Boonin and McMahan counter that this distinction does not provide an objection to extraction abortions that disconnect embryos and allow them to die. I disagree. I first argue that letting die and killing are not to be distinguished by differences between acts and omissions, moral and immoral motives, intentional or unintentional deaths, and causing or not causing a pathology. I (...) offer a taxonomy in which hysterotomies turn out to be killings. I then argue that if either the placenta is considered an organ of the embryo or the embryo is construed as a part of the pregnant woman, then abortion pills kill rather than allow death. So, assuming that killing people is morally worse than letting them die, extraction abortions can be condemned to the same degree as other abortions. (shrink)

This essay compares the philosophical thoughts on happiness put forth in poems by Friedrich Nietzsche at the age of 12-13 with the happiness concept of Frederik, a modern secondary school student, at about the same age, who was inspired by three of Nietzsche’s poems to consider his own ideas on happiness. The intent is to demonstrate that the child Nietzsche’s poems, written to confront his life problems through philosophizing, can also be useful to 21st-century children, encouraging them to think about (...) problematic and serious fundamental life questions. That this is beneficial has been demonstrated not only by Daniela Camhy in the American and Austrian language areas, but also by Hermann Josef Schmidt in his Quadrology written about Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche’s childhood and youth.In diesem Aufsatz werden die philosophischen Gedanken zum Glück, die der zwölf - dreizehnjährige Friedrich Nietzsche in Gedichtsform präsentierte, mit der Glückskonzeption des etwa gleichaltrigen heutigen Werkrealschülers Frederik verglichen, der drei Gedichte Nietzsches zum Anlass nahm, um über seine eigenen Vorstellungen zum Glück nachzudenken. Es geht darum zu zeigen, dass die Gedichte, die das Kind Nietzsche geschrieben hatte, um sich philosophierend mit seinen Lebensproblemen auseinander zu setzen, auch Kindern des 21. Jahrhunderts als Impuls dienen können, sich mit problematischen und schwerwiegenden Grundfragen des Lebens zu beschäftigen. Wie heilsam dieses Nachdenken ist, konnte nicht nur Daniela Cahmy für den amerikanischen und österreichischen Sprachraum zeigen, sondern auch Hermann Josef Schmidt in seiner Quadrologie zur Kindheit und Jugend von Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. (shrink)

Recent research on the relations of personality to well-being shows that the people who are most healthy, happy and fulfilled are those who are high in all three of the character traits of self-directedness, cooperativeness, and self-transcendence as measured by the Temperament and Character Inventory. In the past, the healthy personality has often been considered to require only high self-directedness and high cooperativeness. However, now the self-centred behaviour of people who are low in self-transcendence is degrading the conditions needed for (...) sustainable life by all human beings. Consequently, human beings need to and can develop their capacity for self-transcendence in order to maintain their individual and collective well-being. (shrink)

This paper focuses on a particular method which is used in contemporary empirical happiness studies, namely measuring people’s happiness by scoring their emotions (Kahneman is a prominent scholar). I examine the presupposition in this field that emotion scores can be added or subtracted, that throughout affective space runs a straight axis that plots hedonic tone or pleasure.

Measures of happiness are increasingly being used throughout the social sciences. While these measures have attracted numerous types of criticisms, a crucial aspect of these measures has been left largely unexplored—their calibration. Using Eran Tal’s recently developed notion of calibration we argue first that the prospect of continued calibration of happiness measures is crucial for the science of happiness, and second, that continued calibration of happiness measures faces a particular problem—The Two Unknowns Problem. The Two Unknowns Problem relies on the (...) claim that individuals are necessarily a part of the measurement apparatus in first person measures of happiness, and the claim that we have no reason to believe that the evaluation standards people employ are invariant across individuals and time. We argue that calibrating happiness measures therefore involves solving an equation with two unknowns—an individual’s degree of happiness, and their evaluation standards—which is, generally, not possible. Third, we consider two possible escape routes from this problem and we suggest that the most promising route requires yet unexplored empirical and theoretical work on linking happiness to behavioral or neural evidence. (shrink)

Revolutionary developments in economics are rare. The conservative bias of the field and its enshrined knowledge make it difficult to introduce new ideas not in line with received theory. Happiness research, however, has the potential to change economics substantially in the future. Its findings, which are gradually being taken into account in standard economics, can be considered revolutionary in three respects: the measurement of experienced utility using psychologists' tools for measuring subjective well-being; new insights into how human beings value goods (...) and services and social conditions that include consideration of such non-material values as autonomy and social relations; and policy consequences of these new insights that suggest different ways for government to affect individual well-being. In Happiness, emphasizing empirical evidence rather than theoretical conjectures, Bruno Frey substantiates these three revolutionary claims for happiness research. After tracing the major developments of happiness research in economics and demonstrating that we have gained important new insights into how income, unemployment, inflation, and income demonstration affect well-being, Frey examines such wide-ranging topics as democracy and federalism, self-employment and volunteer work, marriage, terrorism, and watching television from the new perspective of happiness research. Turning to policy implications, Frey describes how government can provide the conditions for people to achieve well-being, arguing that a crucial role is played by adequate political institutions and decentralized decision making. Happiness demonstrates the achievements of the economic happiness revolution and points the way to future research.Bruno S. Frey is Professor of Economics at the University of Zurich, Visiting Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and Research Director of CREMA. He is co-editor of Economics and Psychology: A Promising New Cross-Disciplinary Field. (shrink)

My main thesis in this article is that Descartes' ethics should be understood as involving a distinction between happiness and well-being. The distinction I have in mind is never clearly stated or articulated by Descartes himself, but I argue that we nevertheless have good reason to embrace it as an important component in a charitable reconstruction of his ethical thought. In section I, I present Descartes' account of happiness and of how he thinks happiness can (and cannot) be acquired. Then, (...) in section II, I introduce and develop the distinction between happiness and well-being. I do this via a discussion of a difficult passage in one of Descartes' letters to Elisabeth, where he may seem first to grant and then immediately to reject the view that people's happiness can vary in degree depending on the possession of goods or perfections that are outside their power to control. I believe my proposed distinction can help us make good sense of this passage. In the last two sections (III and IV), I then offer some further grounds or reasons for why the proposed distinction should be ascribed to Descartes. (shrink)

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This timely book addresses the conflict between globalism and nationalism. It provides a liberal communitarian response to the rise of populism occurring in many democracies. The book highlights the role of communities next to that of the state and the market. It spells out the policy implications of liberal communitarianism for privacy, freedom of the press, and much else. In a persuasive argument that speaks to politics today from Europe (...) to the United States to Australia, the author offers a compelling vision of hope. Above all, the book offers a framework for dealing with moral challenges people face as they seek happiness but also to live up to their responsibilities to others and the common good. At a time when even our most basic values are up for question in policy debates riddled with populist manipulation, Amitai Etzioni’s bold book creates a new frame which introduces morals and values back into applied policy questions. These questions span the challenges of jobless growth to the unanswered questions posed by the role of artificial intelligence in a wide range of daily life tasks and decisions. While not all readers will agree with the communitarian solutions that he proposes, many will welcome an approach that is, at its core, inclusive and accepting of the increasingly global nature of all societies at the same time. It is a must read for all readers concerned about the future of Western liberal democracy. Carol Graham, Leo Pasvolsky Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution and College Park Professor/University of Maryland In characteristically lively, engaging, and provocative style Etzioni tackles many of the great public policy dilemmas that afflict us today. Arguing that we are trapped into a spiral of slavish consumerism, he proposes a form of liberal communitarian that, he suggests, will allow human beings to flourish in changing circumstances. Jonathan Wolff, Blavatnik Chair of Public Policy, Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. (shrink)

What can well-meaning people do about terror and genocide? The more we fight against systems of violence, the further we seem to sink into them. This book explores the lives and letters of ordinary and intellectual Germans who faced the ethical challenges of the Third Reich. Trained in history, literary criticism, philosophy, and theology, its four authors look at the role of myths, lies, non-conformity, irony, and modeling in cultivating a self. They explain how we might use these ordinary strategies (...) of selfhood to bear the burden of historical responsibility and be happy doing so.". (shrink)

Many researchers studying subjective wellbeing (SWB) understand SWB as a concept that is close to Bentham’s notion of happiness. This conception of happiness is philosophically controversial, because it treats pleasure as a homogenous experience. I analyze an important deviation from Bentham in John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism and its relevance for SWB research: qualitative differences in pleasurable experiences. I argue that in cases where lives involving qualitatively different experiences are compared, Mill’s qualitative perspective is incompatible with an important assumption in the (...) SWB literature: that happiness can be meaningfully rated by people on a scale. I illustrate the problem by means of the question of whether becoming a parent makes people happier. I analyze whether the problem can be avoided on alternative views of happiness, but argue that on all plausible accounts of happiness, the problem persists. I conclude that the problem it poses for self-reported happiness is genuine and should be acknowledged by SWB researchers. I end by discussing the ways in which this conclusion can help the study of happiness move forward. (shrink)

How do we measure happiness? Focusing on subjective measures as a proxy for welfare and well-being, this book finds ways to do that. Subjective measures have been used by psychologists, sociologists, political scientists, and, more recently, economists to answer a variety of scientifically and politically relevant questions. Van Praag, a pioneer in this field since 1971, and Ferrer-i-Carbonell present in this book a generally applicable methodology for the analysis of subjective satisfaction. Drawing on a range of surveys on people's satisfaction (...) with their jobs, income, housing, marriages, and government policy, among other areas of life, this book shows how satisfaction with life "as a whole" is an aggregate of these domain satisfactions. Using German, British, Dutch, and Russian data, the authors cover a wide range of topics, even some not usually considered part of economic study.The book makes a distinction between actual satisfaction levels and individual norms, and in this way complements Van Praag's earlier work within the Leyden School with his later work in "happiness research". Among the many topics covered, the authors discuss: individuals' memory and anticipation processes and the estimation of adaptation phenomena ; the effect of reference groups on income norms and satisfaction with income; the importance of climate for well-being, including the development of a climate-equivalence index; the trade-offs between chronic diseases and income when well-being is kept constant; the damage of aircraft noise on well-being; the construction of a new talent tax tariff; and inequality from a satisfaction perspective, including the definition of "satisfaction inequalities", a natural extension of income inequality and poverty.This groundbreaking book presents new and fruitful methodology that consitutes a welcome addition to the social sciences. (shrink)

Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is a treatment involving the implantation of electrodes into the brain. Presently, it is used for neurological disorders like Parkinson’s disease, but indications are expanding to psychiatric disorders such as depression, addiction and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Theoretically, it may be possible to use DBS for the enhancement of various mental functions. This article discusses a case of an OCD patient who felt very happy with the DBS treatment, even though her symptoms were not reduced. First, (...) it is explored if the argument that ‘doctors are not in the business of trading happiness’, as used by her psychiatrist to justify his discontinuation of the DBS treatment, holds. The relationship between enhancement and the goals of medicine is discussed and it is concluded that even though the goals of medicine do not set strict limits and may even include certain types of enhancement, there are some good reasons for limiting the kind of things doctors are required or allowed to do. Next, the case is discussed from the perspective of beneficence and autonomy. It is argued that making people feel good is not the same as enhancing their well-being and that it is unlikely—though not absolutely impossible—that the well-being of the happy OCD patient is really improved. Finally, some concerns regarding the autonomy of a request made under the influence of DBS treatment are considered. (shrink)

In the eighteenth century, Rousseau argued that the principal source of human unhappiness was our tendency to make invidious comparisons when humans were forced to cooperate in the pre-social state of nature. This increased proximity fuelled a desire for status and relative position which is the main source of the unhappiness in modern civilisation. I argue, first, that there is now substantial evidence supporting Rousseau's view that status matters much more to individuals than do absolute levels of wealth. However, I (...) also argue that there is mounting evidence that Rousseau failed to appreciate the extent to which our desire for status is natural. According to some evolutionary biologists, human beings evolved in an environment of scarcity and resource competition, where each individual's position was closely linked to his or her prospects for survival and reproductive success. Consequently, we are adapted by evolution to compete for status and relative position, which leads to a situation in which most people end up less happy. (shrink)