Happiness
Happiness as the Sole Good
There seem to be quite a few people who believe that all human action aims towards the agent’s own happiness, and to avoiding the agent’s unhappiness. Yet, this view is mistaken. It is not far from the truth, yet it is far enough to lend itself to conclusions that ought to be rejected.
We can see that it is mistaken in the following experiment.
Ask those people around you what they would do in the following circumstances.
A mad scientist has taken you, and somebody you care a great deal about, prisoner. He gives you two options, and demands that you pick one.
Option 1: The person you care about is to be set free, in good health, and with enough wealth to take care of his needs for the foreseeable future. He has been unconscious the whole time, so he will not remember anything about what happened to you. He will be given reason to believe that you are safe and happy. Your memory will also be erased, and we will give you every reason to believe that this person is being tortured mercilessly. You will hear the screams. Other than this, you will be well fed and cared for and given as much freedom as we can allow.
Option 2: The person you care about will be taken to another island, where he will be mercilessly tortured. However, you will not hear the screams. Your memory will be erased, and we will give you every reason to believe that this person is living a healthy and happy life. You will be convinced that he is well. In addition, you will be well fed and cared for and given as much freedom as we can allow.
A great many people, if faced with these options, will report that they would select Option 1.
Yet, this would not be the option that makes them happiest. If they truly care about the other person, then the thought that the other person is down the hall being mercilessly tortured is going to be torture for that individual. On the other hand, the belief that the other person is healthy and happy should make the agent happy. The thesis that everybody aims for their own happiness suggests that everybody would select option 2, when empirical evidence suggests that very few if any would select this option.
Along these same lines, it is possible to present a pair of options to a scientist or medical researcher and ask which they would rather have happen. Would they rather die with the false belief that they had made no significant contribution to science, when in fact some of their research becomes instrumental in a breakthrough that occurs long after they died, or would they rather be famous in their own lifetime for a theory that ends up setting science back hundreds of years?
I am not saying that everybody would give the same answer. However, those who defend the happiness thesis do have to argue for the same answer for everybody — the answer that produces the most happiness for the individual. In this case, it would be the praise for what will eventually be revealed to be a scientific dead end that significantly slowed scientific research in pursuit of a dead-end. If anybody is willing to accept the unhappiness of present scorn in exchange for future fame that they would know nothing about, this shows that happiness is not the only thing that matters, at least to some people.
I am also not saying that happiness has no value. Clearly, we want to be happy. Our own happiness is clearly one of our projects — for most people, anyway. What I am denying is that it is the only project, and that there is nothing else to consider in making a decision other than the project of making oneself happy. People do, in fact, adopt a number of projects. The well being of their children, making society better than it would have otherwise been, writing a great novel, discovering some hidden secret in science or some medical breakthrough, providing for the safety and security of one’s family, friends, and country, are all projects — for the sake of which some people are willing to sacrifice their own happiness.
The main problem with accepting the happiness thesis, is that it denigrates all of these other projects. In doing so, it thwarts the fulfillment of these projects and sacrifices, in their place, a lesser good of happiness.
It is important to note one significant connection between projects and happiness. If a person has a project (e.g., to discover some secret of science), and he accomplishes that project, and he knows it, then he will likely experience happiness. However, this happiness is best understood as an unintended side effect of successfully completed the project. He did not successfully complete the project because it would make him happy; he became happy because he successfully completed the project. Successfully completing the project was his goal all along; the happiness that results from successfully completing the project and knowing this is ‘icing on the cake’.
Mistaken Implications of the Happiness Thesis
The main area where the happiness thesis runs into problem is the support that it gives to deception. “Don’t tell your grandma about the ranch, it will only upset her.”
Why would it upset her? It will upset her because she cares. Why does she care? Because she has a project other than happiness that is at stake and that project (in this case, something to do with the ranch) is being thwarted. Perhaps there is nothing that grandma can do about the ranch.
Perhaps a ranch, which has been in the family for generations, is about to be sold. The only two options are: grandma’s project of keeping the ranch in the family is thwarted and grandma is unhappy (because she knows this), or grandma’s project of keeping the ranch in the family is thwarted and grandma is happy (because she is ignorant). In this case, one may be able to make an argument for not telling Grandma. However, one needs to make sure that Grandma also does not have a project of living in the real world, and of not appearing to be made to look foolish when she talks about the family ranch to others who know that it is no longer in the family.
This is just one area where the happiness thesis invites people to sacrifice others’ projects in favor of happiness. There are also cases where a person may intentionally thwart somebody else’s projects, yet convince themselves that they do no wrong as long as the other person does not find out about it. These are cases where a person claims, “I have not done anything wrong if nobody notices.”
For example, an individual collects money from some wealthy patrons to perform some scientific research or to help some remote village. The people who make the contribution will never know what actually happens to the money. Whatever the recipient does, he will not make the contributors less happy (as long as they remain ignorant, and we can imagine cases in which they would almost certainly remain ignorant), These types of actions may be as grand as the type of fraud suggested here, or simply hiding something from a friend or co-worker that puts their project at risk.
The classic example that is used to refute the happiness criterion is that of spreading rumors or lies about somebody else — blaming them for some project’s failure or simply spreading a story about them that is not true. In many cases, one can reasonably expect that the lie will not get back to the person it is about, so it cannot make that person unhappy. If it does not make that person unhappy, then the happiness thesis suggests that he has not been harmed in any way.
Yet, if we consider the victim of this lie to have a project of establishing and maintaining a good reputation, a project of being known to be reliable, honest, and trustworthy, these projects are being thwarted by the agent’s lies. This is where the harm is being done; but, the happiness thesis minimizes these wrongs, making it easier for the agent to ignore these effects.
Another area where the happiness thesis gets in the way of a person directing his own affairs, is that people who accept this thesis live under the misconception that they can have no project other than their own happiness. They do not see options sitting in front of them for other types of projects. So, they cut themselves off from possible options.
In addition, to the degree that they actually accept this thesis, they cannot understand other peoples’ actions except in terms of their seeking their own happiness. This leads to a cynical view of other people that prevents the agent from seeing them as they really are.
Projects
We have the capacity for adopting projects things other than our own happiness. All of these do have these projects — rather it be the project of raising a healthy and happy child with a rewarding future, experiencing the sites in different parts of the world, growing a business, completing a novel, teaching classrooms full of children, or any of a number of other tasks that people can adopt. We do not do these things because we seek our own happiness. Rather, we seek these things because they have value to us, and we are happy when something that value comes to pass.
However, we can have happiness even if we fail. Happiness comes from believing that we have succeeded, even where we have not. A happy person can easily be deluded, thinking that he has accomplished some task that, in fact, he has never done.
In fact, imagine that researchers have created a device, that we can wear on our heads or step into, that makes us think that we are living the life we want to live. We can think of it in terms of a Matrix, or a Star Trek Holodeck, where images get fed into our brain. This machine feeds us images that makes us think that we are successfully completing our projects. It shows us receiving awards or other honors, obtaining the love of the person we judge to be the most attractive, earning stacks of money that we can then spend as we like, wielding power to mold the world as we think best. We would be happy, while we lay, attached to the machine, our bodies wasting away and finally dying. Yet, to our dying day, we would be happy.
Yet, it was all a deception produced by some machine.
For some people, this will not matter. They are happy, and this, in fact, is all they care about. For a great many people, however, this would be a pleasant diversion, but would be a distraction from life. If they find themselves too strongly drawn to this fiction, they may seek professional help to cut themselves off. Such a machine provides happiness, but it does not allow the individual to actually complete many of the projects that people can adopt. The fame, the love, the money, and the power are all fake. So is the happiness they provide.
This would be fine if happiness were the only thing that matters. However, it is not.