Nozick On HappinessThis is a featured page




Philosophers since Aristotle have argued that happiness is the only thing that is valued purely for its own sake (an 'intrisic good'). We call many things good besides happiness, but we call them good because they are, or we believe they are, connected to happiness. In fact, that seems to be what makes something good, that it is likely to lead to happiness. But what makes happiness good? Is there something else that happiness must lead to in order to be good? Probably not. Happiness is good just because of what it is. On this traditional view, happiness is the only thing valued purely for itself. Nozick wants to challenge this view, but I am not sure why.

You might be wondering what a philosophical theory can really say about happiness. Isn't this a totally subjective matter? I think that happiness is not entirely subjective, and there are some objective truths about happiness. While there is an objective structure to happiness, the details must be filled in subjectively. Nozick makes a few good points about the objective features of happiness.

The first interesting point Nozick makes is that we care about more than the total amount of happiness in our life. This is clearly shown by considering two lives with the same amount of happiness in them, but where one (A) slopes continuously upward to increasing happiness as time goes on. The other life (B) slopes continuously downward. However, both lives have the same amount of happiness in them. Despite the equal amount of happiness, A seems like a clearly preferable life. Things are always getting better, and we live with the expectation of good things in the future. B has the added pleasures of remembering past happiness, though things continue to decline. Nozick believes that al,most everyone would choose A over B if presented with such a choice, or something quite similar. Thus, something else other than the mere amount of happiness matters. What is the something else? Nozick calls it the 'narrative direction' of happiness, its shapes and contours over a life. We want good experiences structured in a certain way, not just stuffed in a bucket.
Nozick briefly discusses the nature of pleasure, as this is clearly an important part of happiness. There are pleasures of the mind and emotionn, as well as pleasures of the body. What they have in common is that they are valued for their felt quality. That is what a pleasure is, something valued for its felt qualities. This is different from something like Equality, which we value but not because of some feeling that is good.
The Experience Machine! This is cool, and it shows something important about happiness. Suppose for the sake of argument that we had a machine which completely recreated the nature of real experiences in your mind as you float in a tank. When in the tank you completely believe your experiences are real. Moreover, you can program any range of experiences that you want to; any series of highs and lows, different values, different careers, etc. You could program the experiences to seem very real to life as well, but very positive. From the inside, your life will feel as good as possible. Would you get in for your whole life? Why not? From the inside, nothing could be missing. You can even feel like you're growing, and real and deep, and changing. From the inside, nothing is missing,. If you would not get in, then you must care about more than how things feel from the inside. The Experience Machine shows this clearly, although many of us assume that how things feel is what determines the quality of your life. Now this seems mistaken.
What else matters? Nozick infers the Reality Principle. We care about being connected to reality. That is what is missing from the Experience Machine, that is the only thing missing. We want our experiences to grow out of reality, not fantasy, even if it feels the same way. What a strange thing to care about, reality. But it seems that we do. This means that our ultimate aim in life is not simply to feel a certain way, but to BE a certain way. Feeling is not enough.
Nozick then moves to the three different happiness emotions. The first is: being happy that something is the case. This is basically just seeing that something you value has been realized. You may be happy for a friend's success, world peace, for your favorite team, etc. This feeling is a direct response to our values being realized in the world. However, these good things may not be happening to you. If that is the case, this kind of happiness would not be complete happiness, that requires that good things happening in your life!
The second happiness emotion is: feeling that your life is good now. This form focuses on your life in particular, which the first did not. But it only focuses on one moment of your life, NOW. Sometime for no reason at all, or for a seemingly trivial reason, we get a feeling of completeness in a moment. You need nothing else at this moment, life is complete. Perhaps you have felt this just riding the bus after final exams, or taking a walk. What produces this feeling is the many unsatisfied wants that we have are not part of our consciousness at that moment. Consciousness is filled with satisfaction. These are great moments, but we could have one even when our life is going down the tubes. And if this is a rare experience, then it is not enough to make our life as a whole good, just those moments. Even if we had many such moments, we want to know what they all added up to. What does your life as a whole add up to and are you happy with that?
This brings us to the third form of happiness: being happy with your life as a whole. This is a judgement we make from a reflective standpoint on our life, a step removed from the business of living itself. We have to consider our life as a whole and then apply some standard for judging how good it is. This takes a lot of reflection. The standard to choose in evaluating your life is up to you! Some people may pressure to apply their standards, but the choice of how to evaluate your life is entirely yours. What standard would you choose? If you do not have such a standard, then you cannot have the third type of happiness emotion. The standard you choose will be some type of ideal person that you want to become throughout your life. Your life as a whole is good if you get close enough to this ideal. That provides the feeling of fulfillment, which neither of the other two forms of happiness include.
Read my outline of MetaSatisfaction for an elaboration of the third form of happiness.




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tcblock DIRECTION OF HAPPINESS #3 1 Dec 17 2008, 9:47 PM EST by ytu2
Thread started: Dec 16 2008, 5:16 PM EST  Watch
There would be more love and support around me, which would stimulate my happiness level to increase. Eventually, I would get to the very top and at this level I would have my personal life to where I would desire and be my own boss. Obviously there are more categories that would contribute to the fulfillment of my happiness, but those are some of the few important ones. This life that I just demonstrated could not be achieved with the “B” life style.
In conclusion, even though both life spectrums contain the same amount of happiness, I would rather chose life “A” because it leads up to being most happy, instead of ones happiness decreasing. Life “B” could also be dangerous because when someone has so much and then loses it all, it can mentally be very difficult on the person to keep being motivated. It’s always harder to lose what you had than to gain what you’ve never felt.
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tcblock DIRECTION OF HAPPINESS 1 Dec 17 2008, 6:58 AM EST by kshi
Thread started: Dec 16 2008, 5:15 PM EST  Watch
The thought experiment called the direction of happiness is based on what road of happiness an individual would take to fulfill his or her life. There is a choice between life “A” and life “B”, where both obtain the same amount of happiness, but in different ways. Life “A” can be symbolized as an upward sloping line that keeps moving up. In this case, it shows an increase of happiness as time goes on. On the other hand, life “B” can be shown as a downward sloping line where the happiness decreases as time goes on. The hypothesis of this experiment is that it does not matter what road you take, both have the same amount of happiness, so therefore they are both equally good choices. However, I disagree with this hypothesis and would choose life “A” because I think working upwards is better than having it all and then losing it as time goes on.
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tcblock DIRECTION OF HAPPINESS #2 0 Dec 16 2008, 5:16 PM EST by tcblock
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Life “A” is a better choice because it starts at the bottom of the spectrum and works its way up to full happiness. This means that each day or week gets better than the next as oppose to worse. Its like the satisfaction of working up to something. For example, if there were two people who got 1 million dollars in their life, except one worked hard to get it and another one was given to them by their parents, the person who worked harder for it would appreciate it more and would be happier because they made a huge accomplishment. The person who worked for 1 million dollars slowly got up there, while the other person got it all so fast and now they are already spending it all. The second person is just running out of money as opposed to increasing their bank account. This is the same concept of the comparison between lives “A” and “B”. Another big problem with life “B” is that it can mentally bring a person down. The person who chooses life “B” knows the feeling of complete happiness and how good it feels. Then slowly he or she will lose that feeling and never be able to reach back up to that spot that they already know and love. Happiness will keep on fading away and nothing can stop it from descending. To me, this is a depressing feeling and thought to think about. I would much rather work up to my happiness. I would already know what it feels like to be as low as possible on a scale of happiness, and would never have to feel that place again because my happiness would keep climbing up the latter.
In my life, I would want to start out at the bottom with my happiness and work to the top. Maybe at the bottom, I don’t have a lot of friends, my family is not very supportive of my life, I am lost at work and life is just not going well right now. Slowly, these conditions would improve and little things such as family and friends would get better.
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