I claim that there are objectively true necessary conditions for happiness. The claim that x is a necessary condition for y is expressed as follows: X is a necessary condition for y if and only if y cannot be true unless x is true. My proposal is: y = P Is Happy, x = P is Meta-Satisfied. Thus I claim y is impossible without x. I must admit, my claims below are rather bold. I have to expect that error lurks somewhere, so I invite you to help improve my theory by trying to falsify it.

The necessary conditions for happiness will collectively be called Meta-Satisfaction? Being meta-satisfied is the state of being satisfied with your satisfactions. No doubt we are never comlpletely satisfied with anything, much less our satisfactions. So, we should refine this to say that we must be satisfied with the set of satisfactions and dissatisfactions we have experienced in life in order to be meta-satisfied. This is a ‘meta’ satisfaction because it consists in the satisfaction taken in our satisfactions, which is different from the first order satisfactions themselves.

To illustrate this distinction, consider the unfortunate case of a repentent drug user who derives satisfaction from a drug, call it Satisfaction Syrum (it always delivers). Being repentent, he is dissatisfied with the satisfaction derived in the course of using Satisfaction Syrum, but he cannot deny that the moment of use was satisfying. Less extreme versions of this abound in daily lfe, the satisfied but regretful smoker, sated but guilty chocolate lover and so on, the suburban family who finds the satisfactions of such a life unsatisfying. Such people are Meta-Dissatisfied; their first order satisfactions are not found satisfying from the meta-perspective.

Clearly, you could also be Meta-Dissatisfied if your life were dominated by dissatisfaction, rather than usatisfying satisfactions, and you simply cannot muster any satisfaction over this fact. However, I would deny that you MUST be Meta-Dissatisfied if your life is dominated by dissatisfaction. Pursuit of good aims may in fact lead one to a life of considerable first order dissatisfaction, yet we may find Meta-Satisfaction in the fact that our first order dissatisfactions result from the pursuit of good aims. However, if the dissatisfactions are due to the pursuit of aims we do not ultimately endorse, then we should find it difficult to be Meta-Satisfied with first order dissatisfaction.

Enough about Meta-Dissatisfaction, what more can be said about Meta-Satisfaction? I say the following 6 things must all hold true of A if A is Meta-Satisfied. For our purposes, a person can only be meta-satisfied if they satisfy each of the 6 conditions, 5 is one too few to be happy.

1. A must commit to a personal Ideal (I)

2. A must approximate (I) during life.

3. A must be satisfied by approximating (I).

4. A must have self-knowledge.

5. A must exhibit open mindedness

6. A must have self-control

Conditions 1-3 are implicit in the discussion above, but 4-6 are new:
(1) A personal ideal is a conception of the person that you want to be, or the life that you want to be your life, AND this Ideal functions as a standard for evaluating your own life. This must be YOUR standard. Even if you are living out an ideal suggested by friends or family, it must receive your personal endorsement at some deep level. An act of the will that identifies you with your ideal.
(2) Fairly straightforward, happiness requires that we at least get close to meeting the expectations of oneself contained in our ideal above.
(3) For obvious reasons, success in 1 and 2 must ultimately be satisfying to us, which is a matter of being satisfied with the first order satisfactions that arise in (2).
It is plausible to argue that 1-3 cannot be satisfied unless 4-6 are satisfied.
(4) Self-knowledge is required to know what brings you satisfaction and how you are most likely to obtain such things given your individual nature and the social/historical context you live in. You also may project, based on this knowledge, which types of satisfactions you are likely to find satisfying.

(5) By openmindedness, I mean having an understanding of a number of different ideals that one could have chosen, AND where the chosen ideal has shown its merit against the competing ideals as the one best suited for you. J.S. Mill argues that we can only possess an idea in the mind as a "living truth", rather than a "dead dogma" if the idea is constantly subjected to the scrutiny of competing positions. I say the same for our ideal in 1, and this requires openmindendness on our part. Yes, that does seem to imply that closed-minded people cannot be happy. Perhaps I have gone to far here. If so, that is your case to make. I'm all ears.

(6)Self-Control is needed for (2). In order to actually bring our ideal to fruition, or some approximation thereof, we must posses an excellence of will that steers us away from the ways of life not favored by our ideal, and firmly on our chosen path. The unchosen ideals in 5 will no doubt loom as temptation when we are busy trodding the path of our favored ideal.

Self-control differs from Self-Knowledge and open-mindedness in that the former is an excellence of the will and the latter are excellences of the mind. Thus we must have virtue in both senses in order to have happiness. It’s interesting to note that a failing of happiness can be due to a failure of the intellect, Intellectual Vice we could say. This shows that the achievement of happiness is in part an intellectual achievement. Perhaps that is why we go to college!

Your assignment is to play the Devil's Advocate and prove me wrong. There is an agreed upon procedure for falsifying claims with conditional logic form. We falsify my claim by finding a person that is happy but does not meet the requirements for Meta-Satisfaction. In order to show this, you need to make a convincing case that a person could be happy, but fail to satisfy at least one of the proposed necessary conditions 1-6. That would be enough to show that Meta-Satisfaction is not strictly necessary for Happiness. I think it is necessary. Construct a counterexample descibing a real, or realistic, case of a person that could be happy and not meta-satisfied. I will try to show either that your case is really an example of someone who IS meta-satisfied, or of someone that is not reasonably considered happy.