Spring 2008 Professor's Blog - Happiness

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Next Morning Blogs

Jan 15 2008

Well, I hope we raised alot of the big course questions and that you're as excited about getting underway as I am. Please start organizing your reading for next week now. As you may know, with once-per-week courses, it's easy to "forget" about the course until the night before it happens each week. On the bright side, meeting once per week gives you more control of your time, and that class can become more of an event. But some of that is up to you.

I forgot to mention that my exams are based completely on the study questions we identify in the course schedule. We'll adapt some of last year's questions, so follow this each week. You can see the updated study questions from our first class on the schedule now as an example. My strong advice is that you make notes on these questions each week after class. That will be your study guide for the exam.

Please go ahead and logon to the course site and start building your grading scheme. You can change items in your grading scheme up until you turn them in.

I was really struck (again) by how much our images of happiness seems to involve specific situations of tranquility, satisfaction, and enjoyment. Here are some ancient greek terms that get at similar states:

hesychia - quietness athembia - absence of pain in the soul (psyche) eustatheia - stability euthymia - tranquility experienced as pleasurable kara - joy eudaimonia - being guided by or possessing a happy spirit (daemon)

As we start to explore the views of happiness of some large ancient cultures, you'll see some of these concepts (which we also find in sanskrit) informing philosophical accounts of wisdom and happiness. As you dig into your reading for next week, if you find terms or concepts that you don't completely understand, consult some quick reference sources such as www.wikipedia.com or, in philosophy, the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (which is online through Foley). There are great, concise articles on both sources.

Well, it was great to meet you all last night. Please do stop in (Rebman 203) at some point to introduce yourself. My office hours are MW 10-11 and Th 10:45-12:00, and by appointment.

Mark Alfino

Jan 22, 2008 - Second Class - Models of Happiness in Global Traditions & Causes and Correlates of Happiness

Sorry about being in a bit of a fog last night from my cold. Last night after class I realized that I left a few things out and failed to underscore a couple of other things, so I'll use this "next morning" blog to take care of that. On the whole I thought your discussion was good and that most of the topics we started to discuss could have developed into longer discussions. Sorry if any of you felt skipped over. I'll continue to try to balance participation opportunities. We'll be doing more small group discussion in the coming weeks (especially when our reading volume settles down) and that should give more of you a chance to think through these issues in discussion with each other.

I think it's important to see Daoism and Buddhism as involving what I call a "strategy of separation and (re)union." Both of these traditions suggest that part of the cause of our unhappiness is our involvement in self-deception, over attachment to desire, and inaccurate judgment. The remedy is to separate ourselves from these "snares" and achieve a kind of union with fundamental reality. (As you compare the other traditions on our handout, you will find that this strategy applies to Christianity as well (though we haven't gotten to this discussion yet).) Indeed, in the philosophies of the Mediterranean cultures we plan to look at (Classical Greek and Hellenistic thought), you will find a similar strategy. The point I omitted last night was to look at these traditions in terms of a general "happiness strategy". We'll be building on this in the next few weeks.

The Argyle reading is new this time around, and I'm worried that too many of you didn't get to it or found it impenetrably difficult, so I would value your feedback on that. The reason I put it in the course is that it seemed like a really concise and tightly organized summary of the research, but let me know if you had trouble with it. The main point I want to underscore about this research is that, as philosophers, we use research like this to build our own theories of happiness. So, for example, when you read about the strong correlation (likely, cause) between intimacy and happiness, you have a couple of theoretical questions to answer: Why is intimacy so important to happiness? What makes for successful intimate relationships? Given that intimacy is not equally important to everyone, do you see yourself as an exception to the pattern? Remember, the overall goal of looking at all of this material is the formation of your own "philosophy of happiness." As we discussed last night, finding patterns in our actual experience is relevant to this, but we should also be open to the possibility that happiness lies in "separating ourselves" from the culture's larger patterns. So, for example, when you read about the hedonic treadmill, you have an example of a phenomenon that could defeat our happiness. The obvious response might be: Am I an exception to the treadmill effect? If not, how do I avoid this effect? Where do I see this in my experience?

That's it for now. Please start putting your grading schemes together, especially if you're going to do journal entries. We'll talk about grading schemes in class next week. Also, let's shoot for a higher level of reading preparation. Many of you were able to refer effectively to the readings, but some of you clearly couldn't. The higher the level of preparation, the higher the level of philosophical practice we can achieve. But you all know that already, right?

Alfino

Jan 29th - Gilbert - Prospection, Objectivity of Happiness, and Large Numbers

Well, if Gilbert is presuading you then you woke up today less sure of the relationship between your predictions about what will make you happy and the actual things (whatever they turn out to be) that will influence your well being. I thought we gave this a good discussion last night, and your small group discussions sounded productive. Now, the next morning, I'm wondering if Gilbert's research is good news or bad news. It's good news to know that I'm likely to tell a story of my life in which I conclude that I'm happy, but it's bad news if you're worried (as every good Happiness philosopher should be) that this complicates the the distinction between "genuine" and "false" happiness. If we "synthesize" happiness in the narrative we invent for our lives, which stories are to be preferred and why? Should we (could we) really avoid the illusions of prospection?

I also hope we were able to demonstrate something about "philosophical method" with Gilbert last night. If you go back to those basic questions from the first week, you could say that your job as philosophers is to develop an overall view of happiness that gives the best answers to those questions that you can. To get there, of course, we break the job down, in this case by asking what must be true (or is more likely to be true) about happiness theories (at least at the experiential level) on a particualar interpretation of Gilbert's "skeptical perspectivism"

Next week we get to look at two clear, well-developed answers to the problem of happiness: epicureanism and stoicism. Again, it's a different sort of evidence than recent cognitive psychology, but I hope to show that these ancient "graceful life" philosophies have interesting relevance to the problems Gilbert raises. Does this help the plot thicken?

Thanks for getting your grading schemes together. Drop by the office (office hours MW 10-11, TH 11-12) if you have time.

Alfino

Feb 5th - Stoics and Epicureans

Stoicism and Epicureanism give us our first real look, within the course, at two "philosophies of happiness." As we discussed, they share a common strategy for happiness: focus on understanding reality and adjusting your emotions in light of your understanding. In other words, if you train yourself toward virtue you will be happy. The Epicurean claims that this training will enable you to enjoy pleasure as a consequence of virtue. The Stoic argues that virtue just is happiness.

One of the more interesting discussions last night concerned the criticism that the idea of the "ratio" in Stoicism and Epicureanism (Don't demand that things happen as you wish, but wish that they heppen as they do.") sounded like an endorsement of complacency. All that "settling", my goodness. The criticism doesn't go away if you substitute "accepting" for "settling", but it helps. Can you, in fact, combine these in your experience? Isn't it inevitable?

The hard philosophical problem in the discussion of virtue and happiness, at least the way it emerged last night, is to assess this whole idea of the pursuing happiness by pursuing discipline. Virtue is a discipline, much like physical training, in which you try to find the appropriate emotional responses to situations based on your understanding of the kind of thing you are and the reality before you. When we talked about "enjoying anger" I realized something about how complicated this topic is. Beating someone up intellectually or physical can feel like the fulfillment of one's abilities. After all that training in argumentation (or boxing for the physical analogy), it can feel like the exercise of "virtue" to beat up on someone. Of course, for Stoics all pursues harmonize in the Good and the Epicurean would tell,"A man who causes fear cannot be free from fear." But you don't need to agree with this. Just figure out your considered response to these philosophies and you'll have more clues about your own.

On the drive home, I was wondering how these philosophies settle with your religious (or non-religious) attitudes. After all, Epicurus' "ghostie Gods" were not big hits. Humans want their gods to help out and to be involved. Stoic pantheism might not strike some of you as theological at all. If God is distributed throughout all reality, is he/it/she thinking about me? I think these philosophies are compatible with alternate theologies or none at all. That might be another strike against them for you, but you could also say these are "root" philosophies, they seem adaptable, in different ways to a high level of confidence (faith) in purposiveness (that would be stoic) to a "low epistemology" such as Epicurus, in which you just have to pursue pleasure (after understanding what pleasuure is and how virtue is a necessary condition for being a hedonist. As I told you in class, I admire the faith of the stoic and the attention to the psychology of pleasure in Epicurus. Of course, you should select views and rationales according to your own lights, especially if you're building toward that "My Philosophy of Happiness" paper.

Some housekeeping items:

• Try sharing your study question answers on the new Study Question Collaboration page at the main Happiness page.
• Study questions from last night are updated on the course website. If you haven't been doing study questions, start right now! They are the key to your happiness in the course.
• If you signed up for the meditation exercises, we will be having a short meeting next week at the end of class. Look over the resources on meditation on the course wiki for next week's class.
• It's never too late to drop by to introduce yourself. Office hours are MW 10-11, TH 11-12 and, most importantly, by appointment. Send me a couple of times and dates that work for you and I'll pick one.

Feb 12th - Love and Happiness

The main goal of our class last night was to discuss some views of love in light of a critical distinction between culture and the basic realities we recognize in love. On that basis, you can assess the importance of love, intimate relationship, familial relations, and friendship, to your theory of happiness. Last night we focused on intimate sexual love (in honor of Valentine's Day), but it's important to see the broad picture.

Initially, we made a distinction between reductive views (which some kinds of evolutionary theories and, oddly, Schopenhauer's view are instances of) and non-reductive views, in which we argue that mental terms like "love," "trust," "passion", while perhaps ultimately dependent on physical processes, are nonetheless necessary for talking about and having a theory about love. In other words, love doesn't reduce to chemical processes between organisms, even if that is the physical reality.

We talked about love and status, following the de Botton reading. We also reviewed Montaigne's advice on "reconciling ourselves with our bodies." In that discussion, there was a significant student voice suggesting that we haven't resolved these issues 450 years later. I raised the skeptical possibility that "more talk" wont' help, but in the end Montaigne's counsel looks contemporary.

The question: What percentage of people you are attracted to could you imagine having a successful, intimate, long term relationship with? generated some lively discussion. The goal in asking the question is to shine a critical light on the basis for believing that there is a relatively small or large percentage of the "potential candidates" for the prize of your love. There might be a correlation between romanticism and a low percentage answer, though lots of other factors could account for the answer. Similarly, a high percentage answer might mean that you are more disposed to believe that love has to do with how two broadly compatible people actually treat each other. You could still believe this and be a romantic. Any view you come to on this should square with the fact of arranged marriage in cultures in which that is experienced as voluntary.

After the break we got into what come to be known as the "viral theory of love." As I disucssed last night, this theory emerged from the course deliberations over the past few years on following:

1. What the relationship researchers are telling us these days - attachment theory, Gottman's work
2. Evolutionary naturalism (which Schopenhauer also wrestled with more abstractly), and
3. The puzzles of cultural models of love and happiness in views of romanticism, arranged marriages, etc.
4. The happiness research, which tells us that love and intimacy across a wide range of relationships (from sexual partners to friends) is strongly correlated with happiness.

The theory itself suggests that there must be "susceptibility" to committment to an intimate relationship and that a good metaphor for that (to keep our naturalistic intuiions in the picture) is susceptibility to a virus. The second condition of love is committment to will the good (and to want to please) the beloved. Things get murky here. We stumbled a bit on the term "work". Is love work? I think we agreed that relationships require effort, but there is something remarkable about the dynamic of this effort. It is often "effortless effort" and returned many fold. I think we were realistic the difficulty of sustaining this kind of relationship, and I hope we weren't presumptuous about assuming that a single long term relationship is an objective ideal, though some research suggests that, all thing equal, longer term memories enhance old age (until you lose your memory).

The short love narrative in de Botton returns us to our larger theme: the critical questioning cultural ideals. The guy in the narrative has to negotiate his idea of himself, love, and the other in the face of the reality that unfolds as the couple get to know each other. It's not that rock climbing women can't love acrophobic men, it's just that you have to figure out (probably intuitively) what's going to be an obstacle and what isn't.

To some extent the viral theory of love is a counterweight to the inevitable cultural construction of love. Focusing on the pragmatic question of one's capacity to love and be loved, and considering psychological theories about attachment, I think we can get some critical distance on the cultural messages we get about love.

Students doing the meditation exercises: You should get a test email for the group today. Let me know if you don't.

Alfino