Happiness Fall 2017 Class Notes

AUG 29

Audio from class: First section, parts a and b [1], [2]. Second section: [3]

• Course Introduction

• Some Problems of Happiness: notes
• Small Group Response / Peer introductions

• Course Mechanics and Assessment

• Course websites: alfino.org, courses (courses.alfino.org) and wiki (wiki.gonzaga.edu/faculty/alfino)
• Submit Roster Information
• Grading Schemes & Assignments
• Some values of anonymity / non-anonymity in developing philosophical skill.

AUG 31

Audio from class: [4] [5]

Note on Method

• Today's readings come from a history of happiness and a contemporary philosophical reflection on "living well" -- one of our core methods in the course will involve this kind of interdisciplinary study.
• In your group exercise today, you will be working with methods such as: generating cases, ordering cases by principles, "pumping intuitions".
• Thought experiment are part of a contemporary philosophers' toolkit. Nozick's "Experience Machine" is a thought experiment.

Some notes on Teaching Methods and Advice

• transparency and anonymity -- Saint names, pseudonyms, dropboxes, peer review, sharing student work, grade distributions
• Note on finding audio. In each class day's notes.
• Note on finding old class notes. At bottom of main wiki page.
• prep cycle -- check out "focus" notes on reading list, read, come to class, follow study questions from class, make notes in light of class, repeat.
• Note your responses to things in your notes so that you can go back and collect them for the My Philosophy of Happiness paper.
• Mark or note your readings so that you can answer study questions for use in short answer (Q&W) exercises and essay exams.

Cahn and Vitrano, "Living Well"

• considers how various philosophers would evaluate the contrast between the fictional cases of Pat and Lee

• Taylor and Frankfurt: P&L are equal. "living in accord with your desires" / according to what you love

• Living well: tied to distinctions between

• "successful lives" vs. "wasted lives"
• lives pursuing "intrinsically valuable" goals
• lives that are "works of art"
• fame and achievement vs. mission and meaning vs. satisfaction with one's own activities

• concern about the possibility of ideology or cultural bias.

• Wolf's list: computer games and crossword puzzles not on the list, but why not, asks Haidt?
• why disparage making money, swimming, driving cool cars?
• why do philosopher's think they can put philosophy at the top of the list?

• Example of Phil Saltman: Does happiness require maximizing accomplishment? Can unhappiness be associated with resignation from challenge?

• Cahn and Vitrano's answer: p. 21.

Small Group Work

• What is the relationship between happiness and achievement? Between happiness and using your talents? Is it an option, a favored option, a necessity?

Some general notes on Classical Views and the problem of criteria for living well

• Note how happiness emerges as a concern in Greek culture -- (and in other cultures -- will be looking at Buddhism later)
• Plato's (Socrates') view as exemplified in the Symposium -- finding happiness in the search for good accounts of things; knowledge.
• Structure of Symposium -- Love and Happiness as being drawn toward a transcendent and complete reality. (and later in Christianity)

• Specific term of Socrates' view -- eros --> desire --> lack vs. happiness --> fulfillment --> possession (self) -- problem of Alcibiades

• Aristotle's view -- telic, developmental, but also privileging the rational, similar problem as Plato. Not an account of happiness for the masses.

• Raises the question of criteria for living well -- How might it be true that happiness and realizing our nature are related? unrelated?

McMahon, "Chapter 1: The Highest Good"

1. Classical Greek Models of Happiness

Key theme: Greek cultural break with accommodation to destiny. Recognition of possibility of control of circumstances determining happiness.

Implicit historical narrative: Classical Greek philosophy has a point of connection with Periclean Athens, but develops Athenian cultural values in a radically new way. This begins a distinctive kind of narrative about happiness in the West.

1. The Greek Cultural Model

• Connection of the culture with tragedy, appreciation of fate, happiness as gift of gods.
• Dionysian culture
• Post-Socratic Schools -- Hellenism and Hellenistic culture (we'll be returning to some of these schools later in the course)

2. The Greek Philosophical Models in Greek Philosophical culture: Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, and Zeno.

A. Plato - Symposium gives us picture of Plato's view.

• Contrast the Symposium with the cult of Dionysius
• Reasoning our way to the Good (Happiness). Symposium as purification ritual (Summary including Alcibiades twist). bad desire/good desire. We will find real happiness in the pursuit of transcendent knowledge.
• Object of desire is transcendent. (Reminder about Platonic metaphysics.) "intellectual orgasm" (36)
• McMahon: "radical reappraisal of the standards of the world" 37

B. Aristotle (note McMahon pp. 41ff and Aristotle reading)

• end, function, craft, techne. Hierarchy of arts.
• end vs. final end -- the universal good is the final end, not relative. sec. 6-7.
• happiness as activity of the soul in accordance with virture (def., but also consequence of reasoning from nature of human life)
• Section 13: nature of the soul. two irrational elements: veg/appetitive and one rational. Note separation/relationship.
• As M notes, Aristotle's focus on the rational part of the soul leaves him with a similar problem as Plato -- a model of happines that few (not the Alcibiades in the world) will attain.

• Is the Greek Classical model of happiness (as seen in the Symposium and Aristotle's thought), a revelation of truth about happiness or the beginning of a repressive line of thought in happiness studies?
• If happiness requires a disciplined practice, how do you maintain solidarity with those who do not maintain the discipline (the Alcibiades problem)? Possible weakness of an individual enlightenment model of happiness.

SEP 5

Audio from class: [6] [7]

Methods

• conceptual analysis of subjective and objective in Vitrano; think of this as a basic dimension of theoretical space for happiness.
• Haybron's mention of method, p. 10.
• we're also acquiring bigger "classes of cases" to theorize from. (Jane and the Pidana)

Vitrano, The Subjectivity of Happiness

• "objectivist view" of happiness,

• connects happiness and the good life, living a good life.
• especially from Aristotle: happiness is objectively related to moral and prudential goodness, "living well" and "doing well"
• objectivists limit happiness to those who can develop their capacities and talents.

• subjectivist view:

• "satisfaction criterion" (note: an objectivist can still require that one also be satisfied with one's life)

• modified objectivism (adding constraints to subjectivism):

• Warner: satisfaction, but also of "important desires" that are thought "worthwhile". Simpson adds that the desires must actually be worthwhile.
• Annas: stronger still. We can assess our desires and goals objectively.
• Kekes: We can assess whether someone's satisfaction is warranted.
• Nozick: can't call someone happy if their emotions are unjustified and based on false evaluations

• Counterarguments to the objectivists:

• Case of Jane, who is happy in part because of her marriage, which she considers a success, but wrong about that because her husband is having an affair.

• might want to say that Jane would be "better off" knowing the truth, but then happiness and being "better off" are at odds, which is a problem for an objectivist who thinks happiness is the "best" state.

• second, to the extent that happiness is an emotion, we will have to credit the experience of the emotion as a form of fulfillment of the state.

• Other considerations supporting a subjectivist view:

• satisfaction criterion compatible with improvement. Someone can be happy and satisfied and yet they might still be happy if they made better moral and prudential decisions.
• therefore, subjectivism and appraisal are not incompatible.

• subjectivists explain behavior better.

• people actually behaves as though happiness were one among many goals.

Haybron, Dan. Chapter 1: "A Remarkable Fact"

• compares happy Socrates from a culture we regard as impoverished to us. and
• compares Amish, Maasai, and Inughuit to us.
• Paradoxical for our intuitions -- they are happy but don't have things we regard as necessary to happiness.
• International data on happiness -- What does it mean?
• the Piraha (Pidana) - outliers

• maybe happiness is too variable to have a theory about. his approach, p. 9-10
• advocates theorizing happiness as a psychological state, separate from life satisfaction.

Questions

• Do you have to achieve your goals to be happy?
• Do you have to have goals to be happy?
• What is your analysis of Jane's situation?
• What does it mean for our theory of happiness that there is happiness among the poorest people of earth and that cultures model happiness in significantly different ways (radically diff balances of PA/NA as in the Piraha)?

SEP 7

Audio from class: [8] [9]

Method notes

• Today we're exploring (through 14 centuries!) the range of the cultural phenomenon of Happiness, adding information from Roman culture and Christian culture. It's hard to have a good theory without a sense of the variability and behavior of the phenomena. History discloses this in unique ways.

Gilbert, Chapter 1. Journey to Elsewhen

• the difference, to the problem of happiness, from our ability to imagine a future.

• Calls "Nexting" predicting immediate future for me; "predicting" both conscious and unconscious. surprise. measurable in the very young and primates. Notice the levels of "nexting" from simple to entirely imagined futures.

• nexting happens in the frontal lobe; Phinneas Gage; lobotomies; tradeoffs between planning (being able to think about the future) and anxiety. N.N. - cognitive awareness of time without ability to imagine the future.

• Prospection and Emotion: 12% of time we think about the future. ways that we enjoy anticipation of a future (18), even as substitute, American optimism and distorted sense of the future. imagining the future changes our predictions about the likelihood of our imaginings coming true. Cancer patients more optimistic about future than the healthy.

• Control. study at 21ff. lots of specific results on control read 22.

Darrin McMahon, Chapter 2, Perpetual Felicity

• Note time period being covered: 0-500 ad Roman - Christian culture

• Roman culture of happiness: prosperity, fertility, power, luck. Also images of simplicity.

• "Horatian" images of happiness: Carpe Diem, read p. 72, note M's hypothesis: idyllic imagery a response to urban decadence and disorder. also contains an element of fantasy of plenty, of a "cornucopia". note critical element in Horace: p. 74: finds that the wealth of Roman culture may have undermined happiness.

• Early Christian Model of Happiness: 76-77: "worship of sorrow", major symbol about execution, but this is also a path to become blessed, beatitude, makarios (Greek). -- radical inversion of classical and Roman thought. To be happy is to walk in the way of the Lord.

• Judaic culture of happiness/blessedness term: Asher -- note how terms and concepts from Hellenic/Judaic/Roman cultures are being mixed. Happiness model as a path or program of formation. (cf. East/West) Beatitudes from Matthew, p. 82. change in role of suffering Judaic to Christian...

• Story of Perpetua and Felicitas (150ad). Martyrdom and Happiness.

• Transitions in Christian thought on happiness after Early Christianity: Augustine, Pseudo-Dyonisius, Aquinas

• Augustine, 96: personal history, symbol of Christian critique of pagan conception, yet also assimilation of Hellenic culture. "To be happy is to be suffused with truth, to 'have God within the soul," to "enjoy God". Note the big development here: positive happiness as a state of Christian joy. Also, Augustine makes the argument that the classical model fails to deliver this sort of happiness. City of God: explaining sacking of Rome, but also a model of Christian Happiness writ large. Also, an articulation of the doctrine of original sin. Need for grace in salvation. Pelagian controversy. Note summary at 105. Along with shaping so much of Christian theology, Augustine shaped the Christian conception of happiness.

• John the Scot (Eriugena) 847 ad, problem: how do we return to God from our exile? new articulation of free will (note importance to later history of happiness). rediscovers Pseudo-Dionysius, falsely thought to be contemporary of Paul (who mentions a Dionysius): Erugena's Dionysius was really a 6th century Syrian influenced by neoplatonism. mystical traditions both pagan (Plotinus) and christian (desert fathers)113. Great example of the fusion of classical and Christian thought. Platonic, Neo-Platonic, and Christian. Mystical bliss as a higher form of happiness.

• Aquinas distinction between perfect and imperfect happiness. Idea of order of creation, ladder of being. (Ladders everywhere. Also a version in Plato's divided line.) Humans on top among mortal creatures. (need to appreciate how "hot" Aristotle was in 13th century Paris, among university students! some concerns for the church: condemnation of theses including the idea of happiness here.) Fusion with Aristotlean conception of nature, to an extent. note p. 126. connects Aristotle's ideal of contemplation to Christian spirituality.

Questions

1. What is radically distinctive about Christian models of happiness and what is borrowed from the philosophical and historical culture of the time?

2. How does the existence and function of the pre-frontal brain complicate the problem of happiness?

SEP 12

Audio from class: [10] [11]

Method Notes

Today's reading is an overview of research which might help us build a "construct" for happiness. Brief mention of a structure for understanding how constructs (theories) develop through observation and experiment.

A core philosophical method, especially these days, is to try to synthesize the results of diverse research programs to represent a construct for something that, in the case of happiness for example, is too complex to know precisely.

Haidt, "Chapter 5: The Pursuit of Happiness"

(gloss on "elephant" vs. "rider")

• Major theme -- happiness as internal or external pursuit.

• About the structure of pleasure....

• diminishes on repeat...evolutionary gloss
• pre-goal attainment positive affect vs. post-goal attainment positive affect (Davidson)
• Progress Principle: happiness in the journey -- "Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing."

• The Adaptation Principle

• we return to baselines for + and - experiences
• we are sensitive to changes more than absolutes.

• Problem: If the adaptation principle and heritability of happiness are both true, does it matter much what we do?

• Attempt to "outrun" adaptation is "hedonic treadmill"

• Buddha and Epictetus take a relatively "internal" path. Haidt suggests research shows this to be somewhat extreme direction to go -- there are things to strive for outside of yourself. (Kind of lumping alot together, but we'll be looking at this more.)

• Haidt's list of happiness makers and unmakers(correlates and major causes)
• Adaptation (habituation, also relative sensitivity to change -- nb. bottom of p. 85), hedonic treadmill, set point theory (heritability of happiness).
• Bob and Mary comparison (87): relationship, meaningfulness. Bob's list more susceptible to adaptation. (Note some initial complications: Does marriage make people happy or do happy people marry? wealth effects (good topic for research paper).

• Small group discussion with Report using Google Form: In 20 minutes, develop a set of critical responses (or a single response) in 200-300 words to the following question: Why are so many people in the culture focused on raising their kids to be like Bob when it looks like Mary has more of the components of happiness in her life? Don't be reluctant to challenge perceived presuppositions of the question. You might want to agree on a strategy such as 3-5 minutes individual study and reflection, 10 minutes to produce the paragraph (5 minutes to get a draft, 5 to improve).

• Happiness Formula

• H = Set point + Conditions + Voluntary action
• Is the lack of adaptation for cosmetic surgery disturbing or comforting? what's shallow vs. what matters.
• from 92f: Noise, Commuting, Lack of Control, Shame, Relationships,
• "It is vain to say that human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it." (Charlotte Bronte, 1847) (He implies that the inward path to happiness involves a choice of inaction. Consider some assumptions people have about people who meditation.)

• Flow (experience sampling) and Seligman's "Pleasures" vs. "Gratifications"; Strengths test used to be at this site: [12], but it's now a general site for Seligman's work.

• Ways of working against your happiness (Lessons from the research)

• False hypotheses about material goods.
• Comparisons and biases. Conspicuous consumption is a zero sum game. p. 101 -- Seems to support the inward strategy
• Paradox of Choice: We say more choices will make us happier, but there is counter-evidence. Schwartz maximizers and satisficers.

• • Note concluding reflection: What are we to make of the Calcutta reports?

• Whole group discussion: What are some of the promises and pitfalls of an internal vs. external strategy for happiness?

Rethinking Haidt's Happiness Formula

• Haidt's formula: *H = Set point + Conditions + Voluntary action
• Set point might be better thought of as "initial affect profile"
• Relationship between Conditions and Voluntary action unclear. Actions change some conditions and habitual or dispositional responses might also create good conditions, yet not be wholly conscious and hence not wholly voluntary(?)
• Conditions (ranging from fated to chosen) and Responses to Conditions
• Meta -- actions and practices that we engage to develop and strengthen an orientation to life that will promote happiness and well being. These include practices that improve cognitive and emotive responses. (Haidt's "internal strategies". Also some of the capacities developed by the happiness practica.

SEP 14

Audio from class: [13] [14]

Gilbert, Chapter 2: The View from in Here

• Twins: Lroi and Reba. How to assess their preference?

• Types of happiness: emotional, moral, judgement happiness.

• How can the twins be happy? What is the role of "objective conditions"?

• Subjectivity of Yellow, 32. Nozick's experience machine, 35. Happy Frank, p. 37. (Perhaps goal of this analysis is to see that normal understanding of happiness includes life happiness, virtues, and perfective activities.)

• 40: How similar are two people's experience of happiness? How would you know?

• problem: we don't compare experiences, we compare memories of experiences.

• Describer's study on memory of color swatch, 41. What do we access when we make happiness judgements?

• How reliable is our judgement from one minute to the next?

• Interviewer substitution studies Daniel Simon's Lab: [15]. Other perceptual aspects, 43-44.

• Conclusion: 44-45: read. Not so much about how bad we are at noticing change, but how, if we aren't paying attention, memory kicks in.

• Happiness scales

• Language squishing and Experience stretching: Addresses the question: Does the range of my experience of happiness lead me to talk differently about an identical experience (of the cake) as someone else, or does it cause me to experience things differently? (Point about guitar experience (52) -- moving targets problem.)

• Language squishing hyp: We "squeeze" our happiness scale (language) to fit the range of our objective exp.

• R&L feel exactly like you do (about a birthday cake, for example) but talk about it differently.
• consistent with the idea that the same feeling or state could receive a higher assessment by someone with limited experience.

• Experience stretching hyp: We take the range of our objective experience and stretch it to fit our scale.

• R&L talk about experiences the same as you do but feel something different.
• consistent with the idea that someone is having a different experience because of their limited background.
• maybe a rich background of experience (exotic experience, diverse or challenging experience, luxurious experience, experience of rarefied environments) "ruins" mundane experience. In which case, absence of peak experiences is not a problem.

Another way of putting the R&L problem: When R&L give something an 8 is it like what you experience when you (presumably as someone with broader and more diverse experience) give something an 8?

• Drawing a conclusion: Our relationship to our judgements about happiness is changed by our experience of happiness and vice versa, creating a kind of ambiguity in intersubjective assessments of happiness.

• Small group discussion: Thinking about R&L and "experience stretching" and "language squishing", what are the major variables that affect whether two people are having getting the "same hedonic effect" from an experience or different effects? Can enriched experience (luxury, peak experiences, exotic experiences) "ruin you"? Does connoisseurship pose a risk to happiness? Does the "moving targets" problem come into the picture here?

Haybron, Chapter 2: What is Happiness?

• takes us into a rich phenomenal account of emotional state happiness

• endorsement -- some difficulty understanding this: not a judgement, but a feeling from satisfying criteria you accept as counting toward the claim, "my life is positively good"

• examples -- feeling from actual endorsements, but also from savoring accomplishment or appreciating need fulfillment (parents seeing contented children, a full pantry...)

• engagement - vitality and flow
• attunement -- peace of mind, tranquility, confidence, expansiveness

• Is Haybron making a recommendation or describing objective, transcultural features of emotional happiness?

• Problem of "false happiness" -- discrepancies such as Robert's (also Happy Frank) -- adaptive unconscious might be part of the explanation -- interesting that we can go wrong in this way. mood propensity or dispositional happiness.

• Can you also be happy and not know it?

• The Haybron discussion also gets at the idea of superficial vs. deep happiness. Ricard, or the sage, presumably have it.

Questions

1. Do peak experiences matter to our overall happiness? Won't we just fit our experience to our language?

2. How does the evidence of our difficulty in comparing experiences affect the problem of understanding happiness?

3. How universal is Haybron's model of emotional state happiness?

4. Does Haybron's model keep Hs and Hl separate?

SEP 19

Audio from class: [16] [17]

Philosophical Methods at Work

• In our group discussion work, you will be asked to speculate and draw inferences from Haidt's discussion of the the nature of the brain.
• With Gilbert, we are asking about the deeper implications of psychological research related to self-knowledge and capacities for self-awareness.
• The last part of the Gilbert chapter involves a "meta-theoretical" discussion. Philosophical investigations often raise meta-theoretical problems.

Haidt, "The Divided Self"

• metaphors from Plato and Buddha. Training metaphor in both. Plato's horses: rational and irrational desire. H's: elephant and rider. point: reason-based metaphors for consciousness don't explain our funny behavior with respect to our well-being. We seem more conflicted than a reason based model would suggest.
• Akrasia [18] -- csness is not univocal. You can try to make reason speak for you, but knowledge of the brain suggests that's the wrong way to talk.
• Freud: ego, id, superego.
• Four major structures of brains to consider while theorizing about happiness:

• Mind vs. Body - gut brain. neurons all over. GI and immune system illnesses intersect with psychological conditions such as stress and depression.
• Left vs. Right -Michael Gazzaniga, collected evidence on split brain patients (severing corpus collasum to reduce seizures), controlled experiments with patients report of l/r brain function. split brains in everyday life... Why does this matter if you don't have a split brain???

• "confabulation" - implications for our picture of csness.
• reminder that lateralization doesn't negate coordination.
• Consciousness and coherence are an achievement!

• New vs. Old -neo-cortex and frontal cortex recent - case of U VA schoolteacher in his forties who starts acting weird - massive tumor in frontal cortex. (Phineas Gage) -- moment of appreciation for the orbitofrontal cortex. Rationality embodied in part in our capacity to suppress urges and integrate desires in a social world. esp. orbitofrontal cortex (p. 12). Our rationality may be less of a stand-alone faculty than something that is socially enacted. (again, embodied cognition is trending here, but also explains connection with frontal cortex.) Also, Kluver-Bucy Syndrome: [19]
• Note on "repligate" -- Consider some skepticism about priming studies. For More: [20]

• Controlled vs. Automatic - priming research, 13. Larger background theory that rider evolved to serve the elephant. Important paper by Hugo Mercier & Dan Sperber, "Why do Humans Reason?" [21]
• Note on "repligate" -- Consider some skepticism about priming studies. For More: [22]

• Small group discussion: What is the importance of "keeping the brain in mind" while thinking about happiness? Is there room for skeptical doubt about it? Consider the potential importance of each of the features of the brain Haidt discusses for thinking about happiness?

• Two Big examples of phenomena that arise from these structures and features of the brain.

• Self-Control: Studied, famous in relation to failures of self control 18: Mischel and Impulse control [23] Poe and the "imp of the perverse"; 19: Wegner on ironic processes (don't think of a white bear). point: shows automatic and controlled processes at odds.
• Disgust 21: disgust - incest scenario -

• 22 q. final statement about rider and elephant. "We make pronouncements, vows, and resolutions, and then are surprised by our own powerlessness to carry them out. We sometimes fall into the view that we are fighting with our unconscious, our id, or our animal self. But really we are the whole thing. We are the rider, and we are the elephant. Both have their strengths and special skills."

Gilbert, Chapter 3: Outside Looking In

• How well do we know what we're feeling?

• Determining that something is scary comes before understanding it. (That's scary.) automatic processes can help or distort our preferred reactions.

• Maybe you can be happy and "not know it" in the sense of not being aware that this (state, experience structure, etc.) is normal to happiness.

• Capilano Bridge Study -- fear and arousal. reading without awareness. you can have an experience and not be present to it or aware of it.

• Blindsight - visual experience and awareness of that experience are generated by distinct parts of the brain. 62.

• Alexithymia - mismatch of experience and awareness of experience or lack of introspective awareness, leading to impoverished vocab of phen. experience. You could be happy and not know it. (Will you "know it when you see it"?) (That's scary, too.) But another claim being made here is about variation in people's aptitude for emotional self-description. This seems related to "emotional intelligence." (Discussion: Do people vary in this way? What, if any, intervention might alter one's capacity for emotional self-decription?)

• p. 63: "They (alexithymics) seem to have feelings, they just don't seem to know about them."

• Objectivity issue summarized: 64.
• Addressing Measurement Issues: 1) imperfect measures are still measures; 2) real time reports by individuals are still pretty reliable (1st person perspective has some privilege); 3) law of large numbers can help

• physical correlates, multiple measures, avoid priming,
• Law of Large Numbers -- resolves some issues of subjectivity.
• "problem of subjective experience" -- relation between knowledge of patterns and individual. point, bottom of p. 69. "law of larger numbers" to the rescue.

SEP 21

Audio from class: [24] [25]

Arglyle, "Causes and Correlates of Happiness"

• Age
• Education
• Social Status
• Income
• Marriage
• Ethnicity
• Employment
• Leisure
• Religion
• Life Events

Synopsis by major factor:

• Age

• The older are slightly happier, notably in positive affect. Some evidence that women become less happy with age. In assessing causality, we might need to acknowledge a cohort effect (older people are those who survive, hence not nec. representative of a sampling of all age groups). Older people are less satisfied than others with their future prospects.
• Old people could have lower expectations, and hence their greater self-reported happiness might not be comparable to a younger person's self-reported happiness. (Consider Cantril's study that found older people more satisfied with past and current lives (less with future).)
• Puzzle: objective conditions are worse for old people (health, depression and loneliness!), yet they are more satisfied. (Neural degeneration has got to be on the table as a hypothesis.) Actually, declining aspirations, "environmental mastery", and autonomy increases might help explain this. Also, old people participate in their religion more. A boost.

• Education

• The educated are slightly happier (on PA, not reduced NA). Effect weak in US. Data suggest the education effect is greater in poorer countries. Control for income and job status effects and there is still a slight effect from education. [From personal achievement? Finding enduring sources of flow and pleasure?] But income and job status account for most of the education effect.

• Social Status

• About twice the effect of education or age (could be seeing combined effect of both), but half of the effect is from job status. Greater effect for stratified societies. [How professors are treated in Italy, for example.]
• Note 356: social class predicts a big bundle of goods that also have measurable happiness effects: housing, relationships, and leisure. Also, diff classes DO different things.

• Income

• Average correlation of .17 across studies. See chart on p. 356 -- curvilinear, with slight upward tail at highest incomes. (intriguing)
• Steep relation of income from poverty to material sufficiency.
• Diener found a stronger correlation when using multiple income measures (such and GNP, purchasing power indexes, etc.)
• Bradburn pay raise studies in '69. (see cartoon) Inglehart studies in 90's: people who say their $ situation improved also report high satisfaction.
• Famous Myers and Diener 1996 study: "In the United States, average personal income has risen from $4,000 in 1970 to $16,000 in 1990 (in 1990 dollars), but there has been no change in average happiness or satisfaction." Some evidence that happiness is sensitive to economic downturns (Belgium), some evidence of variation in strength of effect across culture.
• Lottery winner studies may not be a good way to test income effects since you get lots of disruptions with winning the lottery.
• Cluster effect with income: Income comes with host of other goods: p. 358.
• Comparison groups and relative changes may be stronger than absolute income levels. (Note "pay fairness" increases income satisfaction. Gonzaga note.) Women's pay (358).
• Michalo's "goal achievement gap model" p. 358: "whereby happiness is said to be due to the gap between aspirations and achievements and this gap is due to comparisons with both "average folks" and one's own past life (see figure 18.3).

Other Resources:

• Kahneman and Deaton, "High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being"
• Graham, et. al, "The Easterlin Paradox and Other Paradoxes: Why both sides of the Debate May be Correct"

• Marriage

• Average effect from meta-analysis of .14. Stronger effects for young. Does more for women than men, though stronger effect on male health.
• Causal model: Married people have higher social well being indicators (mental and physical health). These indicators are independent factors for happiness. Marriage is a source of emotional and material support. Married people just take better care of themselves. Men might benefit from emotional support more since women provide that to male spouses more than males? (differently?)
• Effects of marriage has a life-stage dimension to them. (figure 18.4) Having children has a small effect.
• Reverse causation is a consideration, but hard to support since 90% of people get married.
• Good example in this section of distinguishing between correlational data and causal discussion.
• Construct for marriage: strong social and emotional support, material help, companionship.

• Might be interesting to look at research comparing marriage to other types of social support systems. Why are people in your age group delaying marriage? Is it making them happier?

• Ethnicity

• Widely confirmed studies show that average happiness for US African Americans is lower than for US whites.
• Mostly accounted for by income, education, and job status.
• Interestingly, African American children enjoy higher self-esteem than white kids.

• Employment

• Studies of unemployed and retired help isolate effects.
• Unemployed significantly less happy: "The unemployed in nearly all countries are much less happy than those at work. Inglehart (1990) found that 61 percent of the unemployed were satisfied, compared with 78 percent of manual workers."
• Strong effects when unemployment is low; different ways of looking at employment effects (363).
• Causal model: income and self-esteem account for most of effect.

• Leisure

• Relatively strong correlation: .2 in meta-studies.
• Leisure effects observed in lots of contexts (social relations from work, adolescent leisure habits, even a short walk. Sport and exercise include both social effects and release of endorphins. Like religion, leisure activities have multi-faceted effects on happiness.
• Flow is a factor. Comparisons of high engagement and high apathy (tv) leisure activities.
• TV watching as a leisure activity. Predicted low SWB, but has some positive effects. Soap opera watchers!
• Volunteer and charity work were found to generate high levels of joy, exceeded only by dancing!

• Religion

• The strength of religion on happiness is positive, sensitive to church attendance, strength of commitment, related to meaningfulness and sense of purpose (an independent variable). Overall modest effect, but stronger for those more involved in their church. note demographic factors: single, old, sick benefit most from religious participation. US effect stronger. (Why do protestants get more happiness from their religion than Catholics?)
• Reverse causation: Are happier people more likely to be religious?
• Causal model: Religion works through social support, increasing esteem and meaningfulness.
• Kirpatrick 1992 study: self-reported relationship with God has similar effects as other relationships.

• Life events and activities (especially on affect)

• "' A study in five Eu European countries found that the main causes of joy were said to be relationships with friends, the basic pleasures of food, drink, and sex, and success experiences (Scherer etal. 1986)."..."Frequency of sexual intercourse also correlates with happiness, as does satisfaction with sex life, being in love, and frequency of interaction with spouse, but having liberal sexual attitudes has a negative relationship." "...alcohol, in modest doses, has the greatest effects on positive mood."

• Competencies -- Some other factors or attributes that might be causal. For young women, attractiveness, especially at young ages, has strong effect on happiness. Height in men. health (with causation in both directions). social skills predict happiness. health can be viewed as a competency: high correlation (look back at Bob and Mary comparison)

• Note policy point: This article is from early days in the policy discussion. But the basic point has been the same: Why do we put so much emphasis on increasing GDP is happiness is affected by so many other things?

SEP 26

Audio from class: [26] [27]

Methodological Point for the Day

• So far we've been talking alot about "happy vs. happier," but we now we need to start tracking qualitatively different forms of happiness. Cultures give us a way to look at this, but Gilbert's discussion of the interpretive power of the mind.

Diener and Suh, "National Differences in SWB"

• With this article, income is once again highlighted as a factor, but now in the context of cross nation comparisons. The major issue here is, "How does culture and national grouping interact with perceptions and judgements of happiness? (Note problem of relation of national borders to tribe, ethnicity, and region.)

• Methodological Difficulties:

• 1. Measurement Issues -- gloss on "artifacts" as measurement problems. Example: different ways of administering a survey, moment to moment variation affecting results.

• Wealth is clustered with other factors that predict H, such as rights, equality, fulfillment of needs, and individualism.
• Transnational similarities (p. 435, in all nations most people are happy) might reflect some tendency to for judgements to be group-relative.
• General validity concerns about self reports are offset by research using multiple measures.
• Example of Russian / US student comparison, 437, west/east berliners -- second measure -- event memory bias -- confirms self-reports. Also, column B: mood memory

• 2. Are nations meaningful units of analysis? Nationality predicts SWB in general and in sub groups (gender/age).438b

• 3. Scale structure invariance -- non-technical version: what if the terms used in happiness surveys have different "weights" or relationships with each other and with happiness? Some evidence of scale invariance. (Note that a validated construct, such as LS/PA+NA, might be the basis for showing scale invariance. Cf to Gilbert.

• Happiness Across Nations:

• After accounting for measurement and methodological issues, there are real and substantive differences in well-being across nations. While wealthier nations are generally happier, there are complexities to the causal model. National income correlates with non-economic goods such as rights, equality, fulfillment of basic needs, and individualism (list at 436). These factors have effects on both SWB and income that have not been isolated. (at 441: real ambiguity about causal paths in this analysis: is it wealth or the correlates of wealth that are causal for happiness? Thought Experiment: the Nazi's won, but they really know how to boost GDP. Could you imagine the society being just as happy?

• Some details: .69 correlate between purchasing power and LS-SWB, lower, but sig. correlations with affect.

• Individualism

• Individualism correlates with higher reported SWB, but also higher suicide rates. Collectivists may be working with a different model of happiness or just a different attitude about its importance. (Carol Graham, Happiness Around the World, is the main successor research that I'm aware of. 1999 vs. 2009). Individualism is linked with wealth, so hard to separate effects. Note specific differences in valuation between individualist vs. collectivist culture. (442) Problem (I think): SWB is more salient to individualists.

• Small Group discussion: Do you see the data on individualism and SWB supporting the idea that individualism (along with the political and economic culture is clusters with) is a better universal strategy for happiness or supporting the idea that individualist and collectivist cultures are pursuing different kinds of happiness?

• Some non-correlates: homogeneity, population density.

Different models for explaining cultural differences are presented:

1. innate needs approach, Veenhoven, explains lack of growth in SWB in rich countries.
2. theory of goal striving, SWB relative to goal pursuits, which are different between rich and poor nations.
3. models of emotional socialization, different cultures/nations social young to affect in different ways.
4. genetic explanations.

?

Gilbert, Chapter 4: In the Blind Spot of the Mind's Eye

• Comparions of Adolph Fisher & George Eastman. Point: Need to 2nd guess how we impose seemingly objective criteria on others' lives.

• Just because it's easier for us to imagine that a certain kind of future will bring happiness, and what we imagine might even be in line with objective research, it doesn't follow that other futures won't.

• Brain reweaves experience: study with cars and stop signs/yield signs. Information acquired after the event alters memory of the event.
• Two highly confirmed results: Memory fills in. We don't typically notice it happening. Word list excercise. 80 -- literal and metaphorical blindspots. experiments with interrupted sentences. We fill in.

• Model of Mind (84) Prior to 19th century:

"philosophers had thought of the senses as conduits that allowed information about the properties of objects in the world to travel from the object and into the mind. The mind was like a movie screen in which the object was rebroadcast. The operation broke down on occasion, hence people occasionally saw things as they were not. But when the senses were working properly, they showed what was there. This theory of realism was described in 1690 by the philosopher John Locke: brains "believe" they don't "make believe" .

• Model of Mind brought in with Kant at beginning of 1800's:

Kant's idealism: "Kant's new theory of idealism claimed that our perceptions are not the result of a physiological process by which our eyes somehow transmit an image of the world into our brains but rather, they are the result of a psychological process that combines what our eyes see with what we already think, feel, know, want, and believe, and then uses this combination of sensory information and preexisting knowledge to construct our perception of reality. "

• false belief test -- [28]

• Still, we act like realists: truck moving study-- we are first realists, but we learn to adopt an idealist perspective in social communication.
• We experience the world as if our interpretations were part of reality. We do not realize we are seeing an interpretation.
• We fill in details: imagine a plate of spaghetti. Very important for thinking about how we fill in the future. We carry out the exercise of imagining, and even make estimates of satisfaction, but the result depends upon which of the family of experiences picked out by "plate of spaghetti" we have in mind.
• point for happiness theories: p. 89.
• closes by giving you the narratives that make sense of the Fisher/Eastman comparison.

SEP 28

Audio from class: [29] [30]

Haybron, Chapter 3, "Life Satisfaction"

• More cases of lives that require narratives to understand: Moresse "Pop" Bickham. Note what Bickham says. It's possible that Bickham has deployed a powerful version of the "internal strategy".
• Haybron considers whether we should infer from his life satisfaction that he was happy

• Claim: You can judge your life favorably no matter how you feel. (Probe this.)
• Claim: (33) There may be a diff between being satisfied with your life and judging that it is going well.

• Comment: Bickham is the extreme case in which its hard to get our intuitions around the idea that Hs and Hl could go together. But let's do our own investigation of this.

• Was Wittgenstein's "wonderful" life plausibly happy or satisfying?

• LS defined at p. 35: "To be satisfied with your life is to regard it as going well enough by your standards."

• That's a puzzling definition since early he convinced us that you "satisfied" and "going well" can be judged separately.

• Claim: It's a mistake to call life satisfaction a hedonic good because it is "not just a question of pleasure"

• Comment: This doesn't tell us that it doesn't also involve a kind of feeling. The fact that it involves judgement doesn't mean emotion isn't involved.

• Small Group Problem: How do you make life satisfaction judgements? How will you decide if your life is "going well" in the coming 2-3 years? Can you be satisfied with your life even if some aspects are not going well? When you think of what is good in your life, do you experience a kind of affect?

• Problems with LS judgements:

• they are global judgments of complex sets of events over time. too reductive a judgement to make 1 - 10.
• it sounds like a simple judgement of the relationship between expectation and outcome (like ordering a steak), but it isn't, really, now is it?

• Good point: more like assessing a "goal-achievement gap" -- example of tenure happiness study

• determining "well enough" is pretty subjective (variable). -- maybe, but that could be explained within the "goal-achievement gap" model since we're always "resetting" in one direction or another ("Things won are done." or "I guess that's not working") recall point about hedonic structure of this.
• most people seem to be able to assert satisfaction with their lives independently of whether they were "choiceworthy"

• For Haybron, this implies that Hl judgements are basically much less relevant to assessing happiness than emotional states. He even suggests with the Calcutta workers reports that they are not grounded judgements.

*kidney patients, colostomy patients.

Short Writing Assignment due this Sunday at midnight!

• Please write a 400 word maximum answer to one of the following questions:

1. It seems like avoiding the experience machine requires you to accept some kind of objectivity into your theory of happiness. How do you do that given the apparent variation in things that make people happy?
2. What are some of the best reasons to be skeptical about our ability to make the kinds of judgement and comparisons that would allow us to predict what would make us happy? Are there also reasons to be confident about our ability to know and move toward happiness?
3. How do you explain differences in life satisfaction and hedonic balance across nations and ethnicity? Do the best explanations suggest to you that positive and negative affect are fixed?

• Prepare your answer and submit it in the following way:

1. Do not put your name in the file or filename. You may put your student id number in the file. If possible put your word count in the file.
2. Format your answer in double spaced text in a 12 point font. Please indicate which question you are answering.
3. Save the file in the ".docx" file format using the file name "Short Happiness Writing 1".
4. Log in to courses.alfino.org. Upload your file to the Q&W dropbox.

OCT 3

Audio from class: [31] [32]

Some Dates

• Way before the stoics:

• "What is wise is one thing, to understand rightly how all things are steered through all." -- Heraclitus
• Most global philosophical cultures have deep philosophical commitments to some form of this principle.

Example of modern stoic / CBT connection: [33]

"The Stoic Worldview"

Theology & Ontology -

• pantheism -- theos - (pneuma) - matter.
• ontology - All is corporeal, yet pneuma distinguishes life and force from dead matter.

Determinism and Freedom - Ench #1

Pneuma, Psyche, and Hegimonikon: Importance of Hegemonikon

Model of Growth and Development toward Sagehood & Wisdom - Soul-training

Late Stoicism: Epictetus

Key Idea: To realize our rational nature (and the freedom, joy and, really, connection to the divine, that only rational being can know), we need to adjust our thinking about our lives to what we know about reality.

Key Claim: If you realize your nature, you will flourish and be happy.

Some passages that define the practical philosophy which follows from the metaphysics and this principle:

• Notice the "re-orientation" which is recommended in #1 and #2. "confine your aversions"
• "Some things are in our control and others are not."
• "Confine your aversion" and understand the limits of things. (Sounds like an “aversion” retraining program based on knowledge claims.)
• Infamous #3. Read with #7, #8, and #14, in case we’re being too subtle. "confine your attractions"
• Something like mindfulness, #4
• Limits of pride. Catching the mind exaggerating.
• Desire: #15,
• Comportment and advice in later points of the enchiridion.

• alignment: 8
• awareness of change: 11
• observing asymmetries: 26
• importance of commitment
• note specific advice in 34 (attend to the phenomenology of desire and future pleasure), 35 (own it). "measure" in 39, read 41. 43

Small Group Prompt

• Start with some general introductory discussion about the stoic viewpoint, considering questions of clarification at first but then moving into strengths and weakness. Try to formulate what you take to be insights or oversights of this counsel for happiness. Is the implicit psychology of stoicism compatible with what you understand about human psychology? Try to come to some assessment of stoic advice for happiness.

Hypotheses on Stoic Happiness

1. A Happiness you deserve ---

2. Happiness is a further goal from virtue.

3. Virtue is a means to happiness. (in common with Epicurus) (#12 and #13 - If you want to improve...)

4. Stoic joy is real happiness.

5. Stoicism is a council of wisdom, not happiness.

OCT 5

• New! Audio from class is now by link to a shared folder: [34]

Philosophical Method Advice for the Day

• When you are working with historical philosophies, you should try to avoid treating the theory as a fixed position, even if it is sometimes articulated in terms of extreme examples or strong distinctions. It often turns out that getting insights from a classical theory requires you to modify it in light of new knowledge or reinterpret its emphasizes.

Hellenistic Hedonism: Epicurus -- Letter to Menoeceus and Principal Doctrine

• Key Idea: Pleasure is the Good ("Alpha and Omega of a happy life." - Letter)

• Fundamental distinction between Katastematic pleasures and kinetic pleasure.

• Accepts reality of gods, but thinks it's human error to think that the gods bestow blessings and punishments. They're not thinking about you.
• natural desires vs. groundless desires, of the natural, some necessary some only natural. Of the necessary, some for happiness, curing disease, surviving. Direct yourself toward satisfying the natural necessary desires.

• "For the end of all our actions is to be free from pain and fear, and when once we have attained all this, the tempest of the soul is laid to rest" (The desire for pleasure is also a kind of pain.)

• Epicurus is telling us that while we think pleasure is endless stimulation, but it is really found in satisfaction, which is a state of non-desire (rather than lack of desire).

• "They have the sweetest enjoyment of luxury who stand least in need of it."

• "Plain fare gives as much pleasure as a costly diet." "When we say, then, that pleasure is the end and aim, we do not mean . . . "

• tetrapharmakos:

• 1. Don't fear gods.

• 2. Death is nothing. - note his arguments here and the similar in method to stoicism - need to live the awareness.

• 3. What is good is easy to get.

• 4. What is evil is easy to endure.

• PD 5: Relation of virtue to pleasure
• PD 18: close to adaptation.
• PD 25: something akin to mindfulness.
• PD 27-8: priority of friendship.

Small group exercise on Hedonism

• Consider the framework of robust hedonism, Epicurean hedonism, and Modern Epicureanism and then try to figure out which of Epicurus' ideas you would recommend incorporating into a modern reconstruction of hedonism.

Article on Epicurus' concept of pleasure Epicurus_on_Pleasure_and_the_Complete_Life

OCT 10

Note on Method

Irivne's work gives a good example of mixing two techniques: critiquing and "saving" a theory. When you "save" a theory from a criticism, you try to figure out, among other things, what the theory is really committed to and which parts of the theory are optional or could be revised.

Also,today, like last week in the course, we practice the time honored technique of rummaging through great historical philosophies for insight and things to carry with us.

William Irvine, Chapter 4, "Negative Visualization"

• from p. 82: "To practice negative visualization is to contemplate the impermanence of the world around you."

• Reasons for contemplating bad things: prevention, diminish effect, reverse adaptation.

• Adaptation: wants to reverse it. "creating a desire in us for the things we already have" 67-68. Two fathers thought experiment. (also gratitude.)

• Contemplation of our own death 70: stimulus to robust hedonism or thoughtful appreciation?

• 73ff: Sources of evidence for possibility of "?Stoic Joy": children (whose experience is too new to have adapted deeply), people who survive disasters (catastrophe-induced transformation). Negative visualization doesn't have the drawbacks of catastrophe induced transformation.

• 77: connects neg. vis. to giving thanks: example of saying grace. (Note that Fortune and God play similar roles here.)

• 79: projective visualization: "the asymmetry" (found in stoic, epicurean, and buddhist thought) -- use the asymmetry in your response to your own vs. others' loss as a way of altering your response to your own loss.

• Objections: recall that neg. vis. is not a persistent meditation. still, done wrongly, it can lead to negative rumination. p. 81: Doesn't this heighten loss? response: the two fathers again (81)

• Small group discussion: Assess negative visualization as technique within stoicism and then as a more general practice. Is it plausible that it could reverse adaptation and produce states of joy?

William Irvine, Chapter 5, "The Trichotomy of Control"

• Some things up us, some things aren't.

• Internal strategy: changing ourselves. Desire not to be frustrated by future desires. [Problem: Stoicism seems to counsel a withdrawl or low goal setting.]
• Irvine's critique of dichotomy: ambiguity -- total or partial control. [Note on philosophical method.]
• Critique of stoic claim that we have complete control of desires, and aversions. Tennis match example (88). Casino example: Epictetus wrong to include desire as something completely internal.
• Claims: We do have complete control over goals, opinion, and character (take care of your hegimonikon, your guiding principles, theos in you!).
• 94: response to "Stoicism is a 'withdrawl from life' philosophy" and that a Stoic would avoid attachment (96)
• Should you want to win the tennis match, as a Stoic? internal/externally expressed goals. 96-97.

• Problem of Stoic cosmopolitanism: Why would a stoic set goals that would threaten his/her tranquility? (quick answer: because it won't if she's a good stoic). Small group question: Does the trichotomy of control and internal goal setting solve the problem?

OCT 12

Some General Points on Yoga

• samadhi - the goal of the spiritual practice of yoga; ecstasy, union; a mystical experience of enlightenment. mention connection to wisdom.

• Yoga, defined in various ways, also in relation to Vedanta narrative. dualism and monism in yogic thought.

• 3 periods pre-classical (or Vedanta), classical (Patanjali 2nd cent. CE), and post-classical (ex. Shankara, 8th cent). Important that Patanjali's period represents a dualist approach. Purusa / Prakrati. Spirit / Nature, roughly.

• Teacher/disciple model.

• Yoga is infused in multiple traditions: Hindu, Buddhist, and its own. Meditative figures on coins from 3,000 bc. Rig Veda has image of a yogi who, by achieving physical control through asanas (poses) and physical austerities (fasting, meditation, etc.) achieves access to a "deeper realm" of insights about reality.

• Yoga in Bhagavad Gita (Miller 10): Arjuna, warrior, locked in battle with his own kin. Important conversation with Krishna. (Pre-classical) Like Homeric, Yoga has a history in warrior culture and warrior ethos (duty). (mention Antigone)

Miller, Yoga: Discipline of Freedom, Introduction

• This is an introduction to her edition / translation of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras.

• "The aim of yoga is to eliminate the control that material nature exerts over the human spirit, to rediscover through introspective practice what the poet T. S. Eliot called the "still point of the turning world." " This is a state of perfect equilibrium and absolute spiritual calm, an interior refuge in the chaos of worldly existence. In the view of Patanjali, yogic practice can break habitual ways of thinking and acting that bind one to the corruptions of everyday life."

• basic analysis found in the "paradoxical nature of memory and thought itself" -- Our minds get us into trouble.
• solitude and turning away from the world are only stages and strategies. not a renunciation philosophy.
• Yoga is, fundamentally, an individual spiritual program. q. p 4 (ties in with meaning of "yoga" - spiritual yoke; discipline, but also integration of forces, like a yoke.

• From Samkhya dualism: everything is a mix of prakrati and purusa. 13: "The basis of spiritual liberation in the Yoga school is a profound experience of the evolutionary process whereby spirit becomes enmeshed in material nature."

• The Three Gunas (13): Lucidity (sattva), Passion (rajas), and inertia (tamas). Part of the problem of existence is that the faculties of understanding are material. Interesting difference from Western association of Reason with the Divine and Transcendent.

• The psychology of Patanjali's yoga: follow Miller's discussion of thought process (17) (citta), "tyranny of uncontrollable thought," reducing thought "traces" or "seeds". goal to make thought "invulnerable" to the chaos of mental and physical stimuli. to do that, we need to attend to how the mind produces desire, anger and delusion.

• In Patanjali:

• First, there's a process of "unenlightenment" -- Purusa becomes bound to prakrati. Enlightenment is about undoing the this entanglement. (Note again connection with Buddhism). q. p. 19: Ignorance...

• 1st Small group discussion activity:

• Look for and share experiences you have had that might be examples of the kind of untanglement and amplification of thought and emotion that Patanjali was thinking about when he suggested we pursue "seedless" thought. In what circumstances do you find that thought "feeds on itself" or becomes persistent. How does social psychology and phenomena such as gossip or drama create such situations? What practical attitudes and behaviors (imagine scenarios) might a person influence by a yogic model of happiness pursue in such situations?

Donna Farhi, "Cleaning up Our Act: The Four Brahmavihara

• Story of the deformed sage, Ashtavakra. Look beyond physical.

• Five Kleshas in Patanjali:

• 1. Avidha: Ignorance of our eternal nature
• 2. Asmita: Seeing oneself as separate and divided from the rest of ??the world
• 3. Raga: Attraction and attachment to impermanent things
• 4. Dvesha: Aversion to the unpleasant
• 5. Abhinivesha: Clinging to life because we fail to perceive the seamless continuity of consciousness, which cannot be broken by death (Yoga-Sutra 13)

• Note that the first two have to do with identity and the last three with desire. Maybe there's a connection between how I'm thinking about myself (as a self) and my ability to manage desire?

• Ashtanga Yoga -- eight fold program (from wikipedia):

Sanskrit	English
Yama	moral codes
Niyama	self-purification and study
Asana	posture
Pranayama	breath control
Pratyahara	sense control
Dharana	intention
Dhyana	meditation
Samadhi	contemplation

• note Fahri talks about "spiritual fitness". Does this make sense?

• The Brahmavihara are four attitudes Patanjali recommends developing:

• 1. Friendliness toward the joyful
• 2. Compassion for those who are suffering
• 3. Celebrating the good in others
• 4. Remaining impartial to the faults and imperfections of others(Yoga-Sutra 1.33)

• Notes on Brahmivihara:

• Note Fahri's more "social" focus. The first three Brahmavihara take us outside of ourselves.
• Compassion might involve the obvious, but also note leaving people "invisible" - reaching out. also "loving-kindness" meditation.
• 3: cultivating a habit of spontaneous appreciate, noticing (and working on) any jealousy effects.
• 4: note the "costs" of having an enemy. overcoming the need to fix situations.

• 62: cultivating "metta" - loving kindness meditation.

• 2nd small group discussion question

• Does making yourself calm and lucid in the way that yogics advocate entail being less active in your life? What sorts of activity

Introduction to Yoga Practicum

We'll save 10 minutes at the end of class for those interested in hearing about the yoga practicum.

OCT 17

Introduction to Buddhism (from wikipedia)

• The Four Noble Truths

1 There is suffering.

2 There is the origination of suffering: suffering comes into existence in dependence on causes.

3 There is the cessation of suffering: all future suffering can be prevented by becoming aware of our ignorance and undoing the effects of it.

4 There is a path to the cessation of suffering.

8 fold path. (see above and in Feuerstein.)

Division	Eightfold Path factors
Wisdom (Sanskrit: prajñā, Pāli: paññā)	1. Right view
	2. Right intention
Ethical conduct (Sanskrit: śīla, Pāli: sīla)	3. Right speech
	4. Right action
	5. Right livelihood
Concentration (Sanskrit and Pāli: samādhi)	6. Right effort
	7. Right mindfulness
	8. Right concentration

- from wikipedia.

Introduction to self-guided mindfulness meditation

• Read wiki page: Meditation Exercises

• Goal is to experience a psychological "meditation effect," often in 3rd week. Characteristics.

• Initial challenges

• Time, Place, Seating and Environment
• Maintaining comfortable alertness
• Working with mental content: problem of thought suppression. "Try not to think of a white bear."
• Techniques for dissipating mental content: visualizations, returning to breath, optical effects. Generally focus on techniques that avoid thought suppression, but disengage gently from the thought or memory.

• Weekly goals.

• Early weeks: Overcoming obstacles to meditation --> Experiencing some "meditation effect"
• Later weeks: Noticing changes in mental state (if any) pre post meditation. Noticing differences between different meditation experiences. Noticing changes in interaction with others, mood, or affect within hours of meditation.
• Students have sometimes timed meditations to particular events (stressful or fun) to try to notice effects.

OCT 19

Matthieu Ricard, Chs. 6&7: Alchemy of Suffering and Veils of the Ego

Chapter Six: Alchemy of Suffering (Modern version of 4 noble truths)

• Shortest history of the kingdom: "They Suffer"

• Pervasive suffering -- from growth and development
• Suffering of Change -- from illusion of permanence.
• Multiplicity of Suffering -- suffering from awareness of the many ways things can go wrong.
• Hidden Suffering -- anxiousness about hidden dangers

• Note connection to Gilbert: because we can "next" (imagine futures and alternate presents, design) we are open to these kinds of suffering. Quite a bargain.

• Invisible Suffering -- as in the food industry, suffering of workers to bring you cheap socks. A consequence of invisible suffering is that we repeat the behaviors that lead to it because we don't see it (also food examples).

• Suffering is ubiquitous, but we can learn the causes. Suffering can be avoided "locally" (as entropy can be reversed locally). Note that Buddhism involves a consistent commitment to causation even as, over centuries, our understanding of it has changed.

• Sources of Suffering -- self-centeredness, our unhappiness is caused, 4 Noble Truths.

• A Buddhist tetra pharmakos: Recognize suffering, Eliminate its source, End it, By Practicing the Path.
• 66: "One can suffer physically or mentally -- by feeling sad, for instance -- without losing the sense of fulfillment that is founded on inner peace and selflessness"
• Buddhist story of woman distraught over loss, sent by Buddha to gather dirt from all houses without loss.
• Note 67: parallel story as in stoicism.
• brings in a dash of attachment theory 69-71.

• Methods for responding to suffering -- Control of sense and emotion. Meditation. Use of mental imagery. Mindful self-observation and reflection.

• Some themes of a modern (scientifically oriented) Buddhist explication of the 4 Noble Truths:

• Causal attitude toward suffering at the psychological more than metaphysical level. 65, 67; use of neurology to understand pain and related phen. 73
• Positive aspects of suffering 71 -- suffering can be productive for spiritual dev.
• Mental imagery in ancient and modern Buddhist practice; use of meditation in management of tendencies of ego. (Note to meditators. Use visualization to re-center and avoid the dynamics of conscious thought suppression.)
• Use in stimulating positive and prosocial emotions: compassion, empathy. (stories of suffering endured with growth)

• Note the emphasis on conscious use of methods that get at pre-conscious expression of emotion. The emotions are the "scene" for progress, not just a matter of rational control of emotions. more of a training model. While the meditations and use of mental imagery might seem a little far out to some of you, recall that this is being proposed within a naturalistic (evolutionary and neurological) model. He's making empirical predictions about how you can alter your responses to the conditions of your suffering.

Chapter Seven: Veils of the Ego (modern version of "no self" doctrine)

• Ego as a fear reaction to the world. reread 80. (Is it? Is this too strong? or wrong? note subclaim 83, note dispositions) consider evidence from everyday life: Children, social situations with peers. Needs to maintain the self in equilibrium with social reality, not just physical reality. Ego formation is not being contested here. It's a natural social psychological process. But by observing some of our characteristics biases in contructing the self, we can avoid some behaviors that lead to unhealthy suffering.
• Consequence of typical ego formation is a sense of separateness.
• Observing the ego at work: example of physical and moral pain, 84. example of the vase, the asymmetry of our response is a clue. This is the "fundamental attribution error" [35]

• What to do with the Ego? -- here Ricard wants to separate healthy, self-confident development of a self (what Buddhists might teach their children) from egoism.
• Problem: How can I live without an ego? R's response: true self-confidence is ego-less.
• Cites Paul Ekman's studies of emotionally exceptional people. ego-less and joyful. The sense you can have that someone simply wouldn't hurt you and wants the best for you. Isn't satisfying any "neediness" on you.

• Psychopaths, on the other hand, have huge egos.

• The Deceptive Ego: Gives brief account of the illusion of self.
• What is the best way think about our experience of "self" from a scientific and Buddhist point of view? Between a past and future that don't exist? 90: self a name we give to a continuum. A concept that refers to a dynamic process. The up side of this view of the self is that you can exert control on the influence that shape it. It's an illusion, but it's your illusion.
• Attitude toward ultimate reality of things. 93 Some of Buddha's preferred metaphors for the self.

Small Group Discussion

• To what extent do you share Ricard's analysis of the effects of egocentricity on happiness? What does it mean to be "egoless"? Would this be bad advice to someone starting a career, for example?

• Review Ricard's critique of the self. To what extent do we reify the self? Does this place a role in unhappiness and suffering?

OCT 24

Robert Emmons, Gratitude, Subjective Well-Being, and the Brain

• importance of exchange of gifts, symbolic and material. Note at 471, anthropological explanation. (Consider complexity of gift giving.)
• Broad range of gratitude: from specific feeling about a particular event or circumstance to a general attitude toward life. From satisfying "civic courtesy" to Life as a gift.
• Definitions: "positive recognition of benefits received". "undeserved merit" Note that it is dependent upon the recognition of the benefit. From Fitzgerald (470): appreciation, goodwill, disposition that follows from appreciation and goodwill.
• Gratitude can be a "virtue" if understood as a cultivated disposition to recognize undeserved merit.
• Gratitude response is stronger if the beneficiary intends the benefit.

• Gratitude as Affective Trait

• grateful people experience more positive emotion. 473 (direction of causation? If you're happy (have the conditions for it -- enjoying many benefits) and you don't know it...)
• other correlates. Hl. health, optimism, exercising, empathic, prosocial,forgiving helpful, supportive, less materialistic.

• Evolutionary Perspective

• "as a cognitive—emotional supplement serving to sustain reciprocal obligations. -Simmel (471) "Thus, during exchange of benefits, gratitude prompts one person (a beneficiary) to be bound to another (a benefactor) during "exchange of benefits, thereby reminding beneficiaries of their reciprocity obligations."
• "Trivers viewed gratitude as an evolutionary adaptation that regulates people's responses to altruistic acts. Gratitude for altruistic acts is a reward for adherence to the universal norm of reciprocity and is a mediating mechanism that links the receipt of a favor to the giving of a return favor." Gratitude enacts/promotes reciprocal altruism. "places us" in social hierarchy defined by benefactor/beneficiary.

• Correlates of gratitude: greater LS, hope, less depression, anxiety, envy, prosociality, empathy, forgivingness, less focused on material goods, more spiritual and religious. Later (481) - promotes positive memory bias!

• Core Emmons and McCullough gratitude research. Three studies: Gratitude Journals with pre/post testing. gratitutde, hassles, and events conditions, 1. 1xwk 10 weeks, 2. daily 3wks, 3. in adults with neumuscular disease. results: higher LS, optimism, lower health complaints, more excercise. results held up 6 months later. anecdote.

• Some evidence in kids.

• Benefits:

• 1. strengthen social relationships
• 2. counters NA and depression (increases positive memory bias -- a form of positive illusion!)
• 3. promotes resiliency (study of responses to disaster)

• Gratitude and the Brain

• Cognitive-affective neuroscience construct (What's happening to your brain when you experience gratitude?)
• General hypothesis: we have structures for both perceiving gratitude in others and expressing it.
• Specific hypothesis: Limbic prefontal networks involved: "; (1) the fusiform face-processing areas near the temporal—occipital junctions, (2) the amygdala and Limbic emotional processing systems that support emotional states, and (3) interactions between these two subcortical centers with the prefrontal regions that control executive and evaluative processes." 483. Like other prosocial emotions.

Specific hypothesis tested with studies of gratitude and mood induction in Parkinson's Disease patients. (Read at 483)

• Gratitude and SWB

• Strong claim for long term effects of gratitude as a trait: p. 476 -- participants show SWB boost 6 months later.

• Psychological attitudes at odds with gratitude:

• "A number of personal burdens and external obstacles block grateful thoughts. A number of attitudes are incompatible with a grateful outlook on life, including perceptions of victimhood, an in ability to admit one's shortcomings, a sense of entitlement, and an inability to admit that one is not self-sufficient. In a culture that celebrates self-aggrandizement and perceptions of deservingness, gratitude can be crowded out." 485 (Note again, a potential connection to the discussion of egoism from buddhism.)

Option 3: Gratitude and Journal.

• This exercise involves keeping a gratitude journal for a period of three weeks. You don't necessarily turn that in (it's likely to include some personal things), but you do turn in three journal entries (one for each week) based on the guidelines for this exercise from the leading researchers on this, Emmons & McCullough.

• Your daily gratitude journal is both an occasion for expressing gratitude and reporting moments during the day when you engaged in a gratitude behavior (something more extended or involved than "thanks!"). Gratitude behaviors include all of the verbal behaviors by which you can show appreciation to others or in the presence of others for benefits enjoyed. This ranges from telling people explicitly what you appreciate about what they did for you. (examples: call centers, someone correcting you or informing you, someone doing more for you than they had to.) G behaviors can include requesting a benefit (Could you help me with this?...) that you already intend to be really grateful. "I'd be ever so grateful if...."

Bryant, Chapter 8: Enhancing Savoring

• Thanksgiving, Marvelling, Basking, and Luxuriating

• Theoretical Issues:

• How much can savoring do given set point theory? (Lykken 2000 - "trying to be happier...") "range" (Recall Emmons study results: effects 6 months later.)
• Similar efforts: Fordyce's happiness intervention study: savoring a common feature
• Savoring in a construct relationship with Coping

• Factors Enhancing both Coping and Savoring:

• Social Support (sharing feelings with others) -- note imp. of having people with whom to share good news. being such a person, as well. building elements of happy community.
• Writing about life experiences, (gratitude journals would be a positive example, or log)
• Downward hedonic contrast (neg. visualization, but also foregrounding and isolating the positive experience. Recovering a sense that the ordinary is a treat.) (odd effect of volunteering working in absolutely poor countries) ---
• Humor, - Can you cultivate a sense of humor about things? Can you make yourself laugh? (Laughter clubs)
• Spirituality & Religion --
• Awareness of Fleetingness of Experience -- note connection with buddhism. Could heightening our awareness of the fleetingness of life enhance our savoring of it?

• Essential Pre-conditions for Savoring

• Freedom from Social and Esteem Concerns: explicated largely in terms of mindfulness... (more advice here, 206) (cynical caveat: Unless that's what you're savoring!)?
• Present Focus: goes back to what might seem odd about mindfulness as preparatory to savoring.
• non-judgmental orientation
• openness to seeing something new or as if for the first time.
• Attentional Focus: avoid multi-tasking, imagine it's the last time (it usually is -- consider the perfect day. Consider today as having a kind of perfection. Can one extend the judgement to a cloudy day? ), attention to uniqueness of experience aids savoring.

• Exercises

• Vacation in Daily Life -- (in food studies, "slow culture" (from the slow food movement).
• Life Review -- "chaining"
• Camera Exercise

Additional Issues:

• Savoring and Connoisseur-ship: Does Savoring require (or is it enhanced by) connoisseur-ship? How does that square with Epicurean simplicity? Note how you might use a modified Epicureanism to include some insights about complex savoring.

Option 2: Savoring and Journal

• This exercise is based on the work of Fred Bryant, who offers practical advice about creating and evaluating savoring experiences. You'll come up with three experiences and journal on each. Schedule this for the 2-3 weeks after the topic comes up in class. The goal of each journal entry is to describe your savoring event, what you did to make it a savoring event, and whether it led to a noticeably different experience of pleasure and satisfaction. Your grade does not depend upon finding positive results.

• You have alot of flexibility in planning and carrying out your savoring experiences. I suggest choosing one or two that involve a personal savoring experience (a food experience, a walk with camera on a sunny afternoon, ...) and one or two that involve others (arrange a dinner with your partner, roomies, or friends, take someone out to dinner)

Random Food Discovery and Food News

• This is from 2015 and while very much related to happiness, rather tangential in connection with today's readings.

• Along the way, Spence has found that a strawberry-flavored mousse tastes ten per cent sweeter when served from a white container rather than a black one; that coffee tastes nearly twice as intense but only two-thirds as sweet when it is drunk from a white mug rather than a clear glass one; that adding two and a half ounces to the weight of a plastic yogurt container makes the yogurt seem about twenty-five per cent more filling, and that bittersweet toffee tastes ten per cent more bitter if it is eaten while you’re listening to low-pitched music. This year alone, Spence has submitted papers showing that a cookie seems harder and crunchier when served from a surface that has been sandpapered to a rough finish, and that Colombian and British shoppers are twice as willing to choose a juice whose label features a concave, smile-like line rather than a convex, frown-like one. (From an article in this week's Food Issue of NYer.)

OCT 26

• Leave 10 mins to debrief with meditation practicum participants.

Philosophical Method: Multiples frames for studying happiness

• This is a good moment to notice how many distinct frames of reference we have going now for thinking about happiness: ::*philosophical traditions, comparative philosophy

• religion, comparative religion
• historical development of cultural ideas of happiness, with drivers such as wealth and the growth of knowledge
• cross cultural comparison of meaning and levels of happiness, and of course
• individual psychological constructs (Hs / Hl; PA/NA)

• Important to see how these frames of reference each have critical theoretical questions, but also practical questions associated with them. (give examples)

Csiksentmihalyi, Finding Flow, Chapters 1-2

Structures of Everyday Life

• Note how C establishes his humanistic psych presuppositions and commitments in the first few pages. human capacities, potential, development. What's possible? story of Joe.
• Focus on how we spend our time and the state of mind/affect we experience from diff. activities in daily life: production, maintenance, leisure. q. p. 8
• Note cultural and historical differences in the way we spend time and think about the value of productive time. C's ideas here are once again in fashion with "slow culture" writing. add in note about "attentional economy" seems suspicious of TV.
• Experience Sampling Method -- p. 14ff

The Content of Experience

• Theoretical position, p. 21: In story of woman with two jobs: looking for patterns of human commitment to a life. Wants to ask less for self-reports of happiness and more about the moods and affect that might be functionally related to happiness.

• Two big points:

• Happiness is positive emotion that might be driven by behavior. And,
• It may be especially evident in a life of commitments and goals which reduce "psychic entropy."

• Discussion of emotions, goals, and thoughts in terms of the organization of "psychic entropy", 22 roughly, the cognitive / emotive state of order in my mind at a particular moment or during an activity. Intentions and goals inform and order our psychic energy. Most prefer intrinsic motivation, next extrinsic, finally least productive of positive affect is no goal state. Interesting point about self-esteem being independent of accomplishment -- possibly a problem of goal setting. Notice throughout, p. 22 for example, robust endorsement of human potential. Assumption: We could be alot happier (if we follow the implications of this theory).

• Note distinction between Eastern philosophical suspicion of origin of goals and "superficial reading" that suggests it counsels renunciation of goals. (recall discussion of enlightenment and fourth brahmavirhara.) q. p. 24
• three contents of consciousness: emotions, intentions, and thoughts. their integration allows for flow.
• FLOW, p. 29ff. (What a quiet mind is getting ready for.)

• effortless action, being in the zone, altered time consciousness.
• clear set of goals, focusing attention.
• often at limits of skill and challenge level.
• absorption in task, dynamic feedback. "All in."

• Theoretical Problem about the Relation of Flow to Happiness:

• "It is the full involvement of flow, rather than happiness, that makes for excellence in life. When we are in flow, we are not happy, because to experience happiness we must focus on our inner states, and that would take away attention from the task at hand." [Theoretical note: choice of "rather than happiness". Also could be "causes LS" or savoring model.] Think about place of flow in hierarchy of daily goals. Intensity of flow varies widely from extreme to mundane activity. Note related states.
• Data on frequency of flow experiences, p. 33.

• Small Group prompt: Report experiences of flow. If you were trying to get flow to happen more reliably in your life, what steps would you take? What are the obstacles to states of flow? What is its relationship to happiness in your view? Does a happy life have to have flow?

McMahon, Chapter 3: From Heaven to Earth (Renaissance & Reformation)

• Background of emerging wealth: The Great Divergence [36]

• Contemptus Mundi: 13th-15th century: characteristics. Life in the European Middle Ages.

• Contrast with Renaissance Humanism:

• studia humanitis -- 141
• Pico: 1463. Oration on Dignity of Man. key ideas: protean character of man. read quote on 144. 146: still traditional model (in line with Aquinas' dist.)
• Renaissance Neo-platonism 151: vertical path to happiness.
• Felicitas p. 153
• Bronzino's Allegory of Happiness -- connection to earthly happiness evident.[37] "This complex allegory represents Happiness (in the centre) with Cupid, flanked by Justice and Prudence. At her feet are Time and Fortune, with the wheel of destiny and the enemies of peace lying humiliated on the ground. Above the head of Happiness is Fame sounding a trumpet, and Glory holding a laurel garland. This Happiness, with the cornucopia, is a triumph of pink and blue; the naked bodies of the figures are smooth, almost stroked by the colour as if they were precious stones - round and well-defined those of the young women, haggard and leaden that of the old man."
• Lorenzo Valla's On Pleasure -- represents after life as pleasurable; connecting epicureanism to a Christian life. Note biographical detail. Valla also unmasks claims about Dionysius the Areopagite from Acts, with it, undermining authority of mystical otherworldly current of thought. 161
• Smiles -- also, Mona Lisa, early 1500's
• Melancholy as disease: expressed in theory of humours;
• Thomas More and the concept of "utopia" - new idea. "eu" from "eudaimonia" (flourishing, happiness for Aristotle); in his good Christians devote themselves also to enjoyment of this world.

• Reformation - The reformation can be seen as a huge step toward bring personal faith life and spiritual happiness together.

• Martin Luther and happiness: 1534 letter, ok to be happy, salvation by faith, "killing the Old Adam" (recall the Pelagian heresy! p 169)
• Calvin
• English Civil War -- opens up wide range of alternative views p. 175-176.
• Locke, late 17th century. tabula rasa, nb. 180. Mind is impressed upon by experience and nature. Has its own imperatives. Note what is left out: original sin. Reassertion of happiness as driver of desire. Note enlightenment model of reasonableness of christianity here. Roughly: Reason discovers our happiness and God, as its author, wants this for us. Letter on Toleration very important for construction of modern model of self. Note context of religious wars. [European Wars of Religion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_wars_of_religion]
• Locke also important to history of happiness for political thought, which supports democratic republicanism over monarchy -- note trending models of happiness toward control of one's life at personal and political levels. Note connection at p. 182. "pursuit of happiness"; physiological thought on happiness;, but even that pleasure can enhance spirituality. 185: "...Locke had legitimated the search for happiness in this life, grounding it in science, human impulse, and divine order."
• Hobbes: we are governed by desire continuously, so happiness must be the continual satisfaction of aims and desires. disparages tranquility or katastematic pleasures.
• nice summary at par bot 185 - 186

Discussion of the period

• How does the Renaissaince re-discover and create a new idea of the Christian self?

• How do new models of the self, such as we find in the Reformation and in Locke's thought set-up the idea of a future secular self?

OCT 31

Philosophical Method Note

• In today's history reading we have our best opportunity yet to see the culture and happiness interact. We'll need to have some kind of framework for thinking about culture and the unique historical disruptions and experiements that take us from Reformation and Enlightenment culture to the American cultural experiment on happiness.

Csiksentmihalyi, Chapter 3, "How We Feel When Doing Different Things"

• Table 2: Quality of Experience in Everyday Activities. review. Where are opportunities for +affect at work, in maint. activities, and leisure? Do we correctly anticipate the "affect profiles" of different activities?

• Schizophrenic patient and ESM: noticing affect patterns can have practical value.

• Note comments on solitude, 41-42. modern life: in and out of solitude. hypothesis: interaction makes us happy because it structures psychic energy by external demands. some theorists talk about the "ethics of the face".

• (not in text) some research on American's social networks (people you could call for a favor) are smaller than other western cultures.

• American's experience driving as a very positive experience. Men and women experience different moods in different parts of the house.

• Implicit hypothesis: People have different strategies and degrees of awareness of how to manage their affect (a form of self-care). Happiness might be improved by developing these capacities for self-care and by critical assessment of one's assumptions about how different activities are supposed to make one feel. One way start on that would be to become mindful of both the assumptions we have about different activities and the moods, emotions, and rationalizations that we experience during and in anticipation of them.

• Small Group Discussion: How well does C. describe the "affect profiles" of different daily activities? What strategies do you use (control of environment, rewards, food, etc.) to manage affect in the rhythm of everday activities? Where do you get caught short?

McMahon, Chapter 6: Liberalism and Its Discontents

• The Bequest: Enlightenment liberalism

• example of Franklin as quintessential representative of the American appropriation of Enlightenment liberalism

• symbol of thrift and accumulation, self-made, tract, The Path to Riches and Happiness.

• Dec. of Independence: tracing "pursuit of happiness" in enlightenment texts. connected in part to "life, liberty and property", but also in Locke, pursuit of pleasure, seen in "sensualist" terms as unending, relentless. Hence, the value in Am. culture of Christian and Enlightenment Christian (Jeffersonian) praise of christian values of restraint and group commitment. Moral sense theorists of the Scottish Englightenment (326) provide another route to these values.

• p. 322ff: How religious were Enlightenment thinkers? 18th century writings link happiness, Christian life. Jefferson: not pious, but Jeff bible, liked Unitarianism, exemplary Am.Enlightenment religion: Christian ethics good for promoting happiness.

• The American Model of Happiness: Libertarian over civil republican. High religious participation.

• 324: Tension in American Model seen in distinct strains of Libertarian (rooted in freedom of conscience and religion) "freedom from" vs. Classical Republican (rooted in a duty to civic participation and contribution to the public good) "freedom to contribute".

• Alexis de Tocqueville's contribution: Democracy in America 1835 1840: Sociological insight into sadness in the American experiment.

• Of Toq's thesis: Macmahon writes: "perhaps, the cynic, or at least the skeptic, may be on firmer ground. For in a society in which the unhindered pursuit of happiness (to say nothing of its attainment) is treated as a natural, Godgiven right, the inability to make steady progress along the way will inevitably be seen as an aberration, a suspension of the natural order of things." big passage: 333-334

• really about the dynamics of equality, freedom, and democracy vs. community and social values. U.S. a big experiment. Tocqueville also praised Americans for self-reliance and a sense of "enlightened self interest" -- realizing that it is in your self-interest to be concerned about others.

• And that, Tocqueville concluded in a famous line, "is the reason for the strange melancholy often haunting inhabitants of democracies in the midst of abundance, and of that disgust with life sometimes gripping them in calm and easy circumstances." praised enlightened self-interest of americans.

• Mill's contribution: Autonomy and Liberal Hope

• 344: image of John Stuart Mill reviewing Toq's essays and longing for democracy in Europe.
• If. "Let the idea take hold," Mill warned, "that the most serious danger to the future prospects of mankind is in the unbalanced influence of the commercial spirit. .. ."^^

• 347: section on Mill's depression -- famous -- finds solace in romatic poetry. why? evocative, imaginative against starker imagination of rationalist enlightenment.
• also in Mill (and Butler), the problem of indirect happiness (similar to puzzle about enlightened self-interest). Mill's passage 348 breaking with simple Benthamism.

• Mill, On Liberty passage 350 - can't violate someone's liberty to make them happier...

• McM: Is there a romanticism in Mill's position on Liberty?

• Weber's contribution: Socio-religious insight into the dynamic between capitalism and Protestant Christianity.

• Weber Section: 355 "In the Protestant anxiety over the fate of individual salvation, he argued, lay the motive force behind an impetus to capital accumulation, regarded as a sign and partial assurance of God's blessing. Combining ascetic renunciation, a notion of work as divine calling, and a critically rational disposition, the Protestant faith, Weber argued, brought together nascent capitalism's essential qualities: the restriction of consumption in favor of the accrual of capital, and a religiously consecrated ethic of discipline, delayed gratification, industry, and thrift.

• 358: "Indeed, it was during the very period when Weber was writing that America, and the West more generally, began to undergo what the sociologist Daniel Bell has described as a monumental transformation, "the shift from production to consumption as the fulcrum of capitalism." Bringing "silk stockings to shop girls" and "luxury to the masses," this transformation made of "marketing and hedonism" the "motor forces of capitalism," driving over all restraints that stood in the way of the enjoyment of material pleasures with a momentum that would have surprised even Tocqueville." (Note: Galbraith, "The Dependency Effect; reliance on raising GDP; sustainability of economy and population)

• "Material goods," he observed at the end of The Protestant Ethic, "have gained an increasing and finally an inexorable power over the lives of men as at no previous period in history."

• Discussion topic:

NOV 2

Relationships and Happiness in your Theory of Happiness

1. Consider the range of types of relationships we can have, including solitude, virtual, and spiritual relationships.
2. What is your basic model for relationships in general? For close relationships?
3. Is the model for love and intimacy changing in a highly individualistic, advanced capitalist culture such as the US?

• From a paper, "The Ethical Importance of Close Reltionships" -- Interesting paper from a colleague I met this summer, trying to describe the values of close relationships without adopting a taxomony of relationships that automatically privileges life time monogamy. Consensuality, reciprocity, non-instrumental treatment, shared responsiblity, sharing self-narrative truth, trust (related to vulnerability).
• From media on the "delay of marriage" trend. [38]
• Research on dating and relationship trends among 20-30 year olds. "stay over" relationships. [39]

Csiksentmihalyi, Chapter Six, Relationships and the Quality of Life

• Concept of individual as product of social world, social world scripts transitions to adult relationship.

• samskara - Hindu codes of conduct by age. (Does social life actually produce the individual in an important sense?)

• "A relationship that leads to order in consciousness instead of psychic entropy has to meet at least two conditions.

• The first is to find some compatibility between our goals and that of the other person or persons. This is always difficult in principle, given that each participant in the interaction is bound to pursue his or her self-interest." 81

• The second condition for a successful interaction is that one be willing to invest attention in the other person's goals not an easy task either, considering that psychic energy is the most essential and scarce resource we own.

• Claims friendships don't habituate because people are always changing. If you continue to share goals and investment of energy, the pleasure never dies (until you do). [Note that in this case the "moving target" is not a problem.]

• Big research result: ESM study confirms profile of happiness for time spent with friends. Fig. 3 p. 83.

• Notes some changes from traditional social life: Americans tend to be friends with their parents more -- a novel and recent change. Changes in the coupling of sociability and relationship: marriages not formerly assumed to be about friendship or social intimacy.

• Summary of good family life, read p. 88. Note the focus on the "work" families do in our lives.

• [Discussion Point: Evaluate C's criteria of friendship. How flexible are we with regard to relationship and how big a threat does a (non-traditional) highly competitive achievement oriented culture pose to relationships?]

• Balance of solitude and social experience. German study by Noelle-Newman on overestimation of desirability of solitude -- (related to recurring historical motif of the "blessed isle" - Rousseau and in classical Roman period Hesiod)

• Discusses cities as places of historical challenge to our ability to manage difference and close interaction. Connects to globalism and contrasts to efforts to "restore" communities' traditional social bonds.

• Possible discussion: Should we cultivate capacities for happiness in solitude or "follow the data"? More on this later.

• Closes with claims about the social character of creativity and knowledge-seeking.

• Summarize C's overall view of the role of culture in structuring our "psychic energy"

• Small group: Test his view at a general and specific level. What are the challenges for individualistic culture for meeting his criteria for relationship? What are the specific challenges you and your peers face in negotiating career, relationship, and family? Should we be trying to recover traditional forms of social life (intergenerational households, strong expectations for lifetime partnership, social network "enforcing" relationship stability) or moving on and accepting that there are new forms of the self emerging that will coincide with ways of managing relationship (eliminating guilt from relationship change, term relationships, career-first strategies)?

Diener and Diener, Happiness, Chapter 4

• "Happiness and Social Relationships: You Can't Do Without Them"

• opening thought experiment, point: People are our reference points in some fundamental way. 49. Cf. to Csiksentmihalyi.
• Major claim: Necessity of relationship to happiness. evidence of causality in both directions.
• Introvert / Extrovert study: (note also the small gap between extroverts socially and alone). Looks like a scale shift.
• Inducing moods in test subjects alters perception/desirability/expectation of social situations.
• Duchenne smile study p. 53.
• great statement of value of relationship, p. 54. Note, again, the "work" relationships do for us.
• Strong correlation of social/happy, but what direction is the causation? High LS prior to marriage predicts satisfaction/longevity of marriage. Marriage might be enable higher sustained happiness under the right conditions (57)
• Return to the Marriage/Happiness debate:

• Lucas study: Marriage itself give you a small predictable happiness bump.
• Married people may be happier than average because happy people are more likely to marry than terribly unhappy people.
• Big example of question of "locating yourself" in relation to the average. Also, in setting expectations.
• Bella DePaulo book, Singled Out - part of reassessment of imperative to marry.

• Love: in light of life span: hot, then companionate
• Children: confirmation of earlier studies.

• Small group discussion: Assess the Lucas study on happiness and marriage. What is the meaning of being single today? How do you assess the general belief that being married and having children makes one happier, in light of the research here?

NOV 7

Love and Happiness

• Philosophical Method Notes: Now that we are deep into a discussion of culture and happiness, it makes sense to ask about how culture shapes our conception of love and, while we're at it, what is love anyway? What is it that culture is shaping when we say culture shapes our conception of love? After answering these simple questions, we get to ask about the future of love. Given that our current conceptions are so recent, and so much else is changing, it's reasonable to think that more change is on the way. Again, traditionalists and neophilics might take different lessons.

• Example of culture of love from romanticism (19th Century Europe): Goethe, Sorrows of Young Werther (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorrows_of_Young_Werther)

de Botton, "Lovelessness"

• Reminds us of need for "social love"
• Also, and a more ambitious interpretive claim: That we can view many of the things people pursue in psychological terms as seeking love in various forms (read p. 6)
• Does de Botton overstate things? Are we really seeking "love from the world" through so many of the things we pursue?

• If so, is it possible to be satisfied by the love we receive from the world?

Haidt, Chapter 6: Love and Attachments

• Attachment Theory - bad science of germ theory in thinking about orphanage moratality, isolation of orphans. Bad advice of early behaviorism for child rearing. Lack of weight on affection and bonding.

• Harlow's monkeys -- "cloth mother studies" Images for Harlow's Monkeys [40]. How did Harlow disconfirm early behaviorist and freudian thought on atttachment? "contact comfort"

• Bowlby's children and orphans. hears about Harlow's work. Duck bonding is news to these researchers.
• Keys to attachment: The central construct of attachment theory is that we have a self-regulating psychological system that uses bonding and attachment as a basis for exploration and growth. Attachment system responds along several axes: example: safety and exploration. postulates a "design system" to negotiate this tension and others which define the maturational challenges of a child and the relationship of its primary caregiver.

• Attachment Theory as Explanation for Love

• Details: Ainsworth "Strange Situation" experiments. Secure (moves easily between security and exploration) and insecure (avoidant/resistant) attachment styles. Genes may not play a large role in attachment style. (maybe epigenetic). Roughly 2/3 "secure" attachment. read p. 116. 1/6 "insecure avoidant" 1/6 "insecure resistant"

• Haidt's update/critique: attachment styles vary apart from genes, but personality doesn't so much. questions Ainsworth's emphasis on causal role of mother, styles more flexible than early research hypothesized. Somewhat open question in research.

• Why think that attachment theory explains love relationships?

• Thesis: adult romantic love grows out of the same psychological system that attaches children to their mothers?
• Developmental psych. evidence from Harzan p. 119. survey research on who satisfies the four defining features on p.119
• Evidence that romantic partners do become attachment figures: same pattern of response to loss as to loss of parental figure.
• READ bot 119. Romantic love might be a repurposed "care giving and guidance system" based on maternal/paternal care. But why is human love so different: hidden ovulation, long gestation/maturation of young...? Hypothesis: evolutionary advantage, in humans, for strong pair bonding, but also response to a highly competitive society in which you need to manage personal growth and development throughout adulthood.

Love and "Love Culture"

• Romantic Love: Love is for a species with big heads. We re-purpose our early parental attachment for romantic love. Oxytocin.
• Addresses the question of romantic love as "just" attachment theory plus mating. 118 and 120-121. Love isn't an end in itself. It's part of nature's business with us.
• Image of Aristophanes speech from Symposium: image of attachment.
• Proposes distinction between: passionate and companionate love. distinct processes.

Philosophers in Love

• Aside: Philosophers on love. Buddha (the problem is that love is attachment) and Plato (rejection of the body)
• Image from Symposium: best love is of the Forms. Beautiful bodies just point us in that direction.
• Caritas(benevolence/good will) and Agape (selfless spiritual love) as extensions. Claims (and this could be viewed as a criticism, but not necessarily) that Christian loves strips love of its particularity (p. 131). (Most of the positive value of agape is found, for Haidt in "elevation". So his critical point here more more that Christian love is vertical, not part of the repurposed maternal system.
• Haidt on love and "culture of love" : Why does human love make philosophers (and religionists) uncomfortable? 131. irrational, hypocritical suppression of pleasure, fear of death.
• Goldenburg research, p. 132:
• Major claims about happiness-making effects of relationships. p. 133. Follow twists: not just that we need from others, but we benefit from being needed and offering benevolent aid.

Brooks, "Social Animal," New Yorker

• Brooks should help us explore the problem of the relationship between "love and the 'culture of love' by focusing on the non-reflective dimension of our evolved psychology that kicks in on a potentially romantic date.
• goal is to heighten awareness of the relationship between the cultural dimension of courtship and the biological. Think about love in light of the split between automatic and controlled processes, attachment theory,
• Look at some of the details together: dress codes, body regimens (mens and womens), head cant, hair flip, chest heave. Similar behaviors for Harold.
• Harold and Erika. two levels (good example of social cognition). looks, early assessments of trust and reliability, nonverbal cues about how things are going, smell, map-meld, "Things that Would Have to Change",
• Related link: Listen to the Michael Levitan segment on This Amercican Life's episode #552: Need to Know. What would it be like to have been raised not to follow any of the conventions needed for dating?

Small Group Discussion

• In a discussion of the relationship between the "culture of love" and love, try to determine some of the attitudes and beliefs about love that you all endorse (Werther isn't a hero, most people want love to last, etc.,) as well as places where there are reasonable differences. Does the "soulmate" view linger even after we tell Werther to get a therapist? Does giving love a naturalistic basis (in biology and attachment theory) ruin it or just demystify it? Drawing on what you know about how people are managing intimacy in 21st US culture, what trends or changes do you predict? Are these attractive possibilities? What are the consequences for the view of love you take in your theory of happiness and the importance you give it?

NOV 9

Gilbert, Chapter 5: The Hound of Silence

• This chapter continues to build the case that our rationality is isn't a simple and accessible universal tool for thinking about things in an unbiased way. That might be an achievement of rationality, but "our inattention to absences influences the way to think about the future."

• We don't train on what's not there: pigeons, detecting pattern change in trigrams. "Blindspot" in our inference machinery. explains tendency to see coincidences -- we don't keep track of non-coincidences.??

• UVA sports fan study (102): Why do non-describer sports fans overestimate impact of losing a big game? 102 They don't think about the whole picture -- what's going to happen after the game, etc. Details the describers fill in. (Interesting practical lesson here.) Likewise, with California happiness studies and our estimates of the happiness of the chronically ill or disabled.

• Analogy of loss of detail of visual objects at a distance and loss of detail in objects of thought at a temporal "distance". "Near future is pretty detailed, but the distant future is blurry and smooth." 105

• Future value. We're horrible at calculating it. View Dan Gilbert's Ted talk on this subject [41]

• Time frame matters: example of agreeing to baby sit in a month vs. tomorrow night.

Johnson, Fenton, "Going It Alone"

• Fenton Johnson's essay raises the question of whether we should view the capacity for enjoying solitude as a sort of happiness that could be cultivated and which you might get better at. Let's compare some of Johnson's reference points (monasteries, for example) with the possibilities for solitude today.

• Trend toward solitary living -- 25% solo in US, over 60% in Scand. countries
• Thesis: There are unique values and opportuntities from solitary living that make it a kind of calling (and path to subjective well-being) for some. This is in contrast to the overwhelming message of society, that failure to pair bond is abnormal. Stronger thesis at 32: "Living amid the culture's obsession...."
• Theme: culture send us messages about the abnormality of solitariness, normality of not wanting to be alone.
• Resources for his thesis:

• Spirituality of Thomas Merton and monks in general; family interaction with
• Creative lives of solitary authors and painters.

• Conceptual issues:

• Solitary and celibate (34); solitary and in/not in relationship;
• Vows, disciplined living. (37)

• Secondary thesis: A kind of "secular monasticism" might make the capacity for solitude a basis other social relationships.

Haidt Chapter 9: Divinity with or without God

• Haidt is telling us about some of the psychological mechanisms that may enable us to experience relationships with enobling acts, people, and divinities. This raises the question of the extent to which these kinds of relationship might be sought out as part of your happiness strategy, and therefore have a place in your theory.

Elevation as a vertical axis in relationship.

• Flatland

• Major speculative hypothesis: 183: In addition to relationship and status, we perceive/experience "divinity" as a kind of "moral purity".

• But this is puzzling, given that we are also animals

• Research on disgust. Why do we experience disgust? 186. Purity opposite impulse from disgust. Disgust brings us "down". Disgust emotions evolved from protecting the mouth to protecting the body. Purity and defilement generally.

• Psychological anthropologist Richard Shweder, U Chicago: Haidt worked with him on research in morality in India: "Shweder's research on morality in Bhubaneswar and elsewhere shows that when people think about morality, their moral concepts cluster into three groups, which he calls the ethic of autonomy, the ethic of community, and the ethic of divinity." 188 -- evidence on diff. distribution of these ethics by class. Note observations on research in India. Link bt. purity/divine.

• Cites approvingly: Eliade, The Sacred and Profane -- perceiving sacredness universal among humans. 189: Interesting examples: handedness, space in houses. Examples from your experience?

• [What would you think of someone eating a burrito in a public restroom stall?]

Elevation and Agape

• Looking for a name for the emotions that we experience when we observe morally outstanding deeds. "Elevation"
• Jefferson: Experience of aesthetic value triggers physical changes in the body and recognizable feeling of elevated sentiments.

• 196: wants to see if elevation can be distinguished from other forms of happiness (such as being entertained). research with student Sara Algoe, (three conditions: doing something good for someone, saw someone tell a joke, saw extraordinary non-moral performance) results seem to separate out different responses: moral elevation vs. response to non-moral excellence like basketball player.

• initial research documents elevation as response. Unclear how moral/non-moral triggers work.

• Vagus Nerve theory -- operation of vagus nerve, relationship to oxytocin. Since oxcytocin causes bonding rather than action, this theory might explain the lack of evidence in an earlier study that elevation leads to action. Tell opening story from Paul Zak's The Love Molecule.

• Puzzle about moral elevation and lack of action -- in two studies no sig increase in "signing up" to volunteer after elevation.

• Lactating moms study 198 -- (answers puzzle: oxcytocin is about bonding, not acting. we've managed to make moral conduct a trigger for oxcytocin.)

• Letter from religious person distinguishing two kinds of tears in church. compassion/celebration

• Latter like agape : objectless love

Awe and Transcendence

• cites Darwin / Emerson, idea of elevation from exp of nature.

• Drugs - -entheogens. reports old experiment with mushrooms and religion.

• Emerson's "transparent eyeball" experience. Awe and transcendence of the ego. (also in flow)

• Awe: "As we traced the word "awe" back in history, we discovered that it has always had a link to fear and submission in the presence of something much greater than the self." 202

• Emotion of awe: "Keltner and I concluded that the emotion of awe happens when two conditions are met: a person perceives something vast (usually physically vast, but sometimes conceptually vast, such as a grand theory, or socially vast, such as great fame or power); and the vast thing cannot be accommodated by the person's existing mental structures." 203

• Story of Arjuna Pandava from Gita. Gets a cosmic eye. Extreme case, but Haidt implies this is a model for how we describe spiritual transformation.

• Maslow's work on peak experiences. Side note on clash about the nature of science in psychology. Maslow is considered a founder of humanistic psych.

• Mark Leary, Curse of the Self: Self as obstacle to -- mental chatter -- self as obstacle to vertical development . Read p. 207.

NOV 10

• Extra resource for reflecting on solitariness. "Why We're Fated to Be Lonely (But that's ok)" [42]

Second Short Writing Assignment: 800 words

• This Short writing assignment involves three steps:

• 1. Review some of the work for SW1 by following this link [43] to the folders for SW1 work and by using the score information at this wiki page: SW1 Animals and Scores. As you read some of this student work, please also bring up the rubric Assignment_Rubric that was used in the exercise and will be used in this exercise both by you and by me. Try to notice how you would apply the rubric, using this student work as a practical example.

• 2. By midnight Monday, November 13, please write an 800 word maximum answer to one of the following questions:

1. Choose one idea from one of the classical philosophies we have studied (Stoicism, Epicureanism, Yoga, Buddhism) that you plan to incorporate into your theory of happiness. Explicate the idea and show why it is important for the way you are thinking about happiness.
2. We have been studying a number of ways that you might qualitatively enhance your happiness by increasing the experience of gratitude, savoring, flow, or elevation in your life. Choose one of these enhancements that you plan to incorporate into your theory of happiness. Explicate the idea and show why it is important for the way you are thinking about happiness. Include research evidence, if available.
3. We have been discussing the challenges of realizing the benefits of relationship in a competitive individualistic culture, along with trends in relationship and different types of relationship, including solitude. How do you understand this problem and what strategies seem promising to you?

• Prepare your answer and submit it in the following way:

1. Do not put your name in the file or filename. You may put your student id number in the file. If possible put your word count in the file.
2. Format your answer in double spaced text in a 12 point font. Please indicate which question you are answering.
3. Save the file in the ".docx" file format using the file name "SW2".
4. Log in to courses.alfino.org. Upload your file to the Q&W dropbox.

• 3. By midnight Friday night, November 17, please review and score four essays.

• Display the Assignment_Rubric and review.
• Go to Link for Student Work and view spreadsheet with Saints, Animals, and Questions. Find the animal next to your saint name and review the next four animals in the alphabetic listing. If necessary, you will loop to the top of the alphabet to complete four reviews. You should only review work on the same question you wrote on.
• Use this google form Happiness Short Writing 2 Peer Review to review your peers. You will submit one record for each review.

• 4. By midnight Monday night, November 20th, please provide "back-evaluations" of Peer reviewers.

• After receiving your peer reviews and scores you will be asked to evaluate the helpfulness of each review. The points from the back evaluation will be added to your score. A google form will be used for this.
• Form for Back-evaluation of Peer Reviews

NOV 14

Gilbert, Chapter 6, The Future is Now

• Being wrong about the future: possibility of heavy planes flying. 112

• "When brains plug holes in the conceptualizations of yesterday and tomorrow, they tend to use a material called today"

• 113: Long list of examples of current experience displacing past experience: dating couples, worries about exams, memories of Perot supporters.

• Examples of how we fail to predict how future selves will feel. 115: Volunteers choosing candy bars or knowing answers.

• We fail to account for the way future experience will change future preferences.

• Sneak Prefeel -- evidence suggests brain can have emotional responses to imaginings of the future. We simulate future events, we don't just experience them reflectively. visual experience vs. imagination.

• How to Select Posters: In poster selection study, the "thinkers" are less satisfied with their choices. 121 "Prefeeling allowed nonthinkers to predict their future satisfaction more accurately than thinkers did." 121

• Limits of Prefeeling: "We can't see or feel two things at once, and the brain has strict priorities about what it will see, hear, and feel and what it will ignore. ... For instance, if we try to imagine a penguin while we are looking at an ostrich, the brain's policy won't allow it."122 2 other research studies on unconscious bias in future predictions. 123

• Note from the gym/thirst study: emotional contagion from one experience to another. The "availability heuristic" comes in here again. Priming. practical advice: you can see how mindfulness might be part of the remedy here.

• Read cartoon on bottom of p. 125 "Imagination cannot easily transcend the boundaries of the present, and one reason for this is that it must borrow machinery that is owned by perception. The fact that these two processes must run on the same platform means that we are sometimes confused about which one is running. We assume that what we feel as we imagine the future is what we'll feel when we get there, but in fact, what we feel as we imagine the future is often response to what's happening in the present."

Gilbert, Chapter 7, Time Bombs

• We spatialize time because it's an abstract thing and thinking of its spatially helps make it concrete. But that makes some things easier to imagine in the future than other things. "Time is no grapefruit"!

• Hedonic adaptation -- factors affecting the habituation rate -- time/variety (connect with satisficer/maximizer)

• False prediction of future pleasure -- p. 130 study on snack predictions.

• Gilbert's point -- variety has a cost… As you slow down the consumption rate, variety becomes less of a happiness maker because your rank preference becomes more prominent. [But it doesn't follow that it's not in your happiness-interest to pay it sometimes. Sampler plates still make sense because you're going to be consuming them quickly and at one sitting.]

• Starting Now: mental images are atemporal. We can inspect a mental image to see who's doing what, but the "when" matters less. We imagine a future event as if it took place now and then discount (recall Gilbert's TED talk)

• Spaghetti satisfaction predictions under condition of multi-tasking, p. 136. multi-tasking raises the effect of hunger and keeps people from making distinctions (morning/afternoon) about their experience. Another interesting implication for mindfulness, assuming a quieter and more mindful person would be less vulnerable to these distortions.

Lots of other biases (this is really what you get in the TED talk referenced above):

• Anchoring Bias (135)-- how many african countries?, Sensitivity to changes, (accounts for preferences for steady income increases, even it net payout is lower).

• Preference for the marked down vacation, even if more costly than a marked up one.

• Famous Khaneman and Tversky "mental accounting" study -- (140) theater tickets and twenty dollar bills.

• We compare the present to the past instead of to the possible. (coffee example)

• But we also make mistakes when we compare the present to the possible. (tv purchase example, wine example, dictionary comparison, chips/chocolate vs. chips/sardines) digress on Economist pricing example.

• Loss aversion (145); Sunk costs (we value things we have or avenues we commit to more than they are worth because we have chosen and invested in them.)

NOV 16

Major Philosophical Options on the "Metaphysics of Death"

• One Life + eternity (note variation on eternities)
• Repeat + release
• One Life

• Note commonalities and differences in the problem of death depending upon the model you are working from. St. Jerome.
• How do we treat death differently because of our metaphysics of death?

Major happiness hypotheses

• Reflecting deeply on mortality will improve the quality of your life (general).
• Culture (movies, fiction, etc) can help with this reflection, or not, by the way they portray death.
• Contemplative practices can help.
• Death teaches us how to live. "to not discover that when I die I had failed to live." (Thoreau) (also Roman soldier story in Montaigne)
• Hedonists in particular, should contemplate death (Montaigne)
• Virtue allows a contempt of death (Montaigne)

Gwande, Atul. "Things Fall Apart" from Being Mortal

• Changes in the shape of the death / well-being curve in light of modern medicine.
• Cultural changes: death denial. invisibility of death in light of lower mortality/medicine.
• The Body:

• Jaw, mandible, teeth. >85 40% without teeth.
• Crunchy inside: leaching of minerals into soft tissue.
• Loss of 1/4 to 1/2 muscle mass.
• Hands
• Brains. 1 inch of spare room by our seventies.

• Aging theories: not likely programmed to die. wide variation in mortality among genetic similars. More just like an complex engineered system.
• We just run out of some things! pigment for hair (stem cells), less effective at waste removal.

• Demographics of aging: rectangularization. 1950: 11% 5yo 1% 85yo Now: equal percentages of 5 and 50yo.
• Response of medical field inadequate. Geriatrics isn't fun for doctors.
• Case 1: Jean - long list of problems, but doing ok a year later. Falling hazards. (40)
• Case 2: Alice (42) - lower competences, taken advantage of.
• Story of Flexi Sillverstone - a geriatric geriatrician. His own health issues. Leading to discussion retirement communities. Expensive. Geriatric depression. (Hospice patient anecdote)

• Don't let people over 85 drive.

Montaigne, That to Study Philosophy is to Learn to Die

• Montaigne's precepts on death:

• 1. Death is not a problem for the hedonist, rather, the contemplation of death improves the pleasure of life.
• 2. Conversely, the fear of death ruins life. (The premeditation on death is the premeditation of liberty.)
• 3. We need to bring death into our awareness more, defeating social norms about talking about it.
• 4. Don't expect to live longer than normal.
• 5. You need to think about death to make sure you aren't already. (Roman soldier example)
• 6. We should be ready.

• Montaigne gives us a hedonist/stoic view of death. One would think that death is a problem for a hedonist, since it appears to be the end of sensation, but Montaigne argues for a strategy of using the contemplation of death to enhance the pleasure of life.

• "Cicero says—[Tusc, i. 31.]—"that to study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one's self to die." The reason of which is, because study and contemplation do in some sort withdraw from us our soul, and employ it separately from the body, which is a kind of apprenticeship and a resemblance of death; or, else, because all the wisdom and reasoning in the world do in the end conclude in this point, to teach us not to fear to die."

• M. affirms his commitment to hedonism: "Let the philosophers say what they will, the thing at which we all aim, even in virtue is pleasure."

• And that virtue (broadly the perfection of reason and emotion in action - something close to a Stoic conception) allows us to conquer death:

• "Now, of all the benefits that virtue confers upon us, the contempt of death is one of the greatest, as the means that accommodates human life with a soft and easy tranquility, and gives us a pure and pleasant taste of living, without which all other pleasure would be extinct."

• Tells his own story: He's 39 (and died at 59) At first thinking about death as a young man seemed silly to him, but then he realized that death comes to young and old.

• Makes fun of people (folk) who are bothered by the mention of death.

• We all think we have more time. Cognitive bias. (mentions, p. 4, weird, untimely deaths -- follow) In light of this, how can we avoid thinking about death? M: You could try not thinking about it, but it will surface if you don't deal with it.

• ["Let him hide beneath iron or brass in his fear, death will pull his head out of his armour. "—Propertious Hi. 18]. Let us disarm him of his strangeness and novelty.

• "Where death waits for us is uncertain; let us look for him everywhere. The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; he who has learned to die has unlearned to serve. There is nothing evil in life for him who rightly comprehends that the privation of life is no evil: to know, how to die delivers us from all subjection and constraint."

• "I am at all hours as well prepared as I am ever like to be, and death, whenever he shall come, can bring nothing along with him I did not expect long before. We should always, as near as we can, be booted and spurred, and ready to go, and, above all things, take care, at that time, to have no business with any one but one's self"

• "Why for so short a life tease ourselves with so many projects?" (Horace) -- Makes fun of people who complain that they are dying before they can do x, y, or z....

• We have a bias to ignoring our own deterioration. "Let us but observe in the ordinary changes and declinations we daily suffer, how nature deprives us of the light and. sense of our bodily decay. What remains to an old man of the vigor of his youth and better days? ["Alas, to old men what portion of life remains!"—Maximian, vel Pseudo-Gallus, i. 16f -- Note Hecht's point about how we insulate ourselves from death, less common experience, also, the beauty culture.

• Religion is founded on the contempt of death. 10.

• "Why not depart from life as a sated guest from a feast? "Lucretius, Hi. 95

Tibetan Book of the Dead

Primary understanding of death: great opportunity for learning.

• Six Bardos:

1. the chikhai bardo or "bardo of the moment of death"
2. the chonyid bardo or "bardo of the experiencing of reality"
3. the sidpa bardo or "bardo of rebirth".
4. the bardo of ordinary waking consciousness
5. dhyana, meditation
6. dream state

• Discuss practice associated with the Great Liberation by Hearing

To the Best of Our Knowledge: Segments on Guillermo Arriaga, Lorne Ladner, et al

• "Mexican writer Guillermo Arriaga is best known in the States for his screenplays. He wrote "Amores Perros" and the critically acclaimed "21 Grams." From his home in Mexico City, Arriaga tells Steve Paulson where the story idea for "21 Grams" came from, and why it was so interesting to have a religious man direct a film written by an atheist that deals with topics like the meaning of life and the afterlife. " Biographical story captures poignancy of death in a traffic accident.

• back story about driving home, on his birthday, and coming across a fatal accident. (35:00) cuts to scene in movie. Arriaga uses characters that have suffered (drug addiction, jail, bad health) and recovered, then suffer again through experience of loss. "And life goes on." Sister's story about pool accident, son asks, "If I die, will you ever smile again?"

• "Also, Lorne Ladner (44:00) is a psychologist, a practicing Buddhist and the author of The Lost Art of Compassion . He tells Jim Fleming that accepting the inevitability of one's own death leads a person to truly appreciate living while you can."

• Meditation on one's own death, charnel grounds. Example about the guy who took down the trophies and put up pictures of his kids. sky burial, 1st Dalai Lama's momento mori -- stone from burial grounds.

• Closes with famous Thoreau quote. "and not when I came to die to discover that I had not lived"

Momento Mori

• Images St. Jerome --- purpose of momento mori

• Momento Mori Wiki page [44]

• The Philosophy Bird

NOV 21

t day pre

NOV 28

• Philosophy News: Human Brain Have Evolved Unique Feel Good Circuits

Gilbert, Chapter 8: Paradise Glossed

• Opening examples of people "re-narrating" horrible events in their lives, including wrongdoing and public humiliation. Asymmetry between people's estimates of misfortune (loss of ability) and estimates of people in those situations.

• "If negative events don't hit us as hard as we expect them to, then why do we expect them to?" Interested in discrepancy between cs forecast and actual experience.

• Suggests that the process of creating and attending to meanings is crucial (154-155). We respond, in part, to our own representations of reality. (Recall the Truck cubby hole perspective taking experiment)

• Importance of context, frequency, and recency in identifying information and salience. Necker cube. Definers and self-rating study (159). importance of relative complexity of experience (over visual illusions). Complexity creates ambiguity which we exploit with narrative Kale and ice cream study, 159. Our immediate experience can change our relative perceptions of arrays of other objects and experiences.

• major thesis on 160. Once our experience becomes actual, our uncs goes to work renarrating the story with positive bias. a kind of "psychological immune system" (psychological investment system). (recall the poster study.) Interesting practical advice follows: You might be able to choose a more or less positive way of looking at situations that have ambiguous interpretations. You are trying to strike a balance between disabling self-criticism and panglossian self-delusion.see 162.

• We Cook the Facts (164): The mind needs some like a fact for belief, (but facts are not always readily available), so... it cooks the evidence. IQ test takers selection of article on IQ bias. By selecting sampling (attending to ads for the cars we bought), by conversational practices (not, "Am I the best lover..., but ....").

• Evidence that we cook the facts comes from situations in which there are symmetrical and predictable inconsistencies in a group's interpretation (sports fans 168), or studies that show that we select evidence that fits our views (169). (This is also the evidence that is moving some faculty to blind grading!)

Gilbert, Chapter 9: Immune to Reality (Openness to Investment in Reality)

• Clever Hans

• Confabulation: People are unaware of many influences on them, but when asked will create a story or reason that provides a plausible explanation other than the actual influence. Priming studies. Negative words flashed on screen produces more negative judgments. (note about being "strangers to ourselves" -- connects with Leary, Curse of Self)

• Some evidence (174) to suggest that deliberate methods to induce good feeling fail.

• thesis on 174: not only do we cook the facts, but we need to consume them in a way that doesn't reveal the fabrication or alteration. (One way that we become "strangers to ourselves" is that we need to conceal the fact that we're cooking the facts.)

• Looking forward/backward (recall examples from 153, in which we over-predict the effect of negative events): asymmetry in judgments of events when looked at prospectively and retrospectively. Thesis: We assume that the views looking forward and backward are symmetrical, but they are not. You won't value things the same way once events transpire, but the process of revaluation is largely hidden from us.

• Judge/Jury Rejection study: prospectively we aren't aware that we'll more easily write off the judge's decision than the jury's. (176) -- key issue: if the explanation for the result is so obvious, why can't the test subjects anticipate it?
• great example of confabulation too.

• Regret: when we blame ourselves for outcomes we might have anticipated. A kind of "personal liability" emotion. Sometimes useful. Problem of the number of things you didn't do. (research on p. 179: suggesting that we regret omissions more than commissions, though they predict that they'll regret commissions more.) Why is this? Gilbert's thesis: It's harder for the immune system to re-narrate an event that didn't happen.

• Psychological Immune System: Very bad things trigger it more than slightly bad things. "it is sometimes more difficult to achieve a positive view of a bad experience than a very bad experience. Concept of "psychological investment" in initiation rites study (181). Triggers at work in the negative feedback study (182).

• Claims that we experience "sunk costs" in relationships. Trade offs between changing our experience and changing our view of our experience. Photo selection satisfaction study involving "escape" and "no escape" conditions p 184. Subjects in the escape condition were less satisfied with their choices. Yet test subjects asked which they would prefer say that want the escape option. (notice prospection/retrospection asymmetry)

• Speculative Theory about how we use explanations: "Explanations allow us to make full use of our experiences, but they also change the natures of those experiences." 186. beneficial effect of writing about trauma, simulated student study involving identified vs. unidentified admirers. 187. Happiness buzz lasts longer on unidentified (power of unexplained) . (Interesting implication for seeking "love from the world".) Suggested as support for theory. Unexplained events have bigger impact. Other studies suggest explanations can get in the way of emotional impact. Point: We respond to unexplained and mysterious events with higher interest and affect, even attributing great significance to them, but we also relentlessly try to explain things, thus diminishing their emotional impact. Example of research with Smile Society cards. Details may have detracted from positive impact. (Again, people think the card with the explanation will have higher impact.) "The price we pay for our irrepressible explanatory urge is that we often spoil our most pleasant experiences by making good sense of them." 191

NOV 30

• 3 scenarios: Mega Car Wash, Newport Smelter, Amazon HQ2

Galbraith, Dependency Effect

• Problem of intertemporal comparison: Who's to say that status pleasures aren't as important to us now as basic satisfactions were to our poor predecessors? It is repugnant to think that desires never lose their urgence, but maybe that's the case.

• Flaw in the view of someone who accepts this case: If our desires and wants are "contrived by the process of production", they are not original with us and therefore can't be "urgent" for us. The whole case for accommodating business production (through infrastructure, tax breaks, etc.) falls apart if the production system is creating the needs.

• Develops his view in Section 2: Not against consumer wants, but little doubt that many are contrived. Cites Keynes on insatiability of status needs. "the desire to get superior goods takes on a life of its own" "The urge to consume is fathered by the value system which emphaasizes the abilityt of the society to produce." (GDP)

• Section 3: advertising and salesmanship (no social media yet). It's a problem if the producer makes the goods and the desire for the goods. Note that is calling into question the idea that the consumer is really autonomous. "independently determined wants"

• Read Section 4.

Bruni & Zamagni, Chapter 1: What is Civil Economy?

• With globalization, we've stopped talking critically about capitalism and simply treat it like a fact of nature. There are still lots of critics, but they don't agree and leave is trapped, as if still in the womb.

• "Civil Economy" refers to the idea that we ought to assess the performance of the economy in relation to its effect on the "civitas" the citizens and community. (Historically connected to a "golden age" of thought in economics in the 18thc, 2nd half, but also, to earlier Roman concepts such as "felicitas publica".

• But civil economy isn't an alternative to capitalism. More of a "laboratory of thought" to help us tell a different story about relationship of capitalism to the common good. Not about the freedom of the individual from the society, but not anti-capitalism.

• Civil economy may involve different way of thinking about cooperation in capitalism. Current model: strong intentional cooperation within the firm, weak non-intentional cooperation outside the firm. But you can have different models. Italian familial capitalism (Olivetti, Ferrero (Nutella) planned industrial capitalism. (Lots of other examples not referenced here: managerial capitalism in Netherlands and many Scandinavian countries, which are also highly competitive economies.)

• The American Model: Anonymous markets, communities compete for businesses (Newport smelter). Financialization of the economy, finance capitalism: fr. Wiki: "Finance capitalism or financial capitalism is the subordination of processes of production to the accumulation of money profits in a financial system. Financial capitalism is thus a form of capitalism where the intermediation of saving to investment becomes a dominant function in the economy, with wider implications for the political process and social evolution: since the late 20th century it has become the predominant force in the global economy, whether in neoliberal or other form.

• "With the financialization of the economy has come the idea that speculative finance creates much more wealth, and far more quickly, than productive labour."14 "Exaltying the merits of themarket, narrow conformist hinking reached the conclusion that the world is what markets make it to be, and not citizen, not even governments, should have the power to correct it s course." 18.

• Need to bring demomcracy and capitalism into coherent, cooperative relationship. Arguably, global capitalism has weakened the power of nation states and communities. Competition of communities for business.

Bruni & Zamagni, Chapter 6: Why GDP is not enough?

• Thesis: We need additional measures of well-being to add to or replace our reliance on GDP. Analogy of multi-stage cycling races: There are many things to compete for in addition winning the overall race. GDP is just the sprinter's jersey. Promoting SWB is the overall goal.

• Historical discussion: Smith's Wealth of Nations not just about individual production and riches, but well-being. Examples of texts from Neopolitan School Genovesi: "Work for your own interest, of course, but don't make others miserable by your gain, work also for public happiness. ....p. 88. Adds "public happiness" to "liberty, fraternity, and equality"

• Critique of GDP: lumps good and bad economic activity together, some stats keepers even consider illegal economic activity. job creation predicts economic activity, but doesn't tell you about the quality of the jobs. "There are awful jobs." (smelt, smelt). GDP relatively new concept (1930s, against background of mercantilist approach which includes wealth of land, resources, labour, capital and stocks. (A stock is any supply of goods of any kind. Stock Market.)

• More critique of GDP: Arguably, "stocks" matter more than "flows" (GDP). Concern about environment is concern about stocks, migration is about human resources, a "stock", security is a stock. (In food studies, egronomists argue about soil and aquifer quality as a neglected stock.)

DEC 5

• Gallup community well-being index, Washington Report

• Using Happiness Research in Community Development

• Core Rationale for Using Happiness Research in Community

• 1. We have a shared interest in economic activity that satisfies our community's needs.
• 2. Our primary cultural theory for how to do that is to increase GDP and rely on "non-intentional cooperation" to meet needs through self-interested economic activity.
• 3. Some critics of this approach agree that market economies important advantages over non-market mechanisms, but argue that markets can be assessed with better measures than GDP.
• 4. Happiness research allows communities to assess flows and stocks of goods, both economic and non-economic.
• 5. The same justifications for using political and economic policy to maintain GDP growth apply to more complete measures of subjective well-being in communities.
• C. Therefore, community development should be guided by both economic growth and broader measures of well-being.

• Models for Using Happiness Research in Community Development

• Macro-Economic Policy and other governmental programs -- Incentives, taxes, and transfers can be used to address public well-being problems (ex. Opiod crisis, super fund sites, urban and rural development). Unemployment policy is a major focus of Happiness and Public Policy research (Frey and Stutzer).
• Zoning and Business Development -- This often takes the form of requirements and conditions placed on development based neighborhood community development plans. While this is a mainstream activity of government, it is often a lightning rod for political disagreement. Zoning requirements are often experience by entrepreneurs as an unwelcome tax or limitation on productivity.
• Government agencies focused on community well-being -- Parks and Recreation. In Spokane, for example, Corbin Arts. Parks programming.
• Socially Responsible Entrepreneurship -- Many entrepreneurs (especially those who are community based) approach investing with the goal of meeting self-interested and other-interested goals. They are hence more open to "voluntary intentional cooperation" with community planners. Example: Link Food in Spokane
• Philanthropic Advocacy for the Civil Economy -- Civic leaders and organizations from mainstream groups like Rotary, Chamber of Commerce often achieve improvements in a community's stock of social capital. Often business leaders in local communities come to understand that their opportunities might be contingent upon solving local problems. Examples like Riverfront Park, Riverfront Square (maybe), Sustainable Seattle, Tilth (in Seattle) suggest that civic groups can be effective in making intentional community development a product of community consensus (sort of).
• Employment in the Civil Economy -- Organizations such as SNAP, Catholic Charities, Lutheran Services, Meals on Wheels, etc. can be thought of as part of a civil economy since they generate economic activity around solving social problems. But so also, developers who maintain Section 8 housing projects as a matter of organizational mission. Community development (whether government, foundation, or community based) can be thought of as a distinct sector of economic activity focused by mission on improving community well-being.
• Voluntary Philanthropic Projects and Services -- Voluntary work might be included here as well if you regard the research as compelling in suggesting there are non-monetary benefits from volunteering. Examples beyond individual community volunteering include: Tilth

Frey and Strutzer, "Policy Consequences of Happiness Research"

• Main highlights:

• Effects of unemployment: Research suggesting that unemployment has a negative effect on SWB of both unemployed and employed. Psychic costs of unemployment. Social effects: inequality, crime, disruption of family life. Why would unemployment affect the employed? empathy, fear of economic insecurity. Main point: unemployment looks different when assessed wholistically. Not just about the "reservation wage".
• Policy implications unclear: The pain of unemployment is a motivator (Psychic costs may be functional.) Artificial job creation might have negative effects on investment.
• Externalities of Status markets: "People do not value the absolute level of their income but compare their economic standing to others." Positional externalities: Example 1, 2. There is a rationale in mainstream economics for addressing externalities. In this case by taxation and transfer. But again, there are problems. In addition to effect of taxation on growth, people might choose other ways to show status.

DEC 7

• Some closing remarks and paper workshop.

DEC 11

Final Paper: My Philosophy of Happiness

By midnight Monday December 11 please turn in your "My Philosophy of Happiness" paper

• Prepare your paper and submit it in the following way:

1. Put your name in the file. This is not a pseudonymous assignment.
2. Format your paper in double spaced text in a 12 point font. Please indicate which question you are answering.
3. Save the file in the ".docx" file format using the file name "My Philosophy of Happiness".
4. Log in to courses.alfino.org. Upload your file to the My Philosophy of Happiness dropbox.

DEC 14

Final Short Essay Assignment: 600-800 words for each essay

• By midnight Thursday, December 14, 2017, please answer two of the following prompts in 600-800 words each:

1. Identify Gilbert's main theses and the most significant kinds of evidence he uses to support them. How serious a problem for happiness do our limited abilities to predict the future pose? What practical advice do you have in light of your new expertise from studying happiness?
2. Why is it important to our happiness to think about death? Identify some of the key arguments and lines of thought for answering this question and briefly assess them.
3. What does the history of happiness tell us about happiness?
4. Assess the case for taking happiness studies into account in civic and political life. Should we go beyond a concern with GDP? Is it reasonable to hope for a broad consensus on some of the measures we would want to use to assess the performance of the economy in promoting well-being at the level of the community?

• Prepare your essays and submit them in the following way:

1. Do not put your name in the file or filename. You may put your student id number in the file. If possible put your word count in the file.
2. Format your answers in one file, using double spaced text in a 12 point font.
3. Save the file in the ".docx" file format using the file name "Final Essays". Please put the numbers of the essays you answered in the file name (e.g. "Final Essays 2 4" if you answered questions 2 and 4).
4. Log in to courses.alfino.org. Upload your file to the Final Exam dropbox.

• Please feel free to collaborate with each other in identifying relevant content and discussing your answer, but to keep your answers authentic, do not share outlines or text of draft answers.