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Jan 22: Introduction to the concept of happiness in several philosophical/religious/cultural traditions: Hinduism, Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. AND Correlates of Happiness

1. Briefly compare Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism regarding their views of happiness (add detail from general reference reading such as the wikipedia or an encyclopedia if necessary, but work primarily from the handout).

Hinduism: Happiness consists in union with Braham (There are three main Gods in the Hindu religion: Braham [the creator], Vishnu [the perservor or the protector] and Shiva [the destroyer]).

To acheive happiness one should shower regard for diverse deities and understand one's dharma and chose a path (yoga) for achieving release (moksha) (Dharma is the path of righteousness and living one's life according to the codes of conduct as described by the Vedas and Upanishads. Dharma means "that which holds" the people of this world and the whole creation. Dharma is the natural universal laws whose observance enables humans to be contented and happy, and to save himself from degradation and suffering. Dharma is the moral law combined with spiritual discipline that guides one's life. See http://hinduism.about.com/od/basics/a/dharma.htm)

The explanation of happiness is given against an analysis of samsara. The complexity of attachment is mirrored in the many Dharmas. (Samsara refers to the process of passing from one body to another throughout all species of life.)

If this makes sense to anybody please explain why. If not, then you might understand why I am not Hindu.

Jainism: Jainism is an ancient religion, emphasizing non-violence, meditation, and personal enlightenment. Happiness is the realization of the soul's true nature and attaining moksha, or liberation. To acheive happiness one should do meditation and ascetic practice aimed at identification with Atma, unchanging reality. (asceticist: a person who leads an austerely simple life, esp. one who abstains from the normal pleasures of life or denies himself or herself material satisfaction.)

Buddhism: Happiness is freedom from teh suffering that characterizes existence, it is attainment of Nirvana. (After attainment of Bodhi, it is believed one is freed from the compulsive cycle of saṃsāra: birth, suffering, death and rebirth, and attains the "highest happiness" (Nirvana, as described in the Dhammapada. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism) (Bodhi is a term applied to the experiencing of an awakening or enlightemnent; an awareness of Reality) To acheive happiness, follow the 4 noble truths and noble 8 fold path. Practice right thinking, speech, conduct, effort, mindfulness, and concentration. Why? Analysis of attachment and desire explains the origin of suffering and shows both the conditioned reality of normal existence. The practices of Buddhism are intended to help us understand the reality and release ourselves from suffering.

It is my impression that the understanding of suffering and attachment is typically misunderstood, even by many "buddhists". To release attachments does not mean to be detatched. Following a law of detachment is simply an attachment itself! This is the sort of attachment that leads to suffering! All things pass, no thing lasts, that is to say, nothing lasts, and nothingness is the only constant. Thus, to truly release attachments is to let be what is. What is, is. If one has an attachment to something that is not, then they will suffer in trying to make it so. This is illustrated well in a story of a zen master who, after the death of his wife, was found on the top of a mountain whailing and crying in mysery. His students approached him and said, "master, why are you crying? Do you not tell us to give up attachments?" He replied, "I am crying because I am devistated. You are confused, you think that to release from attachments means to never be sad, but that is simply your own attachment to peacefulness. For me, devastation is, and I am letting it be. I am devastated and I will be devastated." Or something like that. A typical example from today would be the person who is angry, but has an attachment to "not being angry; anger is wrong or bad". Well, guess what. They are really going to suffer from trying to not be angry because they are attached to the idea of anger being bad. (They are also going to be angry because they are angry, it's really unfortunate!) If they would let be what is, they woudl not suffer from their anger and they would know that it will pass if they let it be.

2. How does the problem of suffering come into play in these traditions? For the reading: Stuart McCready, ed. "The Discovery of Happiness," Chapter 2, "Nirvana and the Social Order" p. 24-36. The Buddhists began their discussion of the human condition, not with how a man should attain happiness, but rather, how he should avoid unhappiness of suffering. Attaining happiness, in other words, was the end result of escaping the more fundamental and general condition of suffering. The highest goal of ethical and spiritual striving was therefore to pass beyond the vicissitudes of suffering by identifying its causes and means of eradication. It should be remembered that Buddhism originated in India (Buddha: 563-483 BCE) and it wasn't until centuries later that it moved to China as Zen Buddhism (about 100 CE)

For the reading: Stuart McCready, ed. "The Discovery of Happiness," Chapter 3, "Dao, Confusinism, and Buddhism" p. 36-56. Fu (happiness or good fortune) and Huo (misfortune or calamity) are opposites in an interactive or transformational circle. The reversal from one extreme to the other is the moment of Dao. One has no control over the transformation between opposites unless one succeeds in attaining the Dao. Only then are opposites such as fortune and misfortune reduced to their original state of unity. Happiness comes from the satisfaction of desires while unhappiness comes from its frustration. Therefore, "one who is content (with what one has) is always happy".

For the reading: Chuang Tzu, Chapter 18, "Perfect Happiness" Man is born to sorrow, and what misery is theirs whose old age with dulled faculties only means prolonged sorrow! I make true pleasure to consists in inaction, which the world regards as great pain. Thus it has been said, "perfect happiness is the absence of happiness; perfect renown is the absence of renown."

3. What is the right relationship between thinking about suffering and happiness? How should we look at ancient cultures, east and west, which focus on alleviation of suffering as the focus of the pusuit of happiness. Have we eliminated suffering? What kinds? Do we experience the absence of suffering from the conditions of life in ancient times? Have we replaced (in the wealthy world) physical suffering with other kinds of suffering (anxiety about one's talents, social esteem, suffering from adverse comparison with others)?

This is not for me to answer, for it asks for opinion and I won't have other people copying down my opinion on their tests.

4. What does a daoist do to become happy, according to Chuang Tzu?

This has already been answered in question 2. In addition, Chuang Tzu emphasized the idea of a Natural Way or Natural Law, which cannot be changed and to fight it is hopeless.

5. How does the parable of Chuang Tzu's widowhood illustrate a daoist understanding of the right attitude toward reality? Do you agree?

"to live with your wife... and to see your eldest son grow up to be a man, then not to shed a tear over her corpse, this would be bad enough. But to drum on a bowl, and sing; surely this is going to far." -Hui Tzu (some guy talking to Chang Tzu) "Not at all," replied Chuang Tzu. "When she died, I could not help being affected by her death. Soon, however, I remembered that she had already existed in a previous state before birth, without form, or even substance; that while in that unconditioned condition, substance was added to spirit... and now, by virtue of a further change, she is dead, passing from one phase to another [just like the seasons]. For me to go about weaping and wailing would be to proclaim myself ignorant of natural laws." Do you agree? This should be your own opinion. Those who are heavenly minded are no earthly good!

6. How does the parable of the kun fish (peng bird) illustrate a daoist perspective that could promote happiness? Can this perspective be criticized for advocating complacency and passivity? Consider a variety of responses to this potential criticism.

I really appreciate this story, and I'll type it all up so you lazy asses don't have to look at your reading, which you probably didn't read anyways.

In the Northern Ocean there is a fish called kun, which is many thousand miles in size. This fish metamorphoses into a bird called peng, whose back is many thousand miles in breadth. When the bird rouses itself and flies, its wings obscure the sky like clouds... When it is moving to the Southern Ocean, it flaps along the water for 3,000 miles... When it ascends to the height of 90,000 miles, the wind is all beneath it. Then, with the blue sky above, and no obstacle on the way, it mounts upon the wind and starts for the south... A cicada and a young dove laugh at the peng, saying: "when we make an effort, we fly up to the trees. Sometimes, not able to reach there, we fall to the ground midway. What is the use of going up 90,000 miles in order to fly toward the south?"... A quail also laughs at it, saying: "Where is that bird going? I spring up with a bound, and when I have reached no more than a few yards I come down again. I just fly about among the brushwood and the bushes. It is also perfect flying"... This is the difference between the great and the small.

What the story suggests is ambiguous (many people cannot tolerate ambiguity and therefore cannot tolerate the messages of this story). On the one hand, we see the enormous difference between the great and the small in their features and pursuits. The peng has large wings and flies high and far. The cicada and quail have tiny wings, and low and short flight. Accordingly, the great and small experience and achieve different things. This is also true of what they each need and enjoy. If they all go against nature by imitating each other in their way of life, distress and frustration will certainly arise. In consequence, satisfaction is relative.

On the other hand, we find that the great and small are different by nature. They move and live in distinct ways because they simply follow their own nature and act in accord with their inborn capacity. They both indulge in what they are doing and enjoy themselves to their full extent. That is the story, it is your job to be able to summarize it.

7. Traditions such as Buddhism analyze the problem of happiness in terms of the need to overcome an unhealthy or unproductive attachment to desire, the ego, or the self. Buddhism gives an important psychological analysis of the need for detachment and renunciation as part of a program of enlightenment which includes the realization of a kind of happiness. One version of this program of enlightenment demands a kind of asceticism. Most people, however, are not willing to embrace asceticism. Could we identify some insights from ascetic practice even if we do not embrace the lifestyle of an ascetic?

Again, the definition: Asceticist: a person who leads an austerely simple life, esp. one who abstains from the normal pleasures of life or denies himself or herself material satisfaction. The insights are up to you. If I told you, they wouldn't be insights. Hint: what is referred to by desire, ego, or self, is somewhat up to interpretation. Some interpretations work better than others.

8. Drawing on the Argyle reading, what evidence do we have for theorizing about the causal factors producing happiness. When you review the discussion of correlates such as age, education, leisure and health, income, social relationships, marriage, and religion, what causal structures seem likely to you? What kind of role do you suspect culture to play in these relationships?

January 29 Topic & Readings: Prospection and Subjectivity in Cognitive Psychology and Measurement of Happiness.

1. Gilbert, Daniel. Stumbling on Happiness. New York: Alfred Knopf, 2006, Chapter 1: Journey to Elsewhen, pp. 2-29

2. Gilbert, Chapter 2: The View from in Here, pp. 29-55

3. Gilbert, Chapter 3: Outside Looking In, pp. 55-75

Questions:

1. Do we accurately understand the relationship between our own future predictions of happiness and the actual determinants of happiness? No. -Researchers have discovered that when people find it easy to imagine an event, they overestimate the likelihood that it will actually occur. Because most of us get so much more practice imagining good than bad events, we tend to overestimate the likelihood that good events will actually happen to us, which leads us to be unrealistically optimistic about our futures (p. 19). Why do we go to great lengths to construct negative possibilities? -Anticipating unpleasant events can minimize their impact. -fear, worry, and anxiety have useful roles to play in our lives (they have functions) (p. 20-21). During his "steering the boat metaphor (about pg. 24-25) he says: We want - and we should want - to control the direction of our boats because some futures are better than others, and even from this distance we should be able to tell which are which. BUT THIS IS THE WRONG ANSWER TO THE QUESTION. We insist on steering our boats because we think we have a pretty good idea of where we should go, but the truth is that much of our steering is in vain 0 not because the boat won't respond, and not because we can't find our destination, but BECAUSE THE FUTURE IS FuNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT THAN IT APPEARS THROUGH THE 'PROSPECTOSCOPE'. It is mostly an experience of illusory foresight (akin to illusory eyesight and hindsight).

2. How objective is happiness? How do we explore objectivity of happiness through thought experiments such as the twins? The twins - "how would you feel"? There seem to be two possibilities for the discrepancy:

1) Someone is making a dreadful mistake when they talk about happiness.

2) um, it seems as though he only mentions the first possibility...

Most disagreements about happiness are semantic (problems of reference) rather than problems of 'philosophy' (problems of meaning, conceptuality, or of 'true nature'). Happiness is used to indicate at least 3 things:

1) Emotional Happiness

Feeling happy (I my opinion, this should be called joy and not con-fused with happiness). It refers to a feeling, an experience, a subjective state and has no objective referent in the physical world (besides brain states, I say!). Thus, there is something that it is like to be when one is emotionally happy or joyous - it has a phenomenological quality. Aha - in each of the cases of emotional happiness described, the encounter generates a roughly similar pattern of neural activity, and thus it makes sense that there is something common to our experiences of each - some conceptual coherence that has led humans to group this hodgepodge of occurrences together in the same linguistic category. Much of it has to do with the "positivity" of the experience and of the words used to describe the experience.

2) Moral Happiness

Feeling happy because: Happiness does not indicate a good feeling but rather that it indicates a very special good feeling that can only be produced by very special means - for example, by living one's life in a propper, moral, meanigful, deep, rich, Socratic, and non-piglike way. Gilbert thinks this is what the Greeks meant by Eudaimonia (means "good spirit" but should probably be translated as "human flourishing" or "life well lived"). Most philosophers thought this kind of happiness could be achieved through virtue, but definitions of virtue are still up in the air.

3) Judgmental Happiness

When a person is expressing a point of view rather than making a claim about their experience. This is true when the word happy is followed by the words that or about. Here, we should take their use of happy to indicate their stance rather than their feelings.

3. What is "skeptical perspectivism" (the view of Gilbert's we christened at the end of Chapter 2)? Do you agree that he holds this position? What are some consequences for a theory of happiness holding this view? (the problem of counterfactual judgement, for instance, in our discussion of Gilbert's enjoyment of "cigars") Skeptical perspectivism is the position that a) we can't say that counterfactual situations give us reliable data on happiness, b) but we can't discount them either. Language-squishing hypothesis: we all have the same subjective experience but talk about it differently (somebody says they like cake more than I do not because it is subjectively better but they squish language and talk as if it was). Experience-stretching hypothesis: when another experiences something different but talks about it in the same way (we say we both like cake the same amount but the other person's subjective experience is of a much better cake than I experience). What is the consequence? "We can't say. What we can say is that all claims of happiness are claims from someone's point of view - from the perspective of a single human being whose unique collection of past experiences serves as a context, a lens, a background for her evaluation of her current experience.

4. What is Gilbert's "language squishing" and "experience stretching" hypotheses? How does this help us think about the subjectivity of report of happiness? Oh, I just did this in the last one...

5. How does Gilbert suggest, in Chapter 3, that we may not be completely aware of our experience? That you could be happy and not know it? We can feel aroused without knowing why we are aroused. Gilbert uses this fact to show how people can therefore misattribute and misconstrue their emotional experiences, letting their affect give them faulty information. This is especially troublesome when the affective information goes misattributed AND unchecked.

6. What is the "bridge study"? Summarize and evaluate. P. 63 to 64.

7. How does the "law of large numbers" help us with the problem of the measurement and objectivity of happiness, by the end of Chapter 3 of Gilbert? Which kinds of bias could you imagine it correcting for? Do the patterns revealed in large numbers applying normatively to individuals? Imperfections in measurement are always a problem, and they are an even bigger problem when we don't recognize them. This can be combated with the phenomenon of the Law of Large Numbers (note: Gilbert's point about 2 neurons not being conscious but that consciousness emerges from the sheer number of interconnections is a philosophical position called "emergentism". In light of evolutionary theory, this position is fairly sensible, but it is not the only sensible position nor is it established fact, per se.) Basically, you can get a statistical anomaly in a small sample, but if you sample enough people eventually one cannot help but find some common trends. This is a merit of meta-analyses.

February 05

Topic & Reading Happiness in Hellenistic Culture: Stoics, Cynics, and Epicureans.

Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus

Diogenes Laertius, Diogenes (of Sinope) the Cynic, also consult Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Epictetus Encheiridion (Handbook) (possibly sections from Arian's Discourse)

Darrin McMahon, excerpt "Surgery for the Soul," from Happiness: A History, New York, Atlantic Montly Press, 2006, pp. 50-59.

SQs Stoic and Epicurean Models of Happiness

1. Compare and contrast Epicureanism and Stoicism as philosophies and in terms of their general theories of happiness. Both have a strategy towards happiness that acheives tranquility through close connection to reality. Epicureanism: virtue leads to happiness, which is pelasure. There are two types (?) of pleasure: Kinetic (bodily pleasure: the pledasure of doing; mental pleasure: pleasure of intellectual pursuit, of insight) and Katostematic (higher sort of state pleausre). Stoicism: Virtue equals happiness. There will be intrinsic pleasure in pursuing virtue, in human perfection. You will be happier if you desire less, for you will satisfy the same amount of desires and suffer fewer frustrations.

2. What does Stoic and Epicurean "training" involve? It involves whips, chains, cattle prods, and hot irons.

3. Can we alter our "natural" emotional responses to bring them in line with correct understanding of nature? ( Can we "live in agreement"?) Some things are up to us, some things are not, and one must be ready to adjust themselves to reality.

4. Assuming we "habituate" our emotions in this way, should we? Consider several points of view. Would it improve happiness? Of course,

5. Is it possible to avoid suffering from negative emotions and increase positive emotions, such as joy? No. No, no, no. This is not how it works. One can alter their their perspectve, but one cannot even KNOW joy without knowing suffering, just as one cannot know love without knowing apathy. All things pass. Furthermore, the human organism is constantly moving towards homeostasis, neutrality. If one is joyous they will move back to neutrality, and neutrality implies an above contingent on the existence of the below (thesis, antithesis, synthesis).

Love

1. What are the two loves that de Botton thinks we strive for? a) our quest for sexual love. Socially accepted and celebrated. b) our quest for love from the world. We are ashamed of this, we don't want to admit it.

2. What is Montaigne's goal in discussing the body, according to de Botton? Are we "reconciled to the body" today? Should that be a goal for happiness? How would you know that you had achieved it? We need to be OK with our bodies in order to enjoy them.

3. How do Schopenhauer and Goethe provide us with images of love from the romantic period of Western European culture? What are some of the challenges of this view? What are some of the attractions? Alternatives?

4. Distinguish reductive and non-reductive naturalism. Schopenhauer is a reductionist. Biochemical level. Nature drives our passions.

5.What is attachment theory and what implications, if any does it have for a theory of love and intimacy?

6. How unique of a choice is the choice of an intimacy partner? To what extent does it depend upon the kind of commitment we are capable of making and sustaining over time as opposed to relatively unique or rare attributes?