OCT 11

12: OCT 11 - 3. Measuring and Finding Happiness

Assigned

• Haybron C4, “Measuring Happiness” (10)
• Gilbert, C2, “The View from in Here” (26)

In-class

• Something on intercultural aspect of wisdom...
• SW2 prompt reveal!

Haybron, C4, “Measuring Happiness”

• We can identify which groups of people are happier and what sorts of things, on average, make people happy.

• Measures of anxiety and depression are reliable and they measure a kind of unhappiness.

• Problems:

• People could read the same question on a H survey, but think of diff meanings of happiness.
• You might try to find a ratio of + to - emotion. 3:1? But cultures vary in these baseline ratios. (See Argyle).
• There is reason to think the high % of self-reported happiness is implausible. (?)

• % of people with depression and loneliness and stress.

• Positivity bias or positivity illusion may explain this over-report.

• We might be better at measuring change in happiness than absolute happiness.

Gilbert, Chapter 2: The View from in Here

• Twins: Lori and Reba. How to assess their preference to stay together? How would you feel at the prospect of being joined that way? View from inside vs. View from outside.

• Types of happiness: emotional, moral - good feeling from realizing potential or acquiring virtue - (some elements of H-l), judgement happiness (H-l).

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

• Subjectivity of Yellow, 32. Yellow isnt’ the wavelength of light, it’s the experience, the psychological state. The idea of a preference is tied to something being more pleasant.
• Nozick's experience machine, 35. Happy Frank - we can’t deny that he might present as having a happy emotional state. (Perhaps goal of this analysis is to see that normal understanding of happiness includes life happiness, virtues, and perfective activities. These can’t be obtained by the experience machine and Frank doesn’t have it either.). This is progress. Lesson: you need to listen closely when people use the word “happy”.

• 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. You can’t have someone else’s experience.

• 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: [1]. Other perceptual aspects, 43-44. The card trick creates the illusion that he guessed your card, but that’s because you only remembered your card.

• 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. Same subjective experience of birthday cake, but different label.

• Consistent with the idea that someone is having the same experience as you from the same event, but labelling it differently because of limited experience.
• Can’t really say that aren’t as happy as you because they didn’t have your range of experiences. You don’t have theirs either.

• 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 than you from the same event because of their limited background AND that that experience is a real peak experience because of the limited background experience.
• 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.

• Drawing the theoretical 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. There is no “view from nowhere” (as in science). (Top of 53)

• Small group discussion: Thinking about R&L and "experience stretching" and "language squishing", Is our happiness limited by the limits of our experience? Can enriched experience (luxury, peak experiences, exotic experiences) "ruin you"? Does connoisseurship really pose a risk to happiness? Think of specific cases that may work differently.

SW2: Obstacles to Happiness (800 words)

• Stage 1: Please write an 800 word maximum answer to the following question by TBD, 2021 11:59pm.

• Topic:

• Topic: Drawing on resources from both Wilson and Gilbert in Unit 2, what are the main obstacles to happiness? Explicate these problems using evidence from these authors (650 words). Then, identify the top three or four pieces of advice you have for addressing these obstacles (250 words). (Try not to disclose your identity in your writing.)

• Advice about collaboration: Collaboration is part of the academic process and the intellectual world that college courses are based on, so it is important to me that you have the possibility to collaborate. I encourage you to collaborate with other students, but only up to the point of sharing ideas, references to class notes, and your own notes, verbally. Collaboration is also a great way to make sure that a high average level of learning and development occurs in the class. The best way to avoid plagiarism is to NOT share text of draft answers or outlines of your answer. Keep it verbal. Generate your own examples.

• Prepare your answer and submit it in the following way. You will lose points if you do not follow these instructions:

1. To assure anonymity, you must remove your name from the the "author name" that you may have provided when you set up your word processing application. For instructions on removing your name from an Word or Google document, [click here].
2. Format your answer in double spaced text, in a typical 12 point font, and using normal margins. Do not add spaces between paragraphs and indent the first line of each paragraph.
3. Do not put your name in the file or filename. You may put your student ID number in the file. Always put a word count in the file. Save your file for this assignment with the name: TBD.
4. To turn in your assignment, log into courses.alfino.org, click on the "1 - Points - SW1" dropbox.
5. If you cannot meet a deadline, you must email me about your circumstances (unless you are having an emergency) before the deadline or you will lose points.

• Stage 2: Please evaluate four student answers and provide brief comments and a score. Review the Assignment Rubric for this exercise. We will be using the Flow and Content areas of the rubric for this assignment. Complete your evaluations and scoring by TBD, 2023, 11:59pm.

• To determine the papers you need to peer review, open the file called "#Key.xls" in the shared folder. You will see a worksheet with saint names in alphabetically order, along with animal names. Find your saint name and review the next four (4) animals' work below your animal name. If you get to the bottom of the list before reaching 4 animals, go to the top of the list and continue.

• Use this Google Form to evaluate four peer papers. Submit the form once for each review.

• Some papers may arrive late. If you are in line to review a missing paper, allow a day or two for it to show up. If it does not show up, go back to the key and review the next animal's paper, continuing until you get four reviews. Do not review more than four papers.

• Stage 3: I will grade and briefly comment on your writing using the peer scores as an initial ranking. Assuming the process works normally, most of my scores probably be within 1-2 points of the peer scores, plus or minus.

• Stage 4: Back-evaluation: After you receive your peer comments and my evaluation, take a few minutes to fill out this quick "back evaluation" rating form: [2]. Fill out the form for each reviewer, but not Alfino. You must do the back evaluation to receive credit for the whole assignment. Failing to give back-evaluations unfairly affects other classmates.

• Back evaluations are due TBD, 2023, 11:59pm.