scholarly journals Hedonism and Happiness in Theory and Practice

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Daniel Michael Weijers
Keyword(s):  
Meaning In Life ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Main Question ◽  
Experience Machine ◽  
Good For ◽  
Philosophical Debates

<p>In this thesis, I investigate several different questions about happiness and hedonism in theory and practice and offer several arguments and theories. In addition to making progress in these happiness-related areas of inquiry, this thesis aims to demonstrate the complexity and variety of happiness-related problems and the broad range of real-world problems that considerations of happiness can help to resolve. Furthermore, nearly every chapter of this thesis demonstrates how interdisciplinary analyses can bring new movement to problems that have become insulated within one academic discipline. This thesis is divided into two main parts. Chapters 1 through 5 constitute Part 1, and Chapters 6 through 8 constitute Part 2. Part 1 of this thesis is focused on theory and questions about what we should believe. In particular, Part 1 is concerned with Prudential Hedonism, a theory of what is good for a person, which claims (roughly) that a preponderance of pleasure over pain (sometimes referred to as happiness) is what is ultimately good for people. After providing a broad overview of hedonism, and especially Prudential Hedonism, in Chapter 1, the remainder of Part 1 focuses on one main question from philosophical debates about well-being: does the experience machine thought experiment give us good reason to believe that internalist accounts of Prudential Hedonism are all false? The main conclusion that I argue for in Part 1 is that no, the experience machine thought experiment does not gives us good reason to believe that internalist accounts of Prudential Hedonism are all false. Part 2 of this thesis is focused on practice, and particularly on how considerations of happiness can inform certain practices and help us to understand what we should do in certain circumstances. Unlike Part 1, which has a smooth narrative flow from chapter to chapter, Part 2 contains three relatively unrelated chapters, each of which investigates a different question without relying on the conclusions of any previous chapters. Chapter 6 argues that an optimistic view about scientific and technological progress allows for two interesting new theories for the meaning of life debate, and discusses what people with certain kinds of belief might want to do to achieve true meaning in life. One of these theories posits that causing there to be infinite happiness can be a way to achieve a truly meaningful life. Chapter 7 demonstrates how considerations of human happiness can justify why a particular set of distributive principles are the fairest way to apportion the burdens associated with adapting to, and mitigating, the potentially devastating effects of rapid climactic change. Based on these considerations, Chapter 7 includes fairly specific policy recommendations about what governments should do about climate change. This thesis also includes a Postscript for Policymakers. Compared to Chapters 2 to 7, the Postscript for Policymakers takes a much higher-level approach; it seeks to provide general answers to two very broad questions. Given its broader scope and different intended audience, the Postscript for Policymakers does not include in-depth discussion of all likely objections. The two questions addressed in the Postscript for Policymakers are: should policymakers use findings from the science of happiness to guide their policy decisions, and how can they best do this? The Postscript for Policymakers concludes that findings from the science of happiness should be used to guide policymaking (with several qualifications), and it provides recommendations for how best to do this.</p>

scholarly journals Hedonism and Happiness in Theory and Practice

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Daniel Michael Weijers
Keyword(s):  
Meaning In Life ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Main Question ◽  
Experience Machine ◽  
Good For ◽  
Philosophical Debates

<p>In this thesis, I investigate several different questions about happiness and hedonism in theory and practice and offer several arguments and theories. In addition to making progress in these happiness-related areas of inquiry, this thesis aims to demonstrate the complexity and variety of happiness-related problems and the broad range of real-world problems that considerations of happiness can help to resolve. Furthermore, nearly every chapter of this thesis demonstrates how interdisciplinary analyses can bring new movement to problems that have become insulated within one academic discipline. This thesis is divided into two main parts. Chapters 1 through 5 constitute Part 1, and Chapters 6 through 8 constitute Part 2. Part 1 of this thesis is focused on theory and questions about what we should believe. In particular, Part 1 is concerned with Prudential Hedonism, a theory of what is good for a person, which claims (roughly) that a preponderance of pleasure over pain (sometimes referred to as happiness) is what is ultimately good for people. After providing a broad overview of hedonism, and especially Prudential Hedonism, in Chapter 1, the remainder of Part 1 focuses on one main question from philosophical debates about well-being: does the experience machine thought experiment give us good reason to believe that internalist accounts of Prudential Hedonism are all false? The main conclusion that I argue for in Part 1 is that no, the experience machine thought experiment does not gives us good reason to believe that internalist accounts of Prudential Hedonism are all false. Part 2 of this thesis is focused on practice, and particularly on how considerations of happiness can inform certain practices and help us to understand what we should do in certain circumstances. Unlike Part 1, which has a smooth narrative flow from chapter to chapter, Part 2 contains three relatively unrelated chapters, each of which investigates a different question without relying on the conclusions of any previous chapters. Chapter 6 argues that an optimistic view about scientific and technological progress allows for two interesting new theories for the meaning of life debate, and discusses what people with certain kinds of belief might want to do to achieve true meaning in life. One of these theories posits that causing there to be infinite happiness can be a way to achieve a truly meaningful life. Chapter 7 demonstrates how considerations of human happiness can justify why a particular set of distributive principles are the fairest way to apportion the burdens associated with adapting to, and mitigating, the potentially devastating effects of rapid climactic change. Based on these considerations, Chapter 7 includes fairly specific policy recommendations about what governments should do about climate change. This thesis also includes a Postscript for Policymakers. Compared to Chapters 2 to 7, the Postscript for Policymakers takes a much higher-level approach; it seeks to provide general answers to two very broad questions. Given its broader scope and different intended audience, the Postscript for Policymakers does not include in-depth discussion of all likely objections. The two questions addressed in the Postscript for Policymakers are: should policymakers use findings from the science of happiness to guide their policy decisions, and how can they best do this? The Postscript for Policymakers concludes that findings from the science of happiness should be used to guide policymaking (with several qualifications), and it provides recommendations for how best to do this.</p>

The Quality of Life

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Kraut
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
No Value ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Robert Nozick ◽  
Experience Machine ◽  
The World ◽  
Better Than

The Quality of Life: Aristotle Revised presents a philosophical theory about the constituents of human well-being. It begins with Aristotle’s thoughts about this topic, but often modifies and sometimes rejects them. The principal idea is that what Aristotle calls “external goods” (wealth, reputation, power) have at most an indirect bearing on the quality of our lives. A good internal life—the way in which we experience the world—is what well-being consists in. Pleasure is one aspect of this experience, but only a small part of it. Far more valuable is the quality of our emotional, intellectual, social, and perceptual experiences. These aspects of our existence make it potentially richer and deeper than the quality of life available to many other animals. A good human life is immeasurably better than that of a simple creature that feels only the pleasures of nourishment. Even if it felt pleasure for millions of years, human life would be superior. Contemporary discussions of well-being often appeal to a thought experiment devised by Robert Nozick, which holds that we should not attach ourselves to an “experience machine”—a device that manipulates our brains and gives us any illusory experiences of our choosing. This is thought to show that one’s interior life has little or no value on its own; that we must live in “the real world” to live well. In fact, however, this thought experiment supports the opposite conclusion: the quality of our lives consists in the quality of our experiences.

Experientialism and the Experience Machine

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Kraut
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Minor Importance ◽  
Other Minds ◽  
Causal Interaction ◽  
Material World ◽  
Experience Machine

Nozick’s thought experiment makes many assumptions about the experience machine that require re-examination. It raises questions about whether illusion and self-deception are inherently bad; about what it is to be active rather than passive; about what it is to be free; about the value of physical embodiment and causal interaction with the material world; about the value of fiction and beauty; and about solipsism. Would one’s life be bad, if there are no other minds? Posthumous harms and benefits are also thought to pose a problem for an experientialist conception of well-being. Aristotle wrongly believes that there are such harms and benefits, but his error is negligible, because he assigns them minor importance.

scholarly journals Reviving Hedonism about Well-Being: Refuting the Argument from False Pleasures and  Restricting the Relevance of Intuitive 'Evidence'

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Daniel Michael Turton
Keyword(s):  
Good Reason ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Sufficient Evidence ◽  
Warning Sign ◽  
Significant Information ◽  
The Road ◽  
Experience Machine ◽  
One Step ◽  
On The Road

<p>Throughout the vast majority of its history, hedonism about well-being has been perennially unpopular (Feldman 2004). The arguments in this essay take steps towards reviving the plausibility of hedonism about well-being. The main argument currently used to refute hedonism about well-being, the Argument from False Pleasures, is shown to lack sufficient evidence to be compelling. The main evidence provided for the Argument from False Pleasures comes in the form of two thought experiments, the Experience Machine (Nozick 1974) and the Deceived Businessman (Kagan 1998). These thought experiments typically produce strong intuitive responses, which are used to directly support the Argument from False Pleasures. This essay investigates how theories of well-being are currently evaluated by moral philosophers, with a specific focus on the place our intuitions have in the process. Indeed, the major role that moral intuitions play in evaluating theories of well-being, despite their sometimes dubious epistemic credentials, leads to an in-depth enquiry into their inner workings and potential for containing normatively significant information. The investigation, which draws on the work of Woodward and Allman (2007), concludes that intuitions about unrealistic thought experiments should not play an important role in evaluating theories of well-being. Rather, they should only act as a warning sign, highlighting moral propositions for further analysis. Based on these findings, a new method for assessing theories of well-being is suggested and applied to a specific internalist account of hedonism about well-being to show how the Deceived Businessman and Experience Machine thought experiments lack normative significance, leaving the Argument from False Pleasures without sufficient evidence to be compelling. Indeed, this essay concludes that the Argument from False Pleasures should no longer be thought to provide any good reason to believe that hedonism about well-being is implausible. This result is only one step on the road to reviving hedonism about well-being, but it is a very important one.</p>

scholarly journals Reviving Hedonism about Well-Being: Refuting the Argument from False Pleasures and  Restricting the Relevance of Intuitive 'Evidence'

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Daniel Michael Turton
Keyword(s):  
Good Reason ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Sufficient Evidence ◽  
Warning Sign ◽  
Significant Information ◽  
The Road ◽  
Experience Machine ◽  
One Step ◽  
On The Road

<p>Throughout the vast majority of its history, hedonism about well-being has been perennially unpopular (Feldman 2004). The arguments in this essay take steps towards reviving the plausibility of hedonism about well-being. The main argument currently used to refute hedonism about well-being, the Argument from False Pleasures, is shown to lack sufficient evidence to be compelling. The main evidence provided for the Argument from False Pleasures comes in the form of two thought experiments, the Experience Machine (Nozick 1974) and the Deceived Businessman (Kagan 1998). These thought experiments typically produce strong intuitive responses, which are used to directly support the Argument from False Pleasures. This essay investigates how theories of well-being are currently evaluated by moral philosophers, with a specific focus on the place our intuitions have in the process. Indeed, the major role that moral intuitions play in evaluating theories of well-being, despite their sometimes dubious epistemic credentials, leads to an in-depth enquiry into their inner workings and potential for containing normatively significant information. The investigation, which draws on the work of Woodward and Allman (2007), concludes that intuitions about unrealistic thought experiments should not play an important role in evaluating theories of well-being. Rather, they should only act as a warning sign, highlighting moral propositions for further analysis. Based on these findings, a new method for assessing theories of well-being is suggested and applied to a specific internalist account of hedonism about well-being to show how the Deceived Businessman and Experience Machine thought experiments lack normative significance, leaving the Argument from False Pleasures without sufficient evidence to be compelling. Indeed, this essay concludes that the Argument from False Pleasures should no longer be thought to provide any good reason to believe that hedonism about well-being is implausible. This result is only one step on the road to reviving hedonism about well-being, but it is a very important one.</p>

Foundations From Quantum Physics for a Normative Theory of Administration and Governance

Public Voices ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 35
Author(s):  
R. Philip Brown
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
Meaning In Life ◽  
Quantum Physics ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
The People ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Prime Meridian ◽  
Organizational Purpose ◽  
Organizing Principles

The modem American ethos is a brand of Lockean individualism gone wrong that now embraces rapacious self-interest as its prime meridian. A new ethicalmodel is necessary to combat this radical, soulless, and excessively particularistic form of individualism. The author proposes a journeyman philosophy of organization and governance for citizen and administrative practitioner alike based upon concepts from quantum theory. This normative model of administration, called authentic individualism, has certain ramifications for a more reflexive, creative and unorthodox approach to public administration. All institutions and organizations are systems guided by general organizing principles that should discard the humans as a resource model, make employee well-being an organizational purpose, encourage humans toward a sense of moral meaning in life and work, recognize legitimate leadership as emerging from the people who make up the organization, and fulfill obligations to the community that supports them and makes them successful.

An Invitation to a Thought Experiment

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shiv Visvanathan
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Scientific Education ◽  
Education In India

This chapter is an attempt to look at the question of quality within a wider vision of diversity and democracy. It is an effort to show how epistemological approaches to knowledge and democracy help to determine the quality of knowledge, life and well-being in a society. The chapter also discusses the problems of science and examines the current nature of discourse in scientific education in India.

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