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Journal of Happiness Studies

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01-10-2010 | Research Paper

Happiness in a Flux? The Instability Problem

Author: Krister Bykvist

Published in: Journal of Happiness Studies | Issue 5/2010

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Abstract

In the recent discussion of happiness it has become popular to claim that being happy means having a certain positive attitude towards your life. This attitude involves both a judgement that your life measures up to your standards and a feeling of satisfaction with your life. In this paper, I am going to discuss a serious problem inherent in this account that has important ramifications for the normative question of how we ought to pursue happiness. If happiness is in part determined by your standards, how shall we determine whether you are happier in one life than in another when your standards change across these lives? Perhaps you will judge a life as a parent as better than a childless life, if you were to become a parent, but judge a childless life as better than a parenting life, if you were to remain childless. Which standard should determine the comparative happiness of the two lives? In this paper, I shall argue that some innocent-looking answers to this question will generate inconsistencies. To find an acceptable resolution, we need to make a difficult choice between what on the face of it look like two equally valid principles of happiness.

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The list of proponents of the life satisfaction view, or something close to it, is very long. It includes Brülde (1998), Kekes (1982), Nozick (1989), Tatarkiewicz (1966) and Von Wright (1963).

See, for instance, Diener and Emmons (1985).

Nor do they want to say that, relative to the earlier time, you had a happy life on the whole, but relative to the later time, you did not have a happy life on the whole. We want to know whether you had a happy life, period. Of course, this is not to deny that your happiness level can change over time; it is only to deny that your happiness level for a certain period is a relative matter.

Feldman (2008) suggests that it is best to take the life satisfaction approach to be a two-part theory. The first part would give a measure of happiness at a moment, based upon the amount of the relevant sort of whole life satisfaction at that moment. The second part would give a measure of happiness in the life as a whole based upon some sort of aggregation of happiness levels at moments within the life.

Structurally similar examples concerning desire-based well-being are presented in Bricker (1980), pp. 381–401, and Gibbard (1992).

Structurally similar arguments applied to desire-based well-being are given in Bykvist (2006a, b, 2010).

Feldman (2008) points out that the happiness of a happy-go-lucky person crucially depends on him not reflecting on all important aspects of his life.

This kind of conditionality is discussed in Parfit (1992), p. 151.

Bricker (1980) defends a similar theory applied to well-being. Bykvist (2010) provides a thorough defence of a ‘diagonal theory’ of well-being against the competitors.

The ‘diagonal happiness’ theory can be seen as a version of Feldman’s two-part theory, introduced in footnote 4, if we understand ‘relevant sort of whole life satisfaction at a time’ as ‘the degree of match between the whole life and the standards adopted at a time’. Note that this is not the only way to understand ‘relevant sort of whole life satisfaction at a time’. We could instead understand it in comparative terms. For instance, we could say that a life x has more whole life satisfaction at time t than another life y if x is better than y, by both the standards adopted at t in x and the ones adopted at t in y. (Obviously, when the standards from different lives conflict we need some way of aggregating the corresponding comparative judgements.).

For a thorough discussion on this problem applied to desire-based well-being, see, for instance Sobel (1994), p. 801.

Sobel (1994), p. 801.

A subjective theory of happiness which simply identifies happiness with pleasant sensations will have to make sense of the judgement that my experiences are more pleasant to me that your experiences are pleasant to you—a task that does not seem significantly easier than the task of making sense of the judgement that my life matches my standards more than your life matches your standards. In both cases, there is a problem of calibration.

Luc Bovens and Dennis McKerlie helped me appreciate this objection.

Telfer (1980), p. 8.

Sugden (1985), p. 77.

I am only taken into account the negative value of regret here. But the results would be the same if we also took into account the positive value of rejoicing, the value of leading a higher-ranked life. The rejoice-value for first members of the pairs (x, y), (y, z), and (z, x) would be the same, namely 3 (5–2). Replacing the zeros in the text with 3s would obviously not make any difference to the rankings.

It would be conceptually impossible if being happier is a transitive relation, that is, if from the fact that you are happier in x than y, happier in y than in z, we can conclude you must be happier in x than in z. For you cannot both be happier in x than in z, and happier in z than in x.

Dennis McKerlie uses this example to defend a regret-sensitive view of desire-based well-being. See McKerlie (2007), p. 50.

For a nice overview of the problems facing the life satisfaction view, see Haybron (2008), ch. 5.

I am very grateful to Bengt Brülde for incisive comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Brandt, R. B. (1967). Happiness. In P. Edwards (Ed.), Encyclopedia of philosophy (pp. 413–414). New York: The Macmillan Company & the Free Press.

Bricker, P. (1980). Prudence. Journal of Philosophy, LXXVII(7), 381–401.CrossRef

Brülde, B. (1998). The human good. PhD dissertation, University of Gothenburg.

Bykvist, K. (1998). Changing preferences. A study in preferentialism. Uppsaliensis: Acta Universitatis.

Bykvist, K. (2006a). Prudence for changing selves. Utilitas, 18(3), 264–283.CrossRef

Bykvist, K. (2006b). What are desires good for? Towards a coherent endorsement theory. Ratio, 14, 286–304.CrossRef

Bykvist, K. (2010). Can unstable preferences provide a stable standard of well-being. Economics and Philosophy, 26(1), 1–26.CrossRef

Diener, E., Emmons, R. A., et al. (1985). The satisfaction with life scale. Journal of Personality Assessment, 49, 71–75.CrossRef

Feldman, F. (2008). Whole life satisfaction concept of happiness. Theoria, 74(3), 219–238.CrossRef

Gibbard, A. (1992). Interpersonal comparisons: preference, good, and the intrinsic reward of a life. In J. Elster & A. Hylland (Eds.), Foundations of social choice theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Haybron, D. (2008). The pursuit of unhappiness. OUP.

Kekes, J. (1982). Happiness. Mind, 91, 358–376.CrossRef

McKerlie, D. (2007). Comments on Bykvist’s ‘prudence for changing selves’. Utilitas, 19, 47–50.CrossRef

Nozick, R. (1989). The examined life. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Parfit, D. (1992). Reasons and persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press (Appendix I).

Sobel, D. (1994). Full information accounts of well-being. Ethics, 104, 784–810.CrossRef

Sugden, R. (1985). Regret, recrimination, and rationality. Theory and Decision, 19, 77–99.CrossRef

Sumner, L. W. (1996). Welfare, happiness, and ethics. New York: Oxford.

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Telfer, E. (1980). Happiness. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Von Wright, G. H. (1963). The varieties of goodness. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Title: Happiness in a Flux? The Instability Problem
Author: Krister Bykvist
Publication date: 01-10-2010
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
Published in: Journal of Happiness Studies / Issue 5/2010
Print ISSN: 1389-4978
Electronic ISSN: 1573-7780
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-010-9210-1

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