What is it to be Happy? (Venue: Caffè Nero)

(Scroll down for topic intro)

THE VENUE: Caffè Nero

It is now autumn, so we will meet indoors for the next few months.

When we meet indoors, we run the same event in two locations: Caffè Nero and Starbucks, so as to provide capacity for as many people who would like to attend, without overwhelming any one venue. Thus, there will be two events published, and you can choose which one to attend. Please don't sign up for both. This event is for the Nero location.

We meet upstairs at Caffè Nero. An organiser will be present from 10.45. We are not charged for use of the space so it would be good if everyone bought at least one drink.

An attendee limit has been set so as not to overwhelm the venue.

Etiquette
Our discussions are friendly and open. We are a discussion group, not a for-and-against debating society. But it helps if we try to stay on topic. And we should not talk over others, interrupt them, or try to dominate the conversation.

There is often a waiting list for places, so please cancel your attendance as soon as possible if you subsequently find you can't come.

WhatsApp groups
We have two WhatsApp groups. One is to notify events, including extra events such as meeting for a meal or a drink during the week which we don't normally put on the Meetup site. The other is for open discussion of whatever topics occur to people. If you would like to join either or both groups, please send a note of the phone number you would like to use to Richard Baron on: website.audible238@passmail.net. (This is an alias that can be discarded if it attracts spam, hence the odd words.)

THE TOPIC: What is it to be Happy?

This week's topic has been prepared by Duncan, with help from https://1000wordphilosophy.com/2021/05/08/happiness/.

Do you want to be happy? If you’re like most people, then yes, you do.
But what is happiness? What does it mean to be “happy”? How would it feel to be happier than you are now? And how would you go about becoming happier?

We can consider four major philosophical theories of happiness.

According to hedonism, happiness is simply the experience of pleasure. A happy person has a lot more pleasure than displeasure (pain) in her life. To be happy, then, is just to feel good. In other words, there’s no difference between being happy and feeling happy.

But hedonism has some problems. Firstly, it’s possible to be happy without feeling good (such as when a happy person has a toothache), and it’s also possible to feel good without being happy (such as when an unhappy person gets a massage). Since happiness and pleasure can come apart, they can’t be the same thing.

Secondly, happiness and pleasure seem to have different properties. Pleasures are often fleeting, simple, and superficial (think of the pleasure involved in eating ice cream), whereas happiness is supposed to be lasting, complex, and profound. Things with different properties can’t be identical, so happiness can’t be the same thing as pleasure.
These arguments suggest that happiness and pleasure aren’t identical. That being said, it’s hard to imagine a happy person who never feels good. So, perhaps happiness involves pleasure without being identical to it.

According to the desire satisfaction theory, happiness consists in getting what you want - whatever that happens to be. A happy person has many of her desires satisfied; and the more her desires are satisfied, the happier she is.

Even though getting what you want can be a source of happiness, identifying happiness with desire satisfaction is problematic. To start, this implies that the only way to become happier is by satisfying a desire. This seems wrong. Sometimes our happiness is increased by getting something we didn’t previously want - such as a surprise birthday party or getting stuck taking care of a neighbour’s cat. This implies that desire satisfaction is not necessary for happiness.
Desire satisfaction is not always sufficient for happiness, either.

Unfortunately, it is common for people to feel disappointed when they get what they want. Many accomplishments, such as earning a degree or winning a tournament, simply don’t bring the long-lasting happiness that we expect.
So, even if getting what we want sometimes makes us happy, these counterexamples suggest that happiness does not consist in desire satisfaction.

According to the life satisfaction theory, happiness consists in being satisfied with your life. A happy person has a positive impression of her life in general, even though she might not be happy about every single aspect of it. To be happy, then, means to be content with your life as a whole.

It’s controversial whether life satisfaction is affective (a feeling) or cognitive (a belief). On the one hand, life satisfaction certainly comes with positive feelings. On the other hand, it’s possible to step back, reflect on your life, and realise that it’s good, even when you’re feeling down.

One problem for this theory is that it’s difficult for people to distinguish how they feel in the moment from how they feel about their lives overall. Studies have shown that people report feeling more satisfied with their lives when the weather is good, even though this shouldn’t make that much of a difference. But measuring life satisfaction is complicated, so perhaps such studies should be taken with a grain of salt.

According to virtue theory, happiness is the result of cultivating the virtues - both moral and intellectual - such as wisdom, courage, temperance, and patience. A happy person must be sufficiently virtuous. To be happy, then, is to cultivate excellence and to flourish as a result. This view is famously held by Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics.

Linking happiness to virtue has the advantage of treating happiness as a lasting, complex, and profound phenomenon. It also explains how happiness and pleasure can come apart, since a person can be virtuous without feeling good, and a person can feel good without being virtuous.

In spite of these advantages, however, virtue theory is questionable. An important part of being virtuous is being morally good. But are immoral people always unhappy? Arguably not. Many bad people seem happy in spite of - or even because of - their unsavoury actions. And a similar point can be made about intellectual virtue: unwise or irrational people aren’t always unhappy, either. In fact, some of these people seem happy as a direct result of their intellectual deficiencies. “Ignorance is bliss,” as the saying goes!

If happiness is life satisfaction, then happiness seems to be “subjective” in the sense that a person cannot be mistaken about whether or not she is happy. Whether happiness is subjective in this sense is controversial, and a person who thinks that a person can be mistaken about whether or not she is happy will probably favor a different theory of happiness.

But virtue theorists have a response here. Maybe some immoral people seem happy, on the surface; but that doesn’t mean that they are truly happy, at some deeper level. And the same thing can be said about people who lack the intellectual virtues: ignorance may lead to bliss, but that bliss isn’t true happiness. So, there seems to be some room for debate on these issues.

Which theory of happiness you think is true, based on these arguments?

Regardless, please come along on Sunday and make the rest of us happy.