Okay, let me try starting from before that point then.
There’s a bunch of things commonly referred to as emotions. Happiness is one. Anger is another. Sadness is a third. This list is not exhaustive but there’s lots of lists of emotions, here’s one.
Have you ever felt any of these, such that you could say “gosh, I’m really angry right now” as a fact about the world?
basically agree with #3, and agree with what #4 says but almost certainly not with what you mean by it. (I also—obviously—disagree with the notion that these things form some kind of meaningful sequence of specificity or claim strength etc.)
- wait. You don’t think happiness is a thing that people can notice about themselves, but you do think there’s some kind of circumstance that makes a particular person happy? Like, I could go to the beach, and I would be happy, but I couldn’t notice that fact? I put them in that order because I assumed if you were going to disagree with one of them you’d also disagree with all the ones after, so I’m pretty surprised here.
I think many of the things on that list are not emotions. (I mean, surely “creative” is not an emotion? “Respected”? “Intimate”? “Exposed”? “Sceptical”? “Judgmental”??)
Have you ever felt any of these, such that you could say “gosh, I’m really angry right now” as a fact about the world?
Of course.
You don’t think happiness is a thing that people can notice about themselves, but you do think there’s some kind of circumstance that makes a particular person happy? Like, I could go to the beach, and I would be happy, but I couldn’t notice that fact? I put them in that order because I assumed if you were going to disagree with one of them you’d also disagree with all the ones after, so I’m pretty surprised here.
You wrote (#1):
Happiness is some kind of state humans can be in, and they can notice when they’re happy or unhappy if they check.
I think that thinking of happiness as a “state” is basically a mistake even if there’s some technical sense in which it’s true. I also do not think that people are very good at noticing whether they’re happy or unhappy. I wouldn’t go so far as to say “can’t” but it’s not like checking whether you’re angry (which usually has relatively standard and straightforwardly checkable physiological correlates). I expect that the average person asking “am I happy right now” is more likely than not to get a wrong or nonsensical answer.
You also wrote (#2):
Happiness is a state humans can prefer to be in.
As above, I don’t think that happiness is a “state” in a useful sense of the word, but I do think that humans can (and most, probably, do) prefer to be happy rather than not being happy.
And (#3):
Some kind of repeatable, particular circumstances predictably make a human happier and others unhappier.
Yep, generally true. One can quibble with this (e.g. the caveats that you give in parentheses), but as a basic pattern it is true.
But:
You don’t think happiness is a thing that people can notice about themselves, but you do think there’s some kind of circumstance that makes a particular person happy?
Ah, but notice the difference: “make a person happier” vs. “make a person happy”. The latter makes sense if happiness is just an emotional state that one can be in. But if that’s not right—if happiness is more like a characteristic of a person’s experience over time, for example—then the latter form doesn’t make much sense anymore. But the former makes sense either way.
Okay, let me try starting from before that point then.
There’s a bunch of things commonly referred to as emotions. Happiness is one. Anger is another. Sadness is a third. This list is not exhaustive but there’s lots of lists of emotions, here’s one.
Have you ever felt any of these, such that you could say “gosh, I’m really angry right now” as a fact about the world?
- wait. You don’t think happiness is a thing that people can notice about themselves, but you do think there’s some kind of circumstance that makes a particular person happy? Like, I could go to the beach, and I would be happy, but I couldn’t notice that fact? I put them in that order because I assumed if you were going to disagree with one of them you’d also disagree with all the ones after, so I’m pretty surprised here.
I do not agree with this.
(But if you consider happiness to be an emotion, then it makes even less sense to optimize for it!)
I think many of the things on that list are not emotions. (I mean, surely “creative” is not an emotion? “Respected”? “Intimate”? “Exposed”? “Sceptical”? “Judgmental”??)
Of course.
You wrote (#1):
I think that thinking of happiness as a “state” is basically a mistake even if there’s some technical sense in which it’s true. I also do not think that people are very good at noticing whether they’re happy or unhappy. I wouldn’t go so far as to say “can’t” but it’s not like checking whether you’re angry (which usually has relatively standard and straightforwardly checkable physiological correlates). I expect that the average person asking “am I happy right now” is more likely than not to get a wrong or nonsensical answer.
You also wrote (#2):
As above, I don’t think that happiness is a “state” in a useful sense of the word, but I do think that humans can (and most, probably, do) prefer to be happy rather than not being happy.
And (#3):
Yep, generally true. One can quibble with this (e.g. the caveats that you give in parentheses), but as a basic pattern it is true.
But:
Ah, but notice the difference: “make a person happier” vs. “make a person happy”. The latter makes sense if happiness is just an emotional state that one can be in. But if that’s not right—if happiness is more like a characteristic of a person’s experience over time, for example—then the latter form doesn’t make much sense anymore. But the former makes sense either way.