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What Is This Thing Called Happiness? Fred Feldman

Published in print: 2010 Published Online: May Publisher: Oxford University Press 2010 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780199571178 eISBN: 9780191722547 acprof:oso/9780199571178.001.0001 Item type: book

This book is a philosophical study of the nature and value of happiness. Part I is devoted to critical discussion of the most important theories about the nature of happiness, understood as some sort of psychological state. Views discussed include sensory hedonism, local preferentism, Kahneman's theory, and Whole Life Satisfactionism. Part II of the book contains the exposition and defense of a novel theory about the nature and value of happiness. It is a form of attitudinal hedonism. The idea that a person's welfare, or well‐being, depends essentially on happiness is explained and (with reservations) defended, provided that happiness is understood according to the theory presented here. Part III of the book extends the discussion into some areas that bear on interactions between empirical research concerning happiness and philosophical inquiry into the same phenomenon. Current methods of measuring happiness are criticized and a new method is proposed. Philosophical implications of empirical research concerning happiness are evaluated.

Whole Life Satisfaction Concepts of Happiness Fred Feldman

in What Is This Thing Called Happiness? Published in print: 2010 Published Online: May Publisher: Oxford University Press 2010 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780199571178 eISBN: 9780191722547 acprof:oso/9780199571178.003.0005 Item type: chapter

The most popular concepts of happiness among psychologists are ones according to which happiness is “satisfaction with life as a whole”. There are hundreds of non‐equivalent forms of Whole Life Satisfactionism. However, every precise conception either requires actual satisfaction with life or requires hypothetical satisfaction with life. Arguments are presented to demonstrate that a person can be “happy” even though Page 1 of 6

he is not actually making any judgment about the extent to which he is satisfied with his life. Other arguments show that a person can be “unhappy” even though it is not correct to say that if he were to think about his life, he would be dissatisfied with it. This shows that happiness cannot be identified with whole life satisfaction. Appendix A contains discussion of problems concerning interactions between temporal considerations and WLS theories of happiness. Appendix B discusses the idea that happiness can be defined as the score that a person achieves on a suitable happiness test.

International Differences in Well-Being Ed Diener, Daniel Kahneman, and John Helliwell

Published in print: 2010 Published Online: May Publisher: Oxford University Press 2010 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780199732739 eISBN: 9780199776887 acprof:oso/9780199732739.001.0001 Item type: book

This book draws together the latest work from scholars around the world using subjective well-being data to understand and compare well-being across countries and cultures. Starting from many different vantage points, the book reaches a consensus that many measures of subjective well-being, ranging from life evaluations through emotional states, based on memories and current evaluations, merit broader collection and analysis. Using data from the Gallup World Poll, the World Values Survey, and other internationally comparable surveys, the chapters document wide divergences among countries in all measures of subjective wellbeing. The international differences are greater for life evaluations than for emotions. Despite the well-documented differences in the ways in which subjective evaluations change through time and across cultures, the bulk of the very large international differences in life evaluations are due to differences in life circumstances rather than differences in the way these differences are evaluated.

Life Satisfaction

Arie Kapteyn, James P. Smith, and van Soest Arthur in International Differences in Well-Being Published in print: 2010 Published Online: May Publisher: Oxford University Press 2010 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780199732739 eISBN: 9780199776887 acprof:oso/9780199732739.003.0004 Item type: chapter

This chapter analyzes the determinants of global life satisfaction in two countries (The Netherlands and the U.S.), by using both self-reports and responses to a battery of vignette questions. This chapter finds Page 2 of 6

global life satisfaction of happiness is well-described by four domains: job or daily activities, social contacts and family, health, and income. Among the four domains, social contacts and family have the highest impact on global life satisfaction, followed by job and daily activities and health. Income has the lowest impact. As in other work, the chapter finds that American response styles differ from the Dutch in that Americans are more likely to use the extremes of the scale (either very satisfied or very dissatisfied) than the Dutch, who are more inclined to stay in the middle of the scale. Although for both Americans and the Dutch, income is the least important determinant of global life satisfaction, it is more important in the U.S. than in The Netherlands. Indeed life satisfaction varies substantially more with income in the U.S. than in The Netherlands.

Well‐Being

Valerie Tiberius and Alexandra Plakias in The Moral Psychology Handbook Published in print: 2010 Published Online: Publisher: Oxford University Press September 2010 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780199582143 eISBN: 9780191594496 acprof:oso/9780199582143.003.0013 Item type: chapter

Whether it is to be maximized or promoted as the object of a duty of beneficence, well-being is a vitally important notion in ethical theory. Well-being is a value, but to play the role it has often been assigned by ethical theory it must also be something we can measure and compare. It is a normative concept, then, but it also seems to have empirical content. Historically, philosophical conceptions of well-being have been responsive to the paired demands for normative and empirical adequacy. However, recent work has yet to pay serious attention to the burgeoning field of well-being research in empirical psychology. This might be because the research is new and unknown, or it might be due to uncertainty about how a philosophical investigation would take such research into account. This chapter offers solutions to both of these problems. It provides an overview of well-being research in empirical psychology. It then uses this overview as part of an argument for an empirical informed account of well-being that we call the Value-Based Life Satisfaction Account.

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The Aggregation of Satisfactions: General Satisfaction as an Aggregate Bernard Van Praag

in Happiness Quantified: A Satisfaction Calculus Approach Published in print: 2007 Published Online: May Publisher: Oxford University Press 2008 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780199226146 eISBN: 9780191718595 acprof:oso/9780199226146.003.0004 Item type: chapter

This chapter focuses on the development of the satisfaction aggregation model. Satisfaction with life as a whole is analysed as a weighted aggregate of the domain satisfactions. It is shown that various domain levels can be distinguished, leading to a two- or three-layer model. The model is applied to job satisfaction for the British data set; the job is broken down into sub-domains such as salary, safety, permanence, etc. The employee then evaluates his/her job based on these sub-domain satisfactions. It is argued that various satisfactions can be dealt with as observable numerical variables, which can be analysed by traditional econometric one- and multiple-equation(s) models.

International Evidence on the Social Context of Well-Being

John F. Helliwell, Chris Barrington-Leigh, Anthony Harris, and Haifang Huang in International Differences in Well-Being Published in print: 2010 Published Online: May Publisher: Oxford University Press 2010 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780199732739 eISBN: 9780199776887 acprof:oso/9780199732739.003.0010 Item type: chapter

This chapter uses the first three waves of the Gallup World Poll to investigate differences across countries, cultures, and regions in the factors linked to life satisfaction, paying special attention to the social context. The principal findings are: First, using the larger pooled sample, the chapter finds that answers to the satisfaction with life and Cantril ladder questions provide consistent views of what constitutes a good life, with an average of the two measures providing a clearer picture than either measure on its own. Second, this chapter finds strong evidence for the importance of both income and social context variables in explaining within-country and international differences in well-being. For most specifications tested, the combined effects of a few measures of the social and institutional context are as large as those of income in explaining both international and intra-national differences in life satisfaction. Third, the very significant influences of both income and social factors permit the calculation of compensating differentials for social factors. We find very large income-equivalent values for key Page 4 of 6

measures of the social context. Fourth, the international similarity of the estimated equations suggests that the large international differences in average life evaluations are not due to different approaches to the meaning of a good life, but to differing social, institutional, and economic life circumstances.

Reflective Values Valerie Tiberius

in The Reflective Life: Living Wisely With Our Limits Published in print: 2008 Published Online: May Publisher: Oxford University Press 2008 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780199202867 eISBN: 9780191707988 acprof:oso/9780199202867.003.0002 Item type: chapter

This chapter begins by outlining a philosophical account of value commitments and reflective values that highlights the importance of stability, justification, and experience. This account is intended only to explicate the features that a value commitment must have in order to serve as a standard of evaluation in reflection. It is proposed that our reflective values are plural and include life-satisfaction, self-direction, social relationships, and moral ends. Two kinds of arguments are presented. The first is familiar in philosophy: it is argued that certain values are simply presupposed by the Reflective Wisdom Account. The second kind of argument uses empirical findings in psychology as a basis for claims about reflective values.

Having a Life

Stewart D. Friedman and Jeffrey H. Greenhaus in Work and Family—Allies or Enemies?: What Happens When Business Professionals Confront Life Choices Published in print: 2000 Published Online: Publisher: Oxford University Press October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780195112757 eISBN: 9780199848737 acprof:oso/9780195112757.003.0004 Item type: chapter

It will come as little surprise that constant gender role stereotypes have a lot to do with the life satisfaction of people in the survey, and probably that of most readers. Most men are busy being breadwinners. They experience greater life satisfaction in their family roles to the level they spend more time at work — which is true with the common notion that a man's identity is molded largely by his work role, and that a great breadwinner is a satisfied and contented family man. However, women get family satisfaction when they play their nurturing roles at home, and Page 5 of 6

when they take advantage of the emotional support that comes from social networks at work. This fits well with the common view of women.

Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics L. W. Sumner

Published in print: 1999 Published Online: Publisher: Oxford University Press October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780198238782 eISBN: 9780191679773 acprof:oso/9780198238782.001.0001 Item type: book

Moral philosophers agree that welfare matters. But they do not agree about what it is, or how much it matters. This book presents an original theory of welfare, investigating its nature and discussing its importance. It considers and rejects all notable rival theories, both objective and subjective, including hedonism and theories founded on desire or preference. The book's own theory connects welfare closely with happiness or life satisfaction. The book then proceeds to defend welfarism, that is, to argue (against the value pluralism that currently dominates moral philosophy) that welfare is the only basic ethical value, the only thing which we have a moral reason to promote for its own sake. It concludes by discussing the implications of this thesis for ethical and political theory.

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