I am currently reading “The Pursuit of Unhappiness” by philosopher, Dan Haybron. My interest in the book was aroused by some quotes in a post on one of Henry Scouteguazza’s blogs, which suggested that Haybron’s book presented a challenge to classical liberal optimism, i.e. optimism about the capacity of individuals to achieve happiness if they have the liberty to pursue it. I had previously read articles by Haybron and was favourably impressed by them, so decided to read the book even though it might cause me to re-think my views yet again (and despite my aversion to the title).
A lot of the material that I have read and commented on in this blog seems to question the case for classical liberal optimism. I think that is because much of modern writing on this topic tends to view individual rationality in setting and pursuing goals as conventional wisdom that should be challenged. Since I began reading in this area I have become a lot more aware of the potential for individuals to fail to pursue happiness effectively. (For example, see posts discussing views of Dan Gilbert, Dan Ariely, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, and Colin Camerer.) I still believe, nevertheless, that not only is it good to respect the liberty of others – to allow them to live as seems good to themselves - but it also usually does people good to take responsibility for the running of their own lives. It is possible that I might modify these views after I have finished reading “The Pursuit of Unhappiness”.
At this stage I have only read the first half of the book, discussing how happiness can most usefully be perceived. Very briefly, Haybron argues in favour of an emotional state view of happiness rather than either the hedonic view or the life satisfaction view. He rejects the hedonic view (that happiness is pleasure) largely on the grounds that pleasure is something that happens to a person (having pleasant experiences) whereas happiness is a deeper psychological condition. He rejects the view that happiness is life satisfaction for two main reasons. First, he argues that the attitudes that people have toward their lives tend to be unstable - influenced by whatever events come to mind. (I think he overstates this point because of evidence I have discussed in an earlier post that life satisfaction judgements can be fairly stable.) Second, he argues that life satisfaction judgements are inherently ethically loaded e.g. our judgement about our lives may be influenced by such factors as whether or not we think it is admirable to count our blessings.
Haybron argues that happiness consists of a person’s overall emotional condition. A happy person’s emotional condition is broadly positive – involving stances of attunement (peace of mind, confidence and inner freedom), engagement (vitality and flow) and endorsement (joy, cheerfulness).
My initial reaction is that Haybron has presented a persuasive argument that the happiness label belongs on the jar containing positive emotional states rather than on the jars containing pleasures or life satisfaction. This does not rule out the possibility that hedonic considerations and life satisfaction may still be important and closely related to happiness even though they are not the same thing as happiness.
However, I have two reservations. First, Haybron’s argument about the nature of happiness will not prevent the continued generic use of the term to cover a variety of influences on well-being as in the phrase “gross national happiness”. Some potential for semantic confusion will remain even if Haybron’s argument is widely accepted by happiness researchers.
My second reservation is that in the process of his labelling exercise I think the author overstates the difference between positive emotional states and life satisfaction. I will explain why in my next post.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Why is Rudd's essay like toxic debt?
When Jim asked me what I thought of Kevin Rudd’s lengthy essay on the global financial crisis (published in the February 2009 issue of “The Monthly”) I said it was like a CDO. He said: “I agree. Its just a heap of garbage.”
I replied: “No, that’s not what I meant. What Rudd has done in writing this essay is like constructing a CDO. He has taken some reasonable stuff, combined it with some garbage and then dressed it up to look like gold. No-one knows what it is worth.”
Jim interrupted: “We have to pay $7.95 to get a copy. How is that for unrestrained capitalism? We actually have to pay to read the views of our prime minister.”
I ignored Jim’s comment. I continued: “The problem is that I can’t work out whether he is full of crap or just pretending. For example, if we can believe that his praise for the Hawke-Keating governments’ economic liberalisation is sincere, then we can be reasonably confident that his attack on what he describes as “the great neo-liberal experiment” is just a political labelling exercise designed to make Australia’s former government and current opposition look responsible for the world financial crisis. If we can believe that then we don’t have too much to worry about. But what if Janet Albrechtsen is right? What if Rudd’s claim to be a fiscal conservative before the last election was just a charade? What if his social democratic dream all along was to engage in an orgiastic spending spree on borrowed money?” (This is a reference to Janet Albrechtsen’s article ‘PM dumps facade for his ideological dream’, in “The Australian”, 4 February 2009.)
Jim looked puzzled. He said: “I thought the writing was on the wall before the 2007 election that Kevin’07 was no Paul Keating. Did you think his anti-market rhetoric at the time was just labelling? Can you imagine Rudd ever coming clean with the public, like Keating did before the recession in the early 1990s, and telling them that the Australian government can’t spend its way out of a world recession?”
I said: “I thought Rudd’s stuff before the election about not having to choose between Brezhnev and Hayek was just differentiating his product from John Howard’s. I didn’t like his misrepresentation of Hayek, but I thought Rudd was just a kinder and younger version of John Howard.”
Jim replied: “Well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. What do you think of Rudd’s latest package of spending measures?”
I picked up my copy of this morning’s Financial Review and said: “I can’t say it any better than this.” I pointed to the following passage in an article by Mark Latham, former leader of the Labor Party:
“In an open economy, Keynesian pump-priming drives down national savings and increases reliance on costly forms of foreign debt. It is a Band-Aid policy that does nothing to enhance long-term demand conditions and productive capacity. Its lasting legacy for Australia will be a return to deficit budgeting, government indebtedness and tax increases to pay for the spending spree” (Australian Financial Review, 5 Feb. ‘09).
After he had finished reading Jim said: “Yeah, Latham had his problems, but if we had to have a Labor government – and couldn’t have Keating as leader – then I would feel a lot more confident about Australia’s economic future if we now had Latham at the helm instead of Rudd.”
I replied: “No, that’s not what I meant. What Rudd has done in writing this essay is like constructing a CDO. He has taken some reasonable stuff, combined it with some garbage and then dressed it up to look like gold. No-one knows what it is worth.”
Jim interrupted: “We have to pay $7.95 to get a copy. How is that for unrestrained capitalism? We actually have to pay to read the views of our prime minister.”
I ignored Jim’s comment. I continued: “The problem is that I can’t work out whether he is full of crap or just pretending. For example, if we can believe that his praise for the Hawke-Keating governments’ economic liberalisation is sincere, then we can be reasonably confident that his attack on what he describes as “the great neo-liberal experiment” is just a political labelling exercise designed to make Australia’s former government and current opposition look responsible for the world financial crisis. If we can believe that then we don’t have too much to worry about. But what if Janet Albrechtsen is right? What if Rudd’s claim to be a fiscal conservative before the last election was just a charade? What if his social democratic dream all along was to engage in an orgiastic spending spree on borrowed money?” (This is a reference to Janet Albrechtsen’s article ‘PM dumps facade for his ideological dream’, in “The Australian”, 4 February 2009.)
Jim looked puzzled. He said: “I thought the writing was on the wall before the 2007 election that Kevin’07 was no Paul Keating. Did you think his anti-market rhetoric at the time was just labelling? Can you imagine Rudd ever coming clean with the public, like Keating did before the recession in the early 1990s, and telling them that the Australian government can’t spend its way out of a world recession?”
I said: “I thought Rudd’s stuff before the election about not having to choose between Brezhnev and Hayek was just differentiating his product from John Howard’s. I didn’t like his misrepresentation of Hayek, but I thought Rudd was just a kinder and younger version of John Howard.”
Jim replied: “Well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. What do you think of Rudd’s latest package of spending measures?”
I picked up my copy of this morning’s Financial Review and said: “I can’t say it any better than this.” I pointed to the following passage in an article by Mark Latham, former leader of the Labor Party:
“In an open economy, Keynesian pump-priming drives down national savings and increases reliance on costly forms of foreign debt. It is a Band-Aid policy that does nothing to enhance long-term demand conditions and productive capacity. Its lasting legacy for Australia will be a return to deficit budgeting, government indebtedness and tax increases to pay for the spending spree” (Australian Financial Review, 5 Feb. ‘09).
After he had finished reading Jim said: “Yeah, Latham had his problems, but if we had to have a Labor government – and couldn’t have Keating as leader – then I would feel a lot more confident about Australia’s economic future if we now had Latham at the helm instead of Rudd.”
Thursday, January 29, 2009
How can people know what they really want?
It was something I said that got Jim started on this topic. I was talking nostalgically about the lifestyle of the people in the farming community where I grew up. Most of these people knew what they wanted from life and they knew that they were well on the way toward getting it. A lot of the drudgery was disappearing from their lives with the introduction of electricity and the labour saving devices that we now take for granted. These people enjoyed the inner freedom of knowing that they were in control of their own lives. Most of them worked long hours, but they also volunteered a lot of time to work on community projects. Their social life was centred around fund-raising for the local school and charities. They liked their lifestyle and they wouldn’t think of swapping places with anyone living in a big city. They liked to go to “the big smoke” now and then, “just to see how the other half lived”, but they couldn’t understand how anyone would want to live there.
I can remember Jim saying: “You probably aren’t going to agree with this, but I think that these days a lot of people have a huge problem in knowing what they want from life. They have allowed themselves to become slaves to the things they think they have to do. Some are so stressed out that they are drowning in an ocean of ‘have to’.”
I was surprised to hear this argument from Jim. I had thought he would have been the kind of person who would say that if someone didn’t know what they wanted from life, then they should just “give themselves a wake-up call”. So I decided to find out where he was coming from. I asked: “What do you think is responsible for this problem?”
Jim said: “These days everyone in high-income countries has a huge amount of choice about what they do with their time. No-one has to work many hours a week to get the basic necessities of life. But a lot of people don’t feel the freedom that this gives them. They buy things they don’t really want and then they have to spend their lives paying for them. The farmers you were talking about earlier knew what they wanted and knew how to get it. These days a lot of people don’t know what they want because they have never learned how to deal effectively with Self 1’s interference.”
I knew that Self 1 was a concept that Jim had taken from Tim Gallwey’s “inner game” books about playing sport and work, but I wanted to see how he would explain it. So I just continued to show interest.
Jim explained: “Self 1 is your internal coach that has learned how to give advice from your parents and other external coaches. It is the inner voice that keeps warning you and instructing you how to do things and telling you to try harder whenever you make a mistake. Self 1’s reminders are intended to be helpful but they lead us to mistrust and over-control ourselves.
Self 2 is your natural self that embodies all the inherent potential you were born with.”
I didn’t have any problems with Jim’s explanation of Tim Gallwey’s concepts but I couldn’t see their relevance. I said: “Don’t people need this inner voice to warn them before they get out their credit cards and sign their lives away?”
Jim replied: “The problem is that when Self 1 has some good advice people tend to rebel against it because it isn’t their own authentic inner voice. People who grow up on farms have more opportunity to develop an authentic inner voice of their own. This is because they spend a lot of time working with their parents and arguing with them about just about everything.”
Jim’s theory seemed highly simplistic but I thought it might have some merit. As I thought about Jim’s theory I recalled Jonathan Haidt’s elephant and rider metaphor, and wondered whether growing up on a farm might also help some people to identify with the elephant as well as the rider. I remembered Haidt’s comment: “We sometimes fall into the view that we are fighting with our unconscious, our id, or our animal self. But really we are the whole thing. We are the rider and we are elephant. Both have their strengths and special skills” (“The Happiness Hypothesis”, 2006: 22).
Meanwhile, Jim began explaining how Self 1 interference can keep people from knowing what they really want. He said: “As soon as you start to think about what you want from life, Self 1 is likely to chime in with comments about what you should or should not want because of his or her hopes, expectations or fears. This advice is well-meaning, but it comes from someone else. It might even sound like the voice of someone else talking to you. Knowing what you really want is a matter of thinking in positive terms about your own desires - outcomes that are consistent with your own potential and your own values and preferences.”
I said: “So, what you are saying is that if a man wants to be happy then his goal should be to earn a higher income than his wife’s sister’s husband.”
Jim gave the hint of a smile before he replied: “What I’m actually saying is that if people learn to trust themselves they will know what they really want from life.”
I can remember Jim saying: “You probably aren’t going to agree with this, but I think that these days a lot of people have a huge problem in knowing what they want from life. They have allowed themselves to become slaves to the things they think they have to do. Some are so stressed out that they are drowning in an ocean of ‘have to’.”
I was surprised to hear this argument from Jim. I had thought he would have been the kind of person who would say that if someone didn’t know what they wanted from life, then they should just “give themselves a wake-up call”. So I decided to find out where he was coming from. I asked: “What do you think is responsible for this problem?”
Jim said: “These days everyone in high-income countries has a huge amount of choice about what they do with their time. No-one has to work many hours a week to get the basic necessities of life. But a lot of people don’t feel the freedom that this gives them. They buy things they don’t really want and then they have to spend their lives paying for them. The farmers you were talking about earlier knew what they wanted and knew how to get it. These days a lot of people don’t know what they want because they have never learned how to deal effectively with Self 1’s interference.”
I knew that Self 1 was a concept that Jim had taken from Tim Gallwey’s “inner game” books about playing sport and work, but I wanted to see how he would explain it. So I just continued to show interest.
Jim explained: “Self 1 is your internal coach that has learned how to give advice from your parents and other external coaches. It is the inner voice that keeps warning you and instructing you how to do things and telling you to try harder whenever you make a mistake. Self 1’s reminders are intended to be helpful but they lead us to mistrust and over-control ourselves.
Self 2 is your natural self that embodies all the inherent potential you were born with.”
I didn’t have any problems with Jim’s explanation of Tim Gallwey’s concepts but I couldn’t see their relevance. I said: “Don’t people need this inner voice to warn them before they get out their credit cards and sign their lives away?”
Jim replied: “The problem is that when Self 1 has some good advice people tend to rebel against it because it isn’t their own authentic inner voice. People who grow up on farms have more opportunity to develop an authentic inner voice of their own. This is because they spend a lot of time working with their parents and arguing with them about just about everything.”
Jim’s theory seemed highly simplistic but I thought it might have some merit. As I thought about Jim’s theory I recalled Jonathan Haidt’s elephant and rider metaphor, and wondered whether growing up on a farm might also help some people to identify with the elephant as well as the rider. I remembered Haidt’s comment: “We sometimes fall into the view that we are fighting with our unconscious, our id, or our animal self. But really we are the whole thing. We are the rider and we are elephant. Both have their strengths and special skills” (“The Happiness Hypothesis”, 2006: 22).
Meanwhile, Jim began explaining how Self 1 interference can keep people from knowing what they really want. He said: “As soon as you start to think about what you want from life, Self 1 is likely to chime in with comments about what you should or should not want because of his or her hopes, expectations or fears. This advice is well-meaning, but it comes from someone else. It might even sound like the voice of someone else talking to you. Knowing what you really want is a matter of thinking in positive terms about your own desires - outcomes that are consistent with your own potential and your own values and preferences.”
I said: “So, what you are saying is that if a man wants to be happy then his goal should be to earn a higher income than his wife’s sister’s husband.”
Jim gave the hint of a smile before he replied: “What I’m actually saying is that if people learn to trust themselves they will know what they really want from life.”
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Can ethics have the same objectivity as scientific research?
Jim has many annoying habits. One of his most annoying habits is to pick up books that he sees lying around my office and then to read passages at random. I wouldn’t mind if he just read to himself, but after he has been reading for a while he reads selected passages aloud and then asks me what they mean. It is as though he is testing whether I have actually read the book.
When Jim saw my copy of “Invariances”, by Robert Nozick he asked: “Have you read this book?” Without thinking I admitted that I had read it and immediately began to wonder whether it had been wise to claim to have read the book. I added: “But there is a difference between reading and understanding.”
I think Jim sniffed blood. He opened the book about a quarter of the way through and started reading, while I pretended to continue to read a different book. After a minute or two Jim asked: “What does Nozick mean when he states: ‘... we can hold that something about the world makes true statements true’.” (p 74). I suppose I could have admitted that I wasn’t sure what Nozick meant, but I tried to bluff my way through. I said: “I can’t explain it more simply than that.” Jim asked: “Is he saying that people who believe that all truth is relative are out of touch with reality?”
I thought of saying that such people must think they live in different worlds from the one we live in, but I decided the time had come to acknowledge the limitations of my understanding. I told Jim that I actually found the final chapter of “Invariances” a lot easier to understand than the first chapter. Jim flipped to a point about three-quarters of the way through the book and began reading. After a while he asked: “What did Nozick mean when he wrote: ‘an objective belief or judgement is one that arises through a process that does not tend to be directed away from the truth by the operation of biasing factors’.” (p 287) I explained that Nozick argued that it was possible for scientific research to be a reliable process for arriving at true beliefs. For example, while an individual scientist’s bias in favour of his pet theory might lead him astray, the scientific process can still be objective as long as other scientists are free to try to disprove his theory.
Jim read on for a while, and then asked: “Is Nozick actually saying here that ethical statements can be objective in the same way that scientific statements can be objective?” Fortunately, I was able to refer Jim to the following notes I had made when I read the book:
- Ethics evolved to enable us to co-ordinate our activities with others for mutual benefit.
- The ethics of respect is the first layer of ethics – mandating cooperation for mutual benefit e.g. respect for life and property, non-interference with others etc.
- Objectivity is required in ethical judgements to shield people from bias. Various devices have been proposed to promote objectivity e.g. Adam Smith’s ideal of an impartial observer and Rawls’ concept of a veil of ignorance.
- Objective ethical truths are held to have symmetry, or invariance, in their application e.g. the golden rule and Kant’s categorical imperative.
- The adoption of greater ethical symmetry (e.g. through rule of law) has extended the scope of impersonal dealings with non-relatives which in turn has enabled huge improvements in living standards in many countries.
After looking at my notes Jim flipped to the end of the book and began reading again. A little while later he made a loud noise. In fact, he uttered a profanity - one that some readers of this blog might find highly offensive. If Jim’s wife, Agnes, had been present she would have told Jim that what he said was “unnecessary”. Nevertheless, the profanity did serve to get my attention.
Jim said: “ Nozick was brilliant! Look, he makes the point here that the evolution of conscious self awareness – the attribute that marks us as human - was crucial to enable us to reflect on our own behaviour. And this reflection helps us to act in accordance with norms of cooperation for mutual benefit. Now listen to this.”
Jim then read aloud from one of the final paragraphs: “ ...if conscious self-awareness was selected for because it makes us capable of ethical behaviour, then ethics, even the very first layer of the ethics of respect, truly is what makes us human.” (p 300)
Jim added: “Don’t you wish you had written that?”
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