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.require "memo.pub[let,jmc]" source;
.cb HAPPINESS IS A DUBIOUS CONCEPT


	Few ideas have caused as much unhappiness as the idea of happiness
itself.  Many people, perhaps most, believe that they do what they do
because they think it will make them happy, and if the action doesn't make
the actor happy, then it was pointless.  But when a person analyzes what
constitutes happiness for himself, the analysis usually fails, and he
finds all action pointless.  Fortunately, being human, at this point he
usually forgets the problem for a while or concocts some idea of happiness
whose hollowness later returns to haunt him.  He is usually happier when
he isn't thinking about happiness but rather pursuing a goal he has
somehow adopted.  This, perhaps over-simplified is the %2paradox of
hedonism.

	In order to understand it better, consider the following
mathematical formulation of the idea of happiness and its pursuit. A 
person has a sensation function %2input(t)%1 where ⊗t is time, and
happiness is defined by

.font A "MATH50";
!!a1:	%2H = %AI%4life %2happi(input(t)) dt%1,

where the function ⊗happi gives the "instantaneous happiness".
Sometimes the integrand is multiplied by a damping factor
of the form %2e%5-at%1 that serves to discount the future.
According to this theory, the success of a life would be the
value of this integral, and it should be engraved on the
tombstones of the members of the %2Society for Point-Count Living%1.

	In my opinion, most utilitarian philosophers from Bentham
to Rawls are essentially adherents of this theory, and I don't
suppose I have refuted it just by making a joke about it in
the previous paragraph.
The general form of the theory admits considerable
variation, because the instantaneous happiness function ⊗happi 
can be varied to give a variety of motivations
either as normative proposals or psychological theories.
Thus John Stuart Mill emphasized "higher pleasures"
in order to justify highly ethical behavior.
I suppose that most rational people form the theory spontaneously;
I believe I did.

	Nevertheless, the theory is wrong as a psychological description
of behavior, i.e. I claim people's actions can't be explained by supposing
that they do what they think will make them happy.  It is also wrong in
the normative sense; there is no way of fixing the function ⊗happi that in
fact will lead to a moral and personally satisfactory life.  I will argue
that attempting to fit one's own actions to such a theory is often less
personally satisfactory and less moral than even not examining one's
motivations at all.  Because a bad theory in this area is often worse than
no theory at all, unreflective people are often happier and behave better.

	First consider it as pyschological theory.
People are observed to pursue various goals.  Can we account for
their behavior by supposing that they are trying to maximize a
happiness function?  The most obvious counter-example is that of
a man pursuing a goal that will be realized only after his death.
This behavior is rather common and even natural and usually moral, but
many people refrain from it, because the happiness theory of their own
motivations, makes it seem irrational to pursue such goals.
(Of course, one way out of the
difficulty is to believe in an after-life, in which case one can
imagine taking satisfaction in heaven with the achievement of the
goal.  It seems to me that the Christian religion played an
important role in  helping people rationalize altruistic goals, and
this made it possible for Christian countries to form long
term purposes and implement them.  Unfortunately, the religion
seems to be mistaken, and this has weakened the ability of the
formerly Christian countries to form and pursue long range
goals.  In fact, one of the arguments given for a belief in after-life
is that it reconciles pursuing altruistic goals with the happiness
theory of motivation.  It seems to me that this argument dates back
to the beginnings of Christianity).

	Fortunately, many people still pursue post-life goals, either
because they don't believe the happiness theory of their own motivations,
because they forget about it most of the time, because they
can somehow rationalize the pursuit of post-life goals as contributing
to present happiness, or because they hope to be rewarded in an
after-life.

	Let's look at some of the rationalizations of post-life
goals by adherents of the happiness theory.

	The second psychological objection to the happiness theory
is that people usually reject happiness based on illusion.  Suppose
I have the somewhat altruistic goal that my children's
college education be provided for in case I die prematurely, and
I implement this goal by buying an insurance policy that to my
surprise and pleasure turns out unexpectedly inexpensive.
Now suppose that
I accidentally come upon evidence that leads me to suspect that the
insurance company has put a provision in the policy that will allow them
to avoid paying it.  I do not regret having discovered this fact, even
though I would have been happier all my life had I not discovered it.  The
simplest explanation is that my goal concerned the real world and not the
sequence of my perceptions.  Naturally, an empiricist may be inclined to
try to repair the theory that happiness is a function of perceptions in
various ways, but these ways all seem rather strained.

	However, suppose we grant that goals involve the real world as
well as perceptions.  I might try to salvage the happiness theory by
making the integrand a function of the state of the world-history and not
just of input.  Even so repaired, the theory is still wrong.

	There is simply too much evidence that people form goals rather
arbitrarily.

	Freudian psychology often explains the goals of an adult
as arising metaphorically from biological childhood goals.
Obviously this is true in some cases, and for present purposes 
it isn't necessary to evaluate the proportion of such goals.  The
point is that such a goal, once formed, has a motivating force
independent of whether it contributes to the original childhood
goal.  Pointing out that it doesn't contribute to the childhood
goal doesn't invalidate it.

	A third argument against the happiness theory is that
long term goals seem to depend on short term psychological state.
When a person is angry or tired or exhilirated, his conception of
his long term goals changes - not merely his weighting of short
term satisfactions vs. long term goals.  This contention could
and should be checked experimentally.

.bb Normative objections to the happiness theory.

	Individuals criticize their own goal structures.  A person
likes to think that his goals meet criteria of rationality, morality,
and altruism as well as esthetic criteria that seem harder to make
precise.  I believe that one can prove a theorem of mathematical
logic to the effect that a second order predicate %2Good(goal)%1, 
criticizing goals which we can regard as predicates on states of
the world or as integrals over time - cannot always be reduced to
first order goals.  An example of this mathematical conjecture is
the following: suppose a person wants his goals to be ethical in
the sense that they will not lead to harming other people.  This
doesn't itself prescribe the goal, nor can it always be expressed
by adjoining a component to a happiness function that subtracts
the amount of harm done to others.  A better example might be a
purely esthetic criterion.


.bb EXAMPLES

	Consider a discussion of the future plans of an institution.
One finds a variety of points of view, but I have never seen a sharp
separation between people who will be around to experience the fruits
of the proposals and those who won't.  Students who will graduate
and old men who will die before the plans are realized are both
capable of contributing along with those who will be there, and
there is no detectable qualitative difference in their contributions.

	It seems to me that one of the most significant features of
the old-style family was that it could have long-term goals as an
institution to which its members could contribute.
This institution was mainly destroyed by variety of careers
necessitating mobility, by the possibility of living well without
any basis of accumulated wealth, by the requirement of servants to
maintain an old-fashioned estate, by inheritance taxes, and by
new social views that down-graded such institutions.  When the
technology exists to maintain an estate without servants, families
may recover as social institutions.
.skip to column 1
.bb NOTES

1. The happiness theory leads benevolent people to try
to optimize other people's happiness, which often results
in trying to control them rather than letting them do
what they want.

2. People want to have goals.  They want these goals to
have certain characteristics, e.g. they want to have
goals they regard as moral.

3. Many goals arise as metaphors but escape the control
of their causes.  This is ok.

4. A person's criteria for compromising among his long
term goals depend on his physiological state.  Thus what
seems worthwhile in life as a whole is much affected by
fatigue or oxygen deficiency.  This effect is distinct
from the fact that physiological condition produces
short term goals.

5. The higher order goal criteria are higher order in
the logical sense of predicates applicable to predicates
and not necessarily in any moral sense.

6. True benevolence involves letting others do what
they actually want - subject to others' rights -
rather than optimizing their happiness in any sense.
.BB CONSEQUENCES

	The ideas proposed here have some individual moral and social
consequences:
.item←0;

	#. One can and should criticize one's goals according to
a variety of short range and long range criteria.  However, there is
no reason to try to force them into optimizing any single
life-long function.

	#. In considering actions that affect other people, one
should respect their actual goals.  These observed goals should
be given a high weight in comparison to their "welfare" or
what ought to make them happy.  From this point of view, one
should look with suspicion on the efforts to construct a "quality
of life" function for the country.

	#. One can expect that people's goals will be quite varied
and will not fit under an optimizing criterion.  Therefore, in
order to find out what they are in an individual case, it is
necessary to listen carefully, ask questions, and observe carefully.

	#. Social welfare may consist in many people having the
opportunity to realize their goals - subject to the rights of
others.  People are enriched by opportunities even if few
take them.  
	Societies decline when prosperous, because the ruling
class finds itself unhappy, and people adopt strange goals.

	Alternate theory: the society declines when a class
grows beyond the ability of society to support it.  In the past
this has always been a small fraction of society.  Thus in the
eighteenth century, England could continue to support a nobility
of 2000 people, while France collapsed with a nobility of more
than 100,000.  The reason English nobiility was small may be
that it resulted from the Norman conquest which wiped out
the Saxon nobility and started growth from a smaller base.

	The class whose expansion is threatening our present
society is the bureaucratic intellectual class.  New York can
afford the welfare recipients better than it can afford the
city employees.  There is a connection between the preference
for the bureaucratic life and alienation, but I don't quite
see what it is.