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Hedonism and Happiness in Theory and Practice

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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ResearchArchive at Victoria University of Wellington Hedonism and Happiness in Theory and Practice by Daniel Michael Weijers A thesis submitted to Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Victoria University of Wellington 2012 2 —for Linda, Eli, and Alex— 3 4 Contents Acknowledgments ............................................................................................. 7 Abstract ............................................................................................................... 9 Part 1 .................................................................................................................... 11 Chapter 1: Hedonism: An Encyclopaedic Overview ...................................... 15 Chapter 2: The Experience Machine Objection to Hedonism ......................... 49 Chapter 3: The Case for Status Quo Bias in Experience Machine Scenarios ........................................................................................................ 83 Chapter 4: We Can Test the Experience Machine ............................................ 117 Chapter 5: Reducing Status Quo Bias and other Confounding Factors in Experience Machine Scenarios ................................................................ 135 Part 2 .................................................................................................................... 161 Chapter 6: Theories of the Meaning of Life: Optimistic Naturalism and Infinite Happiness ........................................................................................ 165 Chapter 7: Happiness and Climate Change: How Should the Responsibilities of Adaptation and Mitigation be Shared? ....................... 199 Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 227 Postscript for Policymakers: The Science of Happiness for Policy- makers ............................................................................................................ 231 References ........................................................................................................... 263 5 6 Acknowledgements I have many people to thank for supporting, encouraging, and inspiring me throughout the last three years. I have thoroughly enjoyed writing this thesis in large part because of them. I take great pleasure in being able to pay tribute to them here. First and foremost, I wish to thank my supervisor, Nick Agar, for being my philosophical mentor and so much more. In addition to continuous useful feedback on my writing and ideas, Nick has generously offered me guidance, reassurance, and friendship. With Nick’s help, I have become a better philosopher in all respects. Ramon Das and Simon Keller have also helped hone my philosophical skills with invaluable advice on manuscripts for my thesis and other projects. I’m also indebted to the entire Philosophy programme at Victoria University of Wellington, and particularly to the staff who have gone out of their way to provide me with useful career opportunities and advice: Nick Agar, Simon Keller, Ken Perszyk, Ramon Das, Kim Sterelny, Stuart Brock, and Ed Mares. And to Pennie Gapes for being so knowledgeable and reliable in her role as school manager. I’m also grateful to the Victoria University of Wellington students that I have studied and socialised with. A great deal of my philosophical learning is thanks to engagement with these wonderful people in corridors, in seminars, and over beers. Most of all, I’d like to thank: Ewan Kingston, John Matthewson, David Gilbert, Chiara Elettra, Hatha McDivitt, Frieder Lempp, Tony Scott, Lucas Kengmana, Steve Riley, and Shri Sharma. I have been very lucky to collaborate with several outstanding people while writing academic papers, setting up the International Journal of Wellbeing, organising a conference on Well-being and Public Policy, and 7 organising an edited book on well-being and public policy: Aaron Jarden, Philip S. Morrison, Ramon Das, David Eng, John F. Helliwell, and Sam Wren- Lewis. I have thoroughly enjoyed working with you all. Certainly worth a mention; this thesis would not have been possible without the scholarship and grant funding provided by the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Victoria University of Wellington. I also want to take this opportunity to mention four thinkers whose writing inspired me to investigate hedonism and happiness in more detail: Dan Haybron, Roger Crisp, Richard Layard, and Fred Feldman. If I had not read their work several years ago, I have no idea where I would be now. To my parents, Anne and Mick, I want to thank you for raising me and helping me become the person I am today. I now realise that raising a child is a difficult and often underappreciated task, so please accept this heartfelt thank you for all the effort you have both put in over the last 30 years. I couldn’t have had a better start in life. To my brother Joe, aunt Beth, and father Mick, thanks for your useful comments on my often outlandish ideas. Finally, thanks and more thanks to Linda, Eli, and Bud. This thesis is for you as much as it is for me—it’s for our family. Thanks for supporting me over these three years and thanks for making me whole< You know I’d only get into the experience machine if you guys did too. 8 Abstract In this thesis, I investigate several different questions about happiness and hedonism in theory and practice and offer several arguments and theories. In addition to making progress in these happiness-related areas of inquiry, this thesis aims to demonstrate the complexity and variety of happiness-related problems and the broad range of real-world problems that considerations of happiness can help to resolve. Furthermore, nearly every chapter of this thesis demonstrates how interdisciplinary analyses can bring new movement to problems that have become insulated within one academic discipline. This thesis is divided into two main parts. Chapters 1 through 5 constitute Part 1, and Chapters 6 through 8 constitute Part 2. Part 1 of this thesis is focused on theory and questions about what we should believe. In particular, Part 1 is concerned with Prudential Hedonism, a theory of what is good for a person, which claims (roughly) that a preponderance of pleasure over pain (sometimes referred to as happiness) is what is ultimately good for people. After providing a broad overview of hedonism, and especially Prudential Hedonism, in Chapter 1, the remainder of Part 1 focuses on one main question from philosophical debates about well-being: does the experience machine thought experiment give us good reason to believe that internalist accounts of Prudential Hedonism are all false? The main conclusion that I argue for in Part 1 is that no, the experience machine thought experiment does not gives us good reason to believe that internalist accounts of Prudential Hedonism are all false. Part 2 of this thesis is focused on practice, and particularly on how considerations of happiness can inform certain practices and help us to understand what we should do in certain circumstances. Unlike Part 1, which 9 has a smooth narrative flow from chapter to chapter, Part 2 contains three relatively unrelated chapters, each of which investigates a different question without relying on the conclusions of any previous chapters. Chapter 6 argues that an optimistic view about scientific and technological progress allows for two interesting new theories for the meaning of life debate, and discusses what people with certain kinds of belief might want to do to achieve true meaning in life. One of these theories posits that causing there to be infinite happiness can be a way to achieve a truly meaningful life. Chapter 7 demonstrates how considerations of human happiness can justify why a particular set of distributive principles are the fairest way to apportion the burdens associated with adapting to, and mitigating, the potentially devastating effects of rapid climactic change. Based on these considerations, Chapter 7 includes fairly specific policy recommendations about what governments should do about climate change. This thesis also includes a Postscript for Policymakers. Compared to Chapters 2 to 7, the Postscript for Policymakers takes a much higher-level approach; it seeks to provide general answers to two very broad questions. Given its broader scope and different intended audience, the Postscript for Policymakers does not include in-depth discussion of all likely objections. The two questions addressed in the Postscript for Policymakers are: should policymakers use findings from the science of happiness to guide their policy decisions, and how can they best do this? The Postscript for Policymakers concludes that findings from the science of happiness should be used to guide policymaking (with several qualifications), and it provides recommendations for how best to do this. 10 Part 1 Part 1 of this thesis focuses on theory and questions about what we should believe. In philosophy, the two main theoretical debates about happiness are how to define happiness and whether being happy is all, part, or none of what makes our lives go well for us. Part 1 of this thesis engages in this second debate. The claim that being happy is all of what ultimately makes our lives go well for us is most often defended by Prudential Hedonists. Prudential Hedonists believe that happiness—usually
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