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Happiness is not Well-Being

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Abstract

This paper attempts to explain the conceptual connections between happiness and well-being. It first distinguishes episodic happiness from happiness in the personal attribute sense. It then evaluates two recent proposals about the connection between happiness and well-being: (1) the idea that episodic happiness and well-being both have the same fundamental determinants, so that a person is well-off to a particular degree in virtue of the fact that they are happy to that degree, and (2) the idea that happiness in the personal attribute sense can serve as a “proxy” for well-being, i.e., that a person’s degree of deep or robust happiness approximates their degree of well-being. It is argued that happiness in both these senses is conceptually, metaphysically, and empirically distinct from well-being. A new analysis of welfare, well-being as agential flourishing, can explain welfare’s real connection to happiness in both the episodic and personal attribute senses. It predicts that such happiness is only directly beneficial when it is valued, when it is a form of valuing, or when it underwrites (i.e., serves as the causal basis for) the disposition to realize one’s values. It is therefore a necessary—but not sufficient—condition for especially high levels of well-being. This analysis of welfare integrates many insights from the eudaimonic tradition of welfare and happiness research in psychology, and also addresses common criticisms of these eudaimonic models.

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Notes

  1. Here, the terms “well-being” and “welfare” are used as synonyms, as is common practice in philosophy (see, e.g., Sumner 1996). Both these terms are taken to express the concept of prudential good, i.e., one’s own interests, i.e., personal advantage. This concept is described in more detail at the end of Sect. 2. Philosophical practice, here, differs from practice among those social scientists who use “welfare” as a synonym for “utility,” where this latter is understood as revealed preference-satisfaction (Von Neumann and Morgenstern 1944; Binmore 2009).

  2. This theory attempts to explain the welfare of adult human persons, not the welfare of all possible welfare-subjects or all possible rational beings (it is not clear to me why many philosophers assume that such a general theory of welfare is possible). The theory explains welfare at a time, but it can also be extended to provide estimates of welfare over time and the welfare-ideal human life. It can also be extended to explain the welfare of children. Space limitations prohibit discussion of these extensions, here.

  3. This theory attempts to explain the deep nature of personal benefit and harm; it does not furnish us with any kind of prudential decision-procedure that would allow us to tell which course of action would bring us closer to the paradigm. But, if the theory correctly identifies the “target”—i.e., the deep nature of welfare—psychologists and others who know the relevant empirical facts could presumably identify principles or rules for approaching it.

  4. The disposition to realize one’s values is constituted both by some non-dispositional or “categorical” properties and by some further dispositions; hence the reference to its causal basis rather than its categorical basis (Prior et al. 1982; Fara 2006).

  5. Sen (1985) suggests a different view, one according to which achieved well-being consists partially in achieved functionings, as Nussbaum notes (2011, p. 198).

  6. The emotional state theory does not face the objections Feldman has raised against Davis’s desire-satisfactionist theory, Sumner’s life-satisfaction theory, and Kahneman’s theory of “objective happiness” (Feldman 2010, pp. 37–104). It also has an advantage over Feldman’s own attitudinal hedonism, which does not capture the affective component of episodic happiness. Feldman in fact argues that happiness does not involve any affective component (Cf. Feldman 2010, pp. 143–147). Feldman argues that all a person’s sensory feelings could be suppressed by anesthesia, and yet the person might still be quite happy. The problem with this argument is that Feldman has entirely ignored emotional or affective feelings, which are distinct from sensory feelings like warmth, cold, and pressure. Feldman is correct that it is possible for a person to be attitudinally pleased or happy without having any sensory feelings. But happiness requires the presence of positive emotional states—states which anesthesia does not characteristically suppress. A person who is attitudinally pleased to a high degree without experiencing any of the usual concomitant positive emotional states might count as notionally pleased, but they would not count as happy (cf. Zimmerman 2010).

  7. It is therefore false that, if all of a person’s major goals are being achieved, and a person knows this, then they will simply feel happy as a matter of nomological or causal necessity (cf. Kraut 1979). Even the greatest achievers—those who, against all odds, satisfy all their most important goals—might be afflicted by depression or anxiety and for this reason be seriously unhappy.

  8. Since all the activities rated by this study were ones that subjects picked out as representative of “who [they] are and what [they] are like as a person,” it is also likely that there are other activities that are very enjoyable but that score much lower personal expressiveness, and so are less significant for welfare (just as the present model predicts).

  9. Waterman et al. show empirically that autonomous selection is necessary but not sufficient for activities to exhibit the profile of characteristics usually associated with intrinsically motivated activities. On conceptual grounds, the theory defended here concurs that autonomous selection of goals is not sufficient for them to count as valued, i.e., as objects of pro-attitudes with which the subject stably identifies.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Fred Feldman, Dan Haybron, Alan Waterman, the editor of this journal, and two anonymous referees for helpful feedback on the ideas in this paper.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, California State University, 1250 Bellflower Blvd, Long Beach, CA, 90840, USA

    Jason R. Raibley

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Raibley, J.R. Happiness is not Well-Being. J Happiness Stud 13, 1105–1129 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-011-9309-z

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