Abstract
Daniel Haybron has made an original contribution to philosophical discussions of happiness. He has put forward a theory that identifies happiness with moods and the propensity to experience moods. Haybron’s contribution deserves a critical examination. The first section of my paper is interpretive. I show how Haybron uses the concepts of ‘central affective states’ and ‘mood propensity’ to define happiness. The second and third sections of the paper are critical. They focus on the inclusion of mood propensity in Haybron’s theory. In the second section I argue that his theory fails because there is an example that shows a subject can be happy even when that subject does not have a positive mood propensity. In the third section of the paper, I consider Haybron’s objection that the case in question is ‘object-specific’ and that it is not ‘emotionally-based’. I discuss both of these technical terms in detail. Moreover, I argue that a modified version of the counter example accommodates these technical terms while retaining the persuasiveness of the original example.
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Notes
Since this is an interdisciplinary journal it is important to say something about the goals and methodology of philosophical analyses. A philosophical analysis of happiness is intended to be a matter of conceptual analysis. It is supposed to give a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for happiness to obtain. This is supposed to be a necessary truth that is applicable to all cases, fanciful or actual. Philosophical analyses are often tested by considering thought experiments, asking what our intuitions about those cases are, and then asking whether the analysis in question agrees with our intuitions. Often competing analyses of a concept will match our intuitions in all ordinary and normal cases. So philosophers must resort to fanciful thought experiments to decide between them. Philosophers ask what our intuitions are in the fanciful cases and then ask which if either of the competing theories matches our intuitions. There are limits however. The thought experiments must be possible in some sense. Sometimes this means the cases are consistent with the laws of nature. Other times this only means the cases are formally consistent. Some of the cases I consider here are very fanciful. They require bizarre coincidences. But they are consistent with the laws of nature. Appeal to such cases is in line with the traditional mainstream philosophical community that is one of the audiences to whom Haybron’s work is directed. Such cases provide one way of testing the plausibility of Haybron’s theory.
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Hill, S. Haybron on Mood Propensity and Happiness. J Happiness Stud 10, 215–228 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-007-9076-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-007-9076-z