Integrity or Irrationality: Requirements for Happiness

[Cirrus]

Do you agree? Is the final conclusion (6) supported?

1. The choice to live in the human and natural world entails the judgment that life, the natural and human world, have value.
2. Experience of the natural and human world as enjoyable and meaningful rather than meaningless and empty depends on one's esteem for them.
3. Enjoyable and meaningful experience of the natural and human world are important to human happiness.
4. Self-esteem may rationally be supported or diminished by perceiving oneself as supporting or harming, harmonious or in conflict with, the human and natural world
5. Self-esteem is important to human happiness.
6. Happiness therefore depends on either (A) accurate perception of oneself as living in harmony with or to the benefit of the natural and human world, (rather than in conflict with or to their harm), or (B) irrational or mistaken beliefs regarding the human and natural world, and one's relationship to them.

[Sy Borg]

Hi Cirrus. Is this the thread you thought had disappeared?

I think you'd find Dan Gilbert's happiness talks of interest and relevance to your trains of thought. He talks about "natural happiness" (when you get what you want) and "synthetic happiness" (when you decide to be happy with what you have anyway). Synthetic happiness may involve delusion or rationalisation (or wisdom), but it seemingly provides the same benefits as natural happiness. Importantly, unlike natural happiness, synthetic happiness is somewhat under our control.

ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_ ... anguage=en

[Alec Smart]

Synthetic indifference is what has always worked best for me.

[Cirrus]

Hi Cirrus. Is this the thread you thought had disappeared?

I think you'd find Dan Gilbert's happiness talks of interest and relevance to your trains of thought. [...]

This is a new posting of the thread I thought disappeared, and now the earlier one has reappeared.

Thanks for the link to an interesting TED talk. I like the comparison of emotional self-regulation to an immune system. I've thought of the same analogy, although immune system analogies are applied to many different things these days. The irrational happiness I was referring to seems to be synthetic. Dan Gilbert's suggestion that synthetic happiness is just as valuable as natural happiness weakens a potential application I was hoping my argument could make, that happiness based on genuine ethical integrity is better than happiness based on a false sense of integrity.

There's a particular person I had in mind, who was born into a privileged family, given every opportunity to grow from strength to strength and develop her talents to become an intelligent, charismatic, highly successful professional. Yet this is the most thoroughly corrupted person I've ever met — a manipulative, misanthropic, sadistic bully, deeply prejudiced in every way...

If Dan Gilbert is right, perhaps this kind of sociopath can be genuinely happy within their bubbles of self-serving irrationality. I suppose we're all dependent irrational happiness, more or less.

[Thoughtson0]

i find trouble with the first premise, is living a conscious choice one makes or is consciousness a product of life and if so shouldn't we regard happiness as a favorable outcome of forces which have their source at an intelligence beyond the confines of thought or at the very least beyond conscious integrity?

[Boots]

Do you agree? Is the final conclusion (6) supported?

1. The choice to live in the human and natural world entails the judgment that life, the natural and human world, have value.
2. Experience of the natural and human world as enjoyable and meaningful rather than meaningless and empty depends on one's esteem for them.
3. Enjoyable and meaningful experience of the natural and human world are important to human happiness.
4. Self-esteem may rationally be supported or diminished by perceiving oneself as supporting or harming, harmonious or in conflict with, the human and natural world
5. Self-esteem is important to human happiness.
6. Happiness therefore depends on either (A) accurate perception of oneself as living in harmony with or to the benefit of the natural and human world, (rather than in conflict with or to their harm), or (B) irrational or mistaken beliefs regarding the human and natural world, and one's relationship to them.

We don't have choice. Life may just be a safer bet than shuffling off this mortal coil.
Joy and meaning can be found through more than esteem.
Happiness may be largely genetic.
Self-esteem is overrated. See my comment about happiness above.

[LuckyR]

Do you agree? Is the final conclusion (6) supported?

1. The choice to live in the human and natural world entails the judgment that life, the natural and human world, have value.
2. Experience of the natural and human world as enjoyable and meaningful rather than meaningless and empty depends on one's esteem for them.
3. Enjoyable and meaningful experience of the natural and human world are important to human happiness.
4. Self-esteem may rationally be supported or diminished by perceiving oneself as supporting or harming, harmonious or in conflict with, the human and natural world
5. Self-esteem is important to human happiness.
6. Happiness therefore depends on either (A) accurate perception of oneself as living in harmony with or to the benefit of the natural and human world, (rather than in conflict with or to their harm), or (B) irrational or mistaken beliefs regarding the human and natural world, and one's relationship to them.

Well, you set this up as a proof. In order for it to work as one, the ideas have to be correct for 100% of situations. Unfortunately for you, your comments are of trends, not certainties, so no, these do not work as a proof, though they can be perfectly accurate for a number of folks, but not 100%.

[Killosopher]

Do you agree?

Partly yes, partly no.

Is the final conclusion (6) supported?

No, the premises do not support the conclusion, i.e, the argument is invalid since there are substitution instances where even if the premises are assumed to be true will yield a false conclusion.

The argument is also unsound since some of the premises are not true and it lacks validity.

I have a few questions for you.

1. What is "ethical integrity" to you?
2. Since you seem to value it so much, do you think you live up to your own standards?
3. Consider a hypothetical situation, where you're forced to yield your deeply held opinions and beliefs to that of society/world for the sake of conformity and harmony. Would this position make you happy?

There's a particular person I had in mind, who was born into a privileged family, given every opportunity to grow from strength to strength and develop her talents to become an intelligent, charismatic, highly successful professional. Yet this is the most thoroughly corrupted person I've ever met — a manipulative, misanthropic, sadistic bully, deeply prejudiced in every way...

If Dan Gilbert is right, perhaps this kind of sociopath can be genuinely happy within their bubbles of self-serving irrationality. I suppose we're all dependent irrational happiness, more or less.

4. Do you think you have accurately perceived this person? Considering the fact that perception = sensation + meaning, and that many errors are known to occur in the process.

[Wilson]

Do you agree? Is the final conclusion (6) supported?

1. The choice to live in the human and natural world entails the judgment that life, the natural and human world, have value.
2. Experience of the natural and human world as enjoyable and meaningful rather than meaningless and empty depends on one's esteem for them.
3. Enjoyable and meaningful experience of the natural and human world are important to human happiness.
4. Self-esteem may rationally be supported or diminished by perceiving oneself as supporting or harming, harmonious or in conflict with, the human and natural world
5. Self-esteem is important to human happiness.
6. Happiness therefore depends on either (A) accurate perception of oneself as living in harmony with or to the benefit of the natural and human world, (rather than in conflict with or to their harm), or (B) irrational or mistaken beliefs regarding the human and natural world, and one's relationship to them.

I find that attempting to prove a philosophical point by listing a set of postulates and then drawing conclusions from them almost always fails. Usually the postulates are a matter of opinion, as are 1 and 2, and not self-evident, so anything that follows from them is invalid. That sort of logic works with trigonometry but not philosophy.

Happiness is an important subject, all right, but its basis is probably hormonal - dopamine, endorphins, and serotonin - which are produced partly as the result of what we think about. Everybody is born with a tendency toward a certain level of happiness. The lucky ones will be happy no matter what catastrophes befall them. The unlucky ones will be unhappy no matter how perfect their lives look to an outsider. Our circumstances will shift our happiness level up or down, but for most of us the range of our moods is somewhat limited by our genetics. The reason we're not all ecstatic is that total satisfaction with life would make us unlikely to be driven to innovate or work hard, so evolution favored those who were dissatisfied enough that they were motivated to be productive members of our hunter-gatherer ancestors - but not so depressed that they gave up.