Life Satisfaction

AGENDA

1. Mill's advice
2. Life satisfaction view
3. Preview: exam coming up Feb 18

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Epictetus--basically a life coach, lots of advice

Mill --if he were a life coach, what would he advise?

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Famous passage

"It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides." (Mill, para 6)

Mill: don't be distracted by satisfaction.  THAT isn't happiness.

Leads us to the next view....

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Christine Vitrano--

• contemporary philosopher, author of The Nature and Value of Happiness
• Happiness is all that matters (so she's a hedonist, like Mill)
• But what is happiness? Not pleasure, but rather feeling satisfied with your life

Many formulations (p. 104)--

1. A person is happy if "she is disposed, when she considers her life, to feel satisfied, which means she judges that her expectations are being attained" 
2. One is happy if "one likes those parts of one's total life patterns and circumstances that one thinks are important" 
3. Happiness is "having a favorable attitude toward whatever relationship one happens to have to one's circumstances" 
4. Happiness is "being pleased with one's happiness as a whole" 
5. "The happy person has a favorable impression, attitude, or perception of her life" 

Vitrano--life satisfaction is both a judgment and a feeling

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Why does she prefer the life satisfaction view instead of the pleasure view? (earlier in her book)

• pleasure goes up and down all the time
• life satisfaction is more stable
• happiness is something pretty stable
• so happiness = life satisfaction
• is this persuasive?

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If you say you are very satisfied with your life, could you be wrong about that?

1. Mistaken if you're lying
2. Mistaken if you didn't understand the question
3. Would you be mistaken if your satisfaction is due to errors ????

Should we add a no-errors condition?

CASES (p. 114-116)

Susie the Grad Student. She's in graduate school and looks forward to her career in her field. She says she's very satisfied with her life. In reality, her professors think she's doing bad work and her chances of getting a job are very low. (p. 114-115)

1. Some say--not actually satisfied because she isn't actually fulfilling her own plans for life
2. Vitrano--Susie really is satisfied with her life

Tom the vanilla ice cream lover. He's thrilled that he gets to eat vanilla ice cream all the time and says he has a wonderful life, but doesn't know there are 100 other flavors other people are enjoying. 

1. Some others--Tom isn't really satisfied because he's making a "faulty comparison" 
2. Vitrano--Tom is satisfied with his life

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The Arbitrariness Objection (Daniel Haybron)

Life satisfaction fluctuates in strange ways, so happiness shouldn't be identified with it

Experiments Cited by Haybron

1. 
   people report higher life satisfaction when....
• the weather is good
• they have just found a lucky dime
• they first eat a candy bar
• they are in a pleasant room 
2. people report different amounts of life satisfaction depending on question order

Vitrano's response

1. Life satisfaction may in fact have some strange causes. It doesn't matter.
2. The experiments may not actually show that life satisfaction fluctuates based on these arbitrary factors. 
• Another interpretation is that the arbitrary factors  distract people and prevent them from focusing on the question of life satisfaction. Like assessing food in a restaurant while hearing a baby cry.)

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Next time: an objection to ALL hedonist views (both pleasure and life satisfaction)