The philosophy and science of overall life happiness

[DuB]

"There is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination." --Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, 1995 Over the past couple decades, there has been vastly increasing interest across the social & behavioral sciences in studying happiness: What are its causes and correlates? How does it vary across societies, over time, and within the individual lifespan? How should we best pursue it? Are people able to accurately predict what will make them happy or unhappy? The purpose of this thread is not to answer the questions above. Rather, the purpose of this thread is to analyze a general philosophical issue underlying much of this research. Dennett wrote that all science is ultimately built on philosophical claims and that, unfortunately, these claims are typically smuggled in as implicit assumptions rather than being explicitly examined and questioned. The topic I want to focus on here is a great example of how philosophy guides science and what is potentially at stake when we fail to examine the philosophical assumptions guiding our science. The topic pertains to studies of overall life happiness: How do we define it philosophically and procedurally? The answer to this question bears importantly on how we proceed in the scientific study of "the good life." There are two general approaches to measuring overall life happiness, and they are guided by different philosophical views on what constitutes overall life happiness. One approach is straight-forward: we simply ask people a very small set of questions--or even a single question--about how happy they are with their life in general. If we make the reasonable assumptions that they have some personal notion of their level of happiness and they have no reasons to deceive us, then we can take their answers at face value. The philosophy guiding this approach is that what is important when it comes to life happiness is how satisfied we feel when we step back, take stock, and reflect on our life. If doing so makes us happy, then we have a high level of overall life happiness. Call this the "self-report" approach. Another approach is more involved. We give people some kind of recording device--a small hand-held PDA, a paper diary, periodic text messages to their phone, etc.--and using this device, we ask them at numerous random times through their days to report, not how happy they are with their life in general, but how happy they feel in that exact moment. We continue this for some extended period of time (perhaps a few weeks), and at the end of the period we take the average of all of these moment-by-moment happiness ratings. We then define this aggregate measure as their level of overall life happiness. The philosophy guiding this approach is that what is important when it comes to life happiness is not how happy one feels when they reflect on their life, but the sum of the happiness they feel in the totality of individual experiences which constitute their life. Call this the "experience-sampling" approach. These approaches differ not only in terms of how we consequently think about and measure happiness, they also differ in that they can lead to very different estimates of how happy a person is with their life. Consider a successful but over-worked medical school student. This student has met every challenge they have faced with flying colors and is well on their way to fulfilling their life dream of becoming a doctor. However, on a day-to-day level, they are extremely stressed, fatigued, and in less than perfect health. According to the self-report approach, this student is likely to have a high level of overall life happiness. But according to the experience-sampling approach, the student is likely to have low overall life happiness. Now consider another young man or woman, a high school drop-out who spends their days partying, drinking, and taking drugs, but who has failed in every long-term goal they have attempted and whose lack of direction in life implies bleak prospects for their future. According to the self-report approach, it is likely that this person will report low levels of overall life happiness. However, according to the experience-sampling approach, this person is likely to register a high level of overall life happiness. So now we arrive at the question: From a philosophical perspective, which of these approaches is a more valid conceptualization of overall life happiness? Is life happiness the satisfaction we feel when we reflect on our lives, or is it the happiness we feel in the sum of individual moments which comprise our lives?