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Edited by Marc_Geddes, 02 February 2007 - 09:41 AM.

Much of what we interpret as Happiness appears to be coming from having a healthy body [...] Representations of situations are generated/evaluated to ascertain whether they are beneficial to one's health in some way

What would you say to the seemingly competing psychosomatic view that it may conversely be happiness (about anything) that causes the appropriate signalling to keep the body healthy?

We needed scientists to tell us this?

http://radicalacadem...otleethics2.htm

Aristotle's Ethics: The Theory of Happiness - II

by Mortimer J. Adler, Ph.D.

The main point we have seen so far is that, for Aristotle, a happy life is a good life. In other words, happiness is good. But other things are good, too -- such things as health and wealth, knowledge and friendship, and a good moral character. We recognize all these things as good. All of us want them, and would regret being deprived of them. How does happiness stand in relation to all these other goods? And how are they all related to happiness? Aristotle tells us a number of things which enable us to answer this question. He says, in the first place, that all men agree in speaking of happiness as the ultimate good, the highest good, the supreme good. We can understand what this means when we realize that happiness is that state of human well-being which leaves nothing more to be desired.

A happy man, Aristotle would say, is the man who has everything he really needs. He has those things which he needs to realize his potentials. That is why Aristotle says that the happy man wants for nothing. Aristotle then points out that this cannot be said of other goods.

Thus a man might have health, but not sufficient wealth. Or, he may have both wealth and health -- but he may lack friends. Another man may have great knowledge -- but still lack other human perfections.

Perhaps now, we can see what Aristotle means. According to him, although a man possesses one or more of the things which his nature craves, he may lack others, and then he cannot be considered happy. There would be some real goods missing which he should desire and try to obtain.

This leads Aristotle to his definition of the happy life as a life made perfect by the possession of all good things such as health wealth, friendship, knowledge, virtue -- all these are constituent parts of happiness. And happiness is the whole good of which they are component parts. That is how happiness is related to all the other goods.

You can test the truth of this insight for yourself in the following very simple way: Suppose someone asked you why you wanted to be healthy. You would answer by saying: because being healthy would enable you to do the kind of work you wanted to do. But then suppose they asked you why you wanted to do that kind of work? Or why you wanted to acquire some of the world's wealth? Or why you wanted to learn things. To all such questions your ultimate answer would be: because you wanted to become happy. But if you were then asked why you wanted to become happy, your only answer would be: because you wanted to become happy.

This shows you that happiness is something you seek for its own sake, whereas you seek all the other goods ultimately for the sake of happiness. Happiness is the only good of which this is true. It is the only good which we seek for its own sake, as Aristotle says.

    Happiness is desirable in itself and never for the sake of something else. But honor, pleasure, reason, and every virtue we choose indeed for themselves, but we choose them also for the sake of happiness, judging that by means of them we shall be happy. Happiness, on the other hand, no one chooses for the sake of these, nor, in general, for anything other than itself. Happiness, then, is something final and self-sufficient.

I know that on my own experience and thinking.


Haven't I been telling everyone here? in many posts scattered everywhere here but specially in philosophy and in religion boards, that the meaning of life is happiness which is fundamentally keeping all your physiological functions tuned-up to the optimal extent in efficiency and in duration.

And I come to that conclusion from my own thinking, without reading any research reports from scientists or philosophers.

Besides, I have this suspicion that a lot of the discoveries of science and philosophy are old shoe wisdom teachings from men in the street, since the dawn of human consciousness and self-introspection.

When you become intellectually mature, you enjoy reading such studies in confirmation of your old shoe wisdom insights, arrrived at from your own experience, observation, of life, and your own thinking.

Susma

Aristotle

With a very slight qualification I'd agree. Reason, knowlege, experience and such personality-enhancing traits seem not quite in the same way means to achieve happiness as wealth or health are. It's more like they generate additional modes in which happiness can express itself, sometimes allowing it to evolve into a more complex feeling than it was before. Similar to the feeling of hearing a Symphony that seems to evolve only as you hear it multiple times. Thus I disagree with happiness leaving nothing to wish for. It is always open to evolve. This includes the type of positive feedback Marc brought up.

Mortimer Adler writes,

You can test the truth of this insight for yourself in the following very simple way: Suppose someone asked you why you wanted to be healthy. You would answer by saying: because being healthy would enable you to do the kind of work you wanted to do. But then suppose they asked you why you wanted to do that kind of work? Or why you wanted to acquire some of the world's wealth? Or why you wanted to learn things. To all such questions your ultimate answer would be: because you wanted to become happy. But if you were then asked why you wanted to become happy, your only answer would be: because you wanted to become happy.

Of course, an evolutionary psychologist might argue that "happiness" broadcasts reproductive fitness to potential mates. We are suffering from a hardwired delusion about why our ephemeral minds "want" certain things like happiness, when in reality our genes have been sexually selected over thousands of generations to produce these behaviors to improve the odds of pushing sperm cells into proximity with egg cells.

Here is also where the correlation between happiness and genetic fitness comes to a halt. Evolutionary psychology would predicted a one-dimensional scale on which certain fixed behaviors yield more happiness than others. But the felt experience can become very multidimensional when "growth" is taken into account.
Not quite sure what to make of the altruism thing. Would this include a fading of the border between individual persons that can result from growth?