Is happiness really all that important? A lot of people think so, but that being happy just for happiness' sake is a waste. If there was a "happiness pill" that could make me happy for the rest of my life, I wouldn't take it. Because if I did, I'd get lazy and wouldn't accomplish anything. It seems like the pill would be cheating. But on the other hand, I'm not so sure I'd want to be the most successful person in the world if it meant I could never be happy. So I have to wonder: is it happiness or the things that make us happy that we should value?

On this topic, I have always been intrigued by Simone de Beauvoir's comments in the introduction to The Second Sex. She says: But we do not confuse the idea of private interest with that ofhappiness, although that is another common point of view. Are not womenof the harem more happy than women voters? Is not the housekeeperhappier than the working-woman? It is not too clear just what the word happy really means and still less what true values it may mask. There is nopossibility of measuring the happiness of others, and it is always easyto describe as happy the situation in which one wishes to place them. In particular those who are condemned to stagnation are oftenpronounced happy on the pretext that happiness consists in being atrest. This notion we reject, for our perspective is that ofexistentialist ethics. Every subject plays his part as suchspecifically through exploits or projects that serve as a mode oftranscendence; he achieves liberty only through a continual reachingout...

Can the well-documented placebo effect in medicine be applied to the comfort religious belief gives many? In the case of religion, should such an affect be encouraged, discouraged, or dismissed? You could argue that none of us will ever know until we die, and if we were wrong in being religious we will never know we got it wrong. If various monks or nuns in various religions (to take an extreme example of devotion) got it wrong - and some would have to have had if you subscribe to the logical view that only one religion can assure you an afterlife, what possible advice can be given? If you feel someone is wasting their life on a misguided religious quest should you just preserve silence, salute the meaning it lends their life and leave well alone? What duty do we have here, if any? Philosophers understand the points involved better than most and can see through many misconceptions in religious belief that believers are unaware of. Each-to-his-own is surely a tragic cop-out.

This isn't really an answer to your question but, rather, a point I find interesting about the framing of your question. (You could still ask your question in slightly different terms, of course...) Although the idea of a "placebo effect" is common, there is actually some reason to doubt that it is "well-documented". A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine by Asbjorn Hrobjartsson and Peter C. Gotzsche, (May 24, 2001) argues tha t the trials aiming to establish a placebo effect are, for the most part, not sound. http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/344/21/1594 For example, in some cases the studies don't take into account the fact that the condition of some percentage of people will improve without any medication at all. Although the studies compare people who take medication with people who take a placebo, they don't always compare people who take the placebo with those who take nothing. This, as you might expect, doesn't settle the question, but...