I was recently having a conversation with a friend about what should be the ultimate goal of life. I suggested that happiness (although this was not strictly defined) may be one of the most worthy goals to aim for in life since it is not a means to anything else but an end in itself. In response my friend argued that if happiness were to be the ultimate goal of someone's life then it would be best achieved by taking a 'happiness' drug or otherwise stimulating the brain in such a way as to induce a state of perpetual happiness. Although this seemed inherently wrong to me it nevertheless seemed to fulfill my criteria of the purpose of a life. It is an important point to bear in mind when answering this question that my friend tends to offer explanations in terms of reductionist science. He is an undergraduate biologist and for him even emotions, such as happiness, can be simply reduced down to chemical reactions and electrical impulses. As a result it seems to me that if happiness is seen in these scientific reductionist terms, and the goal of the life as being happiness is accepted, then there is no way round the conclusion that happiness obtained through drugs or other 'artificial' means is just as worthy or good as any other kind of more 'genuine' happiness. Indeed to my friend this kind of so called 'artificial' or induced happiness is the same as 'genuine' happiness because they all have their origins in chemical reactions in the brain. Is it appropriate to reduce happiness to nothing more that chemical reactions and are such 'artificial' or induced states of happiness as good or worthy a goal for someone's life as more 'genuine' happiness?

Comments

Most philosophers (including several you have no doubt heard of, such as Plato and Aristotle) who have thought that happiness was the appropriate goal of a good life have not understood the goal they had in mind as a purely subjective state, so I would encourage you and your friend to consider the possibility that it is not simply feeling happy that matters, but actually being a certain way.

Consider the case of a drug addict who is provided a lifetime supply of his or her drug of choice. If you wish, imagine miraculously finding a way to ensure that the addict's life and physical health would in no way be threatened--his or her expected life span would not be shortened, nor would the lifelong addiction threaten the addict's physical health in any way. In short, the addict could go through life high as a kite with all other necessities provided with indemnity against any of the usual deliterious affects of drug-addiction.

The case I am asking you to imagine is probably impossible on various grounds, for it is plainly impossible to remove all of the negative effects of going around high all the time, but anyway consider at least some period of time during which the addict is high all the time and well protected against the usual bad effects associated with drug use. Is that person happy?

In the purely subjective sense of happy, I think we have to say that such a person would be happy--maybe even supremely so. But if this subjective sense were all that mattered, why do we recoil from wishing for ourselves such a life? Why is it that we find ourselves preferring lives in which our entertainments, engagements, and activities include much more than simply sitting in a delighted stupor all the time? If such a person is really more happy as a result of the constant subjective happiness he or she feels, why would we prefer our admittedly less happy (subjectively) lives to their's?

This sort of example seems to me to show either that "happiness" is not actually what we have in mind as an ultimate goal, or else that the correct understanding of what it means to be truly happy must include both an objective as well as a subjective element. I do not wish to suggest that a subjective sense of happiness is unimportant or irrelevant. Rather, I am proposing that this is not by itself enough--that some objective conditions that wwe regard as choiceworthy must also be included in the correct and fully adequate sense of what our life goal should be. We wish to lead lives that sensible people would wish to emulate. That is why some philosophers and scholars have suggested that the sense of "happiness" we should be considering for such questions ought to be something like "well-being" or perhaps "human flourishing," both of which seem to require subjective and objective success.

I hope this helps!

Read another response by Nicholas D. Smith

Read another response about Happiness, Value