Happiness
Happiness machine
Lets start with Robert Nozick:s happiness machine. Imagine a machine you can put
your self into and experience a lot of good things. You can easily produce happiness
for yourself in it and especially a happier life than you would experience outside
of it. The problem is you would not be a person in the real world, just a thing
in a machine. Would you put yourself in it? Nozick thinks that you would not and
that this proves that happiness is not all we want. I also think most people would
not, at least in the developed world. We want to be persons in the real world rather
than to optimize happiness.
Hedonistic utilitarianism
Hedonistic utilitarianism is the view that one should optimize happiness for people.
Even though it sounds good it amounts to some problems I think, as maybe every collective
optimizing theory does. It is of course hard to define measures of happiness and
optimize but the risk is also that what I think is individual rights are violated.
Consider for example these three cases:
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First case |
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What if it is proved that religious people are happier
than the rest of us? Should the state teach them to be religious? |
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Second case |
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Imagine the following scenario. A person wants to live a very hard life because
of a religious conviction. He will not be very happy in this life but it will be
harmless to others and he chooses it (or does he? Maybe he is indoctrinated and
can not be regarded as acting out of free will?). The state has a re-school program
that can change his life by removing the conviction and he will be a happier person
there after. Should we re-school him? |
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Third case |
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There are probably (and sadly) many homophobians in the society and rather few
homosexuals. Forbidding homosexuality will probably make the homophobians happier
and the homosexuals unhappier. A hedonistic utilitarian has to compare the happiness
increase for the homophobians with the happiness decrease of the homosexuals to
decide wether to forbid homosexuality. |
I think individual rights are better. For the first case I think the school should
teach facts and scientific conclusions. It should not teach some story just to make
people feel good. When it comes to the second case I think the state should not
optimize peoples happiness but allow and provide (or even optimize) choices for people.
People should be allowed “bad” choices. Finally I think some rights, for example the right
to ones own sexuality when consentual is a stronger right than some collectivistic
optimization. I think only to do the comparison is rather bizarre yet forbidding
people to be who they are are even more bizarre.
This said about hedonistic utilitarianism I think some negative utilitarianism can
possibly be practised by the state. This means minimizing suffering.