8.1 Happiness as The Highest Good

We explored the pursuit of happiness as a major human goal in Chapter 3, Morality and the Good life. Both Bentham and Mill believed it to be the primary motivating factor in all human efforts.

The Principle of Utility

Bentham was the first ethicist to suggest that pleasure and pain could be measured. His theory was popular in his day because it professed to offer a mathematical formula for determining moral action. He argued that one simply needs to calculate the number of positive and negative units of pleasure/pain. A unit of pleasure he called a utility.

The concern of the Utilitarians is how to increase net utility. Their moral theory is based on the principle which states that “the morally right action is the action that produces the most good,” commonly shorthanded as “the greatest good for the many.” The morally wrong action, on the contrary, is the one that leads to the reduction of the maximum good. For instance, a utilitarian may argue that although some armed robbers robbed a bank in a heist, as long as there are more people who benefit from the robbery (say, in a Robin Hood-like manner the robbers generously shared the money with many people) than there are people who suffer from the robbery (say, only the billionaire who owns the bank will bear the cost of the loss), the heist will be morally right rather than morally wrong. And on this utilitarian premise, if more people suffer from the heist while fewer people benefit from it, the heist will be morally wrong.

Pleasure and Pain

Bentham understood happiness in terms of the pleasure/pain dynamic. Its assumption is that we all desire pleasure and seek to avoid pain. This is known as Hedonism. What separates Hedonism from other theories of well-being is that the hedonist believes that what defines a successful life is directly related to the amount of pleasure in that life; no other factors are relevant at all. Therefore, the more pleasure that a person experiences in their life then the better their life goes, and vice versa. Whereas other theories might focus on fulfilling desires people have, or an objective list of things such as friendship and health.

The roots of Hedonism can be traced back at least as far as Epicurus (341–270 BC) whom we met in chapter 3, as well as to other philosophers from Ancient Greece. Epicurus held the hedonistic view that the primary intrinsic good for a person is pleasure; meaning that pleasure is always good for a person in and of itself, irrespective of the cause or context of the pleasure. According to this theory, pleasure is always intrinsically good for a person and less pleasure is always intrinsically bad. What that implies as well is that all other choices in life which lead toward pleasure (e.g. exercising, going to school, saving money for future purchases) should be viewed as instrumental goods, i.e. good insofar as they ultimately lead to the intrinsic good of pleasure.

Hedonism is a relatively simple theory of what makes your life better. If you feel that your life would be better if you won the lottery, married your true love, or achieved your desired qualifications, then the hedonistic explanation of these judgments is that these things are good for you only if they provide you with pleasure. Many pleasures may be physical, but [some advocate for] a theory known as Attitudinal Hedonism. According to this theory, psychological pleasures can themselves count as intrinsically good for a person. So, while reading a book would not seem to produce pleasure in a physical way, a hedonist may value the psychological pleasure associated with that act of reading and thus accept that it can improve a person’s well-being. This understanding of hedonistic pleasure may help to explain why, for example, one person can gain so much pleasure from a Lady Gaga album while another gains nothing at all; the psychological responses to the music differ.

But are the Hedonists correct? Are human moral urges really that simple? Do all of our choices boil down to a desire to feel pleasure or avoid pain? Robert Nozick has offered a thought experiment that questions the assumptions of Hedonism.

Nozick’s Experience Machine

One important problem for Hedonism is that our well-being seems to be affected by more than just the total pleasure in our lives. It may be the case that you enjoy gaining a new qualification, but there seems to be more to the value of this event than merely the pleasure produced. Many people agree that success in gaining a meaningful qualification improves your life even if no pleasure is obtained from it. Certainly, many believe that the relationship between what improves your life and what gives pleasure is not directly proportional, as the hedonist would claim.

Robert Nozick (1938–2002) attacked the hedonistic idea that pleasure is the only good by testing our intuitions via a now-famous thought-experiment. Nozick asks:

Suppose there was an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired. Super-duper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain. Should you plug into this machine for life, pre-programming your life experiences? […] Of course, while in the tank you won’t know that you’re there; you’ll think that it’s all actually happening […] would you plug in?¹

Nozick’s challenge to Hedonism is based on the thought that most people who consider this possible situation would opt not to plug in. Indeed, if you ask yourself if you would actually choose to leave behind your real friends, family, and life in favor of a pre-programmed existence you also might conclude that plugging into the experience machine would not be desirable. However, if Hedonism is correct and our well-being is determined entirely by the amount of pleasure that we experience, then Nozick wonders “what else can matter to us, other than how our lives feel from the inside?” The experience machine guarantees us pleasure, yet we find it unappealing compared to a real-life where pleasure is far from assured. This may suggest that our well-being is determined by other factors in addition to how much pleasure we secure, perhaps knowledge or friendships.

The Hedonists need not give way entirely on this point, of course, as they may feel that the experience machine is desirable just because it guarantees experiences of pleasure. Or you might believe that our suspicions about the machine are misplaced. After all, once inside the machine we would not suspect that things were not real. You may feel that the hedonist could bite the bullet (accept the apparently awkward conclusion as a non-fatal implication of the theory) and say that any reticence to enter the machine is irrational. Perhaps the lives of those choosing to be plugged into the machine would go extraordinarily well!

References: 

1. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/robert-nozicks-experience-machine/#:~:text=Of%20course%2C%20while%20in%20the,machines%20if%20everyone%20plugs%20in.