I can't think of any uniquely philosophical answer to this one. Does it follow from the fact that 9999 people out 10000 would prefer to lose a pinkie rather than their eye sight imply that there is more pain in the latter than in the former? But then what would we say to that one person who wanted to hold on to her pinkie? That she was wrong to choose her finger over her sight. That she made a misjudgment about pain? I don't think so. There does seem to be something intrinsically subjective about these judgments. Might we be able to make them inter-subjective? Not sure.

I know that there are people in psycho-physics working on scaling issues. Linda Bartoshuk is doing some brilliant research in this area. There is a profile of her work in the June 18 issue of Science.

Thanks for your very well put and honest sigh of a reflection. It does sound as though you are bored and detached. You say that it is hard to care - which is right to suggest that caring is an activity-- not a feeling that washes over. Could you make stronger efforts to care, to get involved? I've often found that Pascal was right - going through the motions can lead to authentic feelings.

I'm in the same time territory and sometimes I think that there is nothing to look forward to - nothing good at least - just losing people I feel as though I can't live without, the body breaking down, not being taken seriously, the nursing home. I think it is a scary period. Not that this makes any difference, but it has also struck me how much being in the present, in America at least, depends upon having a future, a dream. It is as though for us, no tomorrow means no today. Sad. And at a certain point our future does in fact become pretty narrow and, well, terrifying.

I just try to care - to be as kind as I can, to soften my spirit, but this approach has been something that I have gotten from yoga, not from western philosophy. Indeed, I think that the Socrates guild has encouraged us to think that there is no wisdom in the body and movement. And sometimes just moving the body - taking long walks will move the spirit. I would try that when the great numbness comes over you. all the best, Gordon

An excellent question, it is important to reflect upon the things we invest our lives into. I think there are three very different concerns you might have about investing life into these activities:

1: Perhaps, these activities aren't happiness at all, but merely distract you from genuine happiness.

2: Perhaps, these activities are genuinely good to a degree, but distract you from more important things that are more central to happiness.

3: Perhaps, these activities are genuinely good because you find them pleasurable (or fulfill your desires). And pleasure (or fulfilled desire) is the only thing that is genuinely good, but these ways of pursuing pleasure are only effective short-term and are likely to undercut your total amount of long-term pleasure.

Since you ask whether there is any value in these things at all, you seem to be more concerned about the first potential problem. However, the good news for you is that Plato's view is a minority view (even among philosophers) since it presupposes that something like virtue or wisdom is the ONLY genuinely good thing in life. He thought that other things were so irrelevant to 'true' happiness that 'no one could harm the good man' even if they unjustly executed the good man.

However, problems two and three are also very real potential problems. For problem two, assume that there are a variety of things that are genuinely good and contribute to happiness... things like physical pleasure, experiencing beauty, authentic relationships, knowledge, virtue, fulfilling desires, spiritual experience, etc. (feel free to modify the list by adding or subtracting things that appeal to you). Well, in this case there is a risk that you might lead an unbalanced life and miss out on important things because you are overly preoccupied with one or two things on the list. So, to take an extreme example suppose you play video games and do drugs so much that you never experience genuine undrugged authentic friendship, you might miss out on something truly great in life.

Finally, suppose something like pleasure is the only genuinely good thing in life that constitutes happiness. Well, the things that you are involved in certainly bring you pleasure. Yet they still might distract you from something even more pleasurable like authentic friendship or certain types of knowledge. Also, suppose that drugs are damaging to your health or psyche in some way that makes it difficult for you to maximize your pleasure long term. In either of these cases, you need to consider whether you are undermining your long term happiness.

That being said, I think that things like video games and creating and listening to music are certainly enjoyable to those who prefer them. For these activities, it is simply a question of balancing them with other pursuits. I'd be more concerned about the long-term effects of drugs (though I admit I'm not an expert on their effects). It does seem to me that addictions of all sorts are significant threats to long-term happiness on all accounts of happiness.

The four major views of happiness (aka subjective well-being) are that happiness is constituted by:

1) Pleasure (and the absence of pain)

2) Fulfilled Desires

3) Virtue

4) A number of different sources that form an objective list of some sort: usually including things like pleasure, fulfilled desire, virtue, but also friendship, knowledge, or beauty.

Of course, this list of theories is an oversimplification since each of the theories has a number of variations. I'm not aware of any correlation between gender and preferred theories. I think theories one and two are the most dominant theories among philosophers and psychologists. Theory four seems to be the 'common-sense' theory that most people intuit...(but academics are often drawn to theories one and two because they attempt to reduce all the sources of well-being posited in theory four to a single value). Theory three enjoys a lot of classical support and still has contemporary supporters as well.

I should also point out that there is an ambiguity in what you might mean by needing to 'act' in order to be happy. The older thinkers like Aristotle meant that we needed to '(act)ualize' our human potential in order to achieve happiness. I'm not sure that concept 'maps on' to what we currently think of as being 'active'. An interesting variation of Aristotle's theory was advance by Maslow several decades ago.

You might also be interested in my forthcoming book, The Prudence of Love, which argues that there is a connection between possessing the virtue of love and subjective well-being on all four of the above theories.

Your comment on Peter Smith's claim, "utterly preposterous," doesn't sound like rigorous argument to me, but more like contemptuous dismissal. I'm glad panelists aren't displaying more of your style of rigor!

The consideration you do offer seems to misunderstand Smith's claim. What you quote him as saying is that if our actions are guided by beliefs that have been irrationally formed, it's likely that those actions will not promote our ends. I can see why he says this: if you think (1) that irrationally formed beliefs are as likely as not to be false and (2) that actions guided by false beliefs are not likely to get us what we want, his claim follows. Your observation – that we sometimes take pleasure in beliefs even if they have been irrationally arrived at – seems correct but beside the point: it speaks neither to the truth of (1) nor to that of (2).

Jennifer Church points out a couple of types of a case where irrationally formed beliefs (or degrees of belief, in the over-confidence case) can promote our welfare. Sure there are such cases.

But that doesn't affect the original point at stake. There being a few cases doesn't undermine the point that in general false beliefs (because of their content!) are unlikely to lead to successful action,* and so irrationally formed beliefs -- being likely to be false -- are not in general likely to lead to actions which get us what we want. And that is enough to explain why we should in general care a lot about forming our beliefs in a rational way. Which in turn is enough to counter the original questioner's worry that philosophy "uses as its main tool a mechanism [rational thought] that is the opposite of what is most important to us": in general, rational belief-formation matters for getting whatever is important to us.

*Indeed, some attractive views about ascribing content to belief-states, such as Ramsey's success semantics, make that point pivotal to the theory of content.