Next readings--
- Kieran Setiya, Midlife (looks longer than it is)
- Atul Gawande, Being Mortal
- annotations
- 3 annotations of text (must highlight text)
- 1 reply to another student
Slote discussion
- A lot of agreement with Slote
- Some objections he's overlooking the long-term impact of childhood
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A concept from Tomlin is useful here
- Internal questions--how to asssess life for people during a particular period of life?
- External questions--what is the impact of that period on future periods of life?
Slote is only interested in the internal question. He is saying
Internally, the hours/days/years of childhood may be good or bad, but they matter less than the hours/days/years of adulthood. Likewise for old age.What is Slote saying about this graph? Whatever the true slope is, the middle part of life matters more
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The impact objection
- "He's denying the impact of childhood!" -- no
- "He's ignoring the impact of childhood!" -- in a sense, yes -- because it's not his topic
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Slote's arguments
- A period can matter less internally than other periods. For example, periods when we are asleep and dreaming.
- School boy/girl glories and disappointments
- Old age activites (bingo)
- period-relative vs. overall goods
What difference doees it make if you agree with Slote?
- Looking back at your childhood
- Looking ahead toa dulthood
- How you react to people playing bingo
- Philanthropy--should I donate to the girl scouts, a college, or a senior education program?
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Today: happiness at midlife
- Hedonism: to assess a period of life (internally), must focus entirely on pleasure or happiness
- Even if you don't buy the whole Hedonist view of wellbeing, you probably think happiness matters
Carol Graham and Julia Pozuelo, "Happiness, stress, and age" (2016) Annotated
The U shaped curve
Graphs starting on p. 249
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Empirical study of happiness
- Three definitions of happiness in use (G&P p. 226)
- hedonic--mood questions (how did you feel yesterday? did you smile? were you cheerful?)
- evaluative--how satisfied are you with your life as a whole? (Cantril scale below)
- eudemonic--do you have a sense of purpose or meaning?
- In depth study of individual experience--experience sampling, day reconstruction-- Daniel Kahnemann
- Gallup World Poll, Eurobarometer, and other huge yearly surveys
- Use of controls
- How are age and happiness related?
- without controls--just compare 18 year olds to 80 year olds, etc.
- with controls--use statistics to abstract from other factors
- compare rich 18 year olds and rich 80 year olds to abstract from wealth
- Happiness around the world (scroll down)
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HHappiness and age -- Graham and Pozuelo's findings
- The U shaped curve (p. 256, the US)
- Most studies show this (p. 230)
- Both controlled and uncontrolled studies (p. 228)
- Happiness curves mirrors stress curves, but not exactly (p. 256, the US)
- It's nearly universal (p. 249-256)
- It's even found in the great apes! (p. 229)
- The turning point or nadir--when happiness bottoms out and starts to increase again comes sooner in places with higher average happiness (p. 238)
- Note: hedonists will say it's better to dip sooner, so lifetime happiness total will be greater
Questions
