‘Happiness, philosophy and science’
September 6, 2011 1811
Gary Gutting explores the science of happiness in a blog-post for the New York Times, and looks at the data on correlations between happiness and various genetic, social, economic and personal factors. The new research raises hopes and provokes scepticism. There are serious methodological challenges around the use of individuals’ self-reports of how happy they are and attempts to quantify a quality such as happiness. The biggest challenge concerns the meaning and value of happiness, and the different ways in which it is defined and understood. The author suggests that psychologists and philosophers need to work together to address these questions.
