Can True Happiness Be Achieved By Taking a Pill?

There is a tradition in philosophy going back to Aristotle which contrasts the subjective feeling of happiness with objective reality. We can only call a man or woman truly happy provided that certain objective conditions are met. So that a man who died thinking he had been the happiest man alive, could not be said to have been truly happy if his wife and family, and the people he believed to be his closest friends despised him.

You would no doubt reply that Aristotelian happiness embodying as it does a moral judgment about the quality of a person's life, is not a scientific concept. In any case, it does not follow from the fact that no-one would want that kind of deluded happiness, that in such a situation one would not in fact be happy.

It is important that we are talking about happiness and not the sensation of pleasure. In a famous experiment, monkeys' brains were wired so that by pressing a button, they experienced intense pleasure. The result was that the monkeys could not leave the button alone, and died of starvation. Perhaps the same would happen to humans. However, a happiness pill is not a pleasure pill.

What would a happiness pill do? It would fill you with energy and a joy for life. The dullest task would be undertaken with a relish. The pain of failure would be minimized, the joys of success magnified a hundredfold. One would be filled with the love of humanity. One would be incapable of envy or malice. I am not talking about drugging yourself up with Ecstasy tablets and dancing until you drop. The effect would be precisely the effect that is attained by a few fortunate persons through philosophy or religion: a feeling of serene, confident joy.

"How can this be genuine happiness if it is purchased so cheaply?" Well, we could make the tablet really expensive!...Seriously, I can't see that price has anything to do with it, whether measured either in monetary terms, or in terms of human striving and effort.

No, I don't see how one could rule out that there might be such a pill some day. Or, better still, let's suppose one could re-write a few lines of human genetic code to achieve the desired effect. Then there would be no danger of coming down to earth with a thump when the pill supply ran out.

We need not take seriously the skeptics who complain that they prefer to remain unhappy in the face of the world's miseries, because the kind of happiness I am talking about is a spur to action rather than a temptation to complacency. And besides, there wouldn't be any misery. With the happiness pill, or with your genetic code altered, you could be happy, even in the face of imminent starvation.

I just have this suspicion that it wouldn't work. Not necessarily for any reason that can be derived from philosophy, but because of the complex nature of human psychology. Because we do not understand enough about the psychology of happiness, we imagine that you could take one aspect of our mental life and turn it up, the way one might turn up one of the control buttons on an I-Pod, while holding everything else constant. I suspect that what we have overlooked is the contribution of the down side — boredom, depression, anxiety, all the 'negative' feelings and emotions — to the overall condition of human psychological well being. But I could be wrong.

Is Suicide Ethically Wrong?

There are at least two reasons why suicide is regarded as ethically wrong. Firstly, if you commit suicide you fail to take the feelings of others into account; those who care about you. It is the essence of morality to think of others. The second consideration is that you have a moral responsibility to yourself. Immanuel Kant, for instance, argued that we should treat others with respect as Ends in Themselves. As individuals, one among others, we too are an end in itself and should treat ourselves with respect. Kant also thought that our moral community was essentially a rational community and it is rational to want to live.

So if ethics is grounded in either feelings or rationality, suicide is immoral.

However, if it is the case that no-one actually cares whether you commit suicide or not, then on the first reason, I cannot see that it would be unethical. You will not hurt anyone, except yourself: And it is not even clear that you would actually be hurting yourself. Our bodies belong solely to us and I think that we have the right to dispose of them as we think fit.

The rationality argument against suicide shows how you would be hurting yourself and applies even if you don't accept Kant's theory of respect. If you have no reason to live, and no desire to do so, suicide would seem to be the rational conclusion. But this would only be so if there was no future possibility of coming to want to live, and this possibility cannot be rejected. If there is an ethical sense to this it would be that one should be good to oneself and allow oneself the chance of some future happiness.

Can World Peace Be Attained?

As Egypt erupts, I wondered whether world peace is possible.

It is human nature to form strong beliefs and alliances and to be territorial. This is not necessarily incompatible with world peace as long as wars and terrorism are made impossible. Wars and terrorism will only be impossible if there is a worldwide ban on the production — or a total control of — weapons and arms. However, even if all national governments agreed to give up arms to some central control, or there was a global government with the power to command this, man still has the intelligence and ability to make weapons. There may be no wars if nations were to abide by international peace charters — or if they were all committed to one global government — but this would not rule out terrorism and terrorism tends to lead to war.

A global aspiration or commitment is difficult to envision. For example, we could all commit to environmental conservation at this time, but man is too selfish. This selfishness is, though, part of our ability to form close connections in a beneficial sense, since it gives rise to commitments to communities. We care most for those with whom we live in close contact. Since mankind doesn't have a universal attitude which can bring unity between persons, war and terrorism seem inevitable.

Religious commitment is one cause for strife, and although atheism is now an option, it doesn't follow that religious zeal, where it exists, is lessened. Indeed, it is probably strengthened. Even if there were no territorial claims based upon geographical and religious alliances, there would still be individuals who strive for power and wealth who will make claims against which others rebel.

So, really, there is no hope for peace for mankind. It might be wondered whether mankind might change. If we were inclined to be peaceful we would be a strange passive, tolerant sort of being with no strong beliefs and no religious attachments.

How Convincing are Religious Experiences in a Secular Age?

Religious experiences are very personal events; hence, to convince others of such experiences is a very difficult task. It is, of course, easier to convince 'believers' than those set against such phenomena. In a secular society where the understanding is that the materialist views of science do not cater for spiritual revelation, religious experiences are usually taken to be hallucinations. Physical manifestations are usually judged to be coincidences, or at best interesting events which will eventually submit to scientific investigation, and prove to be 'natural' occurrences.

Justification of religious belief is best backed up by logical argument. Empirical proof, so far as I understand, is extremely hard to come by. In a secular society believers are usually linked with superstition, and exaggeration of their experiences. On the other hand, secular views themselves are open to dispute, and just as believers usually find it difficult to prove religious experience, so opponents have an equal difficulty in refuting the claim.

Is Man Good by Nature?

Philosopher Soren Kierkegaard says that what is special about humans is that we can transcend nature towards ethics. But suppose for a moment that we were unable to do this, what would it be like?

My guess is that things would stay pretty much the same, we would still have relationships, we would still donate to charity, we would still have babies, we would still be polite to people. But what would be different as the philosopher Kant notices, is that we would do all these things not because it is right to do them but because of other reasons, self satisfaction, self-interest, sentiment; these reasons may be useful and beneficial, they are done in accordance with the Good but are they done because they are what the Good requires?

Consider cases where the Good may require us to give up our life for someone; how many penguins have you seen thrown himself on a grenade to save his fellow penguins? A penguin may trip and fall on a grenade when it is about to explode and save the colony but that wouldn't be self-sacrifice. Self sacrifice is not part of nature, it requires something special.

It requires that we move beyond the binds of nature. Penguins can't do this but we can. Kant thought this move involved reason giving itself laws of action; ones not conditioned by inclinations or motivations, but are followed solely for its own sake. Kierkegaard suggests that the move is made when we encounter the special presence of another person, who demands our help. This move does not just solely require sacrificing my life, rather all ethical acts are an act of self sacrifice of some kind; it is the putting of the others needs before my own.

Kierkegaard argues that the other person is special in that are Other, they are different from me and to treat them as if they were the same, would be to do them a violence; it would be to take something away from them. Therefore in order to protect this otherness, I must not place them in or reduce them to a mere role in nature, they are better than that.

Humans then are not good by nature, they are self satisfying animals, but because we can transcend nature, we can do good.

Why is Astrology Condemned by Christianity?

Astrology is regarded by the Christian Church to be a form of fortune telling, it is one of a list of practices condemned by the church. Those involved in these practices are considered to be atheists, or more significantly, followers of the Devil. Hence, astrology is linked with trickery, conjuring, witchcraft, deceit, spiritualism, psychic phenomena, all types of fortune telling, mysticism, etc. The claim is that these are all practices condemned by Jesus, Paul and the Apostles.

We might ask: If these practices are condemned why is it that Christianity accepts miracles? The answer is, simply because Jesus and the Apostles are understood to have performed miracles like healing the sick, making accurate predictions of future events, changing water into wine, raising the dead, feeding the five thousand, etc. The difference between those who perform miracles and those who perform tricks is allegedly made clear in the New Testament where, in the Acts of the Apostles the powers of Stephen the Apostle are compared to those of an outstanding conjurer and mystic, and found by the people to be vastly different; to put it crudely, the mystic was not in the same league as Stephen, who is seen to have powers far superior to him. This power is alleged by the church to come from the gift of the Holy Spirit within him. Those selected by God are blessed by the presence of the Holy Spirit, which invests them with special powers outside those of ordinary people.

Anyone claiming supernatural powers who is not blessed by the presence of the Holy Spirit is considered by the church to be a charlatan or a servant of the Devil. The seeking out of witches in the 17th and 18th centuries is well documented, all the victims were accused and condemned on the basis of church dogma regarding special powers. If special power was not coming from the gift of the Holy Spirit there was only one other source — the Devil. Among the victims of the witch finders were many alleged fortune tellers, including those dabbling in astrology. It was feared that fortune tellers could not only foretell the future, but could also influence it. It was deemed likely that such influence would come by way of the Devil and would constitute a challenge to God's plans for his people.

What Effects Have Socrates, Plato and Aristotle Had on our Lives?

Take away Socrates, Plato and Aristotle and you take away the starting point of 2,500 years of Western philosophy. Imagine a possible world where philosophy met a dead end and the early speculations of the Pre-Socratic philosophers were buried and forgotten. Or imagine a possible world where philosophy started out on an altogether different basis from the Socratic method, or the theories of Plato and Aristotle.

One can imagine these things in the abstract, the problem is that, as an armchair philosopher, it is simply impossible to subtract the influence on one's whole way of thinking that these historical facts represent, or imagine how one might have thought differently. Philosophers are always trying to think differently, trying to break out of the confines of starting points and assumptions. The difficulty is that one can never know how far one has succeeded, in the face of the suspicion that, given the historical point that we have actually started from, there may be ways of thinking that are impossible for us to comprehend.

Or we could be asking how important the influence of 2,500 years of Western philosophy has been in the West. Undoubtedly, philosophical views are deeply ingrained in our culture. It is also true that over the last 150 years the increasing confinement of philosophical activity within the academic departments of universities has led to a situation where philosophy, as a branch of human inquiry, has had decreasing influence on our lives. Not so very long ago, a person who had not studied philosophy was considered uneducated. How little that is true today.