From Aristotelian to Modern Happiness: Eudaimonia to Hedonic Hotspots

The modern (materialist) view is happiness is a chemical state of mind, a configuration of firing neurons—not a popular view. In Chapter 2 , I distinguished between emotional WB, life-satisfaction WB, and pleasure—but “happiness” is often used as a catchall. If the WB of Assumption 9a is defined as happier, we need to consider what it means. Jim Holt (in The New York Times, February 12, 2006. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/books/review/oh-joy.html ) imagines its history with bumper-sticker slogans: Happiness = Luck (Homeric), Happiness = Virtue (classical), Happiness = Heaven (medieval), Happiness = Pleasure (Enlightenment), and Happiness = A Warm Puppy (contemporary). The Enlightenment opened the door for happiness to determine right from wrong. Neuroscientists, like economists, model behavior; they want to understand how a brain chooses an alternative. They mostly agree it is the available alternative you most want/desire (Assumption 9b) and not necessarily the one you will like the most (Assumption 9a). They also agree that wanting is driven by the mesolimbic dopamine system. It was believed to drive both wanting and liking, but recent research indicates a separate circuit for liking (your ventral accumbens and medial shell), and the two circuits can get out of sync. Critical to all choice modelers is to what degree. Two main neurological theories differ on this. After reviewing the evidence and theories, I macro up from neurons and discuss the neurology and psychology of sensations, perceptions, emotions, and moods. Economists talk about preferences, rarely about happiness or WB, and never about emotions or mood disorders, making it impossible to map from the sensations each path would produce to an ordering of those paths.