Evaluating happiness

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>>8498519
>anon unironically mentions happiness
>mfw

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>>8498522 cont'd
this thread needs more schopenhauer memes
good gracious, I have plenty

okay, well, first of all you don't define happiness, so this thread might as well go to trash, but for some unknown reason I would like to have you explain yourself
so... go on

>>8498519
But you've just shifted the problem, now instead of agonising over how to decide if you've lived a good life, you'll agonise over how to define the happiness function.

>>8498519
Congratulations, you've discovered microeconomics.

>>8498519
>Look at me, I just finished Calc 1. Am I smart now?

>>8498519
your philosophy is so shit you should kill yourself desu senpai to be honest with you

>>8498544
I'm retarded but not so retarded that I'd try to impress someone with calc 1 lol

>>8498519
So Heroin, it is

>>8498519
Zamyatin did a sort of thing like this in his book. Was a bit contrived.

At least integrate the square of happiness times sign function with happiness as variable to emphasize the importance of great moments. Also fuck latex.

>>8498519
It's not an issue of your happiness, but of everyone's (your own included).

If you make other people happy then your life has value even if you can't find happiness yourself. Conversely, if you achieve happiness at the expense of everyone else, we'd all be better off without you.

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>>8498519
define happiness

>>8498606
happiness is extremely painful

>>8498601
There's no such thing as value. Why should someone give a shit about everyone else?

>>8498519
thats rediculous.

the continuous sum of happiness is not what determines if your life was worth living.

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>>8498612
for me

>>8498519
Philosophy belongs on >>>/lit/ and >>>/his/

>>8498519
Go back to your cabinet Bentham.

>>8498519


The idea that happiness in of itself should be the goal of life is wrongheaded.

That is because emotions themselves are a sense for phenomena; your sense of happiness, or sadness, or any other thing, is a watermark for the direction of action.

The 'hedonic tredmill' is not a bug, but a *feature*. Adapting your range of emotions to the given range of stimuli is vital for them to carry out their function.

If you felt happy all the time, that would be a *malfunction*, your ability to make adaptive decisions in response to differing experiences would be crippled.

It would be like if you were to walk out into sun after being in the shade, but your eyes never adjust sensitivity, and hence are blinded by the signal, perceiving no patterns or features in the undifferentiated glare.

Furthermore, holding up happiness unqualified as an ultimate object it a good way to make people needlessly neurotic; when their their range of responses adapt to their circumstances *as in good working order*, someone who holds happiness as an ultimate object becomes unhappy and existentially discomfited over the fact that he does not feel happy all the time. The preoccupation with happiness perversely causes people to be even less happy than they would be otherwise, rather than simply being content knowing things are working as they should be.

Feelings of gaiety (and all other feelings) are not the high goals, but tools for working towards even greater goals.

>>8498612
for you