The former. I think that “life [in general] is good” is just a way of explaining what is meant by “having a positive outlook on life”, while “[my] life can be better” is a particular belief that influences whether or not you have the positive outlook.
[my life can be better] produces [positive outlook] and [positive outlook] is another way of saying [life (ie the lives of humans in general) is good]
or: “If I believe that my life can be better, then I believe that life-of-humans-in-general is good.”
I’m not implying that you actually believe this, just that this is what you were saying “positive outlook” meant. Am I right? From this perspective a positive outlook seems like a non-sequitur, since the future quality of my life may not provide much information about the lives of other people. Not to mention the fact that some people have good lives with bright futures and some have bad, hopeless ones, so the notion of life-in-general seems meaningless. From this I conclude that I do not have a positive outlook.
I agree with the first interpretation if you replace produces with presupposes or is the sort of thing you believe if you have the feeling of.
I also didn’t mean that [positive outlook] involves people at all: I think it’s more of a feeling about existence in general. It’s true like you say that there is so much variety from one person to another and over time, and that [life in general] as a concept doesn’t make much sense when you really think about it, but that doesn’t stop us from having a feeling about it. We know that it’s silly to talk about whether chocolate ice cream tastes good in general, and yet if you have always loved chocolate ice cream, there is a strong feeling that the goodness is an attribute of the ice cream itself rather than a description of your preferences, which is what you believe when you stop to think about it. The feeling for chocolate ice cream is to the feeling of [positive outlook] as the thought of “I love chocolate ice cream” is to the thought of “my life can be better” (can be better as in “has no upper bound” rather than “has nowhere to go but up”).
I feel like I’m expressing myself so poorly that I should just stop before I confuse even more.
Hmm, good point. But is that a specific belief, or a family of beliefs parameterized over values of “good”? Still, it’s a subjective belief constraint, if nothing else.
I think it’s an attitude, which is a set of dispositions to think and believe (and thus act) in certain ways. The disposition can be represented internally as a belief, but it’s actually something more fundamental. The belief corresponding to an attitude is a representation rather than the thing itself.
To illustrate what I mean, consider people suffering from depression. Their primary problem in cognitive terms is not that they have particular dysfunctional beliefs (my life sucks, I’m a failure, etc.), but that they have a dysfunctional attitude that predisposes them to act in self-defeating ways and adopt particular self-defeating beliefs. They have an attitude that manifests as a strong predisposition to filter the positive, blow the negative out of proportion, and interpret every event in life in a way that would actually be cause for unhappiness if the interpretation were accurate.
Julian Simon’s Good Mood is a counterexample. He was seriously considering suicide once his children were grown—he had no pleasure in life and a high background level of emotional pain.
Still, he was running his life quite well, and got over his depression when he finally had everything squared away enough that he could spend a little time thinking about it. He concluded that depression is caused by making negative comparisons about one’s situation, and found a bunch of strategies (lower standards, improve situation, find something more important than making comparisons, etc.) for not making them.
Surely having a positive outlook on life doesn’t require any specific belief.
Except that life is good that is.
No. That life can be better is sufficient.
To think that your individual life can be better is a way of thinking that life in general is good.
By life in general do you mean the lives of humans in general, or just your own life, extended in time?
The former. I think that “life [in general] is good” is just a way of explaining what is meant by “having a positive outlook on life”, while “[my] life can be better” is a particular belief that influences whether or not you have the positive outlook.
“Influences” is vague, but I take it you mean:
[my life can be better] produces [positive outlook] and [positive outlook] is another way of saying [life (ie the lives of humans in general) is good]
or: “If I believe that my life can be better, then I believe that life-of-humans-in-general is good.”
I’m not implying that you actually believe this, just that this is what you were saying “positive outlook” meant. Am I right? From this perspective a positive outlook seems like a non-sequitur, since the future quality of my life may not provide much information about the lives of other people. Not to mention the fact that some people have good lives with bright futures and some have bad, hopeless ones, so the notion of life-in-general seems meaningless. From this I conclude that I do not have a positive outlook.
I agree with the first interpretation if you replace produces with presupposes or is the sort of thing you believe if you have the feeling of.
I also didn’t mean that [positive outlook] involves people at all: I think it’s more of a feeling about existence in general. It’s true like you say that there is so much variety from one person to another and over time, and that [life in general] as a concept doesn’t make much sense when you really think about it, but that doesn’t stop us from having a feeling about it. We know that it’s silly to talk about whether chocolate ice cream tastes good in general, and yet if you have always loved chocolate ice cream, there is a strong feeling that the goodness is an attribute of the ice cream itself rather than a description of your preferences, which is what you believe when you stop to think about it. The feeling for chocolate ice cream is to the feeling of [positive outlook] as the thought of “I love chocolate ice cream” is to the thought of “my life can be better” (can be better as in “has no upper bound” rather than “has nowhere to go but up”).
I feel like I’m expressing myself so poorly that I should just stop before I confuse even more.
Hmm, good point. But is that a specific belief, or a family of beliefs parameterized over values of “good”? Still, it’s a subjective belief constraint, if nothing else.
I think it’s an attitude, which is a set of dispositions to think and believe (and thus act) in certain ways. The disposition can be represented internally as a belief, but it’s actually something more fundamental. The belief corresponding to an attitude is a representation rather than the thing itself.
To illustrate what I mean, consider people suffering from depression. Their primary problem in cognitive terms is not that they have particular dysfunctional beliefs (my life sucks, I’m a failure, etc.), but that they have a dysfunctional attitude that predisposes them to act in self-defeating ways and adopt particular self-defeating beliefs. They have an attitude that manifests as a strong predisposition to filter the positive, blow the negative out of proportion, and interpret every event in life in a way that would actually be cause for unhappiness if the interpretation were accurate.
Julian Simon’s Good Mood is a counterexample. He was seriously considering suicide once his children were grown—he had no pleasure in life and a high background level of emotional pain.
Still, he was running his life quite well, and got over his depression when he finally had everything squared away enough that he could spend a little time thinking about it. He concluded that depression is caused by making negative comparisons about one’s situation, and found a bunch of strategies (lower standards, improve situation, find something more important than making comparisons, etc.) for not making them.
The link is to the whole text of the book.
Oh, indeed. Well put.