g, you have suggested a few of my reasons. I have thought quite a lot about this and could write many pages, but I will just give an outline here.
(1) Almost everything we want (for ourselves) increases our happiness. Many of these things evidently have no intrinsic value themselves (such as Eliezer’s Ice-cream case). We often think we want them intrinsically, but on closer inspection, if we really ask whether we would want them if they didn’t make us happy we find the answer is ‘no’. Some people think that certain things resist this argument by having some intrinsic value even without contirbuting to happiness. I am not convinced by any of these examples and have an alternative explanation as to my opponents’ views: they are having difficulty really imagining the case without any happiness accruing.
(2) I think that our lives cannot go better based on things that don’t affect our mental states (such as based on what someone else does behind closed doors). If you accept this, that our lives are a function of our mental states, then happiness (broadly construed) seems the best explanation of what it is about our mental states that makes a possible life more valuable than another.
(3) I have some sympathy with preference accounts, but they are liable to count too many preferences, leading to double counting (my wife and I each prefer the other’s life to go better even if we never find out, so do we count twice as much as single people?) and preferences based on false beliefs (to drive a ferrari because they are safer). Once we start ruling out the inappropriate preference types and saying that only the remaining ones count, it seems to me that this just leads back to hedonism.
Note that I’m saying that I think happiness is the only factor in determining whether a life goes well in a particular sense, this needn’t be the same as the most interesting life or the most ethical life. Indeed, I think the most ethical life is the one that leads to the greatest sum of happiness across all lifes (utilitarianism). I’m not completely convinced of any of this, but am far more convinced than I am by any rival theories.
g, you have suggested a few of my reasons. I have thought quite a lot about this and could write many pages, but I will just give an outline here.
(1) Almost everything we want (for ourselves) increases our happiness. Many of these things evidently have no intrinsic value themselves (such as Eliezer’s Ice-cream case). We often think we want them intrinsically, but on closer inspection, if we really ask whether we would want them if they didn’t make us happy we find the answer is ‘no’. Some people think that certain things resist this argument by having some intrinsic value even without contirbuting to happiness. I am not convinced by any of these examples and have an alternative explanation as to my opponents’ views: they are having difficulty really imagining the case without any happiness accruing.
(2) I think that our lives cannot go better based on things that don’t affect our mental states (such as based on what someone else does behind closed doors). If you accept this, that our lives are a function of our mental states, then happiness (broadly construed) seems the best explanation of what it is about our mental states that makes a possible life more valuable than another.
(3) I have some sympathy with preference accounts, but they are liable to count too many preferences, leading to double counting (my wife and I each prefer the other’s life to go better even if we never find out, so do we count twice as much as single people?) and preferences based on false beliefs (to drive a ferrari because they are safer). Once we start ruling out the inappropriate preference types and saying that only the remaining ones count, it seems to me that this just leads back to hedonism.
Note that I’m saying that I think happiness is the only factor in determining whether a life goes well in a particular sense, this needn’t be the same as the most interesting life or the most ethical life. Indeed, I think the most ethical life is the one that leads to the greatest sum of happiness across all lifes (utilitarianism). I’m not completely convinced of any of this, but am far more convinced than I am by any rival theories.