What do Happiness Studies Study Does Happiness Change After Major Life Events - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages... He also went furhter in dissecting the etymology of the word “happiness” by tracing to its root word “hap”, meaning chance and luck whether it is good and bad in his effort to find the true meaning of happiness. The other study of Lucas that our set point of well being or our normal selves is predominantly biologically determined and our response and how we adapt to happiness life changing events in life fluctuates around that levels but will ultimately settle back to this normal state of well being. Griffin in his study about happines begun by assigning a value at the beginning of his argument particularly when Griffin cited eudaimonia” referring to “having a good guardian spirit” because that defined the trajectory of his argument. He begun associating martyrdom with happiness and formulating imaginary mathematical equation that being “happy now” and “more happy instances” vis-a-vis lesser unhappy instances would net to a happy life that made the paper problematic. The analysis was quite simplistic particularly when Griffin added Hume’s standard of taste because it required putting standard to happiness that can be likened to the concept of right and wrong in being happy. Any modern student of philosophy can refute this argument because we already know that there is no universal formula or standard of happiness. What makes one elated with happiness may be a casual circumstance to another. The bottomline is, what makes one happy will not necessarily make another happy. This test can easily be applied to refute the paper’s argument by also using one of Griffin’s example which is the woman from India who is “badly oppressed and what from the outside looks like a miserable existence” (2007:141) and might be content with small improvement of which such contentment, Griffin argued, would not necessarily mean she has a “happy life”. The trouble with Griffin’s line of argument in this example is he already put a qualifier in the his hypothesis by framing it as “pathetically content with a small improvement in what from the outside looks like a miserable existence” (141). There was already a value judgment in the hypothesis which was supposed to be in the conditional because it is yet to be argued. Such, the conclusion is certain to arrive that she will not be happy because the line of reasoning did not provide room for refutation. It can be contended however that the woman, as opposed to the paper’s contention, is happy to the slightest improvement that will come in her life and not necessarily pathetic as what Griffin has framed. With how Griffin framed his words, it seem that he has not experienced poverty because it became an automatic reaction to him to say that a poor woman despite being content of having little will still be unhappy. It is like refuting his own argument because in his words, Griffin also mentioned that “one’s life is happy if one is content that life has brought one much of what one regards as important” (2007:140). Perhaps in his value system, slight improvement is not significant to be considered important but for those who were already exasperated with poverty, a moment of relief and the slightest of improvement is already bliss. Griffin is arguing from the point of view of a rich man who has not sufferred deprivation of his basic need such that, the provision of basic material ...Download file to see next pagesRead More