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‘Happiness is not the only thing’

‘Happiness is not the only thing’

Over at the New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert discusses some new books on the policy implications of so-called 'positive psychology'. Positive psychologists set out to use scientific methods to study, not suffering, depression and psychopatholoy, but the good things in life: what makes people happy, and what doesn't. The most remarkable set of findings of this growing body of research is that many of the things that we expect would make us happy — or unhappy — don't really, or not in the way we believe. For example, winning the lottery has a very short lasting positive effect on people's happiness levels; being seriously handicapped in a car accident only a short lasting negative effect. And above a certain level, economic growth and material wealth do not seem to have much of an effect on people's happiness or 'subjective well-being'. What are the policy implications? In one of the books discussed, Derek Bok makes suggestions that would make people on both the left and right unhappy (though probably not for very long). He concludes that relentlessly aiming at economic growth is a waste of time — but similarly that we should not worry much about growing inequality. It does not make people at the bottom of the scale unhappier, so why care about it?

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Should parents be allowed to pick their children’s sex for non-medical reasons?

Once upon
a time, there were a queen and a king who had three children, all of them boys.
They both loved their children dearly and made sure they had everything they
might need to flourish. Nevertheless, the queen and her husband still felt that
their family was incomplete without a daughter. They had hoped to have one
after the birth of their first son, but both of the queen’s subsequent
pregnancies had produced boys. As she was now getting close to the age when she
could no longer reasonably hope to have more children, she and her husband were
worried that their wish for a daughter would never be fulfilled. Finally,
deciding not to leave what might be their last attempt to chance, they traveled through the
kingdom to solicit the assistance of an eminent enchanter. He was a wise man
renowned to have produced many miracles. Feeling sympathy for the royal couple,
the enchanter granted their request and prepared a special brew for them to
drink. Nine months later, the queen gave birth to a
beautiful daughter.

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I Don’t Care Too Much for Money, Money Can’t Buy Me Lungs

Is it true that “everyone’s a winner”, as Julian Savulescu suggested recently on this blog , if we price life and body parts? Let’s accept that if there is a valid objection to buying and selling body parts, it must be grounded in the recognition of a harm that would come to some person or group of people. Consider, then, Savulescu’s suggestion that we should price body parts, and engage in buying and selling of them. We could categorize the potential harms that it might generate under the following headings:

(1) Harm to the participants in the transactions: donors, recipients, or facilitators

(2) Harm to specific third parties

(3) Harm to society at large

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Going Green Makes You Mean … and Distracts You

When doing something is worse than doing nothing
By: Julian Savulescu

According to a study reported in the Guardian, when people feel they have been morally virtuous by saving the planet through their purchases of organic baby food, for example, it leads to the "licensing [of] selfish and morally questionable behaviour", otherwise known as "moral balancing" or "compensatory ethics". The article came under the wonderful heading, “How going green may make you mean.”

How should an ethicist respond to yet another psychological study of human limitations? Some would no doubt argue that personal ethics should global, not local. Living ethically is a way of life, not an individual choice. That ethics should infuse all our choices, etc, etc

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The Great Egg Raffle – Why Everyone’s a Winner If We Price Life and Body Parts

By: Julian Savulescu

Imagine someone offered you £1 000 000 to cross a busy road. There is a small chance you might lose your life or a limb. But most people would accept the chance. I certainly would. We do that kind of thing every day for trivial reasons, such as to buy a packet of cigarettes or a pint of beer that might also kill us.

Would you be exploited if you crossed the road for a million dollars? Hardly. You were lucky to get such an offer that you judged made it worth crossing the busy road. After all, you could have stayed put or even crossed the road for nothing.

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Cyber-war – the rhetoric of a disruptive and non-destructive warfare

Mariarosaria Taddeo

BBC news (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8511711.stm) reported yesterday that the US Senate is about to appoint Lt General Keith Alexander as head of the U.S. Cyber Command (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Cyber_Command). This is a United States armed forces’ sub-unified command. The USCybercom, as it is abbreviated, manages USA cyber-warfare.
The existence of this command and the military career of the man who leads it prove one more time the importance that cyber-warfare is gaining in the contemporary political and military strategies.

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A Secular Foothold?

“Insofar as modern
liberal discourse rests on a distinction between reasons that emerge in the
course of disinterested observation — secular reasons — and reasons that flow
from a prior metaphysical commitment, it hasn’t got a leg to stand on.”

And so
Stanley Fish concludes his recent
column about the role of secular reasons and religion in public life. While
he briefly touches on a number of issues that stem from this ongoing debate, he
focuses his commentary on the ideas of Stephen Smith, whose new book is called The Disenchantment of
Secular Discourse. Since much of Smith’s argument circles around the
notion of secular reasons, Fish begins by explaining what these reasons are all
about.

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Breakfast with Satan

At the beginning of my journalistic career I went to interview a chap called Magnus Malan.  It was in Pretoria, and early in the morning.  General Malan had been at the heart of South Africa’s apartheid government.  He’d been head of the army and the Minister of Defence.  He had, no doubt, been responsible for… Read More »Breakfast with Satan