Owen J. Flanagan

Can there be a Buddhism without karma, nirvana, and reincarnation that is compatible with the rest of knowledge?

If we are material beings living in a material world―and all the scientific evidence suggests that we are―then we must find existential meaning, if there is such a thing, in this physical world. We must cast our lot with the natural rather than the supernatural. Many Westerners with spiritual (but not religious) inclinations are attracted to Buddhism―almost as a kind of show more moral-mental hygiene. But, as Owen Flanagan points out in The Bodhisattva's Brain, Buddhism is hardly naturalistic. In The Bodhisattva's Brain, Flanagan argues that it is possible to discover in Buddhism a rich, empirically responsible philosophy that could point us to one path of human flourishing.

Some claim that neuroscience is in the process of validating Buddhism empirically, but Flanagan's naturalized Buddhism does not reduce itself to a brain scan showing happiness patterns. "Buddhism naturalized," as Flanagan constructs it, offers instead a fully naturalistic and comprehensive philosophy, compatible with the rest of knowledge―a way of conceiving of the human predicament, of thinking about meaning for finite material beings living in a material world. show less

One simple word – happy. Everyone knows immediately what it means, and where they fit into its range. But in Against Happiness, a team of philosophers and psychologists show that happiness is a giant balloon teeming with uncertainties and contradictions. The slightest attempt to peek into the balloon will cause it to explode into a mushroom cloud of uncontrollable controversy. It reminds me of the Rodney King trial, where lawyers for the police “proved” that no beating took place by show more forcing the jury to examine every single frame of the video that clearly showed it.

There are ten authors in Against Happiness. They bring expertise from philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, cultural psychology, sociology, religion and ethics. Between them, they dissect every conceivable angle, nook and cranny of the word happiness, and the annual global poll that purports to rank countries by their degree of happiness. It’s not pretty. Thumbs down, all around. Julius Caesar suffered fewer wounds on the steps of the Senate than happiness takes in this book.

There are basically two prongs to the attack. The word happiness means different things to different people, different cultures, classes and countries. The authors give explicit examples of how different people respond to the question of how happy they are right now.

In the USA, Blacks are a little less happy than whites. But that would make Blacks cockeyed optimists by comparison. It could be they have resigned themselves to lower pay, fewer opportunities, more healthcare snafus, killings by police and so on. Having internalized all this misery, they manage to claim they’re pretty happy.

Or is that whites are miserable at their declining status, and rate their own happiness lower than they should? Maybe neither Blacks nor whites understood the question the way the pollsters meant it. These are some the innumerable technicalities that render such totally subjective self-happiness evaluations worthless.

This sort of amorphous inefficiency allows the USA to score highly on the global survey, while “40% of American teens suffer ‘persistent sadness and hopelessness.’” But nobody asked them.

At the cultural level, the authors cite a conundrum from organized religion, which often proscribes things that make many people happy. Practitioners go straight to hell according to these institutions. So this kind of happiness is generally not broadcast for fear of hypocrisy and criticism, making self-reports of happiness even more dubious.

At the neurological level, “There is not one brain state that is happiness” and “Happiness is not a simple hedonic state that is shared across animals.” Happiness just will not be pinned down.

The second prong is not about the word but the global survey itself. All over the world, people are asked how happy they are on a scale of one to ten. This is self-reporting, not analysis of facts. Depending on their culture, and even their mood that day, people appreciate themselves and their situations differently.

The Chinese are shown to have an incredibly complex values system, influenced by Confucius, a 2500 year history, the Communist Party, a 1.2 billion population, etc. etc. For all the surveillance, harassment and corruption the Chinese put up with, they say they’re pretty happy people. Or maybe they have to say that?

Bhutan, north of India, values happiness so much it publishes its own gross happiness index figure every year. It actually prioritizes happiness. But the authors show it to be a bogus kind of happiness. Because in this devoutly Buddhist nation, happiness can only be acknowledged when everyone is happy. If there is someone who has fallen on hard times, no one can be happy. So how do they score so highly every year?

And, the authors say, don’t forget about countries like the United Arab Emirates, where people report being very happy. Sure, if you only ask the 1.5 million citizens. The 9.3 million resident aliens, with no rights, no benefits and microscopic incomes might say something else. Most couldn’t even have read the questionnaire because it was only in Arabic.

Other cultures put no value on happiness at all. They value peace, tranquility, family and friends over happiness. Happiness is crass, selfish, fleeting and superficial. They score themselves lower in happiness because it’s the wrong question.

If that weren’t enough, the concept of well-being keeps popping up. Is feeling good happiness? Can someone be happy if they are disabled or ill? And if those people can claim to be happy, shouldn’t everyone else be positively ecstatic by comparison?

The numbers themselves are suspect. If someone scores themself an eight, what did they take into consideration? Is their eight the same as an eight from someone on the other side of the wall, or the world? What defines an eight, anyway? Out of debt? No lawsuits? Healthy feeling today? Still employed? No protesters in the streets? No mass murders today? Someone dropped an unexpected compliment? Sunny and warm outside? Won the office pool? What about yesterday? Does that count?

There is a great deal of Aristotle in the book. It seems the great philosopher coined the term eudaimonia, which has various meanings in English, but generally flourishing. Not happiness, but flourishing: living up to full cognitive and physical potential. Only living to the fullest can qualify as true happiness in a lot of quarters. Living well and doing good are the foundations of true happiness, but how many survey respondents took that into consideration?

Readers will also learn about the Easterlin Paradox, which claims that above a certain level, more income doesn’t make a difference to happiness. It varies with the cost of living in different areas. A millionaire in Manhattan is barely middle class these days.

Take all these things and two hundred pages more of them, and it begins to appear that the global happiness index is a fraud. Any government that makes decisions based on its rank in the index is making a very large mistake. Trying to climb the rankings, like US universities in the annual Newsweek rankings, leads to all kinds of perversions. Oh, and don’t forget the influence of the Science and Ethics of Happiness and Well-being Institute at Columbia University, which published this book. Real money is being spent on understanding happiness through a self-reported ten point scale.

Tearing the simple concept of happiness apart like this should bring a tear to a criminal defense lawyer’s eye. It is a microscopic, thorough and comprehensive assassination of supposed evidence. Donald Trump could use these people about now.

The authors come to the sensible conclusion that the happiness promotion by governments is “a fad, a passing fancy, branding overreach.” Of the survey, they say “on close examination it doesn’t work logically, empirically or philosophically.” That’s pretty much it for the Happiness Index.

But then, just to be sure, the authors asked four academic critics to evaluate their work! The first one got it, all of it, and succinctly. Jennifer Ann Frey is a professor at South Carolina University. She says “we should pause on the happiness agenda, because the prospects that it will bring about true happiness are very dim.” Full marks.

The other three didn’t get it. One said she read it while having a birthday gift massage at a remote spa. Another is a founder of the Happiness Index. Incredibly, they could only see the glass as half full. They sloughed off all the evidence of its worthlessness. One even wondered why the title Against Happiness was so negative. Nobody is against happiness, she said. She couldn’t figure out that the authors weren’t against lower case h happiness itself, but against capital H Happiness the fraud.


Critics.

David Wineberg show less

Against Happiness, written by a collection of nine writers with responses from four others, is a fascinating look at the concept of happiness by examining the weaknesses and, some would say, flaws of the happiness agenda.

First of all, the happiness agenda is a movement that places happiness as the supreme and most important goal in life. Yes, that is a slight simplification but not a misrepresentation. This volume is addressing the current version of this way of thinking, but the concept is show more not new.

The writers aren't claiming that happiness is not a worthwhile goal, just not THE worthwhile goal. It can be a part of a good life, probably a part of everyone's idea of what a good life, for them, would be. I'm not going to try to paraphrase every argument against the happiness agenda, the writers in the book do a much better job than either I or any other reviewer I've seen could do, and I just don't get off on writing just to make this long appear, well, whatever it appears.

Basically, happiness is not the same from person to person, let alone from culture to culture, so having a universal and objective measurement is impossible. This speaks to both various definitions and understandings of what it is. It also speaks to how some cultures explicitly place happiness, particularly individualistic happiness, well below other important and virtuous goals or states of being.

Measurement is another problem as well. Kinda like when a healthcare professional asks you to rate your pain on a scale from one to ten. My five may be your three or your seven. Or I may answer higher or lower based on what I want the person to do. Same idea with self-determined assessments of happiness.

In some ways, I think of happiness as a less harmful version of the popularized positive mental attitude (PMA) craze. Having a PMA certainly can help one achieve one's goals, but overemphasizing it can lead people to think that it alone leads to success. To paraphrase Napoleon Hill: whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe it can achieve. If one conceives and believes, then works toward achieving it, then it can be achieved. But many just take the basic phrase as the entire guide to success. The happiness agenda does something similar with happiness. Happiness equals good life.

Because the happiness agenda people are working to have policy focus on it, everyone needs to be aware of where these ideas fall short. So I would recommend this to anyone who cares about society as a whole. If self-reported happiness can influence policy to a large degree, then many social justice issues could be trampled because those who hold the power can both define happiness for their purposes then enact policy to maintain their own entitlements, which would equal their own happiness, which would keep many people in poverty, with limited or nonexistent rights. This ain't a solid gold movement, more like gold-plated.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. show less

I used Flanagan's book to help prep for a "Philosophy of Psychology" course that I taught.

My overall assessment is that it is useful, though flawed.

It is useful in the following ways: Flanagan is a fairly lucid writer and is able to come up with some nice illustrations of the various arguments covered. Further, the aim of the book is to argue that a truly "scientific " account of the mind is both possible and desirable. To that end, Flanagan covers not just philosophy of mind but also some show more of the more straight forward empirical psychology of the past century. Of course, he pursues this project as a philosopher would, attempting to clarify and critique the basic assumptions of various research programs in empirical psychology (including Jamesian introspective psychology, Freudian analysis, Watson-Skinner-Boring behaviorism, and Piaget's stage theory, and more recent cognitive science). This is especially useful for philosophers who may teach or do a bit of research in philosophy of mind but don't consider it their primary area of specialization. Few of us, I imagine, have taken the time to read much Piaget, so it's nice to see what other philosophers have to say about him.

What is most helpful about "Science of the Mind" is that it captures a sufficient amount of history while remaining critical. Flanagan does actually *assess* the views of his predecessors and, unsurprisingly, finds them wanting in various places. This separates "Science of the Mind" from the of history of science/social science texts that try for a disinterested presentation.

So, on the positive end, I'd say Flanagan succeeds in presenting a critical introduction to a number of psychological research programs that philosophers may not be terribly familiar with, and he does so in a way that cuts through the historical clutter to get at the fundamental issues that excite philosophers.

My issues with the book are as follows:

First, Flanagan really overstates the case against dualism. His primary argument, the old standard based on the conservation of matter, is simply question begging. It presupposes that the an sich universe is casually closed. If *that's* true there is a bit of a problem for any dualism resembling Descartes'. But, why accept the causal closure of the universe? Many people do...but besides appeals to parsimony and (often coupled with) a kind of weird historicism about scientific progress the arguments aren't forthcoming.

Along these same lines, Flanagan's arguments against the transparency of the mental are just not especially convincing and seem to me to conflate two different conceptions of transparency. There is one sense in which transparency is an obviously false thesis which claims that nothing goes on in or about the mind without first flowing through the stream of consciousness. Surely this is much too strong and perhaps Flanagan is right that experimental psychology has produced compelling dis-confirming evidence. However, there is a second sense of transparency which is something like the view that one's beliefs must be somehow accessible to one if they are to count as beliefs at all. This view has a basis in common sense and ordinary language. It is one thing to say that there are mental processes that occur outside of our consciousness or that not all of the information we have stored is always flashing before us at every moment, it is another thing to say that we sometimes believe things that we do not believe that we believe.

Along similar lines, Flanagan seems, at times, to suggest that there is evidence against and reason to doubt the widely held position that introspective reports are incorrigible. One gets that sense that incorrigibility, which is an epistemic feature of some beliefs is being run together with a view about the metaphysics of the mind. Certainly the epistemic status of a belief is going to supervene on the metaphysics of the belief producing mechanism in some way or other. What the world is like will in some way determine how we can know about that world. But it seems to me that we can perhaps remain neutral on the metaphysics and still support incorrigibility. I've yet to find a compelling reason to doubt the accuracy of statements like "It seems warm to me".

Second, Flanagan is a bit too gung-ho, I'd say, about functionalism. While it's true that this book was composed in the heady days of the early 1980s, functionalism is far from the final word. Admittedly, there are many appealing features of functionalism...but even then there were worries...these don't, to my mind, receive sufficient coverage. show less