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Debating Human Happiness

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from: Steven Pinker
to: Martin Seligman

Matters of the Mind

Posted Thursday, Oct. 17, 2002, at 12:13 PM ET

Who are these people?

I agree that we must distinguish "heritable" (varying genetically within in a population) from "evolutionary" (being explicable in terms of phylogeny or adaptation) from "genetic" (a direct or indirect product of the genome) from "unchangeable." But your reasonable advice that people not strive to pole-vault themselves to a level of happiness outside their inherited range seems to assume that there is some connection between them—that at least in this case, what is heritable is also difficult to change. The connection may not, in fact, be far-fetched. For example, opinions on many controversial topics are partly heritable—as Gilbert and Sullivan wrote, "Every boy and every gal that's born into the world alive is either a little liberal or else a little conservative"—and studies have shown that the more heritable an opinion is, the more resistant people are to changing it.

You suggest that my students who would rather be happy pigs than sadder-but-wiser humans bespeak an American hedonistic take on happiness. Is there an alternative explanation: sheer age? Could an orientation toward a good and meaningful life be a hard-won lesson that sinks in only in adulthood or even middle age? One thinks of teenagers' penchant for drugs, casual sex, reckless driving, extreme sports, and romantic infatuation, and of adults' reflections on which decisions in their lives gave them lasting satisfaction. Is turning toward a good and meaningful life just part of growing up? Cross-cultural data would be relevant. Are there cultures in which adolescents are no more hedonistic than adults?

Danny Kahneman speaks of aggregating pleasurable and painful moments, though he also distinguishes the desire to maximize this tally from the desire to have experiences that fall into a satisfying autobiographical narrative (as when we make an arduous trip to an interesting event to be able to say that we have done it). When people ask me, "Do you enjoy writing?" I give them the old author's reply, "I enjoy having written."

Beauty is an interesting case (see Nancy Etcoff's Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty). Many evolutionary psychologists argue that there couldn't be "beauty genes" for particular facial features, because if there were, they would have been selected to fixation many generations ago, and everyone would now be equally beautiful. If there are beauty genes, they express themselves in the brain of the beholder, not the face of the beholdee. We are attracted to features of anatomy that index a person's health, fertility, and absence of developmental defects.

I'd like to return to my own (and Bob Wright's) question about human nature and optimism at the level of politics and social organization. In The Blank Slate I point out that the image of the mind as a tabula rasa is not as rosy as it sounds. It invites totalitarian dictators to try to fill up the slates with the right kind of inscriptions rather than leaving it to chance. It emboldens them to base their authority on a moral superiority to their rivals and to imagine that their repressive governments are temporary measures that will some day wither, allowing a "new man" to live in harmony. Democracy, in contrast, is based on a jaundiced theory of human nature and calls for permanent checks and balances to control human ambition and self-deception. Mao said, "It is on a blank page that the most beautiful poems are written." Madison said, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary; if angels were to govern men, no controls on government would be necessary." In societies no less than individuals, acknowledging our limitations may ultimately be more humane than denying them.

dialogues
entries
123456789
from: Steven Pinker
to: Martin Seligman

Matters of the Mind

Posted Thursday, Oct. 17, 2002, at 12:13 PM ET
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Steven Pinker is Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard and author of The Blank Slate, How the Mind Works, and The Language Instinct. Martin Seligman is Fox Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, former president of the American Psychological Association, and the author of Authentic Happiness. Robert Wright, a visiting fellow at Princeton University's Center for Human Values and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, runs the Web site meaningoflife.tv and is the author of The Moral Animal and Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny.
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Remarks From The Fray, Day 1:

[The Dialogue] seems to be operating on two different levels already. Pinker is a scientist...he is interested in how things work (especially the brain) and does his best to make very few assumptions that are not backed up by empirical observation. To him, the unknown is close at hand...we don't even fully understand how a human brain recognizes its mother. For Seligman, however, it's no big deal to treat "The Pleasant Life" as an empirically validated REAL THING, and go on from there to discuss it …

Pinker's point is that "positive emotions" (I'm not sure what THAT means, either, since "positive" and "negative" don't usually mean "good" and "bad" in science) are as much adaptations as "negative" ones. They show themselves in specific situations. You can manipulate your environment to emulate those specific situations to a degree, given. However, the fact that Seligman still has clients in a "Sisyphean struggle" means that he has not come up with a reliable and communicable method for infinitely increasing happiness levels. I'm sure he would respond to such criticism by stating that a person's degree of happiness depends on how well they understand or agree with his point of view. Anyone who is still depressed "just doesn't get it". I hope everyone recognizes such arguments from discussions about ESP.

I'm sorry...I think I'm taking this from an unfairly scientific perspective. If Seligman's framework seems to be helpful for his clients, then it is as validated as it needs to be for its purpose. However, if we're going to allow for that kind of validation, then Pinker's more constrained discussion of human mental activity seems to be a poor fit for the discussion.

-- Mangar

(To reply, click here.)


I completely agree! What is he talking about? Even parts of his response that momentarily corresponded with external reality were soon obfuscated by a retreat to meaningless catch phrases. For instance he describes the meaningful life, wherein I might use my "signature skills" to accomplish something larger than myself. I agree, that sounds pretty meaningful. But then he goes on to say that he can`t see how "unfortunate and double-edged genes could compromise that?" Well, he might also give some evidence that he tried, or that at least has some idea what Pinker is talking about. First of all, Pinker isn`t saying that genes are double-edged, but that genetically programmed behaviors are. It`s not like genes are marching around the body saying "stop all of this meaningfulness, it`s just gone too far," although I wonder if Seligman might think so.

-- John

(To reply, click here.)


Seligman says something astonishing:

No one has yet discovered genetic constraints on the Good Life. Everyone has signature strengths and everyone is capable of recrafting their lives to use them more.

Surely this can't be true. No genetic constraints on one's willingness and ability to implement the program of change that you prescribe? Someone genetically cursed to live a life of major depression is as capable of implementing this program of change as someone who is genetically blessed with high levels of energy and competence? I may be missing something, but this seems implausible to me.

-- Engram

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(10/16)

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