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Published in:
Issues and Prospects of Valuation Science Read chapter Read first chapter

2024 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

Evaluating Valuations: The Case of Happiness as Oikeiosis

Author : Franca D’Agostini

Published in: Science of Valuations

Publisher: Springer Nature Switzerland

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Abstract

This paper is about alethic (truth-related) valuations. The focus is on one of the most controversial cases, the ‘hedonic valuation’: can judgements such as ‘a is happy,’ ‘I am happy,’ be said true or false? I present three puzzling cases, then I give an account of the concept of happiness grounded on the ancient notion of oikeiosis. I finally suggest that the role of truth in case of hedonic evaluations can teach us something about the art or science of valuation in general.

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previous chapter The Tip and the Bottom. What Makes an Estimate True?
next chapter Values and Evaluation
Footnotes
1
Johns and Ormerod [14] argue that measure does not capture H but only some aspects of it, as H is a multidimensional concept (see Annas [2], p. 46 discussed by MacKerron [16]. Other authors think that it is too subjective and that comparisons of happiness are meaningless [15]. Not only that, for H-valuations we only have first-person reports whose alethic evaluation is problematic: do they tell the truth? (Howard [12] for reconstruction and discussion). A recent account of the debate is given by Haybron [10], and by Ingelstrom and van Der Dejil [13] (pp. 5719–5721). Ingelstrom and van Der Dejil also suggest that at least some of the problems of H-measure can be solved (or dodged) by the ‘calibration’ of H-scales, a program which, as they say, could improve the sector [13, p. 5721].
 
2
See d’Agostini [7].
 
3
A modal structure is a set of possible worlds related by accessibility. This structure rules truth assignations for modal sentences of the kind ‘it is possible that p’ ‘it is impossible that p’ etc., under the condition of the accessibility. Epistemically, the possible world paradigm works in the same way, assuming that to ‘access’ a world w1 one needs to have a ‘vision’ of w1. The philosophical implications are complex, there a lot of literature. For a useful synthesis see Berto and Jago [4, pp. 12–19].
 
4
Notably, HR is in the same situation of the researchers who want to measure the H of individuals and communities: she gives an evaluation of another person's judgement about her own H (see Sect. 2.4 hereafter).
 
5
Ingelstrom and Der Dejil [13]: 5721.
 
6
Giving a theory of a concept is called nowadays ‘conceptual engineering.’ The meaning of the concept should be reconstructed and, if it is the case, revised and redefined. What I propose here is not a complete theory, but a general clarification.
 
7
An accurate analysis of the oikeiosis in Stoic literature is given by Radice [20].
 
8
Clearly, the first power of words is the power of reference, or rather what is called intentionality or aboutness, because it is in virtue of this power that we have the possibility of thinking or saying truths or falsities.
 
9
She may lie, so she may intend to deceive people or also herself. This imports an interesting shift in the concept of H that I am reconstructing now, but there is no room here to develop it.
 
10
They are namely the cases I have specifically dealt with in d’Agostini [7].
 
11
See Radice [20].
 
12
Mulligan [17: 134–135]; see also Haybron [10]; and Landau (2017: Chap. 5).
 
13
‘Happiness becomes an evasive and inconsequential matter’ (29, p. 32). Bottan and Perez Truglia [5] stress that H is ‘autoregressive’ (at least in the sense that it potentiates itself).
 
14
In other terms H-valuations are objective to the extent that the kind of reality we admit in our alethic (second order) valuation of H-judgements is not only grounded on empirical givens (traditionally intended): see Sect. 3.2.
 
15
See also Bottan and Perez Truglia [5]. Excluding the case of unaware happiness or unhappiness, we can concede that there might be ‘neither’ people: people who are not ‘H’ but are not ‘not H’ either, to the extent that they do not reflect upon their condition, or at least they do not characterize their condition in terms of goods in general.
 
16
This does not mean that there is a supremacy of mere ‘being alive’ over the ‘quality’ of life (the alleged ‘strong argument’ against abortion, euthanasia, and other bioethical matters). I am simply noting that happiness and unhappiness are affections concerning the fact of ‘being in the world,’ which is generally acknowledged by H-theorists. For details see Haybron [10].
 
17
The normal reference for ‘logical realism’ is to the so-called T-schema [8], but there is no need to deepen this point here. The kind of transparent realism I am presenting relies on an interpretation of the T-schema in the line of alethic realism and truthmaker theory (as in Alston [1] and Armstrong [3].
 
18
Empathy as an objective (T-related) feature is especially defended by the phenomenological approach of Edith Stein (see Stein [23]).
 
19
In consideration of this, Varzi [24] acknowledges that maybe we do not need a particular (non-classical?) semantics,maybe the message is more radical. The problem of vagueness (and of the typical related paradox, the sorites) ‘arises at a deep and fundamental level, one that appears to be prior to the engagement of any logical and semantic paraphernalia’ [24, p. 37]. I have labelled this ‘prior level’ prelogical; Hanna [9, pp. 46–49 and 230–231] calls it ‘protologic’.
 
20
The four options are currently accepted in philosophical logic. The classical cases of only yes/only no evaluations (just true–just false) are implemented by paracomplete logics, which admit of neither yes nor no, so truth value gaps (this case is labelled ‘I do not know’, but allegedly there might be other reasons for gappy judgements), and paraconsistent logics, which admit of yes and no’ so truth value gluts (without ‘explosion’, i.e. without the triviality of ‘everything is true’, a result normally ascribed to the rule of Detachment, less frequently to Simplification). Recent details about this (and the role of Simplification) are to be found in Ripley [21].
 
21
For details about this see d’Agostini [6].
 
22
How would we be able to measure the effective value of a real estate totally forgetting the impact of vague and multidimensional factors such as H? How could we consider and prevent the effects of social unhappiness?
 
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Priest G (2003) A site for Sorites. In: Beall JC (ed) Liars and heaps. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 9–23
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24.
Varzi A (2003) Cut-offs and their neighbours. In: JC Beall (ed) Liars and heaps. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 24–38
Metadata
Title
Evaluating Valuations: The Case of Happiness as Oikeiosis
Author
Franca D’Agostini
Copyright Year
2024
Book
Science of Valuations

Print ISBN: 978-3-031-53708-0

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-031-53709-7

Copyright Year: 2024

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53709-7_6