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Lisa
Ah yes, that blanket term, "science".
Walk with me for a minute here:
There are a lot of problems with the methodology behind political polls. But when push comes to shove, one guy gets elected and one guy doesn't--so these polling agencies have a level of accountability for their results; it's pretty clear when they're mistaken and by how much for straightforward questions like who people are going to vote for.
Studies involving "happiness" or "meaning" are subject to no such constraint. You don't really know when they get it wrong, and as a result they have no real reason to try and improve their accuracy. The only yardstick is what the mainstream studies have already said, so you either increase your odds of acceptance by ending up with similar results or you try something different on the offchance that you might be a trendsetter, or at least get some attention.
Just because you perform a study that involves statistics and gets peer reviewed does not mean that the results are "science" putting "pressure" on some set of beliefs.
Explain to me how a study of "happiness" or "meaning" could ever have the right incentives for those conducting to be held accountable for error.
Particularly given that I'm in my 30s.
Embarking on a line of inquiry to support a predetermined conclusion...this is "science"?
Then why should we try to quantify it? I just wonder if perhaps we're too quick in our attempt to replace philosophy with statistics. If people are going to have children no matter what, why even attempt to quantify how happy they will or will not be once they're parents? Is this the right question to even ask when pondering parenthood? Maybe. That's a question I feel better leaving up to philosophy than to science. Please, bring science to the hospital with you when you deliver my baby, when you administer care for my child....but I do not believe that meaning can ever be truly measured. There are limits to our understanding which inhibit our ability to bring science to the depths necessary to quantify all the universe....and there is no compelling reason I've heard so far in favor of quantifying meaning or happiness.
This might be laziness on my part, sure. I just place a whole lot less value on the "soft" sciences compared to the "hard" ones, and when we begin placing scientific values on happiness we're sure to be utilizing the softest of soft-sciences in order to make such claims. It strikes me that the best the soft sciences can do is shed some light on a murky subject; they are anything but definitive.
I've got to say, this is a troubling proposition.
Whether meaning and (your) happiness can be truly quanitified is irrelevant. What can be quantified is the eradication of your particular genetic makeup from the human species.
I agree that the "meaning" rebuttal is a dodge, but to ask that proponents of reproduction admit they are "just going to do it anyway," happiness be damned, is to dismiss the biological rationale (i.e. the science) for reproduction to begin with. Many of us accept reproduction as a necessary component of life - and we understand the consequences of large-scale circumvention - of reproduction (and by default natural selection) by a specific group of people.
What you are advocating for is an acceptance of the happiness research into the decision making process on human reproduction. What you are (unintentionally) causing is the increased likelihood that these people who accept the research don't reproduce, terminating their inclusion in the human gene pool. I don't see how this aids your long-term project in slightest.
Maybe this is where E.D. Kain's "meaning" discussion belongs. There is a clear, scientific meaning to reproduction (to reproduce.) When we focus on outcomes outside this meaning to justify our decision to not participate in reproduction, we invite the prospects of unintended consequences. Imagine if a large portion of the community of scientists and empiricists took the happiness research at face value, determined that their individual happiness could be improved (or at least not negatively affected) if they chose not to have children, decreasing the overall birthrates amongst scientisits/empiricists at some statistically significant level versus the rest of the population. Then 25 years later we wonder where all the young scientists are.
There are somethings, biologically, that we are intended to do. Keep it simple and do them; eat, breathe, and make babies.
The happiness one derives from the experience of raising kids (and it's accompanying "meaning") fluctuates madly from one day (hour?) to the next. Is it rewarding? Another word that describes something too subjective to answer with any broad accuracy.
I personally feel that my children are 2 of the best things that have ever happened to me. Can I measure my emotions? Would someone else with the same children or same experiences as me feel the same? No.
I'm trying to absorb your argument in as clear-eyed a way as possible, but it's hard when you seem to take so much relish in tweaking us parents. We "blather" about meaning while you judiciously subject your decision about whether to have kids to the evidence of science. We're "fine folks" while you're out there taking intellectual care.
The implicit meaning of rhetoric is, in theory at least, empirically knowable, and my guess is that, if we had access to a mature science of implicit meaning decryption, we'd find that you're saying a bit more than you're saying you're saying.
I think that your explicit point is that we can, in theory, measure something like whether having children is a net positive in terms of meaning, but I feel in my bones that there's an implicit argument that's saying that you're pretty sure, in your smarty pants science-y bones, that once we have such a science, we'll discover that it says what the happiness research already says, which is that parenting kinda sucks.
Or, to put it another way, is it possible to make your point without being so smug about it?
Reg-u-LATE!
Having kids sucks. Sex stops. Spontaneity vanishes. It's draining.
And I wouldn't trade my two daughters for all the tea in China.
That's hard to argue against...
What's meaningful to one person (say, writing the Great American Novel) might be boring and an utter chore to someone else.
People find meaning in a myriad of different ways (having children, doing good deeds to get into heaven, ranting on the internet, devoting copious amounts of time to a spouse, devoting copious amounts of time to a business or career, etc.)
Most of the elemental things in life trace back to a search for meaning. People should be more aware of this and how this affects their behavior and choices.
This seems to mean, in the context of the article, that the only way of knowing something is to verify it through the scientific method, and that anyone who says he knows something in the absence of strong, scientifically sound evidence, is essentially blathering, but that seems like an awfully arguable point to make in such a knowing way. Haven't philosophers been arguing about the nature of knowledge, and the different kinds of knowledge, and what if any access we have to knowledge, for thousands of years? Did I miss the memo where that debate was resolved?
This is not an argument to stop happiness studies (because they are illuminating, to say the least) , or to stop the multi-millennia ruminations about meaning. However, it is an argument that solutions to the human predicament or quantifying human happiness are part of the never-ending, wonderful conversation of philosophy, without permanent resolution. The study of humanity is not the study of sterile mathematics. Those of us who believe it is, are sometimes regarded as being, "eerie."
In regards to meaning, I find that it is literally a "personal narrative". It's a person's place in a story, the story of their lives. It's an interpretation of the events in one's life as having to do with something bigger than themselves. It's an important part of a person, the ability to create meaning, the lack of which can be seen all around us in a world where such things are taken for granted, even actively suppressed.
Say there's a study that says kids, without question, tend to make people less happy.
This study would not affect my decision to have children.
Is this your point? That I need to be up front about this?
A second question: isn't this 'meaning dodge' really just a play on the ambiguity in the notion of "happiness"? I think what most people are reacting to here is the idea that there is any quantifiable or otherwise reasonably concrete notion of happiness--one that holds, not only across diverse individuals, but across...ahem...time slices of the same individual.
I'm just having a hard time understanding the notion of happiness outside of some notion of time. If you asked me if my kids made me happy, my response would probably change depending on what day it is. The same can be said of any long-term project--philosophy, for example.
Now measure that.
I'd be interested in your take on Charles Murray's speech to the American Enterprise Institute. Here is a (notorious) quantifier employing the "meaning dodge" to defend politics you're sympathetic to.
If you are going to defend liberty, even when it comes in conflict with satisfaction, then don't you have to distinguish the good life from the pleasurable life?
John Stuart Mill tells you it's better to be Socrates unsatisfied than a pig satisfied. Are you saying Mill's "better" is just an arbitrary preference or that it is an arbitrary preference unless someone comes up with a way of measuring it?
1. Happiness is not the only thing which is intrinsically valuable. There are other things like striving and struggling and acting and other experience independent stuff which is intrinsically valueable. I don't think I have to rehash Nozick's experience machine argument for everyone here right?
2. We may or may not be able to quantify how much we value these things. Given that we find a variety of things meaningful, is there any way to compare these things with eachother.
3. what is the use of these studies? None of us are the average person. The rationality of the action depends on how much the action satsifies your values/ meanings vis a vis other actions. Maybe if the science found a way to quantify how much we value various different kind of stuff, discovered how much different courses of action fulfilled those values, then weighted everything and churned out a reccomendation, you would have a much more quantified decision procedure.
4. Will you have to show how that a world where suh a procedure is used ubiquituously is actually a better state of affairs than one where it isnt.
The problem here is just that a lot of people say that children pay off in terms of happiness, but happiness research isn't showing that. Perhaps this is because a lot of people have false expectations about what will make them happy (often the case). However, it also might be that a lot of people are using the term 'happiness' in a different way to happiness researchers (also often the case).
That would explain all the hand waving about 'meaning'. The hand wavers are really trying to say "well you might not get *that* kind of happiness out of having children, but there are still lots of other good things you get."
Meanwhile I'm curious about an entirely different point. Presumably we are all down with the idea that more money will make us happier. And we know that having children involves taking a huge financial hit. And apparently having children turns out to be a wash in terms of happiness, or perhaps a slight negative. Doesn't it follow that, ceteris paribus, having children will make you happier? It has to be adding enough happiness (perhaps nearly) make up for the huge financial loss.