[Buddha-l] Re: Republicans are Happier?

[Richard Hayes]

Bill Kish asks:

>  Why should
> someone be counted as "happy" just because they say they are ?

I think the answer to this question is obvious. Happiness is a purely 
subjective state. There is no fact to the matter of a subjective state except 
what the person reporting the state reports. The claim of being happy is 
unfalsifiable (and hence unscientific).

> I 
> think the possibility of deception (including self-deception) in
> how this question gets answered is fairly high, high enough to make
> the results a little less interesting than they might have been
> otherwise.

It is utterly impossible to be mistaken about how one feels. Self-reports 
about some things can be falsified, provided there is an external standard 
for verification or falsification. Someone might, for example, be deceived 
about whether he is more than 180cm tall, or one might be deceived about 
having an IQ over 85. But how can one be deceived about being in pain or 
liking sour pickles or being happy when the fact of the matter is nothing 
more nor less than thinking that one is so?

I would also argue that it is impossible to be mistaken about whether one is a 
Buddhist, since being a Buddhist is nothing more nor less than thinking one 
is so. (I say this as a Buddhist.)

-- 
Richard P. Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes