What is Happiness?

Happiness
In Psychology, happiness is a mental or emotional state of well being which
can be defined by among others, positive or pleasant emotions ranging from
contentment to intense joy.

To behaviorists, happiness is a cocktail of emotions we experience when we do

something good or positive.

To neurologists, happiness is the experience of a flood of hormones released in

the brain as a reward for behavior that prolongs survival.
Is Happiness a journey or a destination?
 Two Views Of Happiness
• The hedonistic view of well being is that happiness is the polar
opposite of suffering; the presence of happiness indicates the absence
of pain. Because of this, hedonists believe that the purpose of life is to
maximize happiness, which minimizes misery.

• Eudaimonia a term that combines the Greek words for “good” and
“spirit” to describe the ideology. Eudaimonia defines happiness as the
pursuit of becoming a better person. Eudaimonists do this by
challenging themselves intellectually or by engaging in activities that
make them spiritually richer people.
• “good spirited”
• Coined by Aristotle
• Describes the pinnacle of happiness that is attainable
by humans.
• “human flourishing”
 From Nicomachean Ethics
(philosophical inquiry into nature of the good life for a human being.)
Written by Aristotle's son Nicomachus

Human Flourishing arises as a result of different components

such a
- Phronesis
- Friendship
- Wealth
- Power
 Science as Methods and Results
• Science stems from objectivity brought upon by a rigid
method
• Claim to a reason and empiricism
This apple is red.” The verification theory of meaning
claims that it is meaningful if and only if we can
describe which state of affairs has to be observable
so that the sentence can be said to be true.
• The Falsification Principle, proposed by Karl Popper,
is a way of demarcating science from non-science. It
suggests that for a theory to be considered scientific it
must be able to be tested and conceivably proven false.
For example, the hypothesis that "all swans are
white," can be falsified by observing a black swan.
“Falsification” is to be understood as the
refutation of statements, and in contrast,
“verification” refers to statements that are
shown to be true. The goal of science is to create
knowledge by identifying true statements as true
(verified) and false statements as false (falsified).