well-being

11 Responses to “well-being”

1. Christoph
   February 29th, 2012 at 00:14
   

   Actually, the proper conclusion from these premises would be “… are exclusively a matter of chance”. But writing that would give away that there’s something wrong here to begin with.

   This is simply a re-phrasing or application of the old determinism vs. free will problem. In a nutshell, if I choose to investigate the world from a cause-and-effect point of view (as do physics and increasingly also social sciences and as is done here) I should not be surprised to find that everything is caused by something, whether I can describe it in meaningful terms or have to call it “chance”.

   But the way “chance” is used in this quote implies its everyday usage, meaning the opposite of “due to a person’s agency”, and it is possible to analyze in detail the inner processes meant with the latter. This distinction stays meaningful even if the deterministic perspective can point to “causes” within these processes that allow only one outcome.

   A very good treatise of this topic is in the german-language book “Handwerk der Freiheit” by the philosopher Peter Bieri.

   Also, I’m just realizing this has obvious connections to a constructivist point of view (i.e. different possible points of view which cannot be resolved by judging their “trueness”) – exciting :)

   
   
2. E.
   February 29th, 2012 at 00:21
   

   So interesting, Christoph. “Handwerk der Freiheit” was the last out of 5 or 6 books I read about the free will issue, and stopped after 30%. I didn’t finish it and lost interest in the topic alltogether. There wasn’t any point for me to continue thinking about this, because it is not an empirically solvable problem (at the moment), and therefor not of interest to me.

   The point of the authors is: the mean level of well-being is very stable due to life and the highest amount of variance explained my genes. The changes of this mean score are usually due to life events such as unemployment, marriage, accidents, disease etc. The authors call this “fortune’s favor” or chance. Obviously, this is up for debate. But I do see what they’re saying.

   
   
3. Benedikt
   March 2nd, 2012 at 02:29
   

   While I can recommend “Handwerk der Freiheit” very much (even if Bieri, if I remember correctly, only sheds light on the “compatibilism & determinism” version for defending free will – you still should read it, Eiko. You have interest in other questions that can’t be decided empirically, too!) I can’t follow you here, Christoph. If in the first sentence instead of the “largely” a “only” was written, I would see you point. But it isn’t and I don’t.

   
   
4. Christoph
   March 2nd, 2012 at 16:36
   

   @Benedikt, you’re right that my changed conclusion does not follow strictly, but I still feel it is implied. My main point is that the kind of argumentation used in the quote (and its perspective of investigation) does not leave any room for what every-day reasoning would expect as the opposite of “chance” (that is, things that occur due to a person’s effort and decisions).

   Thinking about it more, I actually feel the quote is bogus – without the allusion to the everyday concept of “chance” it loses its scandalous character and becomes boring. If all we are talking about here is a natural science concept of chance (vs. meaningful causation, probabilism vs. strict determinism), what is the big deal?

   @Eiko, it’s been years since I read the book, but I remember it has definite lengths especially in the first part. But it’s worth following Bieri’s flow here, because he makes his point beautifully by first showing that real free will as felt by most people has to be un-caused (“unbedingt”), then showing how absurd the concept is on closer look, and coming to a helpful synthesis. And I feel I learned a lasting philosopher’s lesson from him, to be conscious and careful with the contexts and implications of the concepts you use. And as I keep arguing, this is a prerequisite to any empirical efforts… :)

   Concerning the author’s claims as paraphrased by you, I totally agree regarding factual claims. I argue that the concept of “chance” is used carelessly, and the chosen perspective not useful.

   Lastly, if you take a natural science point of view, I consider the free will issue solved empirically: there is none. How could there even be? (In the sense that human beings are able to do anything not explainable as caused by deterministic or probabilistic physical processes)

   
   
5. Benedikt
   March 3rd, 2012 at 01:50
   

   I think you did understand it in a way not intended by Lykken & Tellegen. While one can doubt their interpretation of data, I don’t think they did want to touch any discussion about free will (and rightly so).
   c. f. the Abstract:
   Happiness, or subjective well-being, was measured on a birth-record-based sample of several thousand middle aged twins using the Well-Being (WB) stale of the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire. Neither soctoeconomic status, educational attainment, family income, marital status, nor an indicant of religious commitment could account for more than about 3% of the variance in WB. From 44% to 52% of the variance in WB, however, is associated with genetic variation. Based on the retest of smaller samples of twins after intervals of 4, 5 and 10 years, we estimate that the heritability of the stable component of subjective well-being approaches 80%.
   (http://education.ucsb.edu/janeconoley/ed197/documents/lykkenHappinessisastochasticphenomenon.pdf)

   
   
6. Christoph
   March 4th, 2012 at 00:46
   

   Thanks for linking the article Benedikt, very interesting. I agree that the main point of the article is a different one (Well-Being is determined largely by genetic variation as opposed to life circumstances). I can even see something humane in their other conclusion “It may be that trying to be happier is as futile as trying to be taller and therefore is counterproductive”. After reading parts of the article, I still feel their final conclusion (which is the part quoted by Eiko) is venturing into the philosophical and every-day understandings. But ultimately this is trying to look into the author’s mind…

   What I think in the end is: there are more helpful ways of looking at the problem of well-being and how to increase it. Just like for IQ, I prefer researching and pointing out the educational and social factors that increase it rather than showing how genetically determined it is.

   
   
7. E.
   March 4th, 2012 at 12:52
   

   The paper, and others I’m reading at the moment tries to answer the question how much variance can be explained by state vs. trait variables. What is state and what is trait can be discussed quite a bit really. To make it simple, I’d say state covariates would be genetic effects and stable psychological traits like personality. State is what happens during the lifetime and interacts with genes.

   We really don’t use the gene vs. environment distinction anymore, it is in many cases quite useless especially when it comes to psychology (with very complex gene-gene and gene-environment interactions).

   The serotonin transporter polymorphism is a good examples for this (5-HTTLPR): a short version of this allele (S/S) makes people vulnerable to depression when moderating effects of adverse life events come into play. S/S carriers seem to have a lower stress threshold and react easier with depression.

   However, there is no main effect of 5-HTTLPR on depression – only the interaction effect with adverse life events. This means that long carriers of this allele (L/L) have the same amount of depression, but the causal pathways seem to be different (we understand much more about S/S carrier depression than L/L).

   So only looking at the gene itself (what most studies are doing) would have not revealed any effect on depression, but once you take GxE interactions into account, you find large differences.

   
   
8. Benedikt
   March 4th, 2012 at 19:51
   

   This is quite interesting.

   @Christoph: I’m with you in this preference. Nevertheless it helps to know what you can do – and what you can’t ever accomplish. (Based on everyday experiences my intuition, that you can influence your happiness, is quite strong, by the way. It involves practice and technique, I would add.) I had a similiar discussion about intelligence some years ago, cf. this Website: http://calnewport.com/blog/2008/12/17/q-a-how-much-does-intelligence-matter-at-college/

   —

   Duplicate? This comment of mine doesn’t show up for me…
   Here for a funnier take on a very similar topic:
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pmnzIhbX2bg

   
   
9. E.
   March 4th, 2012 at 19:52
   

   omg first time in 8 years someone manages to destroy the layout of my blog ;) … going to edit.

   
   
10. Benedikt
    March 4th, 2012 at 19:52
    

    Regarding troubleshooting: If I link a website in the “Website”-field of the Reply-Form, my post doesn’t become visible, but is still in the database. (I can’t post it again as it’s regarded as duplicate.)

    
    
11. E.
    March 4th, 2012 at 19:54
    

    Nothing in spam folder… weird

    
    

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