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Can happiness measures be calibrated?
Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Philosophy.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-0857-1695
2021 (English)In: Synthese, ISSN 0039-7857, E-ISSN 1573-0964, no 199, p. 5719-5746Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Measures of happiness are increasingly being used throughout the social sciences. While these measures have attracted numerous types of criticisms, a crucial aspect of these measures has been left largely unexplored—their calibration. Using Eran Tal’s recently developed notion of calibration we argue first that the prospect of continued calibration of happiness measures is crucial for the science of happiness, and second, that continued calibration of happiness measures faces a particular problem—The Two Unknowns Problem. The Two Unknowns Problem relies on the claim that individuals are necessarily a part of the measurement apparatus in first person measures of happiness, and the claim that we have no reason to believe that the evaluation standards people employ are invariant across individuals and time. We argue that calibrating happiness measures therefore involves solving an equation with two unknowns—an individual’s degree of happiness, and their evaluation standards—which is, generally, not possible. Third, we consider two possible escape routes from this problem and we suggest that the most promising route requires yet unexplored empirical and theoretical work on linking happiness to behavioral or neural evidence.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2021. no 199, p. 5719-5746
National Category
Philosophy
Research subject
Philosophy
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URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-195461DOI: 10.1007/s11229-021-03043-5OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-195461DiVA, id: diva2:1585870
Available from: 2021-08-18 Created: 2021-08-18 Last updated: 2021-12-22Bibliographically approved

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Ingelström, Mats

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