Not!If a person has a high degree of life satisfaction, then his life must be good. — TheHedoMinimalist
Not!If a person has a high degree of dissatisfaction with his life then his life must be bad. — TheHedoMinimalist
This seems reasonable.On the other hand, if the dissatisfied person has the better life, then perhaps a person’s life satisfaction tells little about his quality of life. — TheHedoMinimalist
Can you offer a definition of satisfaction beyond its being just what someone says? — tim wood
What might be sound reasons for accepting a judgment of satisfaction? — tim wood
That being said, it can be more complicated because this understanding of evaluating quality of life by satisfaction may encourage short-term hedonistic behaviour without worrying about long-term consequences. — Judaka
I have my own preferences but I tend to think that its the job of people to live up to their own preferences in the best way they can, that's what I want for others and not for people to think as I do. — Judaka
Is there more to it than that? — tim wood
Now such a thing happiness, above all else, is held to be; for this we choose always for self and never for the sake of something else, but honour, pleasure, reason, and every virtue we choose indeed for themselves (for if nothing resulted from them we should still choose each of them), but we choose them also for the sake of happiness, judging that by means of them we shall be happy. Happiness, on the other hand, no one chooses for the sake of these, nor, in general, for anything other than itself." — tim wood
If a person has a high degree of life satisfaction, then his life must be good. If a person has a high degree of dissatisfaction with his life then his life must be bad. — TheHedoMinimalist
I am sure many people will not be satisfied with just hedonistic pleasures and likewise, many will not be satisfied with a virtual reality. — Judaka
We cannot evaluate a life's worth, it is purely subjective. — Judaka
Regarding the “my life is good because I am satisfied” interpretation, it’s possible for people’s life to alternate between being good and bad during various parts of their life. Of course, if we wish to evaluate the entire life rather than simply a portion of a life then we would simply take a cumulative measure of each period of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. One hypothetical way we could do this is by asking a participant to rate their life satisfaction on an hourly basis on a scale of -10 to 10. -10 would imply that one strongly wants to commit suicide. 0 would imply that one is indifferent to being alive while 10 would imply extreme satisfaction. If we were to conduct such a survey with an individual for their entire life, we would probably get a decent representation of how satisfied they were throughout their entire life. Regarding the "I want a good life therefore I will aim to be satisfied" interpretation. This would imply a preference satisfaction theory of well being and it’s not clear if it’s good to get what you want in this case.If it is to say "my life is good because I am satisfied" or "I want a good life therefore I will aim to be satisfied" then these are good ideas but over what timeframe is this person focusing? You may be satisfied when you eat a lot but dissatisfied over your weight gain or you may be satisfied in a low paying job now but many years down the track begin to regret. — Judaka
People, groups, society, culture and whatever else place values on particular attributes and qualities. I don't think these opinions matter until they matter. In other words, the people with those opinions have to matter and that includes yourself. All of this plays into whether one will be satisfied with their lot in life or not. — Judaka
As I am a nihilist and a pragmatist, I feel compelled to evaluate things from the perspective of someone else's value system. There is no greater goal for people to aspire towards. People never have things sorted out though, they don't even know what they want. Even when they get what they want, they may become bored of it later and will want something new. Just ambition alone means that perhaps one will perpetually dissatisfied with what they've got. However, I interpret being satisfied to mean that your life is being lived in accordance with what you wanted out of it. Representing low internal conflict, knowing yourself and living well. Even if you aren't someone to be admired. — Judaka
What criteria would you use to distinguish good lives from bad lives? — TheHedoMinimalist
If the satisfied slave has the better life, then this might imply that life satisfaction is perhaps the most important factor in determining quality of life. — TheHedoMinimalist
I think that's the case because if you agree that this is an entirely interpretative and subjective evaluation (and will always be) then this method is just another of the potentially infinite number of ways that one could choose to evaluate the quality of a life. The only thing that separates those and this one is the opinion of us humans. — Judaka
This way of evaluating the quality of a life is not particularly absurd or unreasonable but since truth isn't a factor, I would start to look at utility and appeal which would be a hard deviation from the topic. — Judaka
Quality doesn't exist without interpretation - as things just are and they are not measured. It's not different if instead of from a person's mouth, it's by rules they created or criteria they established. — Judaka
Without a truth value, there needs to be some other kind of value and I've yet to see an appeal for that. Since there is no need to evaluate the quality of other peoples' lives and I have yet to see any benefit for people who choose to evaluate the quality of others' lives in this way, I don't see the point of the whole thing.
11h — Judaka
So, why ought the slave be freed despite his comfort and acceptance of his fate? It's because there is a standard that demands that people strive for higher intellectual satisfaction and not live as animals. The religious would refer to this as living out to the extent of one's creation. — Hanover
am pretty sure that Aristotle, in writing on happiness, was not talking about sensation/pleasure. He referred to it in at least one place as being an assessed quality, assessed near the end of life (if it's the question of whether the life was a happy one), and as can be no surprise, he measured it against possibilities. That is, if a bunch of characteristics were in play, then the life was happy. These included (if memory serves) luck, many and good children, health, and so forth. — tim wood
I myself would go further - and it's possible that I got this from Aristotle or elsewhere and don't remember where; i.e., no claim here of originality - that if you can die happy, then you were happy. - and this covers a lot of possibilities. — tim wood
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