The seventeenth-century philosopher John Locke, transported to the twenty-first century, has been discussing with Terence Moore, a twenty-first century student of language, questions concerning words, meanings and understanding. In this conversation Moore tackles Locke on the role he assigns to happiness in his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
MOORE: I've got a bone to pick with you.
LOCKE: Good. I like a nice meaty bone. What's its name?
MOORE: Happiness. Specifically, how you define it and your view of what its role is in our lives.
LOCKE: Didn't I make that clear in Book II and parts of Book IV?
MOORE: You may have believed you did. But I'm not convinced. You wrote, ‘Happiness, in its full extent, is the utmost pleasure we are capable of.’ You also claimed we are moved to act by desire for our own happiness.
LOCKE: (turning the pages of the Essay) What I actually asked was, ‘What is it moves desire?’ I answered my own question, ‘Happiness, and that alone.’
MOORE: There's part of my bone. I believe you overestimate the role of Happiness and underestimate the complexity and diversity of desires.
LOCKE: Anything else?
MOORE: Actually there is. You wrote about Happiness as if it were something that could be pursued.
LOCKE: (turning the pages) Strictly I wrote, ‘The necessity of pursuing true Happiness [is] the Foundation of all Liberty.’
MOORE: And capped it off claiming that ‘… the highest perfection of intellectual nature, lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid Happiness.’ Have I cited you correctly?
LOCKE: (turning the pages) You have.
MOORE: In that case everything you said about Happiness is my bone.
LOCKE: But what exactly is your beef? I like your meaty idioms. We didn't have so many of those in my time.
MOORE: Fundamentally I don't agree with the supreme role you assign to Happiness as the mover and shaper of our lives.
LOCKE: You don't think Happiness is important?
MOORE: I didn't say that. But let's begin, where you often used to begin, with the word itself, ‘Happiness’.
LOCKE: Surely you can't object to the word?
MOORE: Not its phonetics but its syntax. The word is a noun.
LOCKE: Obviously.
MOORE: Nouns, as everybody knows, name things. So when you write Happiness, and Happiness alone, is what moves us to act, readers might believe you conceive Happiness to be a thing, an entity existing somewhere out there, that we, by diligently searching, by earnest pursuit, might one day find.
LOCKE: Is there something amiss with readers believing that?
MOORE: A very great deal.
LOCKE: Give me an instance.
MOORE: Well, you surely don't believe Happiness is a thing. You who taught us in Book III of the Essay that the meaning of abstract words, general terms you called them, is, I quote you, ‘ … nothing but a relation that by the Mind of Man, is added to them.’
LOCKE: I did say that. It's what I believe.
MOORE: So you're not saying there's some abstract stuff out there called Happiness. The meaning of Happiness is up here, in the mind, subjective, private, provisional, uncertain.
LOCKE: Yes, you're right. You're intriguing me. Tell me what ideas does the word Happiness excite in you? What relation does your mind add to it?
MOORE: I use it to characterise a transient state that may unexpectedly overtake some individuals living in a certain kind of way. It's a by-product of something else, it's derivative, secondary, not primal.
LOCKE: So you believe Happiness is epiphenomenal.
MOORE: ‘Epiphenomenal’ is one of those words like ‘rebarbative’ or ‘egregious’, I'm never quite sure what ideas they excite in my mind.
LOCKE: The ideas ‘epiphenomenal’ excite in my mind characterise something occurring as a result of something else – the way ripples disturb the surface of a pond after a stone's dropped. Or the patterns the ebbing sea leaves on a sandy beach.
MOORE: Are you saying you agree! We shouldn't think of Happiness as an entity in its own right, but as a consequence, a derivative. It's not something you aim for, pursue or can teach. Being happy happens, if it does, more or less by accident, when you're engaged with some other activity.
LOCKE: Not so fast. Let me try a teleological argument on you.
MOORE: Does this mean you still want to defend the view you expressed in the Essay that ‘… the highest perfection of intellectual nature, lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid Happiness.’?
LOCKE: What I want to do is explore Happiness. Suppose when we indulge in some activity, perhaps attempting to solve a problem, or, as I tried, to understand ‘understanding’, we do so in pursuit of happiness.
MOORE: It's an argument. We choose to do what we do in order to achieve Happiness. The difficulty for me is I'm not sure that's where the route to Happiness lies. If we set out with Happiness as our goal, my experience is we don't achieve it. Happiness is more likely to steal up on us unsolicited. I'm persuaded there's something deeply epiphenomenal, to use your term, about Happiness.
LOCKE: You are being persuasive. I recall, for example, being overtaken by happiness at times on the rare occasions I was with William.
MOORE: William?
LOCKE: William Molyneux, my Irish friend. And you?
MOORE: Happiness, unsolicited, can steal up when we're walking a ridge in the Scottish Highlands, or maybe I write a sonnet that isn't too bad, or our Conversations go well.
LOCKE: Perhaps I should re-write those passages on Happiness a little, emphasising its epiphenomenal nature.
MOORE: Quite severely re-write I think! There's also the question of the complexity of human desires. You singled out Happiness as the unique desire.
LOCKE: (turning the pages) Strictly what I wrote was, ‘What is it moves desire? Happiness, and that alone.’
MOORE: It's the ‘alone’ I'm querying.
LOCKE: You're saying there are other desires that move us equally.
MOORE: A whole raft of them. Some are ‘for’, some are ‘to’. The desire for physical gratifications of all sorts, for excellence, for reputation, for success, those desires all move us to act. The desire to avoid pain, boredom, escape surroundings, fulfil obligations, avoid stern duty's pointing finger. Then there's compassion. It may be a far greater mover than Happiness… When I see you suffer, I suffer. That moves me to act to allay your suffering, so incidentally, epiphenomenally, allaying my suffering …
LOCKE: Yes, yes. I take your point. To be happy is one among a host of desires moving us to act, including compassion. I suspect when I was writing about happiness I may have confused ‘pleasure’ and ‘happiness’.
MOORE: You certainly appeared to make ‘pleasure’ and ‘pain’ the foundation of your moral theory. You were, you may recall, bold enough to think ‘Morality is capable of demonstration.’ That demonstration doesn't appear in the Essay. Perhaps …?
LOCKE: (coughing hard) I suspect attempting to demonstrate my ethical doctrines might better be the subject of a further Conversation – hopefully one in which Happiness steals up on us unsolicited!
MOORE: That Conversation I'd be happy to take part in. Till next time then.
