Presenting his lecture “What is this thing called happiness?“ as part of the 2010-2011 Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series, University of Massachusetts philosophy Professor Fred Feldman was awarded the Chancellor’s Medal last Tuesday afternoon. The medal is the highest honor bestowed on individuals for exemplary and extraordinary service to the campus.

The lecture, based on Feldman’s book of the same name, drew over 200 people to the Massachusetts Room at the Mullins Center, the largest crowd yet attracted by a lecture in the series.

In the lecture, Feldman said “being happy is not the same thing as being satisfied with your standing in life domains.” He added that a person who is interested in politics could be happy “not because of things going on in his job, his housing, his marriage, or his leisure time activities,” but because, “he’s heard what he takes to be good news” about a political candidate. Feldman explained the opposite could also be true with a similar person who was instead unhappy with the news he had heard.

Feldman used these examples to stress that happiness was not to be confused with welfare, but that rather happiness is a function of pleasure.

Drawing on principles of hedonism to support his take on happiness, Feldman centered his approach on sensory and attitudinal pleasures. Feldman said while hedonists are commonly thought to give the greatest value to sensory pleasure, or physical feeling sensed by a part of the body, greater value is actually attached to attitudinal pleasure, or positive attitudes towards something that is happening, has happened or may happen.

Chuck Vermette, a senior philosophy major in attendance who had taken classes with Feldman, clarified the difference, offering the example that he can get sensory pleasure from a massage and attitudinal pleasure from remembering a karate tournament he won when he was six, or from the knowledge that if it’s spring, flowers are going to bloom.

Vermette, added that attitudinal pleasures don’t need to come from something that has actually happened, or even something that is necessarily going to happen.

Feldman confirmed this, but said that in order to experience attitudinal pleasure in this way, one must really believe that something is going to happen, evoking the implication that humans can create or be convinced of their own happiness.

Feldman added that if people can learn to focus their attention on the good things that are happening, rather than the things that aren’t working out, they can achieve the happiness of his theory.

“By engaging in something that you enjoy, bad thoughts will slip away and you will be happier, according to my theory,” Feldman said.

During the question-and-answer session following the lecture, a member of the audience asked how the theory of happiness explained why he found himself in a good mood, seemingly without reason, as he arrived to the lecture. Feldman asked the man whether he had recognized his good mood during this time. The man said he had and Feldman explained to him that the reason he was happy was because he knew and sensed that he was in a good mood.

Feldman explained that many surveys taken on happiness focus on how satisfied people are with their standing in a collection of life domains, such as their job or their physical environment. Feldman said that life domain satisfaction tests don’t test for happiness, but rather test for welfare. Feldman stressed throughout his lecture that happiness was linked to a psychological state, and not to welfare.

UMass Chancellor Robert Holub, who noted that he has read some philosophical works but none directly focused on happiness, said he tends to be skeptical. Holub said that humans have too many conflicting emotions to accurately report on their own happiness, adding that there are emotions at the subconscious level we aren’t able to detect in ourselves.

Holub raised the question of why pleasure needs to necessarily associated with happiness, and whether happiness is the most sought after emotion. Holub asked whether people can be happy and unhappy at the same time, using the example of people in Egypt who were unhappy with former President Hosni Mubarak, but were happy to be protesting against him.

Brian Canova can be reached at [email protected].