%0 Journal Article
%T An Improved Whole Life Satisfaction Theory of Happiness
%A Jussi Suikkanen
%J International Journal of Wellbeing
%D 2011
%I International Journal of Wellbeing
%R 10.5502/ijw.v1i1.6
%X According to the popular Whole Life Satisfaction theories of happiness, an agent is happy when she judges that her life fulfils her ideal life-plan. Fred Feldman has recently argued that such views cannot accommodate the happiness of spontaneous or preoccupied agents who do not consider how well their lives are going. In this paper, I formulate a new Whole Life Satisfaction theory that is not vulnerable to this objection. My proposal is inspired by Michael Smith¡¯s advice-model of desirability. According to it, an agent is happy when a more informed and rational hypothetical version of her would judge that the agent¡¯s actual life matches the best life-plan for her. I will argue that my new Whole Life Satisfaction theory is a flexible model that can avoid many of the problems besetting previous theories of happiness.
%K Happiness
%K Whole Life Satisfaction
%K Conditional Fallacy
%K Advice Model
%U http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/index.php/ijow/article/view/6