The Structure of Happiness

[A version of this was originally published on my Wordpress blog, 'As A Little Child']

I want to share a story about a moment of philosophical insight that led me to some of my current ideas on metaphysics and the nature of consciousness.

I remember clearly that it was a beautiful Sunday morning, the sun was shining on my face as I was walking to mass at my university, and I was very, very happy. I had long been fascinated by the hard problem of consciousness and the idea of qualia, and so on this beautiful morning I began thinking about the qualia of happiness.

In particular, I wondered what it would be like if my qualia were inverted, such that I experienced the qualia of sadness instead of happiness in that moment. Could I experience "sad" qualia while in every way thinking and acting as if I were "happy"? Still walking down the road with the same spring in my step, the same smile on my face, the same happy thoughts? If that were the case would I actually be happy or sad? Could my experience of happiness be someone else's experience of sadness? Could I know that my qualia was inverted?

And if I knew that someone else's emotional qualia were inverted in this way, would the ethical implications be reversed too, such that I ought to cause them harm? After all, their sadness is my happiness and their pain is my pleasure. Or is my "happy" qualia in fact no more good or bad than theirs? Is it an arbitrary quale that happens to be assigned to the functional reality of happiness? If that is the case, would a philosophical zombie be morally equivalent to a non-zombie? It would seem that the functional reality is far more meaningful than the arbitrary phenomenal experience that is somehow attached to it.

I tried playing it out in my mind, and in doing so I noticed there is a distinct structure to my experience of happiness. Particularly, it seems to have an essential "outwardness" and "openness", while sadness is turned inwards and closed off. Happiness is affirmative, it is a Yes! to the world. Happiness is like the sun that day, beaming out from itself freely. Or like me that day, standing tall with my head up and chest out, welcoming in the sun's rays.

I cannot coherently imagine having inverted emotional qualia because my happiness and sadness are intrinsically tied to my attitude to the reality before me. I cannot imagine experiencing openness while being closed off. I cannot imagine experiencing myself as affirming reality when in fact I am rejecting it. I cannot imagine feeling happy when I am not happy. It makes no sense.

This led me to the conclusion that the experience of happiness is structural. And if the experience of happiness is a structure, could that structure be physically instantiated within the brain? Could structure alone be experience? Might all "qualia", all experience, be structure? Might all of reality?

This began a line of thought that eventually led me to some ideas I've outlined in previous posts, and particularly those on Ontic Structural Realism.

Tying this back to my ongoing reading of 'Process and Reality', I imagine Whitehead would identify happiness as an eternal object that becomes realized in the actual entities that make up our minds, similarly to how the eternal object '5' is realized in 5 actual apples. This fits perfectly with my sense of happiness as a structure that may be realized within the brain. Indeed, I suspect we can consider all Whitehead's eternal objects as abstract structures that become realized in the relational structures of actual entities.

Of course, the difficulty with insights and intuitions is they might not be shared. Maybe this is just a "me thing". Do you agree with my intuition of the 'structure' of happiness? Is there something crucial I'm missing from my account? Please let me know in the comments :)