This article by Brendan I. Koerner in Legal Affairs is interesting (hat tip: SdeW). It’s about measuring the monetary value of happiness for legal purposes: ‘the science of joy measurement’; ‘hedonic damages’.
Stan Smith, the economist to whom we owe the latter term, thinks that ‘a person who loves life will prize his continued existence more highly than a miserable soul [will]’. I wonder about this. It makes some sense, maybe, in a social science context. But is the enjoyment a certain kind of person gets from making herself and others miserable counted in? What would Dostoevsky have thought about the matter? Or Buñuel?
Updated at 3.15 PM: Is there a connection between joy measurement and happiness discourse?