Mitchell Polly, Alexandrova Anna
School of Education, Communication and Society, King's College London, London, UK.
Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
J Happiness Stud. 2021;22(6):2411-2433. doi: 10.1007/s10902-020-00323-8. Epub 2020 Oct 22.
It is a commonly expressed sentiment that the science and philosophy of well-being would do well to learn from each other. Typically such calls identify mistakes and bad practices on both sides that would be remedied if scientists picked the right bit of philosophy and philosophers picked the right bit of science. We argue that the differences between philosophers and scientists thinking about well-being are more difficult to reconcile than such calls suggest, and that pluralism is central to this task. Pluralism is a stance that explicitly drives towards accommodating and nurturing the richness and diversity of well-being, both as a concept and as an object of inquiry. We show that well-being science manifests a contingent pluralism at the level of methodology, whereas philosophy of well-being has largely rejected pluralism at the conceptual level. Recently, things have begun to change. Within philosophy, conceptual monism is under attack. But so is methodological pluralism within science. We welcome the first development, and bemoan the second. We argue that a joined-up philosophy and science of well-being should recognise the virtues of both conceptual and methodological pluralism. Philosophers should embrace the methodological justification of pluralism that can be found in the well-being sciences, and scientists should embrace the conceptual reasons to be pluralist that can be found in philosophical debate.
人们普遍认为，幸福科学与幸福哲学应相互借鉴，共同发展。通常情况下，此类呼吁会指出双方存在的错误和不良做法，认为如果科学家选择正确的哲学观点，哲学家选择正确的科学观点，这些问题就能得到解决。我们认为，哲学家和科学家在思考幸福问题上的差异比此类呼吁所暗示的更难调和，而多元主义是解决这一问题的关键。多元主义是一种立场，它明确致力于接纳和培育幸福的丰富性和多样性，既将其作为一个概念，也将其作为一个研究对象。我们表明，幸福科学在方法论层面表现出一种偶然的多元主义，而幸福哲学在概念层面则大多拒绝多元主义。最近，情况开始发生变化。在哲学领域，概念一元论受到攻击。但科学领域的方法论多元主义也面临挑战。我们欢迎第一个变化，对第二个变化感到遗憾。我们认为，一门融合的幸福哲学与科学应该认识到概念多元主义和方法论多元主义的优点。哲学家应该接受幸福科学中可以找到的多元主义的方法论依据，科学家应该接受哲学辩论中可以找到的支持多元主义的概念性理由。
