¹ Stewart, Frances, ‘Against Happiness: A Critical Appraisal of the Use of Measures of Happiness for Evaluating Progress in Development’, Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 15 (2014), pp. 293–307 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² Raibley, Jason R., ‘Happiness Is Not Well-Being’, Journal of Happiness Studies 13 (2012), pp. 1105–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ See for instance Annas, Julia, ‘Happiness as Achievement’, Daedalus 133 (2004), pp. 44–51 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barrotta, Pierluigi, ‘Why Economists Should Be Unhappy with the Economics of Happiness’, Economics and Philosophy 24 (2008), pp. 145–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sen, Amartya K., ‘The Economics of Happiness and Capability’, Capability and Happiness, ed. Bruni, Luigino, Comim, Flavio and Pugno, Maurizio (2008), pp. 16–27 Google Scholar; Adler, Matthew and Posner, Eric A., ‘Happiness Research and Cost-Benefit Analysis’, The Journal of Legal Studies 37 (2008), pp. S253–S292 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Deneulin, Séverine and Shahani, Lila, An Introduction to the Human Development and Capability Approach: Freedom and Agency (London and Sterling, VA, 2009)Google Scholar; Hausman, Daniel M., ‘Hedonism and Welfare Economics’, Economics and Philosophy 26 (2010), pp. 321–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nussbaum, Martha C., ‘Who Is the Happy Warrior? Philosophy, Happiness Research, and Public Policy’, International Review of Economics 59 (2012), pp. 335–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fleurbaey, Marc and Blanchet, Didier, Beyond GDP: Measuring Welfare and Assessing Sustainability (New York, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ See for example Angner, Erik, ‘The Philosophical Foundations of Subjective Measures Of Well-Being’, Capabilities and Happiness, ed. Bruni, Luigino, Comim, Flavio and Pugno, Maurizio (Oxford, 2008), pp. 286–98Google Scholar; Angner, ‘Subjective Well-Being’, The Journal of Socio-Economics 39 (2010), pp. 361–68 for discussions.

⁵ Sen, Amartya K., Commodities and Capabilities (Amsterdam, 1985)Google Scholar; ‘Well-Being, Agency and Freedom: The Dewey Lectures 1984’, The Journal of Philosophy 82 (1985), pp. 169–221; Sen, On Ethics and Economics (Oxford, 1987)Google Scholar; Development as Freedom (Oxford, 1999); Sen, ‘The Economics’; The Idea of Justice (Cambridge, MA, 2009)Google Scholar; Nussbaum, Martha C., Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach, vol. 3 (New York, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nussbaum, ‘Capabilities as Fundamental Entitlements: Sen and Social Justice’, Feminist Economics 9 (2003), pp. 33–59 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities (Cambridge, MA, 2011)Google Scholar; Nussbaum, ‘Happy Warrior’.

⁶ There are at least two other targets for which adaptation is thought to cause a problem. The first is the view that social benefits should be distributed according to happiness measures. The second is the view that rationality requires that an agent act on her preferences. For the latter, see Bovens, Luc, ‘Sour Grapes and Character Planning’, The Journal of Philosophy 89 (1992), pp. 57–78 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bruckner, Donald W., ‘In Defense of Adaptive Preferences’, Philosophical Studies 142 (2009), pp. 307–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Colburn, Ben, ‘Autonomy and Adaptive Preferences’, Utilitas 23 (2011), pp. 52–71 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bruckner, Donald W., ‘Colburn on Covert Influences’, Utilitas 23 (2011), pp. 451–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ E.g. Chekola, Mark, ‘Happiness, Rationality, Autonomy and the Good Life’, Journal of Happiness Studies 8 (2007), pp. 51–78 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Taylor, Tim, ‘Adaptation and the Measurement of Well-Being’, Ethics and Social Welfare 8 (2014), pp. 248–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ Layard, Richard, Happiness: Lessons Form a New Science (London, 2005)Google Scholar.

⁹ Bruckner, ‘In Defense’; Feldman, Fred, What Is This Thing Called Happiness? (New York, 2010), ch. 8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ Layard, Happiness, p. 49; see also Comim, Flavio, ‘Capabilities and Happiness: Potential Synergies’, Review of Social Economy 63 (2005), pp. 161–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ Some philosophers as well as SWB researchers take the view that SWB is a measure of desire-satisfaction views of well-being: Bruckner, Donald W., ‘Subjective Well-Being and Desire Satisfaction’, Philosophical Papers 39 (2010), pp. 1–28 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schimmack, Ulrich, ‘Well-Being’, Schmollers Jahrbuch 129 (2009), pp. 1–9 Google Scholar. On this view, the epistemic and Axiological Arguments can also be made, but in a slightly different form. For the purpose of simplicity, I will focus on the case of (psychological) happiness and well-being.

¹² See Sumner, Leonard W., Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics (Oxford, 1996)Google Scholar. However, for Sumner, well-being only consists in life-satisfaction when a person's life-satisfaction is ‘authentic’; that is, autonomous and informed.

¹³ E.g. Crisp, Roger, ‘Hedonism Reconsidered’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 73 (2006), pp. 619–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tännsjö, Torbjörn, ‘Narrow Hedonism’, Journal of Happiness Studies 8 (2007), pp. 79–98 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The use of ‘pleasure’ is sometimes considered to have confusing connotations, for which reason the term ‘enjoyment’ is often used by contemporary hedonists without intending a change in meaning, see Crisp, ‘Hedonism’.

¹⁴ Haybron, Daniel M., ‘On Being Happy or Unhappy’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 71 (2005), pp. 287–317 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁵ E.g. Veenhoven, Ruut, ‘The Four Qualities of Life’, Journal of Happiness Studies 1 (2000), pp. 1–39 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶ Further described in van der Deijl, Willem J. A., ‘What Happiness Science Can Learn from John Stuart Mill’, International Journal of Wellbeing 6 (2016), pp. 164–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Both life-satisfaction views (e.g. Dolan, Paul, Peasgood, Tessa and White, Mathew, ‘Do We Really Know What Makes Us Happy? A Review of the Economic Literature on the Factors Associated with Subjective Well-Being’, Journal of Economic Psychology 29 (2008), pp. 94–122)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and (Benthamite) hedonic views (e.g. Kahneman, Daniel, Wakker, Peter P. and Sarin, Rakesh, ‘Back to Bentham? Explorations of Experienced Utility’, The Quarterly Journal of Economics 112 (1997), pp. 375–405 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Veenhoven, ‘The Four Qualities’; Blanchflower, David G. and Oswald, Andrew J., ‘Well-Being over Time in Britain and the USA’, Journal of Public Economics 88 (2004), pp. 1359–86)CrossRefGoogle Scholar are sometimes considered to be the central concept behind the empirical literature on SWB.

¹⁷ Sen does not make the distinction (see below). However, it is important to consider that the problem is significantly different for different conceptions of happiness.

¹⁸ Needless to say, utilitarianism comes with a commitment to sum-ranking that is not relevant for the present purpose, as it is unrelated to identifying happiness with well-being.

¹⁹ See Sen, Commodities; Sen, ‘Well-Being’; Sen, Development; Sen, ‘The Economics’; Sen, The Idea.

²⁰ Sen, On Ethics, pp. 45–6.

²¹ Sen, The Idea, p. 282.

²² Defining happiness in terms of mental states is not completely uncontroversial. Daniel Haybron defends a view on which happiness is constituted by emotional states, which need not have phenomenological components, further discussed below. However, this is solely an account of happiness not of well-being.

²³ Dan Weijers, ‘Hedonism’, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, <http://www.iep.utm.edu/hedonism/> (2011); Silverstein, Matthew, ‘In Defense of Happiness: A Response to the Experience Machine’, Social Theory and Practice 26 (2000), pp. 279–300 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁴ Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York, 1974)Google Scholar.

²⁵ See Weijers, Dan and Schouten, Vanessa, ‘An Assessment of Recent Responses to the Experience Machine Objection to Hedonism’, Journal of Value Inquiry 2 (2013), pp. 461–82 for a recent reviewCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁶ Angner, Erik, ‘Is It Possible to Measure Happiness?’, European Journal for Philosophy of Science 3 (2013), pp. 221–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁷ Sumner, Welfare; Tiberius, Valerie and Hall, Alicia, ‘Normative Theory and Psychological Research: Hedonism, Eudaimonism, and Why It Matters’, The Journal of Positive Psychology 5 (2010), pp. 212–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Austin, Annie, ‘On Well-Being and Public Policy: Are We Capable of Questioning the Hegemony of Happiness?’, Social Indicators Research 127 (2016), pp. 123–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁸ Chekola, ‘Happiness’, p. 72.

²⁹ Haybron, Daniel M., ‘Do We Know How Happy We Are? On Some Limits of Affective Introspection and Recall’, Nous 41 (2007), pp. 394–428 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. As a matter of fact, the epistemic interpretation of adaptation is also covered by what Daniel Haybron calls ‘scale norming’: ‘Scale norming can be a source of adaptation. Insofar as this happens, then we have a second reason for thinking that hedonic adaptation may be less extensive than self-reports would suggest: for these reports may reflect a kind of “scaling adaptation,” in which subjects’ scales change over time. Lasting changes in hedonic state may thus be obscured by adjustments in the scales we use to rate our experience’ (p. 404).

³⁰ Sen's citations given above do not clearly favour one of the interpretations of the argument. There are places in which they do. For instance, in On Ethics and Economics Sen writes that there is a ‘basic problem’, ‘to wit, the insufficient depth of the criterion of happiness or desire-fulfilment in judging a person's well-being’ (On Ethics, p. 46), indicating an axiological interpretation. Nevertheless, in The Idea of Justice, Sen concludes that from the adaptation problem: ‘our perceptions may tend to blind us to the deprivations that we do actually have, which a clearer and more informed understanding can bring out’ (p. 284), indicating an epistemic interpretation. There is thus support for both arguments in Sen.

³¹ See for example Layard, Happiness; Dolan, Peasgood and White, ‘Do We Really Know What Makes Us Happy?’; Helliwell, John F. and Barrington-Leigh, Christopher P., ‘Viewpoint: Measuring and Understanding Subjective Well-Being’, The Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d’économique 43 (2010), pp. 729–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³² See for example Clark, David A., ‘Adaptation, Poverty and Well-Being: Some Issues and Observations with Special Reference to the Capability Approach and Development Studies 1’, Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 10 (2009), pp. 21–42 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; D'Ambrosio, Conchita, Clark, Andrew and Ghislandi, Simone, ‘Adaptation to Poverty in Long-Run Panel Data’, Review of Economics and Statistics 98 (2015), pp. 591–608 Google Scholar; Suppa, Nicolai, ‘Capability Deprivation and Life Satisfaction: Evidence from German Panel Data’, Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 16 (2015), pp. 173–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³³ As life-satisfaction may be more robust with respect to personal tragedies, this problem may not have force if it comes to life-satisfaction views of well-being. The same caveat does not apply to the second prima facie problem. The fact that deprivations rob someone of their ability to be happy, or satisfied, arguably still holds with respect to this view.

³⁴ Crisp, ‘Hedonism’.

³⁵ Fleurbaey and Blanchet, Beyond GDP, p. 169.

³⁶ McMahon, Darrin M., ‘From the Happiness of Virtue to the Virtue of Happiness: 400 BC–AD 1780’, Daedalus 133 (2004), pp. 5–17 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harris, Stephen E., ‘Suffering and the Shape of Well-Being in Buddhist Ethics’, Asian Philosophy 24 (2014), pp. 242–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁷ See Weijers, Dan, ‘Nozick's Experience Machine Is Dead, Long Live the Experience Machine!’, Philosophical Psychology 27 (2014), pp. 513–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁸ Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA, 1971)Google Scholar.

³⁹ Parfit, Derek, Reasons and Persons (Oxford, 1984)Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Lukas, Mark, ‘Desire Satisfactionism and the Problem of Irrelevant Desires’, Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 4 (2009), pp. 1–24 Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Haybron, ‘Do We Know?’; Tännsjö, ‘Narrow Hedonism’; Marsh, Jason, ‘Quality of Life Assessments, Cognitive Reliability, and Procreative Responsibility’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 89 (2014), pp. 436–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; but also Mill, J. S., Utilitarianism, ed. Crisp, Roger, Oxford Philosophical Texts (London, 1871)Google Scholar; see van der Deijl, ‘Happiness Science’. However, only Haybron explicitly cites the adaptation phenomenon as an argument in favour of such a view.

⁴² Fleurbaey and Blanchet, Beyond GDP.

⁴³ Tännsjö, ‘Narrow Hedonism’.

⁴⁴ Starting from Mill, Utilitarianism.

⁴⁵ See also Crisp, ‘Hedonism’. Fred Feldman, What Is This Thing Called Happiness? also defends a version of the view. However, his view differs from other hedonists because he takes pleasure to be attitudinal.

⁴⁶ Sumner, Welfare.

⁴⁷ Haybron, ‘On Being Happy or Unhappy’; Haybron, Daniel M., The Pursuit of Unhappiness: The Elusive Psychology of Well-Being: The Elusive Psychology of Well-Being (New York, 2008)Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ See also Haybron, ‘Do We Know?’.

⁴⁹ See also Schmidt-Petri, Christoph, ‘Mill on Quality and Quantity’, The Philosophical Quarterly 53 (2003), pp. 102–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘On an Interpretation of Mill's Qualitative Utilitarianism’, Prolegomena 5 (2006), pp. 165–77.

⁵⁰ Tännsjö, ‘Narrow Hedonism’, p. 86.

⁵¹ In ‘Adaptation’ Taylor discusses a similar distinction in the adaptation context.

⁵² I do not want to argue, of course, that any of these perspectives is correct. There is no context-independent standard for counting as tall. So, ’error’ may be a misleading term. What is important though is that people have diverging standards on what is ‘tall’, so that taking any one standard will make the other person's judgement erroneous.

⁵³ Clark, Andrew E., Frijters, Paul and Shields, Michael A., ‘Relative Income, Happiness, and Utility: An Explanation for the Easterlin Paradox and Other Puzzles’, Journal of Economic Literature 46 (2008), pp. 95–144 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, ‘Economic Growth and Subjective Well-Being: Reassessing the Easterlin Paradox’, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (2008), pp. 1–87.

⁵⁴ Stevenson and Wolfers, ‘Economic Growth’.

⁵⁵ Fleurbaey and Blanchet, Beyond GDP, pp. 189–90. Fleurbaey and Blanchet only describe the Axiological Argument of adaptation under the heading of adaptation, and do not describe this thought experiment as adaptation. However, as it illustrates quite clearly what I mean by adaptation in the Epistemic Argument in terms of scale errors of judgement, I believe it is justified to use the example as such.

⁵⁶ See Diener, Ed et al., Well-Being for Public Policy (New York, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Veenhoven, Ruut, Cross-National Differences in Happiness: Cultural Measurement Bias or Effect of Culture?‘, International Journal of Wellbeing 2 (2012), pp. 616–28Google Scholar. See Alexandrova, Anna and Haybron, Daniel M., 'Is Construct Validation Valid?’, Philosophy of Science 83 (2016), pp. 1098–1109 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a general critical assessment of this approach in the context of SWB.

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⁶⁵ Inglehart, Ronald et al., ‘Development, Freedom, and Rising Happiness: A Global Perspective (1981–2007)’, Perspectives on Psychological Science 3 (2008), pp. 264–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; a fortiori, Graham, Carol, ‘Adaptation amidst Prosperity and Adversity: Insights from Happiness Studies from around the World’, The World Bank Research Observer 26 (2011), pp. 105–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar discusses high reports of SWB in Afghanistan.

⁶⁶ An earlier version of this article was presented at the Understanding Value IV conference in Sheffield, the peer-review circle in Utrecht and the OZSW conference in Nijmegen. I would particularly like to thank Jack Vromen, Werner Brouwer, Jojanneke Vanderveen, Conrad Heilmann and two anonymous referees for helpful comments, and James Grayot for proofreading the article.