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"Perfectly Happy"

Posted by StephanieWestAllen: "In recent years, cognitive scientists have turned in increasing numbers to the study of human happiness ... .

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[N]ow some scholars are starting to ask a bigger question: shouldn't this new understanding affect policy, too? A huge range of social systems, from tort law to urban planning to medical care, are built on assumptions about what makes people happy. Now, for the first time, researchers are claiming to be actually measuring happiness, to actually know what causes it. In a society whose founding document asserts a basic right to the pursuit of happiness, that new knowledge could have far-reaching implications.

What we're learning, these thinkers argue, should make us reconsider some of the basic rules by which government regulates behavior: how we litigate lawsuits and write contracts; how we zone...

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Source: idealawg, 15 May 2009

Full post as published by Stark County Law Library Blawg on May 18, 2009 (boomark / email).