My contention is that we wouldn't want truth unless we secretly thought that the more truth we have, the happier we are.
Many people may be like that, but not me. I'd prefer an unpleasant truth to a comforting lie.
What if the more we realized truths, the more comprehensive our understanding of reality became (of ourselves, other people, the world, God or the lack of God), the more we realized how bad things really are?
What about that? Yes, I would want to know how bad things really are.
It seems like we have a sort of faith-based optimism that at the end of the road of truth good things are in store.
I don't believe that we live in a nightmarish universe, but it's not faith-based optimism to think that if you are going to deal with such a universe, you will at least need facts to fuel your thinking. That doesn't guarantee that "good things are in store", but it's the only sound and honest policy. A life of ignorant bliss in a nightmarish universe is just a fantasy, a drug, and I would not want to live my life that way.
Given the choice between living an uncomfortable life aware of reality, and living inside of a machine that obliterates awareness of unpleasant facts and that generates pleasant fantasies and merely
simulates a happy life, I'd choose the uncomfortable life for its reality. I'm not saying that an occasional escape to the holodeck for a little play is a bad thing, but that doesn't involve self-deception.
Otherwise, why would we equate truth with happiness; that is, consider truth the ultimate good?
I don't literally equate truth with happiness, or consider truth the ultimate good. At best, truth is means, but virtues such as honesty, integrity, and rationality (all anti self-deception) are aspects of the ultimate end of personal flourishing. To prefer delusion to reality is to be a
malfunctioning human being, IMV.
My point may be expressed as follows. Putting aside any purely
instrumental value of truth in which one might imagine that truth is optional in the pursuit of happiness -- only to be valued when it appears useful -- my view is that there are truth-seeking virtues that are
constitutive means of personal flourishing. A constitutive means is not merely a preliminary to some end, but is an aspect or part of that end. The end is in part characterized by the activities used to bring it about. IMV, rationality is an essential aspect of the end of human flourishing (which is not merely feelings of happiness). That means that while a rational person might discover a fact so unpleasant (e.g. Cthulhu's real existence) that the full flower of flourishing would be rendered impossible due to great fear, this is still preferable to people who would shrink away from the reality and attempt to deceive themselves in order to make themselves "happy", which negates flourishing at its root.
eudaimonia,
Mark
