theory for fruition of pursuits of substantive goods. One could object to Mill's account by asking how someone's life who although pursuing higher pleasures, have the condition of happiness, when such a person never reaches their goals, like a research scientist who never finds the cure for cancer, but loves research nevertheless. Mill would contend that the appreciation of the higher pleasure of conducting research is the important part of deciding happiness, even though by pursuing lower pleasures, a person may achieve contentment, and not the achieving of the ultimate goal. Furthermore, a situation where you are content with lower pleasures is never a superior postion to when you are are miserable yet pursuing higher pleasures. Mill wrote, "A being of higher faculties requires more to make him happy, is capable probably of more acute suffereing, and is certainly accessible to it at more points, than one of the inferior typo; but in spite of these liabilities, he can never really wish to sink his teethc into what he feels to be a lower grade of existence." (57) Mill's theory of well-being centers around the idea that in order to achieve happiness, as opposed to contentment, we must realize that there is a hierarchy of pleasures, and then decide to pursue those which are of the higher nature, engaging our rationality. The Substantive Goods theory most complies to these ideas. It stipulates a hierarchy od desires, advocating a pursuit of ones which are substantive and worthwhile in pursuit of happiness, at the expense of those which are deemed nbot worthwhile.The Substantive Goods Theory is the most persuasive of the three in my opinion. Experientialism is faulted because of its lack of a reality requirement. It is hard to believe that one is experiencing true happiness if the reality of certain situations, for instance the "false-friends" objection, is different than what is perceived. I would want my wife to have an honest love for m...
