In your best guess, do you believe someone can be happy but not have happiness?

Can someone feel hunger yet not be hungry? I think so. “I feel hunger” is a temporary state, easily remedied, while “being hungry” implies a more permanent state.

The comedian Louis C.K. does a marvelous bit about how annoying it is when someone of means, living in a developed country, says, ”[whiny voice] I’m starving!” He recommends talking with a person who truly doesn’t have food and, due to necessity, hasn’t eaten.

The concept is nonsensical. What’s YOUR definition of happiness? I swear that I do try to ignore a lot of your stuff HC, but there’s a nails on the chalkboard effect to stuff like this. It amounts to asking “would there be shrimp boats if there were no such things as shrimp?”

“To be happy but not achieving happiness, in your opinion, is that plausible?”

No. You can’t be something by not achieving it.

@stanleybmanly What’s YOUR definition of happiness?
What I find happy and what another finds happy we know are different. If I tried to define what happiness was, you know as well as I in this place, it would have as much traction as a man on roller skates, standing on a polished aluminum slide, that has been greased with lard.

I swear that I do try to ignore a lot of your stuff HC, but there’s a nails on the chalkboard effect to stuff like this.
Because you personally have no inking or clue to any answer? There is a general, generic state of happiness many have, and if anything, a state where you are not going around crying all day or pissed off like a cat beat out of the chicken bone by the hound dog.

@Sneki95 No. You can’t be something by not achieving it.
Your guess is happiness is only a byproduct of being happy?

@Hypocrisy_Central What else? How am I supposed to be happy without happiness? Please enlighten me.

^ What else? How am I supposed to be happy without happiness? Please enlighten me.
Well, for instance, if one was a very unhappy person but they are visited by a grandchild they are truly fond of, would that make them happy, even if for a brief time, or would they be unhappy even while being visited by a grandchild they truly held dear?

^^^^ @Hypocrisy_Central you just answered your question. As you so eloquently stated, one may find oneself happy for a moment while not in a state of happiness.

I think the confusion here is in trying to compare an adjective and a noun.

Happy is an adjective. It is used to describe someone/thing which is feeling or showing pleasure or contentment, or fortunate and convenient.

Meanwhile, happiness is a noun. It is literally the state of being happy.

These definitions imply that someone cannot have happiness without being happy, and that someone who is experiencing the sensation of being happy (no matter how brief) is experiencing happiness.

You can be content with not being happy all the time…so yes.

Yes definitely

@Love_my_doggie: In my experience, hunger refers to the state of being hungry, while hungry refers to feeling or displaying the need for food. Here again, as I explained in my initial response to this question, we are comparing a noun and an adjective. And just as in that case, the noun describes a state of being that adjective.

@Hypocrisy_Central: Sneki doesn’t seem to be guessing at what happiness is, Sneki seems to have a firm grasp on the definition of the word. While your explanation of how someone could be happy without having happiness shows a distinct lack of understanding of the definition of these terms. Happiness and unhappiness are both nouns describing a state of emotion. These emotions are prone to change, as stimuli changes. It is possible to be unhappy all the time, and such a person would never feel happiness. However, if there is a change from feeling unhappy to feeling happy, even for a moment, then for that moment the individual would be experiencing happiness.

@zenvelo: I’m afraid that your explanation is also fundamentally flawed. If you were not experiencing happiness, you would not feel happy. Happiness is the state of feeling happy. Happy is feeling or showing pleasure or contentment. To say you were happy, but not in a state of happiness… Would be an oxymoron. As though saying, “The ice was not frozen,” where frozen is an adjective meaning, “congealed with cold or turned into ice,” and ice is a noun referring to, “frozen water, a brittle, transparent crystalline solid.” Ice is (by definition) frozen and being frozen refers to a state of being turned into ice.

@ARE_you_kidding_me: Again, while happy can refer to a sense of contentment, happiness simply refers to the state of being happy. So if one is happy (feeling content), one is experiencing happiness.

@babaji: See above.