Evaluating Valuations: The Case of Happiness as Oikeiosis

This paper is about alethic (truth-related) valuations. The focus is on one of the most controversial cases, the ‘hedonic valuation’: can judgements such as ‘a is happy,’ ‘I am happy,’ be said true or false? I present three puzzling cases, then I give an account of the concept of happiness grounded on the ancient notion of oikeiosis. I finally suggest that the role of truth in case of hedonic evaluations can teach us something about the art or science of valuation in general.