Abstract

This chapter canvasses several arguments for happy‐people‐pills. The argument turns on the idea that happy‐people‐pills will promote such fundamental prudential values as happiness, achievement, and virtue. Since happy‐people‐pills will promote wellbeing, this is a powerful reason to permit their use. In the chapter the case is first made that, far from diminishing autonomy, happy‐people‐pills will enhance autonomy. The chapter argues that happy‐people‐pills will increase the prudential good of individuals. After arguing that at a societal level wellbeing is, for the most part, additive, the chapter goes on to examine an argument that happy‐people‐pills can be multiplicative: their use should encourage the acquisition and exercise of pro‐social virtues. So, not only will happy‐people‐pills benefit those who take them, but they should also promote the good of others. The multiplicative effect is a strong moral reason to suppose that we ought to use happy‐people‐pills.