tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post2784176395438522074..comments2024-03-28T19:14:33.619-07:00Comments on The Splintered Mind: Who Cares about Happiness?Eric Schwitzgebelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-38714630321014668562019-11-16T10:21:07.011-08:002019-11-16T10:21:07.011-08:00Professor,
On your thought experiment, a clarific...Professor, <br />On your thought experiment, a clarification. It would certainly be best for the “orgasmatron” entity to exist if somehow created, that is from the perspective of this entity itself. But this doesn’t mean that its creation would be best for humanity as well. We have our own brain based sources of qualia. Or do you mean that if this entity were created, then all sentient beings that do exist or have existed would thus experience perfect perpetual ecstasy under orgasmatron? And perhaps all current non sentient matter would thus become sentient and so feel perfect perpetual ecstasy as well? If you mean this sort of thing, then yes, I’d say that this would be best for me, you, and everything else that’s included. Of course such scenarios are practically ridiculous on many levels, though I do accept the conclusion for thought experiment purposes. <br /><br />Apparently there has always been a strong human tendency to differentiate “higher” from “lower” pleasures, for example displayed by the ancient epicureans. A noble versus base or vulgar distinction seems inherent to academic presentations in this regard. For evolution purposes however, all sentience should go to the same purpose in the end, or exist as the stuff which drives the conscious form of function. <br /><br />One problem with our standard tendency to rank higher to lower forms of sentient motivation, I think, is that it should help prevent our mental and behavioral sciences from objectively grasping our nature. Thus soft sciences continue to remain soft. Once fields such as psychology are socially permitted to explore the human amorally (and note that all hard sciences are explored amorally), then true progress in these fields should finally begin. <br /><br />To this end, consider my single principle of axiology: <br /><br /><em>It’s possible for something that is not conscious (like my brain), to produce a punishment/ reward dynamic from which to drive the function of something that is conscious (like me). </em>Philosopher Erichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11126076811765843302noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-13622957419085845352019-11-15T12:16:30.843-08:002019-11-15T12:16:30.843-08:00Plus, we'd view ourselves as something that ag...Plus, we'd view ourselves as something that ages well and becomes more itself and that can be left for posterityhoward bnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-79812963972012766042019-11-15T12:14:04.431-08:002019-11-15T12:14:04.431-08:00Yes, they'd or we'd care for our lives mor...Yes, they'd or we'd care for our lives more carefully and see it as precious and as something that is our place in the world and both a necessity and a luxury; plus they'd we'd be more likely to share ourselves with others.<br /><br />Those are the consequences of viewing building a life as building a home.<br /><br />Maybe you can think of more<br /><br /> <br /><br />howard bnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-24507144592628571212019-11-15T11:33:13.088-08:002019-11-15T11:33:13.088-08:00Thanks for the comments, folks!
Howard: interesti...Thanks for the comments, folks!<br /><br />Howard: interesting to compare building a life to building a home. Do you think people would live different if they thought of things that way?<br /><br />Bethany: Fair criticism on the high-flying thought experiments. I do think they have a role, but I'm not meaning to build my case on them. In this post, the function of the experiment is partly to soften the reader up for the more ordinary observations later in the post. I also think that extreme cases of this sort can highlight features that more get lost in more nuanced and realistic cases.<br /><br />SelfAware: I agree about hedonic adaptation and contradictory desires. On higher cognition and pleasure -- I'm not so sure about that. The fact that you can react reflexively without pleasure doesn't establish that you need higher cognition to have pleasure or that we only feel it as input to cognitive reasoning.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16274774112862434865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-3948561047340243512019-11-14T16:37:33.137-08:002019-11-14T16:37:33.137-08:00It seems like the primal emotions that drive us ar...It seems like the primal emotions that drive us are far more complex than pleasure vs pain, particularly short term hedonistic type pleasure. Although some of this might come down to how we define "pleasure". For example, is the feeling of satisfaction from writing a good blog post, or comment, a type of pleasure?<br /><br />And there's the fact that our instincts never really let us enjoy things for very long. A long sought after goal, once achieved, may give us enormous pleasure, but few months later our feelings have re-calibrated to the new normal and we're back to striving. This makes complete sense when we think in terms of the motivation to seek food, find mates, etc. It's not adaptive to be satisfied with these things for very long.<br /><br />Our desires are complex, and often contradictory. One reason I think cognition evolved was to resolve those contradictions. There's a reason most of the connections from the cerebrum to the brainstem are inhibitory, allowing higher level cognition to selectively allow or inhibit lower level impulses.<br /><br />In fact, I don't think pleasure exists without cognition. You don't need pain or pleasure to react reflexively. We only feel pleasure, pain, or other feelings as input into cognitive reasoning. Which seems like it makes the idea of the orgasmatron without cognition, and all the things it requires, incoherent.SelfAwarePatternshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11856665627652130336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-12831165504280057882019-11-14T14:57:57.340-08:002019-11-14T14:57:57.340-08:00I imagine the reason that people shudder at philos...I imagine the reason that people shudder at philosophers' outrageous thought experiments has something to do with the fact that such thought experiments often operate so far outside of our usual experience that it becomes meaningless to try to probe gut responses to them. Such is the case, I think, with the orgasmatron - I can't even begin to know what it would mean for particles in the solar system (ie for non-conscious entities) to experience pleasure. I'm also not sure I see what your thought experiment adds that isn't already apparent from Nozick's experience machine. His at least seems to fall within the realm of something we can contemplate.<br /><br />I guess another divergence is that you've shifted the question to whether, if we really only cared about pleasure, we ought to seek to maximize it not individually but in total. If anything, that seems even less plausible - like you've taken the weakest version of the hedonic thesis to refute. <br /><br />I don't disagree with your position - I think we value things other than pure positive emotion - but I think building that case convincingly might require more plausible thought experiments.Bethanynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-47414873403285096672019-11-14T11:56:49.652-08:002019-11-14T11:56:49.652-08:00If people live life on autopilot, perhaps your nat...If people live life on autopilot, perhaps your naturalistic observations are not so crushingly admissible <br />So the two questions are: how would people build their lives as if they were building a home, and how would it affect them?<br />Perhaps people would shudder at an orgasmatron, but still people would not want an evil world with maximal meaning.<br />There is a lot of pondering that remains to be dome on this topichowardnoreply@blogger.com