I've made the following assertion previously on this forum but I'm hoping for some feedback this time.

I'm proposing that the most important thing to be valued in our lives is quality of life, meaning the desire for less suffering and increased positive feelings overall. It is measured in terms of how we feel. I would say that this is the foundation of our existence that should drive how we approach life.

If someone were to reply that this isn't universal and one could value wisdom higher, I would counter by offering a hypothetical of one person with more wisdom but living in constant, excruciating pain and another person with less wisdom but living in continuous bliss. Which person is in the more favorable situation?

Why do religious people want to get to heaven? I would argue that desire is driven by valuing how they feel highest of all.

Yet, many people seem to focus on and evaluate themselves based on morality, or right and wrong behavior. Of course there are numerous situations in which the best behaviors are difficult to know. This causes an uncertainty which attracts people to philosophies, religions, books, or people that claim to be a moral authority.

I believe righteousness should instead be based on our internal feelings; that's where our focus should be. When we are evaluating our lives, the only thing we need is self-examination. This is what reality says we should do based on how affected we are by how we feel.

Thoughts? If you concern yourself with morality (which many on this forum do) and pay less attention to introspection, why?

I think we are a social species, we can't even survive without each-other. For this reason we we ultimately should be measured on how we treat ourselves and others. Good norms and ethics must reflect this, but we also need a basic set of enforceable rules, as a compromise for those situations were our individual views don't match well enough.

I have a friend who is explicitly not a hedonist: that is, he doesn't view personal pleasure as a life goal. He is an existentialist, believing that we can choose our ends in life, and has chosen to achieve other goals relating to personal and family honor.

On this basis he works very hard, at various times in his life in occupations that he finds unpleasant and difficult (he is very wealthy and talented and could easily find a pleasant, easy, and well-paying occupation).

Are you suggesting that his doing so is a mistake? That instead he should be orienting his life to personal pleasure?

If so, how would you attempt to persuade him of this?

I'm not sure that this thought experiment works very well.

1) The term "favorable situation" sounds to me to be talking about things outside of your control. So I might say that the person who lives in excruciating pain here is in a worse situation, but is a better person, or more to be envied or preferred, etc.

2) The easy answer to the question in the sense you are probably driving at is that the person with more wisdom is in the more favorable situation.

3) Someone can believe that, say, wisdom is the highest goal while also acknowledging pleasure as a goal and so willing to give up a little wisdom to achieve large increases in pleasure without thereby implying that pleasure is more important.

Do you mean this as a psychological claim, that people's desire to go to heaven is physically caused by their desire for more pleasure? That is, are you making a normative or a descriptive claim here?

l don't think the contrast with morality here is very useful as some moral theories are in agreement with you that pleasure is the greatest good--most notably the hedonistic utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill. Also, the moral theory of Aristotle is based on the idea that whether an action is virtuous or not depends on whether that action is likely to increase eudaimonia, which means something like happiness, or contentment, or fulfillment/satisfaction. While not exactly the same, it is the idea that a truly virtuous person will feel the most pleasure in doing the things that will lead to happiness.

It is possible that what you mean to be saying here is not just that you think that it is pleasure that we should or do primarily concern ourselves with, but our own personal pleasure, i.e. that you are arguing here for some version of psychological egoism (the theory that all of our actions are motivated by selfish ends) or ethical egoism (the theory that all of our actions ought to be ultimately motivated by selfish ends). I'm not exactly sure what you are after here.

Absolutely, but the context of the point I am trying to make is in the idea that we have the ability to improve our lives. Society needs to discuss morality in order to agree upon rules and laws. There is definitely a place to discuss morality in that regard.

I was talking more about the people who ponder their own behavior and morality in general within the framework of this is how they are going about trying to improve themselves. For example, the person who asks was I wrong for doing x,y, or z? I would say the underlying idea behind this self evaluation is that they are trying to improve their lives (feel better). I believe that moral discussions in this context are inferior to introspection based on my proposed idea that the best way to improve ourselves is to raise the baseline of how we feel, and the best way to evaluate that is to observe how we feel.

I may be heading into the distance but the fact that many care about their moral culpability is that their future as human beings is maintained.

Each of us is born within a characterological disposition which we have brought forth from previous lives. It doesn't take much to see that the moral character of humanity has changed through the ages and in this the morality is through the individual human being. The moral development of the human soul is transcribed within the past and our cultural mores become evident.

In the past mankind lived within a moral ethos which was not entirely dependent upon the individual soul. With an atavistic consciousness guiding the individual being up to 2100 years ago and even up to the Renaissance we are now in the throes of individually, within our "Ego" developing our moral character.

Another way to say this is that we are in the Scylla and Charybdis of "Egotistical" or a self centered behavior versus a "selfless" activity, developing through the "Ego", our individual "I".

The human soul's development is through morality and in this he develops to a future state, a state of spirituality sans materiality.

"One and done" is a falsehood and quite explains why men would choose an ego centered happiness, an ego centered heaven, long life, etc.. as their marching orders, intellectually, of course. The truth is that they still cling to a moral development with their everyday affairs and this is common to all men.

The above is not to find fault but to comprehend that in order to perform moral deeds "CONSCIOUSLY" mankind has fallen into the material to which he develops his individually. The return is within our grasp in which our body, soul and spirit will evolve through our individual conscious behavior, a future of "Wisdom" the precursor to "Love".

The Earth is the "Planet of Love" from I understand it is hard to grasp, intellectually, considering the state of affairs of Man but this is so and the evolution is through recurrent lives.

An important aside is that knowledge, growth, development has its basis in "suffering" and in some way one can grasp the meaning of suffering for human development.

An anecdote is that , as Goethe, stated; "the eye is made for the Light by the Light". Consider a form of man in which the Light strikes the places where the orbits are presently present and literally burns holes into the form of the ancient human soul's body. The eye is created by the Light for the Light and in this we have vision, a spiritual process.

As someone very similar to the friend Original Position mentions, and one for who thought experiment is all:

Pain is essential. Excruciating severity of pain is. Is it meant as a common pathway to something akin to bodhisavatta? The fundamental nature of mathematics actually makes it a law that it is. It also is not, however.

carlo,

Perhaps it is not immaterality but denial of such as a preliminary stage into arenas where your understanding of human nature is tried rather than tested.

Given modern context, let's call it uber-Stoic automasochism. Sure I scatter Nazza jokes all over the place, but at the end, privately, there is no regard higher than mine for that particular Nazarene and other involuntary victims of human's baser natures over the centuries. This is merely a starting point however.

What I do though instead of assuage this is to offer a chance to make this voluntary; and in doing so I intensify the experiences using only the pain itself within a controlled situation:


My students tend to through such experiences find a softening of character one would attribute to Nephilim.

I agree that we can choose our own philosophy for how to live our lives, but I don't believe that we can influence the actual values of those philosophies just because we choose them. I'm saying there are philosophies that are objectively and universally better than others.

I don't think of it as your friend is making a mistake but just that he hasn't yet developed the clarity to realize what he really wants. If your friend were to ask me for life advice, I guess my first response would to have him contemplate on what he really wants at his deepest core. I would recommend that he continuously contemplate this question not just for a couple of hours but over a period of days, weeks, and months even.

I want to say that we can, of course, have multiple values but if we are choosing certain values while neglecting higher values then we will be worse off for it.

Also, just because I am claiming that how we feel is the highest value that doesn't mean I am proposing what people think of as a hedonistic lifestyle. My life has been almost the complete opposite of that in terms of my implementation of sacrifice and delayed gratification.

In my view, in order to go far in terms of mental/spiritual development, increasing our baseline quality of life, it is essential to eventually develop the clarity of what we really want and to hold on to that otherwise we will get sidetracked.

I guess the point of this thread is to encourage people to go deeper into why they behave and value what they do in order to develop more clarity, which would allow for better future decisions. I apologize for any long-windedness and for being unclear.

Don't. If there is a place on 2p2 for exactly these natures, this is probably it. a thin slice of yours and carlo's post allowed me to construct my contribution; it's prob easier to throw up wordcount here than elsewhere...

Efficient readers, you see.

Carlo,

"The human soul's development is through morality"

My life experience disagrees with that. I have found that you cannot intellectualize or figure out how personal development works through philosophy. It has to be discovered and steps cannot be skipped. The exercise of introspecting about what you want is the first step of the process. Life will lead us toward the path if we learn and implement the lessons it is attempting to teach us.

Improved morality is a result of individual growth and development rather than the cause of it.

I'm not sure that I quite get it but the "seeking" of pain or any some such ascetic maneuvers is certainly not apropos. Marquis de Sade, whatever, is still "egotistically driven" and certainly reeks of the "dark side".

Best I can put it, seeking happiness is not to be denied and the overcoming of painful circumstances or suffering along the road is beneficial. It can be painful lifting weights (no pain, no gain ) but muscles develop along the route.

All men have lived within the spiritual world in which he is of the Divine but there are other Beings to whom Man is dependent who help the individual man along the way. We are not alone and to usurp this suffering by consciously causing it is of the lowest nature (hate to judge here).

Each man has his karmic difficulty to receive and in that the karma is completed he improves in human development.

At one time I believe that asceticism was the method to enter the world of the spirit (mystery centers) but times have changed and this is to be done consciously as apposed to in a trance like condition of the aforementioned centers.

Yes, there is difficulty along the way but as a boon to mankind.

Now I have difficulty with some of the egregious acts performed by man upon man and from what I know its not all about "karma" . Each event would have to be researched via spiritual science for a complete understanding. It goes on and on and on....

That is the easiest conclusion to make, yes. But it is often a hampered conscience that attributes purely negative aspects to that historical figure, always.

He might have been as real as Hamlet was to Elizabethan Welsh.

Who knows.

I'm skeptical of the bolded in this context. Sure, there are philosophies that will objectively and universally lead to less pleasure/more pain than other philosophies. And if hedonism is your goal in life, then they would be objectively worse on those grounds. But if you don't have hedonism as your goal, then I don't see how that would make them objectively worse than others. What you need here is some criteria for judging what makes a life better or worse.

We used to have these: eg in Aristotle's final cause ontological claims about the nature of humans as rational animals, or in Christianity's claim that humans are made in the image of God, and so the closer they get to that the more they fulfill their nature.

But we've mostly rejected Aristotle's view of science, and most humanists will reject the Christian view of human nature. So what objective grounds are you using to determine what lives are better or worse?

I think in order for your claim to be accurate, you have to say that people in fact can't choose their own philosophies of life, that in fact somehow hedonism as a criteria for success or a better/worse life is somehow inherent in humans. I'm pretty doubtful of that claim.

Would it help if I noted that my friend has a Ph.D in philosophy and has closely read and studied dozens of books on the subject? He is an expert in both classical Greco-Roman and Japanese philosophy and has consciously modelled his life on a combination of Stoic and Samurai principles.

I think his response to you would be that of course he enjoys pleasure and doesn't enjoy pain, but that he doesn't see much inherent value in that as a goal and so has chosen instead as a life project to seek other goals. I think in part the idea here is that pleasure and pain are fleeting sensations and not really of more significance than the actual experience of them. Thus, in thinking of life projects and goals, pleasure/pain is not very useful. All we can really do is just aggregate hedonic units since any given moment of pleasure is of little importance. But when we think of life projects, we often think of a small number or even a single project: I raised that person who has a good life, I built that successful company, or wrote that book, or helped pass that law, and so on.

I'll also note just as a by-the-by that many have speculated that the happiest life is not found by having happiness as your explicit goal, but rather as a byproduct of a life spent accomplishing other goals.

In philosophy hedonism refers to the pursuit of pleasure. In the popular imagination people often think this means sex, drugs, and rock n'roll, but the classic hedonists like Epicurus or Mill actually praised the pleasures of a cultivated mind and the avoidance of pain and worry as the best way to achieve the maximum hedonic value, so I think it probably is what you are talking about.

I think we're talking about each side of the coin or chicken or the egg. You're right, the intellect can only go so far and in fact can precipitate one into a lower state of affairs but in the future mankind will have developed the intellect along with a "Picture consciousness" much like a "dream" consciousness.The intellect will stay and imaginative pictures will also be the parcel of human thinking. Trying not to condemn it for it is exactly through the intellect that the individual man has progressed as an individuality but the future holds more as noted above.

I can't speak to everything and also know that "philosophy" has limitations only because there are many "looks at life" or different philosophies but its not opinion but actual "love of wisdom" and of course to deny the general heading of "philosophy" doesn't say much. We have to speak to each other and what may be said can be a ;pointer to wisdom or "truth".

I personally love reading philosophers and don't hold it against them for not having the true and ultimate meaning of life. LOL.

As you may know my studies are within "Anthroposophy" and in this the nature of Man as a spiritual being and his place in the cosmos is the guiding light. Aphoristically as the science states the laws of nature the "laws of nature" within the spiritual world is "morality". The moral laws reign and Man's progression such that he can returns to the world of the spirit, to which he belongs and from where he is outsourced ( don't believe I used this word) is by improving in moral tone and temper.

Man is a "moral tone poem" and the end of earthly experience is his returning to his spiritual place of origin, as an individual, having been improved through the moral wind.

OP,

"I think his response to you would be that of course he enjoys pleasure and doesn't enjoy pain, but that he doesn't see much inherent value in that as a goal and so has chosen instead as a life project to seek other goals."


Let me expand on my view. If I were to evaluate whether or not I should pursue something, I would consider the cost of attainment vs the payoff. I would consider the duration or frequency as well as the magnitude of both the pain and pleasure side. For instance, I would pursue something even if the sacrifice was long but the payoff gave a deep feeling of pleasure even if it is short lived. On the other side, if the sacrifice was deeply painful but short-term, I still would pursue that activity if the pleasure payoff was long enough to out balance it.

However, if I were to determine that the overall pain side was greater than the overall pleasure side, it would be impossible for me to pursue that activity. The only way that I would act is if I were in denial of or ignorant of that information.

Likewise, if I were to examine something about my life in which it became clear to me that the pain side dominated over the pleasure side, it would be impossible for me NOT to work toward changing that. Again, the only way I would fail to act is if I were to suppress that knowledge and keep it out of my conscious awareness.

A realization I have had, and a common theme among religion, is that we come into the world with this imbalance toward the pain side. When I suggest to contemplate what we really want through prolonged introspection, I am pushing people toward realizing that this pain imbalance is always there.

Once we become aware of it, it is my experience that it is impossible to not desire to fix it. So, if you're saying your friend can become fully aware of this through self observation and choose not to want to change it, I would disagree. I would say what is really happening is he is allowing it to be suppressed by our pain avoidance survival instinct and then allowing this same mechanism to convince him that there is a better area to focus on.

At this point, I realize I would be just repeating stuff I've shared before if I continue so I'll stop here.

Yeah, I guess I am saying that once the problem I brought up in the previous post is acknowledged, then we can't help but adopt the hedonism philosophy for as long as the problem is acknowledged, which may just be temporarily.

I don't see how you can't be doubtful of that claim until you have experienced it enough to realize it how I have. My ability to persuade at the moment doesn't go beyond saying 'try it and see what happens' which I realize is weak.

I appreciate the responses though, so I could clear it up in my mind.

Without the bolded, there are immense gains to be made. I have always made the assumption that this is a default state.

Like malevolent Universes with all lack of meaning, just pain itself. Whether you see it or not. The latter scenarios I find reassuring, while most don't.

Just isolating a great paragraph and showing a duality that I happen to own all rights to.

And, yes, it's automatically metered to individual psyches. I'm not a bloody idiot.

You are talking on the wrong level of abstraction here. It is, I take it, a fact about some people that their intentional and conscious reasons for action are not hedonistic. That is, some people have beliefs that give them reasons to do x for reason y where y doesn't refer to increasing pleasure or decreasing pain.

Now, most people think that at least some of our actions are in fact driven by our conscious beliefs about the world. Insofar as that is true, then your thesis is just false. However, even if you reject this claim and think that all of our actions are caused by subterranean instinctual drives, it can still be possible to consciously manipulate ourselves into acting in ways consistent with our conscious beliefs even if they lead to more pain (eg think of some religious ideologies that cause people to defer pleasure til after they are dead). So I think your claim that it is impossible to not act according to hedonistic goals once you realize that our live's are more painful than pleasurable is false.

It seems to me you are saying is that you find it impossible to work towards a goal that you know involves more pain or less pleasure than some other alternative. Fine. But what justifies your generalization from your own case to everyone else?

For instance, that isn't true of my own experience. For instance, I find political campaigning very unpleasant, but because of some of my goals in life I have helped run a couple of campaigns. I do this knowing that I will find it unpleasant.This is not a case of deferred pleasure, as the pleasure that I might later get out of winning pales in comparison to the unpleasantness of the months of preparation and work done in campaigning. I do this because I think the sacrifice of my own pleasure here is justified by advancement of my other non-hedonistic life goals.

You haven't described any unique aspect of your own experience such that I should give it more credence than my own or that of my friend.

"It seems to me you are saying is that you find it impossible to work towards a goal that you know involves more pain or less pleasure than some other alternative. Fine. "


The above is true only when looking at things through the hedonistic perspective. For it not to be true, we simply need to change our philosophy. I'm sure you agree that that is quite obvious and what you've been trying to explain to me. Excuse me for that; I have brain fog so bear with me. Here is where I'm currently at:

There are two primary ways that we have an opportunity to become aware of this idea that we are naturally imbalanced toward the pain side - when we repeatedly experience events that trigger pain or through deep prolonged introspection. As this occupies our conscious awareness, we are strongly ENCOURAGED to adopt a hedonistic philosophy until the pain subsides naturally or our pain avoidance mechanism redirects us away from the pain.

Because our pain avoidance mechanism operates at a subconscious level, the only way that we can solve the overall problem is if we either hold onto the hedonistic philosophy consciously or hold onto the feeling of pain consciously therefore inducing the adoption of the hedonistic pain/pleasure perspective, which provides the opportunity to work toward solving the problem.

To bring it all together, once we decide our highest priority is to solve this problem and work to adopt the hedonistic view until it is solved, the way we view certain ideas changes. The concept of righteousness, which is commonly viewed as perfection in moral behavior, instead becomes perfection in being or perfection in how we feel.

One last point I want to make is the hedonistic pain/pleasure view is only necessary when attempting to solve the pain issue. Any other activity that has nothing to do with this subject or once a solution is found, then the hedonistic perspective becomes obsolete.

As you might be able to tell from this thread, solving this problem has pretty much dominated my life over the past decade.

The broader conception of 'hedonism' is being murdered in this thread.

It need not be on the negative end of a spectrum between altruism and self-indulgence. It can be (and most often is - in the modern world) compatible with altruism.

I'm in agreement with the OP.

No one sacrifices (either as a short-term or long-term investment), unless its to somehow improve on their own mental state. Being selfish to oneself and one's own desires makes altruism towards others: unsustainable. How will you help feed others going into the future, when you're giving too much and not eating enough to survive another week? Self-nourishment is essential, and some of us just happen to be hungrier.

A lot of this is common sense. Commonly overlooked too.

^

Neurachem: you cannot in most instances forestall the endorphin/serontin rush you get from helping someone out. In the current stream of this thread, rendering hedonism obsolete is key to a full clinical understanding of altruism.

Easier said than done, certainly.

Practicum: Thomas More:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_More

The idea that this man is an hedonist because he has good feelings (sometime but who knows when) because he's human and we are all alike is fallacious.

He fought the King of England, was tried, and executed via decapitation.

The history of great religious leaders, artists and even some scientists is rife with tragedy of magnificent quality but to say that these men and women are really living within a "hedonistic state of being" to, it seems like, the exclusion of other senses of life is too facile, takes no work and is glaring rife with lack of insight.

We all have a "feeling(sense) of life" which is in the main, healthful, and which comes about through no effort on our part. Most of the time we are unaware of this feeling which in illness becomes disrupted. The desire for good health is not hedonism but, I suppose, given the abstractness of our words someone can say anything is anything.

I've said this in other ways but the goal of all of mankind, some consciously but most unconsciously, is a return to the state of spirituality from which we've left at the episode known as the "Fall of Man". This is what religion is all about; religare or to reunite to our pre fallen state.

That this is a good thing in no way gives anyone the right to call it self centered or hedonistic or whatever pejoratives come to mind. The critical mind only hides an abject "fear" of this type of knowledge which is ennobling.

Its early yet, but a glance at the human condition will reveal a pursuit of this goal in a magnificent symphony of human individuality, the individuality bolstered by Love which is the undercurrent of suffering, the great suffering of Human Man.

What's a better word for the perspective I am describing, rather than 'hedonism'? I, too, would prefer a better term if there is one.

Psychokinetics is an apt term for pain that is thought than felt. That is a catch-all though.

What you describe is a sort of sensory Stoicism, only it is not fundamentally Stoic. In that regard, you are trying to do something so far that is unnatural for most and difficult.

Best to coin one's own terms for those, I think.

Perhaps read some Milton and it'll come to you.

Pleasure or Truth (truthfulness or wisdom) ? Can one find truth through pleasure, a "feeling" which is always amorphously unclear or can truth lead one to a proper representation of pleasure ?

Feelings are vagaries and individual whereas truth or cognition, within thinking are universal. Knowledge is gained through thinking but not so pleasure though pleasure can be an aspect of truthfulness.

Pleasure , within the soul, is immersed within sympathy and antipathy the balanced movements of the soul. This is individual but not a commonality , such as thinking, which brings the human being together with his fellows.

The "feeling" of nationality, as an example, is the separation of groups but also consequential is one's love for nation. Man learned of Love( one type) within his nation but the bringing together of nations can only be through thinking which is an advancement of humankind.

Usually men do not argue over the movement of the moon, planets and stars for these movements stand on their own and mankind recognizes the same. Differences of understanding but no "feeling wars", for want of a better word.

"Feelings" can bring a great deal of mischief in the world if one says that his or her "feel" is right or nation is right, etc..Pleasure is a feeling and not the path to glory.