This is a problem that, ideally, needs to be solved within this generation. I find it unethical to continue to breed if there is the potential to suffer greatly, and the world we live in is filled to the brim with potentials to suffer. If we can make life safe and worthwhile, then progeny will be acceptable.

d) the human condition is too complex for anything this basic and unscientific — schopenhauer1

Also, Schop, I'd like to add, the human condition is not a scientific concept. It's a philosophical one, and psychology has a history of being a bridge between strict science and strict philosophy.

Well said BC. What's the conversion rate between pesos and pfennigs?

I'm not entirely sure if I agree with Maslow's hierarchy, but what I do notice is that the negative experiences are on the bottom, while the positive are at the top. This is because to experience a positive, energized life, one must first deal with the negative things. Hunger, thirst, shelter, and safety are necessary for us to begin to enjoy life. We can certainly feel pleasure even if we are starving, but that would not be "enjoying" life (and I'm sure you'll agree with me). So what I am interpreting here is that each stack on the pyramid is contingent upon the lower stack.

My criticism would be that some of the stacks might be arbitrary. For example, someone could be a hermit up in the mountains and not need love. They might be totally okay with this not being a part of their life, and still have high esteem and self-actualization. I'm not sure if we can divide these feelings like this.

But I do think we can divide negative and positive experiences, and I do think that the positive experiences are contingent upon the control over negative experiences.

That's my two pesos.

It's not that certain individuals are spoiled. It's that it is natural (i.e. the state we exist in without any conscious will to not be in) to hold desires. This is a teaching of the Buddha.

It is not easy to tame this. We get comfortable in a situation, only for it to change and for us to experience suffering or disappointment when it does change. We find ourselves desperately wanting the universe to say something back to us, to validate our egos, and it does nothing.

I agree with you BC. Although we are most definitely separated by age and experience in politics and life in general, I think the current political situation regarding personal agency is that it is a delusion.

Originally agency would have been salvation, back when the Colonies were vying for independence.

But with two hundred plus years in between then and now, political agency has become something of a delusion. And it can't be a delusion without it being a hoax perpetuated by politicians and corporate entities. The greatest threat to our political agency is that of apathy towards our agency, and it seems like that is exactly what has happened.

In relation to regulating research on this basis (if that is what you mean) the question that comes up for me is whether we can know (always if not ever) beforehand just what the ethical implications of any research would be. — John

That's true. Hadn't considered that.

What I meant was that a person who studies archaeology simply to learn more about the ancient history of the earth's biological organisms would be perfectly justified in saying their job is worthwhile even if it does not give any "practical" gifts to society. But a sociopath who tortures mice in various ways to see how long mice can endure physical pain is not justified in saying their activities are worthwhile. They might be intellectual (the sociopath might actually be curious to know the survival rates of mice), but the method of inquiry is horribly unethical.

No, I meant should. The ethical implications of research should be the only factor that decides whether or not a body of knowledge is worth pursuing.

I think the pursuit of knowledge should only be restricted by ethics. To hear people say there needs to be a practical aspect of philosophy is quite disappointing. (Y)

For sure, any thought may feed into the practical, but to say that is not the same as to say that it has direct and obvious practical applications, the way chemistry, physics, geology or genetics, for example, do. — John

If I may interject, I believe Russell held this position regarding his own profession of philosophy. The last chapter in his book "The Problems of Philosophy" talks directly about the value of philosophy. He criticizes the man who does not seek knowledge for its own sake (or at least does not respect this tradition), because they are perpetually locked into a tyranny of common sense.

He would agree with your assessment that philosophy is not meant to enhance the community (as do I). If any value is to be found in philosophy, it is what it can do to the individual; and any residual effects afterwards are seen as something to be appreciated, not expected.

What do you get instead? 'Weltschmerz'. Weltschmerz is what you get. — StreetlightX

I get that your opinion over all of this is that it is caused by decadence. Nietzsche thought Schopenhauer was pissy because he was decadent, for example.

But Weltschmerz is caused because our completely natural disposition towards the world is consistently disappointed. It takes effort to tame this disposition. The fact that it even has to be tamed says something about the world. The disillusionment, which originally was shock or despair, leads to general apathy as one realizes that nothing is going to change. It's a meta-suffering, if you will; the psychological pain resulting in the realization that the world is filled with so much suffering and clearly wasn't meant to be an environment to house entities with egos.

However, I disagree that these are fundamental values and intrinsic rights. Who are they to claim so? As far as I'm concerned, the only rights a man has by birth are the same rights a tiger has - which are not many. — Agustino

Who are you to claim so?

The left claims to be tolerant, but only for things which respect their fundamental values; towards anything else, absolutely intolerant. — Agustino

I think this a massively sweeping claim. The left presumably believes these fundamental values are intrinsic rights to every human being. So of course they are going to be intolerant to the right and others who dismiss many of these values. They are intolerant of intolerance, intolerant of backwards thinking.

Everyone has their own laws on their lands, in their families, and true toleration means not interfering with these. — Agustino

This is a funny thing to say, considering you said you are leaning to the right (which has history of supporting the rolling of tanks into countries that don't necessarily want them).

Some more thoughts on this I'd like to share:

The world we live in has been transformed by the creativity and labor of mankind. We live in a world of technology.

Take, a flashlight. Who knew it was even possible to harness electricity and use it to illuminate your surroundings?! Obviously a flashlight is not a "naturally" occurring thing, since it is built by a human. But the fact that it is even possible, in this universe, to build a flashlight, strikes me as sort of remarkable.

I find it remarkable that we can even harness anything in the universe and use it as a tool.

But it's not just simplistic tools, like a club or a bowl. We have built computers! We have built skyscrapers, and elevators within them! We have built nuclear bombs capable of unimaginable destruction!

It's strange, I think, that the universe should harbor such potential to be used to make such complex and useful tools.

This might be explained by the anthropic principle. Also, it's not entirely easy to make these contraptions. We can't just wake up one day and build an entire skyscraper in the afternoon. Gravity's a bitch sometimes. And there's insurmountable dangers with technology, as well, such as the capability to kill other people. So I think an appeal to an omnibenevolent deity that "made it all for us to be used" is misguided, because it would be a very incompetent deity since they obviously didn't have the foresight to realize their grand design of the universe would result in us utilizing it to achieve destruction.

But this does bug me a bit. It does kind of seem like the universe is "designed" to be utilized. It's not perfect, to be sure, but neither is it a blank slate that we can't do anything with.

Bingo, Willow. It is existentially narcissistic to expect the world to revolve around the ego.

Unfortunately it truly is difficult to tame one's expectations, especially when surrounded by a society that continually makes poor decisions regarding existence, which leads to Weltschermz.

I enjoy listening to the soundtracks of movies and video games. One of my favorite soundtracks comes from a game that is by far one of the most compelling and immersive games I have had the pleasure of playing, The Last of Us. It is a masterpiece, and the music behind it is equally beautiful.

No. The goal is merely to have pleasure now. That is my concern, not "future" pleasure which doesn't exist. It's a moment by moment mastery. — Agustino

I don't necessarily disagree with you, I'm trying to argue with the position that TGW has.

But either way if you are a hedonist, then pleasure is good. Presumably this means that you would strive to maximize the amount of time spent experiencing pleasure in the future, so that when the future comes to be the present, you are experiencing pleasure in the now.

Instead, what follows is that you must strive such that every single moment you feel pleasure. That is the goal. Not that you accumulate the maximum number of pleasurable moments, since the accumulation itself adds nothing to your pleasure and is not a pleasure in and of itself. — Agustino

Thus, the goal is to maximize your [future] time spent experiencing pleasure.

This is factually wrong to begin with. Many people (such as myself) have always refused immunisation shots. Neither are the scientific findings strong enough to support them, in my humble opinion. — Agustino

Please note that you are potentially endangering the lives of people who cannot get immunized.

I agree with your assessment, Ciceronianus, that we shouldn't expect the world to revolve around our expectations. Schopenhauer1, you may recall that I argued that to explicitly complain about this is to be existentially narcissistic.

In theory it makes sense, but in reality is truly can be difficult to tame the beast of desire and expectations. It's only natural for humans to be ego-maniacs, and denying this ego can be difficult and sometimes feel artificial.

When I listen to a song I enjoy, presumably I assume you would agree that I am experiencing pleasure.

Stopping the song and turning off my music player would not be something I desire, because I enjoy the prolonged experience of the song. The song is pleasurable over a course of several minutes.

This means that pleasure can be, and should be, (under your [vague] hedonism) maximized and measured by how long a pleasurable experience is and the intensity of this experience.

Presumably if it were possible for a person to experience a never-ending, constantly increasing amount of pleasure, that would be (under your hedonism) the best thing possible. I don't see how you could object to this without contradicting your hedonism.

We make judgement calls (i.e. what we should do in a situation) often by predicting how long a certain experience will last and the intensity of this experience, and whether or not the cost to experience this experience is worth it. For example, buying a fifty-dollar ice cream cone would be absurdly irresponsible, because you would be using a rather large amount of money for a simple pleasure that lasts but a few minutes. And we decide to get immunization shots because, although they do indeed hurt, they only hurt for a short amount of time and the intensity is not high enough for us to fear, while at the same time we are doing much good because we will not get sick in the future.

I disagree with your assessment that time does not rack up. How else are we to live?

It might be helpful to realize that there are more ways of conceiving of pleasure than along a spectrum or number line or something akin to a subjective experience that can fade or grow more powerful. — Moliere

I agree, I'm not a bare hedonist.

Just some thoughts:

The accumulation of money might make someone happy, thereby granting an example of quantitative happiness.

I agree that there isn't some kind of measurement device, a "Utilometer 2000", that racks up happys.

But you said that

Pleasure does not 'rack up' -- it is good insofar as it is pleasant, which is precisely insofar as it's being experienced, now. We live on a razor's edge in the moment and always act in that moment, not across a span of time where we have to 'accumulate' the best results. — The Great Whatever

So one could instead focus on maximizing the time spent experiencing such pleasures.

I'm not entirely sure, to be honest with you. I couldn't say.

From my experiences on both the old and the new PF (and in life in general it seems), many arguments become heated and persist simply because neither side is willing to endorse the Principle of Charity; they will hide behind this wall of "nah-nah you can't touch me here!" or try to snipe someone's argument apart by aiming at a weakness that amounts little more to moving the goalposts. This leads to an attrition that ends up spiraling out of control.

If you are on PF or any other debate forum just to argue for the sake of arguing, you are detracting from the overall quality of the forum(s).

I cannot see how this could possible be enforced (since someone could easily just feign ignorance on the matter), but we could see if we at least put up a reminder in the text box before typing that says "remember the Principle of Charity...good luck, have fun." It might help keep the amount of silly tug-of-wars to a minimum.

Obviously not from a strictly logical standpoint, but let's be charitable, shall we, and take the phenomenological approach here, and realize that if something is good then that something is something that we want to be maximized.

How does it not follow?! If something is good, then why on earth would it not be the case that it should be maximized?

What do you think are the primary reason why a fascist/totalitarian government is bad?

A dictator has complete control, so if they go off the deep end, everyone else and their mothers are screwed.

Also, a dictator cannot possibly do everything by him/herself, so they need a bureaucracy to help them out. In which case, this mitigates the advantage of having a powerful leader.

Independent thinkers will always be ostracized within fascist communities.

Fascism works in the short term, when people are scared or fed up with something. It thrives on destructive emotions. I believe Mussolini himself said war should be a fundamental part of the fascist state.

But after a while, people are going to get tired. The state will lose its momentum, and then will have to crack down on its citizens using violence and coercion.

The idea that physical reality just isn't enough to ever satisfy the demands of the mind is, in a word, bullshit. Yes, Virginia, some literary (and philosophical) movements contain multitudes of bullshit. One needs to clean it off the bottom of one's boots before one comes into the kitchen.

I'm not saying mind and physical reality is the same thing. It's just the idea that "Oh Gawd, my huge mind (It's so HUGE, a la Monty Python) just can't be satisfied by what little there is here in this dreary physical world!!!" is unadulterated romantic bullshit. — Bitter Crank

I just want to make sure there isn't a misunderstanding, I think Weltschermz happens to everyone at varying degrees, not just me or certain individuals.

From my perspective, every action we take is a distraction. Without distraction, we inevitably fall into boredom, which feels like the time you were home sick from school and didn't know what to do, and it was cold, gray, and dreary outside. Without distractions, the world becomes a bit heavy to look upon.

I'm not a depressive individual; oftentimes I am enjoying myself, but when it's all said and done, this enjoyment rests upon very shaky architecture that easily comes crashing down either with the presence of pain or the inevitable lack of interest for a topic we experience that leads to boredom.

I'm not saying we can't enjoy life, but to enjoy life is to exist upon the peak of a parabola, oftentimes difficult to obtain and easy to lose. It's so delicate that is leads me to believe that it is unnatural. The meaninglessness behind all of this is what leads to my Weltschmerz, I think, because it essentially makes all of us little rats in a rat race.

I don't think the point of ethics is to provide a self-help guide for specific ways you should live your life. — The Great Whatever

To be a hedonist means to believe that pleasure and pain are the only good/bad (respectively). So it makes sense that a hedonist would want to maximize pleasure and minimize pain.

You said:

A correction here: the kind of hedonism I defend doesn't say that the maximization of pleasure or the minimization of pain are good, because this assumes that pain and pleasure can be quantified, and usually that they are are fungible over time or between persons, which they are not. — The Great Whatever

And then:

I don't think the point of ethics is to provide a self-help guide for specific ways you should live your life. The classical hedonists made very different life choices and had very different personalities, if the doxography can be believed. — The Great Whatever

Which strikes me as dodging the question.

I don't think age has much of anything to do with this. Weltschmerz could easily come about by realizing that this is the way it is going to be for. the. rest. of. your. life.

So...noncognitivism?

How else does a strict hedonist go about their lives except by maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain?

Not entirely sure what you are suggesting. Perhaps metalinguistic nominalism?

I agree, I find Trope Theory to be lacking in explaining the similarity between tropes without the use of universals.

particulars are particulars because they are unique. — Marchesk

I would dispute this. A trope theorist would argue that the attributes that are shared are actually just particulars that are part of a set.

I agree with the false dichotomy assessment. I think Aristotelian metaphysics is a good middle-ground between the two extremes.

If it helps, I'm sympathetic to Aristotle's hylomorphism.

Hmm, It makes more sense that the fundamental substance, matter, can be construed in various forms; just as a log decomposes and changes from a brittle structure to a goopy mess but loses none of its matter.

So properties are not like stickers that are applied to an object, properties are the way matter is acting. A yellow pencil does not have the property of yellow, rather, it is acting in such a way that it exemplifies yellow. Maybe universals represent all that is physically possible, that is, all the different forms that matter can be construed. In which case they would exist in the same way the laws of logic exist, out of abstraction. But I don't think there's some kind of mystical inventory that has all these universals floating around somewhere in abstracta, that reeks of pseudoscientific superstitious nonsense.

Also, I dislike the trend in metaphysics that distinguishes objects as entities in themselves. This makes absolutely no sense to me. I suppose this means I am a mereological nihilist.

I need you to understand that I am extremely sympathetic to the perspective of a pessimist; I might as well call myself a pessimist. But my pessimism is rooted in the fact that it is the unfortunate fact that we suffer too much because we accidentally expect too much. We are accidentally narcissistic, and we can't help it. The universe is ill-suited for an self-reflecting ego. If it were possible to extinguish the ego in all its forms, we wouldn't suffer, for what would there be to suffer?

Something I have noticed is oftentimes, the fear of suffering is greater than the actual experience of suffering. This of course doesn't apply to every scenario, which is why you shouldn't just go jump off a canyon thinking you'll be okay.

I think the only kind of pain that actually constitutes as suffering (I think BitterCrank said something along these lines) is any kind of suffering that cannot be redeemed in any way. Terminal illness that leaves a person in a state of misery is one example. But again, remember that the Stoics advocated that as soon as life gets this bad, you are to exit gracefully.