I think I'd prefer to be in flow!

I am eating this cake? Why?
Because I want to eat it. Why?
Because it tastes good and I want to eat what tastes good. Why?
Because it makes me feel good and I want to feel good. Why?
Because I like to feel good. Why?
I just like to feel good why do you keep asking why?

I do what I do because that's what I want, and so do you. Then you may ask why do we do what we want? But what we do is what we want to do on the moment, so there is no infinite regress and no "I don't know".

You don't just want what helps you survive, there is a bunch of stuff we do that don't help us survive. Why you want what you want amounts to the question of why are things the way they are and not different. You can't change what you want now and the way things are now, but you can change to some extent the way things are going to be.

No one knows.
I don't know and you don't know either.
What is it we are talking about again?

Just FYI: have a child and toddlerhood will break you of always having to ask another person "why". :cool:
And so help me....if you ask why.... :confused:

Let's see...

I am eating this candy bar. Why?
Because I like the taste. Why?
Because that's how my body is built. Why?
Because of evolution. Why?
Because of the nature of matter and energy. Why?
Because of the big bang. Why?

Nobody knows why the big bang happened, and it's beyond any looking glass.

Suppose a 2 ton anvil is suspended precariously above your exposed toes, and you know the rope is about to break.

Why would you move your toes out of the anvil's path of destruction?

Do you think you should have to explain why the universe exists the way it does to have adequate justification to preserve your pedal digits?

There is no rational justification to why I should preserve my pedal digits. Yes, I want to survive and avoid pain, but I don't know why that is.


ok, so we want want it because we do it, and we do it because we want it. This sounds circular, still infinite regress.

I guess what I find amusing is that everybody is busy satisfying their needs and wants, without having a clue why.

I want to survive and avoid pain, but I don't know why that is. — bizso09

You want to avoid pain because of what pain feels like. (And that's an end to the regress.)

You satisfy your needs and wants because of how it makes you feel. Why did you make this thread? Because you felt the need to, you felt the want to do it. There is something that made you feel good about posting that thread and that's what made you do it.

You're saying we're all doing it and don't have a clue why, but sure we do, it's the experience of the feeling that makes us do it, when you don't experience the feeling it seems pointless, but when you experience the feeling you see precisely why you're doing it.

But that doesn't imply you are a total slave to your feelings like a robot is a slave to its inputs, you have some control over how you feel.

You want to avoid pain, because that's what pain feels like. This sounds like you want to avoid pain because of pain. What decided what is painful and what is pleasurable? It's arbitrary.


If I really think about it, I don't know why I posted this thread. I guess because I'm feeling absurd or weird thinking about this?

Yes, you're doing things because of the experience of feelings. But where do those feelings come from? You have no clue. They are just handed to you.

In fact, you're 100% slave to your feelings, because there's no rational reason to do anything else. The only control you have over it is to plan and think in a way to move towards even more pleasure.

To be honest, it appears to me that pain and pleasure are some universal forces in the universe, like gravity or electromagnetism.

You want to avoid pain, because that's what pain feels like. This sounds like you want to avoid pain because of pain. — bizso09

You've changed my words. Your version is a tautology, mine is not. You're attacking a straw man.

What decided what is painful and what is pleasurable? It's arbitrary.

Evolution decided it, so it's not arbitrary. In general, what improves an organism's chances of passing on its genes is pleasant, and what harms its chances is painful. So eating and sex are pleasant, while disease and injuries are painful.

What if argument is foward? I eat because of energy. Why? To do work. Why? To get target. Why? To move foward. Why? When get ther, have an answer.
We dont have answr for everything frm one point. So when we move to new point we have new question and new answr.

yeah, so now we're back to evolution, which is back to big bang and God. See my original post.


move forward to where? I like the phrase "forward", everything is making "progress". But where is forward, what are we all going towards? If you don't have the answer you don't know why you're doing it.

You want to avoid pain, because that's what pain feels like — bizso09

Ok, so if not tautology, what does this mean? Who decided that pain is something to avoid? Why can't the feeling of pain be neutral or maybe something to seek?

Here's forward version. It's the same.
I eat. why?
to have energy. why?
to do work. why?
to get target. why?
to move forward. why?
to buy a house. why?
to have a family. why?
so my children are happy. why?
so they can grow up well. why?
so they have a family. why?
so their children are happy. why?
so they can grow up well.

infinite regress ....

OR
so I'm happy. why?
so I have dopamine. why?
so my body does what it's supposed to. why?
so I fulfil my purpose. why?
so God is happy? why?
I don't know.

Who decided that pain is something to avoid? — bizso09

As I said; evolution decided it, i.e. at an early stage of evolution, some genes caused organisms to experience pain when they did something that reduced their chances of passing on those genes, and those genes survived at the expense of genes that didn't do this. That's a perfectly clear account, and I don't see your problem with it.

Why can't the feeling of pain be neutral or maybe something to seek?

Because if it had been like that, it wouldn't have conferred an evolutionary advantage.

yeah, so now we're back to evolution, which is back to big bang and God. See my original post. — bizso09

Foregt God; God is not an explanation for anything.

The Big Bang is a pro tem explanation. Something probably caused it, but we currently have no information about what it was.

If I really think about it, I don't know why I posted this thread. I guess because I'm feeling absurd or weird thinking about this?

Yes, you're doing things because of the experience of feelings. But where do those feelings come from? You have no clue. They are just handed to you.

In fact, you're 100% slave to your feelings, because there's no rational reason to do anything else. The only control you have over it is to plan and think in a way to move towards even more pleasure.

To be honest, it appears to me that pain and pleasure are some universal forces in the universe, like gravity or electromagnetism. — bizso09

Yes you don't know why you feel what you feel just like you don't know why things move the way they do, general relativity and quantum mechanics and the standard models of cosmology and particle physics don't explain why things move the way they do, they only say how things move.

So you don't know why you feel but you know how you feel. And you can notice that different things have a different impact on how you feel, that different beliefs make you feel differently about the same thing, that different beliefs make you act in different ways which change what's around you and what you feel and what others feel, so you are not 100% slave to your feelings, because through thought and imagination you can change your beliefs and through that you can change how you feel and how others feel.

I would say desire and belief are universal forces rather than pain and pleasure, desires and beliefs have an impact on what you find painful and what you find pleasurable. Desire is what moves you, belief is what guides you, and they both impact how you feel. I like to see existence as an interaction between what you desire, what you believe, and what you experience, they all shape each other and define your life. But you are not a mere spectator to all that because you can change your beliefs through thought, which then changes everything.

Objectively, how do you know that whenever you feel the feeling of pain, that means "do not do that". I get that from an evolutionary point of view, it makes sense, but how do YOU know that is how you're supposed to act when you feel THAT feeling. Did your gene call you on the phone, and told you "listen, when I give you this signal, it's called pain, and that means stop doing what you're doing". If you are in control of your behaviour and your behaviour is controlled by your thoughts, and not your emotions, then at some point you would have had to make the decision to actually "let's avoid pain". Since you never made that decision, it's the pain emotion deciding it for you, not YOU or your thoughts. So YOU do not know why you're doing what you're doing, you need to ask your emotions, and you have no clue where they come from.

Now you could argue for evolution in that the emotions come from outside of YOU, in particular they come from the universe, because it is how the universe tells you that given its physical laws, if you act in a certain way, you will not exist, and you can only exist if you act some other way. But as we established, these are outside of you, so you're sitting there clueless and watching "you doing things without knowing why". Also, you can wonder about why the physical laws are like that, no idea about that either...

So If I get this right, I have control over my beliefs, so I can change them to desire whatever I want through my thought. So first question, how do I decide what I should believe and what I should desire. Is it arbitrary? Do I flip a coin? I think the problem with this train of thought is that it's putting the cart before the horse. The first step in shaping my belief is that I want to change it somehow, I already have a desired end state. Now that first desire is handed to me, from who knows where. Probably from evolution, universe, God, etc... but it's definitely coming from outside of me and directly telling me what to do without me knowing why.

But let's assume that I can change my beliefs. So how should I change them? Could I say believe that putting my hand in fire is the best thing ever? Could I believe that there's a door in that brick wall and I just go through it repeatedly (by banging my head). Could I believe that I do not need food? I might have the willpower to do all of these for some time, but unless I'm getting a hit of dopamine, I will give up eventually. Finally, could I believe that I should kill myself and that's 'desirable'? Or whatever I'm doing now, is the 'desirable' thing to do. I guess if all these were true, then people (and things) could believe or desire anything and the world would be total random chaos. Since there is some order, and laws of universe, and evolution, this is not the case.