I am afraid you understand the word "pleasure" in a very restricted sense. — god must be atheist
don't think either hedonism or the satisfaction of appetite provides that. — Wayfarer
many of the items on your list are not emblematic of pleasure so much as of happiness, — Wayfarer
Compare Freud: to him, this principle was libido. That too has a narrow meaning - sexual appetite - but also a broader one, which manifests in all kinds of ways, as it is something like 'the will to live'. But the main reason Jung broke from Freud was exactly because he felt Freud's 'libido' was too narrow to account for human drives generally. — Wayfarer
Happiness is pleasure — god must be atheist
nstead, I say, look at what the physical sciences do do instead of that, and adapt that to ethical inquiry, by substituting empirical experiences (experiences that "seem true or false", and upon interpretation give rise to opinions about reality) with hedonic experiences (experiences that "seem good or bad", and upon interpretation give rise to opinions about morality). — Pfhorrest
What do you even mean by "being moral"? — Pfhorrest
The criteria for the success of what? A moral science, or generally any system of morality? The criteria for success of those things is to provide a means of answering questions about morality. When someone wonders what is moral, how do they figure it out? When two people disagree about what is moral, how do they resolve those difference? Answering how to do that, how to figure out those answers to questions about morality, is the criteria for the success of a system of morality. — Pfhorrest
That you think I'm even trying to do that shows you haven't understood a word that I've said so far. — Pfhorrest
I predict you'd respond here "aha! So you're starting with a system of morality already, your 'ought' premises, just like I said!" But no, no more than the physical sciences start with some set of unquestionable "is" premises. — Pfhorrest
The difference is that you have a reliable point of reference in the case of physical sciences that's not there for morality. It's not only that those experiences are subjective, it's that those experience are already informed by morality. We do not suddenly wake up when we are 18 or so when we have enough maturity to think about this, and start experiencing good and bad things in a vacuum... we already have been conditioned into some form of morality, which will influence how we value those experiences. So how does that work as an objective science, we measure morality by a moving standard that is itself informed by morality? — ChatteringMonkey
So any procedure for answering moral questions will do, as long as it is comprehensive? No other criteria of success are required? — SophistiCat
If by that you mean that I haven't read your articles on morality, then no, I haven't. That wasn't the subject of this thread. — SophistiCat
That sort of Cartesian scheme that you outline doesn't remotely resemble the way science is done. — SophistiCat
I'm getting tired of that naked insult there being repeated, and the implication that I'm not thinking about the motives behind this. I already explained them in great length in response to Wayfarer last night.But even if your approach was better at aping science, that still wouldn't make it any better than a cargo cult, because you still aren't thinking about why you do what you do. Why should morality resemble science? — SophistiCat
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