Sentient persistence is irrational

_db

I believe humans, and most sentient organisms for that matter, have a deficient fear of pain. On the flip side, we have an overly aggressive fear of death.

Death does not harm anyone, as when you die, you (presumably) do not exist anymore to feel anything at all. The process of death, of course, can be painful; so painful that death actually can be seen as a mercy.

Although pain warrants action, our psychological disposition is to value continued existence over the reduction of pain. Evolutionary speaking, the reduction of pain is good only so long as the organism continues to exist. If pain becomes too much to bear, the organism might attempt to escape from the pain by any means necessary (suicide). But this is not conducive to procreation and gene multiplication, so the power consciousness usually has over the rest of the organism is greatly reduced in favor of instinctual behavior.
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Most people do not realize how many risks they expose themselves to, simply by existing. Walking out of the door everyday exposes you to a multitude of risks, risks that, if actualized, can result in great pain. Self-centered-ness, i.e narcissism, prevents most people from seriously considering the possibility that something like this could actually happen to them. This cognitive bias manifests itself in modes of thinking like "it's always the other guy", or "it'll never happen to me, I'll be fine..." This sort of prophetic thinking is what allows horrible accidents to happen in the first place.

The irony here is that the greatest pleasures come at the greatest risk/price. You can't be a hero unless you survive when everyone else failed. All of the warning/caution/danger signs you see on a daily basis are there because someone who thought themselves lucky ended up being quite unlucky. Society is built not merely on the successes of others, but also on the failures of others as well.

Although my goal is not to manufacture slogans, it is obvious from my perspective that life is a series of accidents waiting to happen. There was an Existential Comics on this recently, and one of the quotes was that life is like an airplane ride - sometimes it's great, most of the time it's mediocre, but mostly everyone just hopes nothing horrible happens.
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The conclusion to all of this is that people generally do not know what is best for them. What is best for them may not be what leads to their continued existence. In fact, in light of the very real possibility of horribly painful accidents in the future, a truly unbiased and rational person would understand that the risk is too great, for their own sake. Suicide is generally a rational and reasonable option given the risks life presents to us.

Compare this with a similar situation, that of a vanguard soldier on the front lines. Nobody in their right mind would willingly put their well-being at risk like this without reason. Soldiers have to be drafted, or convinced by some abstract ideal to join the ranks of the military.

Or consider the adrenaline junky. A lot of us, including myself, find some of the things these people do as legitimately insane. Jumping out of a plane without a parachute, scuba diving without a partner or a even an oxygen tank, eating a bowl full of Mexican hot chili peppers without milk, etc. We question their own rationality and sanity.
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So my claim is that life in general is just like the decision to be a soldier or an adrenaline junky, in virtue of the fact that life has the potential to be quite horribly painful. Just as we would not willingly go to the front lines for no good reason, we would not (if we were unbiased and perfectly rational) decide to continue to exist in general for our own sake. An objective evaluation of life would result in the conclusion that, no matter how good you're feeling right now, the future is unknown and has dangerous possibilities, possibilities that cannot be countered by future possible pleasurable moments. Future pleasure is not guaranteed, and escape from horrible pain isn't either.

The decision to continue existing is not rational (indeed it seems that a great deal of people simply persist through life without any real overarching reason). In fact, most people probably don't even "decide" to continue existing, they just do. The decision to continue existing cannot be rational or self-interested. It must be from something greater than the self, such as a dedication to a country, or a religion, or science (a modern priesthood, warranted or not), or an ethical code.

Of course, your decision doesn't necessarily affect anything. Someone might object to being drafted but they still get put on the front lines anyway. And someone might see life as not rationally worth continuing but continue to live on instinct.

Additionally, someone (like myself) might decide to continue existence for a greater purpose (ethics, in my case), but still understand that the real reason they are still around are their instincts to survive. Just like Sartre said in his book Nausea:

"Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance."

mcdoodle

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance — darthbarracuda

This Sartre quote lies around on the Internet out of context. I don't think it means what, isolated, it appears to say. Perhaps it reinforces what you're saying, in the end, but the point of it in its context seems to me to argue that 'rationality' is quite beside the point. To quote 'instincts to survive' is to hang on to rationality. Whereas Sartre is in a descending line from Kierkegaard that living is absurd.

The character Roqeuntin is suffering from nausea, or rather, Nausea. He is obsessed by the odd existence of things about him. Here he is lying among trees.

...at any instant I expected to see the tree-trunks shrivel like weary wands, crumple up, fall on the ground in a soft, folded, black heap. They did not want to exist, only they could not help themselves. So they quietly minded their own business; the sap rose up slowly through the structure, half reluctant, and the roots sank slowly into the earth . But at each instant they seemed on the verge of leaving everything there and obliterating themselves. Tired and old, they kept on existing, against the grain, simply because they were too weak to die, because death could only come to them from the outside: strains of music alone can proudly carry their own death within themselves like an internal necessity: only they don't exist. Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance. I leaned back and closed my eyes. But the images, forewarned, immediately leaped up and filled my closed eyes with existences: existence is a fullness which man can never abandon. — Sartre

Existence is a fullness which man can never abandon: to me that's what Sartre himself is trying to assert, through his character Roquentin, beyond the inner debate with reason and chance.

Barry Etheridge

I believe humans, and most sentient organisms for that matter, have a deficient fear of pain. On the flip side, we have an overly aggressive fear of death. — darthbarracuda

Then you believe wrongly. It is not being dead that people fear but dying, the transition from life to death. The reason being that they expect it to be painful. This hardly suggests a deficient fear of pain. If anything we have an over-aggressive fear of pain which makes, as often as not, the anxiety about pain worse than the actual pain itself!

Terrapin Station

It would be fun, maybe, if we had a month on the board where:

(1) To maintain your registration, you have to post at least 30 times (once per day on average).
(2) You have to start at least two threads in those 30 posts.
(3) No thread can be started on a topic that we've already had a thread on.
(4) You're not allowed to steer threads to topics we've already discussed in more than a couple threads.
(3-4 footnote:) You can't do the same old topics in a veiled way either.
(5) Everyone gets a list of 5-10 keywords that they're not allowed to use in their posts, otherwise they're deregistered. So for example, apokrisis wouldn't be able to use the word "constraint." Streetlight wouldn't be able to use the word "system/systems," I wouldn't be able to use the word "subjective" etc.

Nerevar

If someone lives who is ignorant of the potential for great pain, and they live well, isn't their quality of life far better than someone who is acutely aware of every potential mishap and lives a life of fear?

These qualms about the 'ultimate' pain of death are a bit baffling to me. It seems that people complain about living since they are bound to think/feel/sense things, and by definition some of these things will be classified as good and some as bad, or some as pleasant and some painful, etc. Of course they will be, and chances are that as your body begins to die, unpleasant experiences will increase. Yet remember that events that you once classified as horrible, like skinning your knee as a child, or being without a toy as an infant, can now be borne with ease, simply because you have endured so much worse as an adult. Because you have a vast mental library of many good and terrible things, you can assign a more appropriate level of pleasure or pain to any new experience. Experiences do not happen without your interpretation of them, so only you can determine if the pain of death will be greater or less than any pain that you have endured in your life.

To put it another way, a person living in pain for much of their early life could find a partial cure for their ailment and live 60 years with only moderate pain, and be pleased and grateful that their suffering was lessened, even a little.
On the other hand, a person in moderate health could suffer from a debilitating disease for their final 60 years, in the same amount of pain as the first person, and be miserable the entire time. It's all a matter of perspective.

_db

Existence is a fullness which man can never abandon: to me that's what Sartre himself is trying to assert, through his character Roquentin, beyond the inner debate with reason and chance. — mcdoodle

Does Sartre find any way of overcoming the absurd, irrational character of life? His characters certainly seem to understand it.

Then you believe wrongly. It is not being dead that people fear but dying, the transition from life to death. The reason being that they expect it to be painful. This hardly suggests a deficient fear of pain. If anything we have an over-aggressive fear of pain which makes, as often as not, the anxiety about pain worse than the actual pain itself! — Barry Etheridge

It's probably both. People fear being dead and they also fear the process of dying. As for the over-aggressive fear of pain, I don't think it's the pain that is what makes people fear dying per se but the sense of loss and feeling that they'll "miss out" on everything else that makes people fear death.

It would be fun, maybe, if we had a month on the board where: — Terrapin Station

I would rather there not be requirements for membership apart from basic decency and respect.

If someone lives who is ignorant of the potential for great pain, and they live well, isn't their quality of life far better than someone who is acutely aware of every potential mishap and lives a life of fear? — Nerevar

Yes, I suppose this is correct. It is a double-edged sword. By understanding the possibility of horrible pain in the future, you might end up dooming yourself. But understanding also lets you live more ethically. So the acquisition of wisdom has an ethical side.

Yet remember that events that you once classified as horrible, like skinning your knee as a child, or being without a toy as an infant, can now be borne with ease, simply because you have endured so much worse as an adult. — Nerevar

It's also because we have an unconscious filter that prevents us from actually re-living these bad experiences, at least normally (see PTSD).

Experiences do not happen without your interpretation of them, so only you can determine if the pain of death will be greater or less than any pain that you have endured in your life. — Nerevar

It's not even just the pain of death, but any truly terrible pain. There is an obvious asymmetry in intensity between the possibility of pain and pleasure. Pain can get extraordinarily bad, and only relents when you fall unconscious. Pleasure doesn't do that to you. Nobody actually falls unconscious because of pleasure.

To put it another way, a person living in pain for much of their early life could find a partial cure for their ailment and live 60 years with only moderate pain, and be pleased and grateful that their suffering was lessened, even a little. — Nerevar

On the other hand, a person in moderate health could suffer from a debilitating disease for their final 60 years, in the same amount of pain as the first person, and be miserable the entire time. It's all a matter of perspective — Nerevar

I would say that horrible pain is not worth experiencing. But if you've already experienced it, it's over, you might as well move on. This doesn't justify the initial experience, though.

mcdoodle

Does Sartre find any way of overcoming the absurd, irrational character of life? His characters certainly seem to understand it. — darthbarracuda

I don't think there is a means of such 'overcoming', if you embrace the view, for you commit to the priority, as it were, of the absurd..

The Sartreian leap into freedom, as I interpret it, involves accepting the absurd irrational character of life, as you put it. This is liable to give you the nausea of the novel's title, an existential despondency; it's only by the existential leap of choice, of decision, however absurd, that one makes oneself, and thereby makes one's contribution to making the world.

As I now understand its roots better, this is a kind of interpretation of Kierkegaard without God (faith is absurd and irrational), mingled with phenomenology that descends to Sartre from Husserl and Heidegger. So in the terms of Sartre's later big work, the immediate that we encounter is Being, and the 'we' are the 'Néant', consciousness being nothingness. Authenticity involves acting freely; inauthenticity involves recognising rationally the constraints upon your actions, yet doing nothing about them.

As a footnote, Derrida over-interpreted a phrase of Kierkegaard's: 'L’Instant de la Décision est une Folie'. There's a nice essay by a man called Bennington about the multiple misunderstandings caused by translation from one language to another. Derrida definitely took the quote to mean that the moment of any decision is madness, and I confess, I still find that an attractive view: however much we rationally deliberate, the final choice isn't necessarily in the space of reasons at all.

Bennington does comprehensively show, however, that Kierkegaard's meaning was about 'folly' or foolishness not 'madness', a conclusion which has its own ramifications.

_db

The Sartreian leap into freedom, as I interpret it, involves accepting the absurd irrational character of life, as you put it. This is liable to give you the nausea of the novel's title, an existential despondency; it's only by the existential leap of choice, of decision, however absurd, that one makes oneself, and thereby makes one's contribution to making the world. — mcdoodle

Bennington does comprehensively show, however, that Kierkegaard's meaning was about 'folly' or foolishness not 'madness', a conclusion which has its own ramifications. — mcdoodle

I can't see how else we are to describe such an existentialist leap of faith, though, apart from irrational, absurd "madness". There has to be a good reason for why we ought to continue living. Otherwise why else should we continue living? Why take the leap of faith, why live absurdly?

Camus attempts an irrational reason for continuation - the aesthetic of a survivor, of a rebel. But this is surely irrational, as a revolutionary would not rationally choose to fight the government on his own. Playing a losing game or a highly risky game is similarly just plain stupid.

mcdoodle

There has to be a good reason for why we ought to continue living — darthbarracuda

Well, I think this is where you part company with the existentialist point of view. Or certainly my interpretation of it, which is a bit shop-worn :) There aren't 'irrational reasons' or 'good reasons' in certain areas of knowledge/self-reflection, on this Kierkegaard - Heidegger - Sartre view. To adopt an analytic phrase from Sellars, you asking for something to be in 'the space of reasons' when I'm saying it doesn't inhabit that space. There neither is nor isn't a reason to go on living. There neither is nor isn't a reason to take the existential leap. There's a choice and there will be consequences, mostly unknown and unknowable. 'Reasons' belong over there, in the space where science, logic and mathematics happen. (Just as, for instance, I'm reading Witt's 'Culture and Value' and he would argue the same about 'ethics', that reasons aren't part of the grammar of ethics)

R-13

So my claim is that life in general is just like the decision to be a soldier or an adrenaline junky, in virtue of the fact that life has the potential to be quite horribly painful. Just as we would not willingly go to the front lines for no good reason, we would not (if we were unbiased and perfectly rational) decide to continue to exist in general for our own sake. An objective evaluation of life would result in the conclusion that, no matter how good you're feeling right now, the future is unknown and has dangerous possibilities, possibilities that cannot be countered by future possible pleasurable moments. Future pleasure is not guaranteed, and escape from horrible pain isn't either.

The decision to continue existing is not rational (indeed it seems that a great deal of people simply persist through life without any real overarching reason). In fact, most people probably don't even "decide" to continue existing, they just do. The decision to continue existing cannot be rational or self-interested. It must be from something greater than the self, such as a dedication to a country, or a religion, or science (a modern priesthood, warranted or not), or an ethical code. — darthbarracuda

I agree that the decision to live is not "rational" in an "absolute" sense of the word. But maybe we should question this absolute notion of the rational. Perhaps you'll agree that rationality is usefully describable as a tool for obtaining what we want. If we map the world, this is perhaps secondary. This mapping is perhaps a means. Admittedly, we can switch into a "cold" mode and treat the future as if it was as important to the present. We can assume that this mode is "more" rational. But I have two responses to this.

First, I think our interest and focus fades out as we move away from the present and into greater uncertainty. (Maybe it's not always crazy to use that credit card to spend money that one doesn't have.)

Assuming this, we can look at how your claim might function for its user (in this case you) in the present or in the near future. In other words, we can ask why or how we shift into the "cold" mode of reasoning that assigns vague future suffering a weight that the irrational man in the usual mode does not assign it. Is "cold" talk of objectivity as cold as it intends? Is it more rational to seek out death? I personally embrace the abstract acceptance of death. If I have to, OK, but not just yet. (It's no use whining, and it's a challenge/opportunity to meet that terror with style). Unlike others, perhaps, I'll admit that there is indeed a stupid almost-mystic heroism or leap of faith involved in rising yet again to meet the dangerous day. I guess there is some of that "soldier" thrill you mention. Perhaps you see like as an addiction. I frame in terms of a courageous leap. It does seem easier but also "lamer" to die, especially when one still feels full of potential, healthy of mind and body, eager to develop one's life into an even more impressive and complex shape. (In my experience, things tend to get better as we age and learn --until, of course, we get too old, but that's the low-resolution monster in the distant future, which I am not wired to worry so much about...)

Sentient persistence is irrational

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