This doesn't solve anything, it just shifts the whole burden on the neurotypical vs. neurodivergent distinction, taking it for granted and taking for granted that said distnction can always be reliably established for every person at any given time. As if people would be robots with a make, model, and series number.No, that's quite the opposite. Consider for example recognizing neurodiversity, as in, the non-defectiveness of autistic (etc) experience patterns. Things that please and calm many neurotypical people can be very distressing and displeasing to neurodivergent people. The position you assumed I was arguing would be to call whatever pleases "normal" (neurotypical) people good, and neurodivergent people defective for not finding that good. But what I'm actually advocating is that we say it's good to act one way toward a neurotypical person (the way that they find pleasant and calming), but bad to act that same way toward a neurodivergent person (because they'll find it distressing and displeasing). — Pfhorrest
taking it for granted and taking for granted that said distnction can always be reliably established for every person at any given time. — baker
:100:But you can reject the Church without rejecting the Socratic idea of virtue. — Wayfarer
How does 'what feels good is good' work for e.g. sadists, masochists, severe autistics or antisocial sociopaths (e.g. neo-nazi thugs, serial rapists, billionaire ceo union-busters)? :chin:Hedonism (specifically ethical hedonism, the topic of the thread) is about appealing to experiences (of things feeling good or bad) as grounds to call something good or bad. — Pfhorrest
In other words, informed by e.g. medical sciences, human ecology, moral / cognitive psychology, etc, a baseline of 'what is bad' is readily demonstrable for each and every human animal and, therefore, frames the problematics of anticipating, preventing (net increase of) & reducing harm (misery), both interpersonally and through public policy. The imperative to do so, however, is N O T derivable from scientific data because scientific data only constitute hypothetical explanatory models and, for an ethics to be 'universal' it's insufficient for its grounding to be hypothetical (i.e. relative, or merely possible), therefore it must be categorical. Science, rather, functions as criteria for using empirical data in order to (more) adaptively align judgments & conduct with negating 'what is bad' for human animals. 'Hedonic satisfaction' is just the "pursuit of happiness" treadmill redux, IMO, perennially a fool's errand.We're an animal species. As such, each of us is constituted by the same functional defects: physical, affective, social, cognitive, etc which, if not maintained and sustained, lead, often rapidly, to deprivation and on to permanent or fatal dysfunction. I'd say our functional defects inform us as to (1) what harms us as well as (2) what harms other animals like us to the degree they are like us; true this, as you say, "cannot tell us which to choose" but that's because our species-functional defects are constraints on what constitutes homeostasis, affection, eusociality (or sustainability) & adaptivity, respectively ... AND NOT "OUGHTS" THEMSELVES, providing a 'natural' baseline for, or (basic) facticity of, moral judgments & conduct. Thus, negative utilitarianism, etc (vide Philippa Foot + Karl Popper ... + Spinoza). — 180 Proof
How does 'what feels good is good' work for e.g. sadists, masochists, severe autistics or antisocial sociopaths (e.g. neo-nazi thugs, serial rapists, billionaire ceo union-busters)? :chin: — 180 Proof
This is the point of distinguishing between appetites and desires: an appetite is not aimed for any specific state of affairs like a desire is, it’s just a feeling that calls for something or another—and there’s always multiple options—to sate it.
And it’s also related to the problem of confirmationism and its analogue consequentialism that I’ll go into in the later thread on justice. “If you suffer, I will enjoy it” plus “I should enjoy myself” doesn’t logically entail “you should suffer”; that would be affirming the consequent.
You should enjoy yourself rather than suffer. Also, I should not suffer but rather enjoy myself. Those are necessary conditions of something being good. You enjoying yourself is not, however, a sufficient condition of something being good; if something causes you enjoyment but me suffering, or vice versa, it’s bad, and something else that brings us both enjoyment rather than suffering must be found if we are to bring about good.
If that something else is not something that either of us wanted at the outset, that’s fine; we were both wrong about what was good. It’s up to us to figure out what we should both want, that will satisfy both of our appetites. — Pfhorrest
negative hedonic utilitarianism', is more eudaimonic and less relativist than a "ethical (positive) hedonism" — 180 Proof
Why on earth would anyone want to do that??For the sake of that illustration I take it for granted, but that is just an illustration.
Whenever it is discovered that a person with such and such characteristics experiences such and such phenomena differently that other people, our models have to be updated to reflect that. — Pfhorrest
IOW, it's about training oneself, developing oneself, cultivating oneself into becoming a particular type of person. This is how one "sees for oneself". It's not about verifying whether some claims are true or not. It's about making oneself be such that one comes to see those claims as true, as good. — baker
So your ethical project is abolitionism (or something (transhumanist) like it)? :confused:I am not at all advocating consequentialism and thus no variety of utilitarianism per se, though I broadly agree with utilitarianism on what a good state of affairs is. But I don’t think those ends justify any and all means. Hedonism doesn’t mean anything more specific than that pleasure and pain etc are all that’s morally relevant, that if something is good or bad it is for the reason of some (dis)satisfaction it brings someone. Your negative utilitarianism is still within the scope of that, and very close to the methods that I advocate on pursuit of the ends we’re discussing here. — Pfhorrest
Y'know, it has often seemed to me that far too many people show too much disdain for truth, but it's rare that any of them straight up admit it like this. — Pfhorrest
For the same reason as you don't need to know the exact shape of a car to know you should try not to be hit by them. Truth is a needlessly high standard. — fdrake
That’s a degree of truth that matters, even if an absolute degree of it doesn’t. — Pfhorrest
If you have any concern at all for avoiding falsehood, even if that’s not an absolute and all-defeating concern, then you have some concern for truth. — Pfhorrest
we're already dealing with a notion of truth that is more epistemic and pragmatic, and thus probably agree for practical purposes — fdrake
There are lots of good practical reasons not to care to pay attention to particular things, but given that you're paying attention to something already, it's kind of shocking to see someone so explicitly act like it doesn't matter whether they're right or wrong about it. — Pfhorrest
This is what you get from my words???!Baker's question seemed to be "why do you care not to give false answers to things?", not "why are you talking about that topic?" There are lots of good practical reasons not to care to pay attention to particular things, but given that you're paying attention to something already, it's kind of shocking
to see someone so explicitly act like it doesn't matter whether they're right or wrong about it. — Pfhorrest
Which is what he's doing: Just yet another authoritarian know-it-all with an utopian bent .../.../ Systematising ethics (right/wrong) like that can have a very "this drunk came up to me on the street and told me the way to find God" feel to it! That seems quite vindicated to me, as any such system is an attempt to reconfigure how values are seen and norms are related to, a lot like our drunken messiah's aspirations. — fdrake
https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803103046172Distinction drawn by James, who found it illuminating to classify philosophers into one of these two camps (Pragmatism, Ch. 1). The tender-minded are: rationalistic (going by ‘principles’), intellectualistic, idealistic, optimistic, religious, free-willist, monistic, and dogmatical. The tough-minded are: empiricist (going by ‘facts’), sensationalistic, materialistic, pessimistic, irreligious, fatalistic, pluralistic, and sceptical. — link
In other words, informed by e.g. medical sciences, human ecology, moral / cognitive psychology, etc, a baseline of 'what is bad' is readily demonstrable for each and every human animal and, therefore, frames the problematics of anticipating, preventing (net increase in) & reducing harm (misery), both interpersonally and through public policy. The imperative to do so, however, is N O T derivable from scientific data because scientific data only constitute hypothetical explanatory models and, for an ethics to be 'universal' it's insufficient for its grounding to be hypothetical (i.e. relative, or merely possible), therefore it must be categorical. Science, rather, functions as criteria for using empirical data in order to (more) adaptively align judgments & conduct with negating 'what is bad' for human animals. 'Hedonic satisfaction' is just the "pursuit of happiness" treadmill redux, IMO perennially a fools errand. — 180 Proof
It's a scale. It's just how we compare things. Suffering bad. More suffering worse. Less suffering better. No suffering best. It's not a complicated thing. — Pfhorrest
in this thread it's not even an especially detailed one I'm talking about: it's just "all that matters, morally speaking, is people not suffering" (and consequently, which lead to this discussion, "therefore we should update our idea of what's moral when we discover that something causes someone to suffer"). Which seems like a kindergarten-level "insight", not something that should make me look like an "authoritarian know-it-all". — Pfhorrest
If one excludes the religious, then I think it is indeed plausible (trivially so) that "all that matters, morally speaking, is people not suffering" — Isaac
It packs within that all sorts of assumptions about how to deal with uncertainty (do we act immediately on every 'discovery', or are we cautious about new knowledge?), how we deal with trust ('we' never discover anything, some group does - do we trust them?) — Isaac
Excluding the religious (and similar) views on morality is the point of this facet of my ethics. The people who object to this ethical view pretty much just are religious people. They’re the ones I’m arguing against. — Pfhorrest
If you trivially agree with my points, great! Others don’t. — Pfhorrest
Endorsing hedonistic altruism doesn’t have to mean endorsing consequentialism or authoritarianism or anything like that. It’s just an answer to one little question: what criteria to use when assessing what is moral. The methods by which to apply that are another topic (and on that topic I’m anti-consequentialist), who is responsible for applying such methods is yet another (and on that topic I’m an anarchist), etc. And those are topics I’m getting to. — Pfhorrest
It seems like you want me to start with the big picture conclusion (“hey everyone lets be less authoritarian and hierarchical and work together independently but cooperatively to realize all of our dreams”) and then go into the reasons for that conclusion and the reasons for those reasons etc, going backward through the argument until we get to the deepest premises. I get it, you’re used to psychologically analyzing like that. And that could be a way to do it, sure.
Except then anyone who doesn’t like that conclusion on the face of it is going to dig in their heels and reject any premise that might lead to it no matter how trivially true those premises.
...The point is to first get agreement with those no-duh obvious things, and then build up to things nobody wants to believe (like the rejection of all religions and states), on the grounds of those very same trivial obvious things.
— Pfhorrest
Well, since religious people accept their ethics on faith, not rational argument, I can't understand why you would put such effort into it. — Isaac
You've not quoted a single philosopher who doesn't agree with the basic points you take as premises here. — Isaac
It means having an answer to those questions (otherwise you wouldn't even be starting the process). — Isaac
The idea that you out of all of them, have come up with a system finally, after 200,000 years of trying which is not just a re-framing, or restatement of the issues already known, is ludicrous to the point of being messianic. — Isaac
for that to be the case you'd surely be unsurprised by the amount of 'pushback' you get from people struggling to believe this fact, yet it seems to constantly alarm you. — Isaac
You're working with people's intuitions only here. No actual physiological facts. so how are you distinguishing a 'conclusion' from a 'premise'. Our intuitions don't go around with little labels on them. if I have a feeling that everyone should "be less authoritarian and hierarchical and work together independently but cooperatively to realize all of our dreams" and I also have a feeling that "imposing suffering on others is bad", and maybe also a feeling that "some divine being must have made this universe and so whatever He says is right must be right"... What properties of each of those feelings are you using to judge that one is a 'premise' and the others 'conclusions'. Why should one not take one's feeling about God as a premise and one's feeling about suffering as a conclusion - realising that they must be wrong about the whole suffering thing because God can be a bastard sometimes in that respect? — Isaac
If one excludes the religious, then I think it is indeed plausible (trivially so) that "all that matters, morally speaking, is people not suffering", if you want to frame everything that way, you can. — Isaac
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