• TheHedoMinimalist
    460
    Axiological Hedonism is the view that pleasure is the only thing which is intrinsically good and suffering is the only thing that is intrinsically bad. For something to be intrinsically good or bad, it has to be good or bad for its own sake rather than something else it leads to. For example, money is usually regarded as only being instrumentally good since it’s only good because of what it can buy you. On the other hand, having pleasurable experiences is usually regarded as being good for its own sake since it’s good regardless of what other thing it leads to. There are various things that some philosophers might regard as being intrinsically good: pleasure, satisfied desires, practical accomplishments, knowledge, survival, and a bunch of other things. There are also various things that philosophers might regard as intrinsically bad: suffering, frustrated desires, death, betrayal, and a bunch of other things. As an axiological hedonist, I consider only pleasure to be good for its own sake and only suffering to be bad for its own sake. In my interpretation of hedonism, pleasure is defined as any kind of attribute of an experience which makes the experience feel unambiguously and undeniably good. Suffering is defined as any kind of attribute of an experience which makes the experience feel unambiguously and undeniably bad. Essentially, I am claiming that anything that feels good should be the only thing considered good for its own sake and anything that feels bad should be the only thing considered bad for its own sake. Of course, this should not be construed to mean that we should only pursue pleasure and avoid suffering. Rather, we should try to either maximize pleasure and minimize suffering as ultimate aims. These aims might be best accomplished by sometimes avoiding certain pleasures and pursuing certain sufferings. In addition, I am not assuming that we should only be concerned with our own hedonic well being. We might argue that we should maximize the pleasure and minimize the suffering of others. In order to defend axiological hedonism, I proposed the following argument:

    P1: If there is some credible evidence that pleasure is intrinsically good and suffering is intrinsically bad and no credible evidence that other things are intrinsically good or bad, then we have good reason to accept axiological hedonism.

    P2: Credible evidence is either observed or logically deduced.

    P3: There are 2 types of credible observed evidence which could be used to support theories regarding the intrinsic goodness or badness of certain things: sensational observations and introspective observations. Sensational observations are observations with the 5 senses relating to the outside world. They are most frequently used in science and the perception of basic objects. Introspective observations are observations of our inner subjective experiences. These inner subjective experiences include our own emotions, attitudes, memories, preferences, and personality states.

    P4: The intrinsic goodness of pleasure and the intrinsic badness of suffering is observed within our inner subjective experiences and thus there is credible introspective empirical evidence that pleasure is intrinsically good and suffering is intrinsically bad.

    P5: There is no introspective evidence which suggests that there other things which are intrinsically good or bad.

    P6: There is no sensational evidence which suggests that there other things which are intrinsically good or bad.

    P7: The supposed intrinsic goodness or badness of things aside from pleasure and suffering cannot be logically deduced in any way.

    C: Thus, we have good reason to accept axiological hedonism.

    It would take me a while to defend each premise of the argument so I will only defend the premise if they are doubted or questioned by a responder to the thread. I’m interested to know which premise of my argument is most controversial.
  • OmniscientNihilist
    171
    the mind is not separate from the environment. so real answers to questions will include both the mind and the environment and their relationship together in the explanation.

    1-good and bad
    2-good and evil
    3-right and wrong

    are 3 different things.

    good and bad are words that the mind labels onto any thing that it associates to pleasure or pain. that label is relative to that association so it can change at any time if the mind shifts its point of view and sees a different association. But no matter what it changes to its root will always be pleasure or pain.

    so "good" and "bad" are nothing but fleeting words. metaphysically they dont exist. metaphysically all things including pleasure and pain simply are what they are. they are neither good or bad but simply exist as aspects of being itself.

    "good" and "bad" are just labels used temporarily for pragmatic purposes by the mind.

    as for hedonism the mind will always move towards pleasure and away from pain based on its beliefs of where they are. those beliefs come from past experience or extrapolations from past experience.

    choice is a deterministic cost benefit analysis run in split seconds by your subconscious mind to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. humans are basically pleasure seeking robots, whether they know/admit it or not.
  • Deletedmemberzc
    2.5k
    P4: The intrinsic goodness of pleasure and the intrinsic badness of suffering is observed within our inner subjective experiences and thus there is credible introspective empirical evidence that pleasure is intrinsically good and suffering is intrinsically bad.TheHedoMinimalist

    The words "goodness" and "badness" are troublesome here.

    Your premise, more precisely put, reads: P4: The intrinsic pleasurefulness of pleasure and the intrinsic unpleasurefulness of suffering are observed within our inner subjective experiences and thus there is credible introspective empirical evidence that pleasure is intrinsically pleasureful and suffering is intrinsically unpleasureful.

    Goodness and badness are judgments added to prima facie observations of pleasure and suffering.
  • TheHedoMinimalist
    460
    the mind is not separate from the environment. so real answers to questions will include both the mind and the environment and their relationship together in the explanation.OmniscientNihilist

    What do you mean when you say that the mind is not separate from the environment?

    so "good" and "bad" are nothing but fleeting words. metaphysically they dont exist. metaphysically all things including pleasure and pain simply are what they are. they are neither good or bad but simply exist as aspects of being itself.

    "good" and "bad" are just labels used temporarily for pragmatic purposes by the mind.
    OmniscientNihilist

    Well, aren’t all words just labels used temporarily for pragmatic purposes by the mind? For example, if I say that I’m lying on a bed right now, then my use of the word “bed” is meant to an easy way of describing the collection of atoms that I’m laying on. Similarly, if I say that’s it’s raining outside, “raining” is also just a label used to describe the process of lots of H2O molecules falling on the ground. So, do beds and rain also not exist metaphysically under your view? Are they not just a collection of atoms rather than unified objects or events?

    as for hedonism the mind will always move towards pleasure and away from pain based on its beliefs of where they are. those beliefs come from past experience or extrapolations from past experience.

    choice is a deterministic cost benefit analysis run in split seconds by your subconscious mind to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. humans are basically pleasure seeking robots, whether they know/admit it or not.
    OmniscientNihilist

    That sounds like an argument for Motivational Hedonism which states human action is motivated by the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain. I’m not a proponent of such views but I’m also not an opponent of them. I’m more interested in the question of “what should we pursue or avoid?” rather than “what do we pursue or avoid?”. Whether or not determinism is true, I don’t think it gives us a reason to not philosophize about issues relating to value and decision making. Also, I don’t think we make every choice in split seconds in our subconscious. For example, if I was unsure what I was gonna be my major in college until I spend 2 hours doing extensive research on all majors, then wouldn’t this imply that I spend 2 hours making that decision consciously?
  • OmniscientNihilist
    171
    What do you mean when you say that the mind is not separate from the environment?TheHedoMinimalist

    you cannot separate the mind from your explanation of reality, because the mind is a part of it. a true explanation of things will also include the minds relationship with the things. and in order to do that you need self-awareness and meta-cognition.

    So, do beds and rain also not exist metaphysically under your view?TheHedoMinimalist

    what if i use a bed as a shelf? then what is it, a bed or a shelf? and again we see that the mind is part of the very environment that it's trying to know.

    “what should we pursue or avoid?”TheHedoMinimalist

    you should persue pleasure and avoid pain, but do so intelligently not stupidly.

    wouldn’t this imply that I spend 2 hours making that decision consciously?TheHedoMinimalist

    the subconscious mind is the base, taking care of the deeper aspects, while the conscious intellect sits ontop taking care of the surface details. they work simultaneously together, but there may be some feedback loops before the final execution to behavior is sent. its all deterministic. in from the senses, through and or around in the mind, out to the body, repeat.
  • TheHedoMinimalist
    460
    The words "goodness" and "badness" are troublesome here.

    Your premise, more precisely put, reads: P4: The intrinsic pleasurefulness of pleasure and the intrinsic unpleasurefulness of suffering are observed within our inner subjective experiences and thus there is credible introspective empirical evidence that pleasure is intrinsically pleasureful and suffering is intrinsically unpleasureful.

    Goodness and badness are judgments added to prima facie observations of pleasure and suffering.
    ZzzoneiroCosm

    But, how would you distinguish between pleasurable experiences and non-pleasurable experiences in your mind? It’s seems like you could identify pleasurable experiences by a feeling of unambiguous and undeniable goodness. Similarly, you could only distinguish suffering from non-suffering only by observing the badness of some experiences. Also, the experience of suffering could often compel you to regard it as intrinsically bad. For example, if you put your hand on a hot stove and it hurts, then you would be compelled to think that the hurting sensation is intrinsically bad for at least a moment upon the identification of the experience. No other type of thing aside from pleasure and suffering seems to universally compel us to regard it as intrinsically good or bad. For example, I’m not compelled to regard practical accomplishments as intrinsically good. Even after an initial exposure to something that I define to be a practical accomplishment, I’m not psychologically forced to accept its intrinsic goodness. The same goes for knowledge, satisfied preferences, survival, and other things which can be considered intrinsically good. Essentially, I would argue that properties of pleasurefullness are actually properties of intrinsic goodness and that also partly explains why might refer to a pleasant state of mind as “feeling good”. On the other hand, we can understand properties of other supposedly intrinsically good things like knowledge without presupposing an intrinsic property of goodness in knowledge. I could distinguish knowledge from non-knowledge without implying that one is better than the other, but I cannot distinguish pleasurable experiences from non-pleasurable experiences without implying that one is better than the other one. Thus, I would argue that there must be an observed goodness in pleasure.
  • TheHedoMinimalist
    460

    I actually don’t particularly disagree with anything you said there. I agree that we should try to maximize pleasure and minimize pain in the long term.
  • OmniscientNihilist
    171
    I actually don’t particularly disagree with anything you said there.TheHedoMinimalist

    hedonism, determinism, and solipsism, are irrefutable. therefore should not be avoided but incorporated into any paradigm
  • NOS4A2
    8.3k


    What is intrinsically bad about pain, that it is painful?
  • TheHedoMinimalist
    460
    Well, how would you distinguish suffering from non-suffering? It seems that in order to even identify an experience as being unpleasant one must make a value judgement about that experience. For example, how do you distinguish the feeling of anxiety from the feeling of excitement? Both excitement and anxiety are characterized by a fidgety and heightened state of mind. So, what’s the difference between the 2 experiences? Well, excitement feels good while anxiety feels bad. Thus, by making a value judgement about those experiences, you can distinguish them. Otherwise, anxiety and excitement would pretty much feel the same way. I’m essentially arguing that unpleasantness is a felt property of badness and that our past experiences with unpleasantness is evidence of the existence of that felt property.
  • Pfhorrest
    4.6k
    unpleasantness is a felt property of badnessTheHedoMinimalist

    I'd argue for hedonism in a much more direct way from basically exactly that statement.

    If we start from a place where we have no idea what's "really" good or bad, or if anything at all even is "really" good or bad, we can at least ask ourselves "what seems good or bad?" That seeming-good-or-bad just is hedonic experience, pleasure or enjoyment, suffering or pain. I like to call the faculties that produce such experiences "appetites", the normative analogue of the senses, which likewise are the faculties that produce experiences of what seems true or false. The satisfaction of an appetite is pleasure or enjoyment, the dissatisfaction of it is pain or suffering.

    Just as what initially seems true to our limited empirical experience may later seem false upon further experience, but we still build our picture of what's actually true out of increasingly in-depth examination of our empirical from many different perspectives and in many different circumstances...

    ...likewise what initially seems good to our limited hedonic experience may later seem bad upon further experience, but since that seeming-good-or-bad is all we have to go on, we should build our picture of what's actually good out of increasingly in-depth examination of our hedonic experience, from many different perspectives and in many different circumstances.
  • TheHedoMinimalist
    460
    If we start from a place where we have no idea what's "really" good or bad, or if anything at all even is "really" good or bad, we can at least ask ourselves "what seems good or bad?" That seeming-good-or-bad just is hedonic experience, pleasure or enjoyment, suffering or pain. I like to call the faculties that produce such experiences "appetitesPfhorrest

    I agree that if you start from a place of initial ignorance then you are likely to recognize the goodness of pleasure and the badness of suffering first. I actually used to be pretty skeptical and agnostic about value claims and I wasn’t particularly sure what I should do with my life. Later on, I had this realization that if there’s anything that I have reason to do in this life, it is to increase the pleasantness of my life. At that time, I wasn’t studying philosophy seriously so I didn’t know what the opinion I held on this topic was called. I called my new idea Sensationalism at the time because I thought that life value consisted of positive and negative sensations which ironically enough I never thought about simply calling pleasures and pains. I guess it was mostly because I had a more narrow definition of what pleasure and pain was. Later on, I learned that my viewpoint was called hedonism and that pleasure and pain are often used as more inclusive descriptions of positive and negative experiences.

    ...likewise what initially seems good to our limited hedonic experience may later seem bad upon further experience, but since that seeming-good-or-bad is all we have to go on, we should build our picture of what's actually good out of increasingly in-depth examination of our hedonic experience, from many different perspectives and in many different circumstances.Pfhorrest

    I agree that we should try to create more detailed hedonic accounts to try to help us make good decisions in life. I have actually devised several hedonic analysis methods which I use to explore the merits of various decisions in life. One such method involves simply writing down a list of every type of pleasure and suffering that you can think of. Then, you apply it to an important decision in life. For example, I like to think about the hedonic consequences of having children for myself. I’m much more concerned with suffering than I am with pleasure so I would usually only do an analysis of the suffering caused by having children vs the suffering alleviated by having children. I start the analysis with a list of suffering: physical pain, itchiness, foul smell, anxiety, loneliness, sexual frustration, grief, and so on. There’s like 20 or more different types of suffering that I would want to analyze. Then, I try to see how having children would impact these different types of suffering. I find this method helpful because it helps break down the suffering into something that it’s easy to think about. This allows me to consider things about having children that most other people might not consider. For example, if I think about specifically the grief involved in having children, then I could observe that I might suffer from grief if I have children and something bad happens to them. This would reveal a downside to having children which would not be revealed otherwise. Similarly, if I think about the romantic frustration involved in struggling to find a romantic partner who also doesn’t want to have kids and can meet other important criteria, then this reveals a downside to the child-free life which is often overlooked.
  • TheYoungPhilosopher
    6
    One of the greatest issues with hedonism is the complete ignorance of memento mori (Latin: remember you will die). When we are so focused on pleasure, how can one live a virtuous life? Hedonists are ignoring one of the purposes of this life: living virtuously. If everyone was a hedonist, why would we care for the future, the increase of society, the environment, or even our posterity? Hedonism is therefore a selfish and an ignorant philosophy.
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