As I view it, the main problem here is consensus of definitions.

What does it mean to pursue pleasure?

What pain is to be considered pain to be avoided?

What does it mean to live well?

I find all of these to be very vague notions and generalizations; thus next to impossible to find any consensus, so making a sort of all inclusive claim of what it pleasure, pain or living well is a futile effort.

In addition to this, making such all inclusive claims of value are at the same time all exclusive claims, as when something is included rather than something else, that something else is what is excluded.

I find the statement "to know what good is, and to live it well" is very shortsighted. What is good in one moment is not always what is good in the next moment or even in the next similar moment. Also, is "to live it well" a state of being (a status) or is it perhaps a dynamic process of constant change and adaptations? I feel it is the latter; thus making any fixed points of status (including what one believe one knows as what is good) when it comes to notions of value are shortsighted, as it would have to 'disinclude' the accumulation of any information/experiences that might cause a change in what one deems (attributes/asserts) to be what they 'know' as good.

Such a quote seems to be rather a hasty comment and a very vague notion with far too many holes holding it together. It's a (mis)fortune cookie that I'll pass on.

Meow!

GREG

Those are good points. The context is hedonism and TGW's comments on it. So the good is pleasure and the bad is pain. Therefore living well must have something to do with obtaining more pleasure while minimizing pain.

A non-hedonistic approach to living well might be more complicated, at least in concept. I wanted to know how one was supposed to live well by knowing what is good, which of course depends on what it means to "live well" and "good".

So the good is pleasure and the bad is pain. Therefore living well must have something to do with obtaining more pleasure while minimizing pain. — Marchesk

This doesn't account for physical training for sports or sports in general, people who enjoy S&M, as well as lots of necessary medical procedures where pain is indeed quite necessary. Pain as an important indicator of illness or disease cannot be ignored.

I find that this notion of "pleasure good - pain bad" is overly simplified and full of obvious errors.

A non-hedonistic approach to living well might be more complicated, at least in concept. I wanted to knowhow one was supposed to live well by knowing what is good, which of course depends on what it means to "live well" and "good". — Marchesk

Perhaps this is just me, but being told "how I'm supposed to live" is not really what I'd view all too often as 'good'.

Life means far less for me when it is measured out by someone else's time or standards of measure.

This all reminds me of those who deal with happiness in the manner in which we are attempting to deal with 'what is good':



I suppose I'd continue this thought to include:

You will never know good if you continue to for what goodness consists of...

... good is not a static thing or a static quality. It is a value notion subject to a relative process.

Attempts to define for all cases what 'the good' is or what 'living well' consists of amounts to chasing a rainbow. Why not enjoy looking at the rainbow, as one will never catch it?

Just a passing thought... take it with a grain of salt. ;)

Meow!

GREG



Meow!

GREG

Marchesk:

If hedonism is the case, then pursuing pleasure would be to live well, right?

Pleasure/pain are feelings we generate. They are indeterminate, unbound, you can always get higher or feel more pain. Pleasure/pain provide us with information, they drive us towards and away from things, activities ideas, they pervade life. You can be both in pain and feel pleasure at the same time, they form a kind of continuum.

Plato thought pleasure was a 'becoming', a genesis, a coming to be, If so, then its coming to be is for the sake of something else, and if it is for the sake of something else then it, in itself, cannot be that choice worthy goal. Its value is derivative. If something is for the sake of something else then it is categorically different from what it for the sake of.

If living well is good, what we desire, our goal, then pleasure may be somewhat constitutive of living well, but it cannot encompass it, it can only be for the sake of it.

That tends to be what I think, but I won't deny there are moments of intense pleasure, or just feeling real good after feeling crappy where I think to myself that all I care about is feeling good.

But then if I could be wireheaded to sit on my couch all day, everyday, doing nothing but blissing out, and assuming my needs were met, is that what I really want?

I don't think so. So then it becomes the question of whether pleasure is what I want, or pleasure is an indicator of what I want. And I think it's often the latter.

That being said, there have been experiments with rodents in which they push a button that induces intense pleasure from electrodes in their brain directly stimulating their pleasure center. The rodents will do this at the expense of eating or drinking until they die.

I believe it was in the same thread, but I argued that brute hedonism is not a sufficient explanation for our actions. Preference hedonism/desire-satisfaction hedonism is a far more compelling case than regular hedonism.

Sure, in the daily grind of life hedonism more or less makes sense. You eat a cookie because a cookie tastes good. You don't stab yourself because pain feels bad.

However, more extreme cases bring to light not only new problems but also the superficiality of the prior thinking.

Scenario: A woman is raped by a man. For all intensive purposes, the woman feels hardly any pain at all during the act and it fact feels great sensual pleasure; regardless, she does not want to be raped. A hedonist, however, would have to concede that this act was perfectly okay because the woman (and the man for that matter) both feel only pleasure.

Obviously, the act of rape is still causing the woman severe psychological trauma, which I agree would be pain. But the only reason she is feeling psychological trauma is because her preference (to not be raped) is being disregarded.

Now, back to the prior examples. Do you eat a cookie because the cookie tastes good, or do you eat a cookie because you desire the taste of the sweetness of the cookie? Do you abstain from stabbing yourself because it will hurt, or because you desire to not feel pain?

That tends to be what I think, but I won't deny there are moments of intense pleasure, or just feeling real good after feeling crappy where I think to myself that all I care about is feeling good.

But then if I could be wireheaded to sit on my couch all day, everyday, doing nothing but blissing out, and assuming my needs were met, is that what I really want?

I don't think so. So then it becomes the question of whether pleasure is what I want, or pleasure is an indicator of what I want. And I think it's often the latter.

That being said, there have been experiments with rodents in which they push a button that induces intense pleasure from electrodes in their brain directly stimulating their pleasure center. The rodents will do this at the expense of eating or drinking until they die. — Marchesk

People get meaning out of a struggle or some sort of "cross to bear"
People like pleasure. People might also find meaning in pleasurable things.

People will balance life with meaning-through-struggle with meaning through pleasurable feelings. Boredom and a sense that one needs to feel like one accomplished something more than anything drives the "meaning from struggle" aspect.

Of course my pessimism comes in with the notion that we must find meaning through struggle, and that we cannot simply be without some source of stimulus or excitation. Existence without any need, desire, goals would simply be enough. However, this is for all intents and purposes an impossibility from the start and incomprehensible as to how that sort of existence even looks like.

Of course my pessimism comes in with the notion that we must find meaning through struggle, and that we cannot simply be without some source of stimulus or excitation. Existence without any need, desire, goals would simply be enough. However, this is for all intents and purposes an impossibility from the start and incomprehensible as to how that sort of existence even looks like. — schopenhauer1

Well, if you let go of the narcissistic expectation that life was supposed to be perfect, much of the philosophy of pessimism melts away.

Well, if you let go of the narcissistic expectation that life was supposed to be perfect, much of the philosophy of pessimism melts away. — darthbarracuda

We can't think ourselves into a purely blissful state where nothing affects us. By definition, if we need to struggle and need some pain for meaning, it is inbuilt. The evaluation is that this is no good. Sure we can accept the situation, but we much pretty do that by default. If life isn't perfect, I see no reason why we need to embrace it. Accept it we do by merely survival, so that isn't saying much. It doesn't mean we can't enjoy things. I never said that (though you might try to strawman me). Pessimism is more of an evaluative standpoint from a meta-perspective. So, though one may use any methodology that one needs to get by (Stoicism, self-help, therapy, what have you..), it is not about a methodology as much as a recognition that there structures of the world that are not good. It is the recognition of this that is most important. The way we deal with this is a bit more complicated. Like I said earlier, I am not sure how much asceticism will actually work (or work for most people) in really getting rid of desire or any contingent pains (if that truly is the root cause of suffering). I have the same doubts with other methodologies like Stoicism. The paradox is, of course that, some suffering (grieving over a loved one), though painful, might be meaningful. Also, caring about people and things and even being attached to them (to the point that one would actually grieve and feel sad at its loss) in some way brings meaning as well (contra Stoicism and other self-denial type philosophies). I do have more sympathy for asceticism though than something more tepid like Stoicism because asceticism at least tries to deny everything outright thus ending the "becoming" cycle. This may be a pipedream, but I see what they are trying to do.

We can't think ourselves into a purely blissful state where nothing affects us. By definition, if we need to struggle and need some pain for meaning, it is inbuilt. — schopenhauer1

Thus betraying your narcissism.

Have you considered what a purely blissful state actually is? I would argue that a blissful state is not necessarily one in which nothing affects us (although that wouldn't be horrible either).

It doesn't mean we can't enjoy things. I never said that (though you might try to strawman me). — schopenhauer1

Nor did I, though you might try to strawman me.

it is not about a methodology as much as a recognition that there structures of the world that are not good. — schopenhauer1

Not good from a lowly human perspective. The universe is not benevolent nor malevolent, merely indifferent. How this manifests can be malignant, and it also be benign only to the perspective of a person.

I am not sure how much asceticism will actually work (or work for most people) in really getting rid of desire or any contingent pains — schopenhauer1

It doesn't. It merely gives the person the facade that they are away from their pains, as well as a boost to their ego, oftentimes the same ego they claim they are trying to extinguish.

Asceticism doesn't work because it is not natural. You are constantly reminded why you are pursuing the ascetic lifestyle (suffering).

Thus betraying your narcissism. — darthbarracuda

You asked why I don't like dealing with you, and these kind of remarks are one of several reasons. How is that not inflammatory? I'm sure your response to this will be in the same vein, thus betraying a bit about yourself.

Have you considered what a purely blissful state actually is? I would argue that a blissful state is not necessarily one in which nothing affects us (although that wouldn't be horrible either). — darthbarracuda

Well, a blissful state is probably something along the lines of all preferences being satisfied in the way we want them satisfied. This includes meaning-through-pain, if one so chooses. This also, I guess, includes a certain amount of unexpected pain, that one could stop whenever they wanted and restart if it suited them. Of course, this all sounds like wishful thinking because we are talking utopias here.

An absolute version, if one buys into the Schopenhauer perspective would be pure being without becoming (something that doesn't exist and can only be thought of in its negative).

Not good from a lowly human perspective. The universe is not benevolent nor malevolent, merely indifferent. How this manifests can be malignant, and it also be benign only to the perspective of a person. — darthbarracuda

I never said it wasn't indifferent (though it can't really even be that either but I get the sense you are conveying). Since we are the recipient of how it manifests, that is why it matters. The universe isn't for us, but we certainly must deal with what happens to us and thus why it matters to us

It doesn't. It merely gives the person the facade that they are away from their pains, as well as a boost to their ego, oftentimes the same ego they claim they are trying to extinguish.

Asceticism doesn't work because it is not natural. You are constantly reminded why you are pursuing the ascetic lifestyle (suffering). — darthbarracuda

I could agree with that in a way. As I said earlier, I think it's a pipedream but I see what they are trying to do.

You asked why I don't like dealing with you, and these kind of remarks are one of several reasons. How is that not inflammatory? I'm sure your response to this will be in the same vein, thus betraying a bit about yourself. — schopenhauer1

When I say you are narcissistic, I don't mean it as an insult. I'm trying to argue that you have placed too much value on your opinion on how things "should be". I'm not calling you a pig, I'm saying you are existentially narcissistic.

Well, a blissful state is probably something along the lines of all preferences being satisfied in the way we want them satisfied. This includes meaning-through-pain, if one so chooses. This also, I guess, includes a certain amount of unexpected pain, that one could stop whenever they wanted and restart if it suited them. Of course, this all sounds like wishful thinking because we are talking utopias here. — schopenhauer1

All preferences being satisfied is impossible. To expect this is to set oneself up for failure and disappointment. Understanding this brings about enlightenment (not the supernatural woo kind). Simply peace.

Also, from a Buddhist perspective, if you mitigate desires (and preferences), you mitigate the suffering you feel when you don't get what you want. Wanting something, achieving that thing and getting a quick dopamine hit is really just prolonging the rat race, if you get my drift, since it all just goes back to the striving anyway.

Since we are the recipient of how it manifests, that is why it matters. The universe isn't for us, but we certainly must deal with what happens to us and thus why it matters to us — schopenhauer1

Sure. I agree, we are aliens to an indifferent cosmos.

I need you to understand that I am extremely sympathetic to the perspective of a pessimist; I might as well call myself a pessimist. But my pessimism is rooted in the fact that it is the unfortunate fact that we suffer too much because we accidentally expect too much. We are accidentally narcissistic, and we can't help it. The universe is ill-suited for an self-reflecting ego. If it were possible to extinguish the ego in all its forms, we wouldn't suffer, for what would there be to suffer?

Something I have noticed is oftentimes, the fear of suffering is greater than the actual experience of suffering. This of course doesn't apply to every scenario, which is why you shouldn't just go jump off a canyon thinking you'll be okay.

I think the only kind of pain that actually constitutes as suffering (I think BitterCrank said something along these lines) is any kind of suffering that cannot be redeemed in any way. Terminal illness that leaves a person in a state of misery is one example. But again, remember that the Stoics advocated that as soon as life gets this bad, you are to exit gracefully.

That the greatest good is living well is Aristotle's focus in ethics. For him good is grounded in acting with excellence and with virtue, over the course of a life. In this way of understanding pleasure/pain is secondary or even tertiary. To focus in them hedonistically is animal-like and not what humans are about. We have the gift of practical wisdom, and through deliberation can find ways to choose virtuous/excellent acts, exercised by practical wisdom. We can learn to find pleasure in certain things.

This seems like a good start to me.

Those are good points. The context is hedonism and TGW's comments on it. So the good is pleasure and the bad is pain. Therefore living well must have something to do with obtaining more pleasure while minimizing pain. — Marchesk

A correction here: the kind of hedonism I defend doesn't say that the maximization of pleasure or the minimization of pain are good, because this assumes that pain and pleasure can be quantified, and usually that they are are fungible over time or between persons, which they are not.

How else does a strict hedonist go about their lives except by maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain?

Well, I can almost always be having more pleasure or pain than I currently am. So I don't understand what hedonism is supposed to accomplish ethically. What, am I not to figure out how to have more pleasure and less pain?

I don't think the point of ethics is to provide a self-help guide for specific ways you should live your life. The classical hedonists made very different life choices and had very different personalities, if the doxography can be believed.

Again, the demand that a philosophy tell you what to do specifically with your life does not make sense -- a "do" cannot be derived from a "should," so it's not possible for a philosophy to dictate what you do. Only your actually doing it can do that.

Of course, the problem is that if your philosophy is bad, what you decide to do will be self-contradictory on its own terms. In the Socratic tradition, the focus moves away from 'evil' to ignorance. By removing our ignorance about what is good, we ipso facto remove our temptations and inclinations to do things that, by the very standards we couch them in, make no sense or don't work. If something is actually bad, understanding why it's bad will destroy the temptation to do it.

Pleasure is a good thing, but pleasure can get better. Simple pleasures -- sex, food, soaking in warm water, is probably not going to get better. It's sort of static, which is OK. We also need food and sex a warm bath, and a nice walk, and all that.

One is "supposed to get pleasure" from art. That's what the teacher said. Didn't happen. Not, at least until much later when I knew more about art, cared more about it, had much more specific tastes, and so on. Same with music, but much faster. In my old age I have started to get a great deal of pleasure out of architecture that I never had before, but now I have more understanding. Same with science. I find much more pleasure in (accessible) science than I did once.

The "good" in pleasure is gaining more capacity to have 'complicated' pleasure. Food and sex are still good, still pleasurable, but they haven't (in my case, anyway) gotten much more complicated. What I want from music is much more complicated. What I want from a novel now is more than I wanted 50 years ago.

Pain is a bad thing, for the most part, real pain, not just the soreness and fatigue after doing what one really wanted to do. Pain from tumors, pain from broken bones, gout, rotting teeth, shingles, bee stings, etc. Pain and sickness are, I think, inevitable, and are generally endured. Does it do us good to endure pain and sickness? I don't know. I think it is better to be able to cope with pain, because most likely one will be in serious pain at some point. I don't thin pain makes us "better". Good people before pain are good people after pain, and shit heads before pain are shit heads after pain. Too much pain might turn a good person into a shit head, perhaps, but the opposite seems very unlikely.

Boredom can be a quite serious pain, I think. Really bored people have difficulty connecting to pleasure, moving toward pleasure, having pleasure. Instead they have anhedonia.

Sleep is a pleasure and it is time to get on with it.

Sleep is a pleasure and it is time to get on with it. — Bitter Crank

It is. In some ways it might be the most complete and sublime of 'earthly' pleasures, since when it sets in it has an all-encompassing character, something like bliss.

Generally I think the 'low' pleasures benefit from the fact that, even though they do not increase in complexity or sublimity over time like the 'high' pleasures do, the body forgets them as soon as they're done, making them rise afresh each time they're experienced. A warm shower in the morning doesn't stop feeling good. Unless, of course, you're hitting the hard shit that makes you blow out your fuses, like heroin.

Whereas with the 'high' pleasures, they can genuinely peter out over time, and not as a result of simple bodily exhaustion. It is possible, through too fine an appreciation of music, to cease to enjoy music that you once loved, because your palette becomes too discriminating for it. Many people take a sort od aesthetic pride in this kind of devaluation.

...with the 'high' pleasures, they can genuinely peter out over time, and not as a result of simple bodily exhaustion. It is possible, through too fine an appreciation of music, to cease to enjoy music that you once loved, because your palette becomes too discriminating for it. Many people take a sort od aesthetic pride in this kind of devaluation. — The Great Whatever

I agree. This has happened to me and I feel anything but pride in it. I find prose fiction in general terrifically hard to enjoy - I used to write it, enjoy reading it and savour it - and for a while it felt tragic to me that I'd lost a taste for its flavour.

One reason I came to philosophy late in life was to try out a new taste. It's helped me to feel that one can find new 'high' pleasures - my tastes in music are somewhat different too, for instance - and yet still grieve sometimes for the old.

I haven't found however that the 'low' pleasures remain either. An appetite can get jaded. But maybe that's just me :)

I don't think the point of ethics is to provide a self-help guide for specific ways you should live your life. — The Great Whatever

To be a hedonist means to believe that pleasure and pain are the only good/bad (respectively). So it makes sense that a hedonist would want to maximize pleasure and minimize pain.

You said:

A correction here: the kind of hedonism I defend doesn't say that the maximization of pleasure or the minimization of pain are good, because this assumes that pain and pleasure can be quantified, and usually that they are are fungible over time or between persons, which they are not. — The Great Whatever

And then:

I don't think the point of ethics is to provide a self-help guide for specific ways you should live your life. The classical hedonists made very different life choices and had very different personalities, if the doxography can be believed. — The Great Whatever

Which strikes me as dodging the question.

To be a hedonist means to believe that pleasure and pain are the only good/bad (respectively). So it makes sense that a hedonist would want to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. — darthbarracuda

No, that simply doesn't follow, since the position says nothing about maximization, and doesn't even say whether the notion is coherent.

The difference is, with the low pleasures, hunger will always be there to spice the food. Appreciation of music is a sort of frivolity by comparison, so the qualities that make it impressive are likewise frivolous. There is no bodily need to enjoy music that presses down on you torturously. I say this as someone who used to spend a good portion of his life devouring and loving music, and who just doesn't care too much for it anymore. Yet I still care about filling my stomach, because I have no choice.

How does it not follow?! If something is good, then why on earth would it not be the case that it should be maximized?

Because 'X is good' does not imply 'X should be maximized.'

Obviously not from a strictly logical standpoint, but let's be charitable, shall we, and take the phenomenological approach here, and realize that if something is good then that something is something that we want to be maximized.

...with the 'high' pleasures, they can genuinely peter out over time, and not as a result of simple bodily exhaustion. It is possible, through too fine an appreciation of music, to cease to enjoy music that you once loved, because your palette becomes too discriminating for it. Many people take a sort od aesthetic pride in this kind of devaluation. — The Great Whatever

I agree. This has happened to me and I feel anything but pride in it. I find prose fiction in general terrifically hard to enjoy - I used to write it, enjoy reading it and savour it - and for a while it felt tragic to me that I'd lost a taste for its flavour.

One reason I came to philosophy late in life was to try out a new taste. It's helped me to feel that one can find new 'high' pleasures - my tastes in music are somewhat different too, for instance - and yet still grieve sometimes for the old.

I haven't found however that the 'low' pleasures remain either. An appetite can get jaded. But maybe that's just me :) — mcdoodle

I am not sure what you think a "fine appreciation of music" consists in TGW, that is whether you think it is necessarily confined to some genre(s). In my late teens I liked rock music, the 'heavier' and more progressive the better, then in my twenties I 'progressed' on to explore, learn about and cultivate a taste for classical music and modern jazz. Now I go through phases where I listen to rock, particularly metal, then I listen to classical, then jazz, punk or whatever. I am always able to rekindle my love of all the different genres, but when I am engrossed in one genre I find that I have almost zero interest in the others, and the thought of listening to them can be almost repulsive to me.

Mcdoodle, I have experienced exactly what you have with reading fiction. I used to read a lot of fiction in my late teens and early twenties (mostly the 'classics'; Dostoevsky, Balzac, Melville, Gogol, Gorky, de Maupassant, Stendhal, Flaubert etc). Since then I have gone through a few phases of reading fiction (mostly science fiction and fantasy).

I have written poetry since my early teens (I am now 62) and still enjoy reading poetry and I have always read philosophy of one kind or another. It used to be Eastern philosophy, Buddhism, Zen and so on in my hallucinogen-using days, and I kept reading them as well as Theosophy, Anthroposophy, shamanism, Gurdjieff, Freud, Jung, and so on for years, then I later discovered Western philosophy (although I had read some Western philosophy before all this when I was about 16 or 17, mainly in a book my mother gave me, Western Philosophy from Leibniz to Nietzsche, but I didn't understand it in any rigorously contextualized way.

Now I find I can only read poetry and philosophy, the rest seems a waste of time. Anyway all this preamble was to support the point I want to make that I think it is likely the reason you have "lost the taste" for reading fiction is that it cannot give you what philosophy can, and it therefore seems a waste of time.

If something is good, then why on earth would it not be the case that it should be maximized? — darthbarracuda

Don't mean to butt-in but isn't that one of the problems with Hedonism...the Good can't be 'Gooder', but pleasure can always be more pleasurable.

I'm not entirely sure, to be honest with you. I couldn't say.