Objective vs Subjective Morals

[bennyboy]

Imagine someone who was hard-wired to feel maximal pleasure, all the time. Can you imagine a scenario in which this person wouldn't be an absolute waste of space?

Their pleasure has inherent value, so they could only be a waste of space if their burden on others outweighs their pleasure.

Imagine a scenario where everyone is hard-wired for bliss while machines maintain their world. Would you say they're all wastes of space? You wouldn't want to live in a world where you everyone else experiences endless bliss?

You are talking about a blissful Heaven, which is (as far as I know) a fiction. Here in the real world, pleasure and pain have the functions of ensuring reproduction and motivating a reasonable attempt at survival. In order to achieve a maximal hedonic state, you'd have to create a human who was no longer able to make motivated responses to environmental conditions. He'd die a very happy, idiotic failure. In fact, the western world is completely riddled with half-retarded, undisicplined shits because their parents think their kids' hedonic state is more important than molding them into functional human beings.

Which is better, to feel maximal pleasure, or for one's hedonic state to (fairly) accurately represent the degree to which one is well- or poorly-situated with respect to one's current circumstances? I choose the latter. And since I don't want my kids to die as very happy, idiotic failures, I would choose the latter for them as well, even if it means they must suffer. If my hand's on a hot stove, I want it to hurt; if my children are in danger, I wan them to suffer fear, and benefit from the emotional drive it instills in them.

Any moral system which is likely to undermine the welfare of the self is not only subjective, but also foolish. And when it undermines the welfare of others, or of the whole species, I'd say it is in fact immoral.