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Objective vs Subjective Morals
#21
RE: Objective vs Subjective Morals
I meant "after MFM's kudos", not "prior to".
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#22
RE: Objective vs Subjective Morals
(April 24, 2014 at 5:56 pm)Coffee Jesus Wrote:
(April 24, 2014 at 5:30 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Also, look at drugs.

Jogging creates pain. Is it morally wrong? How about making my kids get off their mobile devices and rejoin the real world? That causes them pain, but it would be immoral NOT to limit their game time, I think.
It doesn't work when you only look at the immediate consequences.

You do it because you think your children will ultimately be happier for it, right? That's ethical hedonism.
The long-term consequences, in term of hedonistic state, are not easily predicted by parents. That's why there are so many different parenting styles and techniques. Nor is the individual hedonic state of my children necessarily the most important thing in raising them: their ability to produce in society, to achieve greatness (or at least technical competence) and to meet their responsibilities is at least as important to me as their emotional state.

Nor is hedonic state a good end-of-the-line for a moral system. It's clear that we are capable of responding with pleasure to actions or events which are not good. For example, drugs feel fantastic, but since they bypass the behavioral and state requirements for normal pleasure. Don't believe me? 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?
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#23
RE: Objective vs Subjective Morals
(April 24, 2014 at 11:33 pm)bennyboy Wrote: 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?
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#24
RE: Objective vs Subjective Morals
(April 25, 2014 at 12:04 am)Coffee Jesus Wrote:
(April 24, 2014 at 11:33 pm)bennyboy Wrote: 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?

Sounds like "imagine heaven." I see a problem however - boredom. Can you be happy and bored at the same time? Perhaps the opposite of pleasure isn't pain at all - perhaps it is boredom.
Kuusi palaa, ja on viimeinen kerta kun annan vaimoni laittaa jouluvalot!
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#25
RE: Objective vs Subjective Morals
I don't think bliss can coincide with boredom.
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#26
RE: Objective vs Subjective Morals
(April 25, 2014 at 12:44 am)Coffee Jesus Wrote: I don't think bliss can coincide with boredom.

Yet we have established that is can coincide with pain. Interesting huh....
Kuusi palaa, ja on viimeinen kerta kun annan vaimoni laittaa jouluvalot!
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#27
RE: Objective vs Subjective Morals
(April 25, 2014 at 12:53 am)max-greece Wrote:
(April 25, 2014 at 12:44 am)Coffee Jesus Wrote: I don't think bliss can coincide with boredom.

Yet we have established that is can coincide with pain. Interesting huh....

I don't know how a masochist feels engaged in BDSM. I don't know whether they feel bliss.
Getting technical, I prefer the terms "value" and "disvalue" over pleasure and pain. "Pain" has a narrower meaning when it's used to mean "physical pain".

If I may make your argument for you:
Physical pain is something that most people assume to be inherently disvaluable... until they learn of masochism. Our inability to distinguish disvalue from something that it's clearly distinct from suggests that we don't know what disvalue really is, in which case disvalue is not a suitable foundation for any form of knowledge.

Hmm, impressive argument.

However, I pose the hypothesis that masochists only enjoy the physical pain as a means to some other aspect of mental experience. If this is the case, there should be a limit on useful pain (see marginal utility), beyond which the pain is no longer desirable. Furthermore, if pain is inherently disvaluable, they should become bothered by the pain once it exceeds this limit.

Wikipedia - Masochism
"Many people with masochistic feelings do not really want to be hurt badly. They want to act out their daydreams, such as being tied up and kidnapped, or becoming the slave of another person. In BDSM, people often agree who will be "top" and "bottom" before they do anything together, and talk about exactly what they will do before they do it. People who do this kind of masochism usually do it for sexual excitement."


It's not surprising that valuable and disvaluable states can coincide given that many mental functions are reducible to simpler mental functions that can operate independently, as with split-brain or blind-sight patients.
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#28
RE: Objective vs Subjective Morals
I disvalue you and your made-up words.
[Image: extraordinarywoo-sig.jpg]
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#29
RE: Objective vs Subjective Morals
I apologize to max-greece if he found that insulting. I was actually just trying to flatter myself. In fact, it took a lot of time and caffeine before I could come up with a good response.



Maybe I was incorrectly using the word "disvalue" where I should have used "displeasure", but "disvalue" is a word.

Stanford.edu - Hedonism
"Ethical or evaluative hedonism claims that only pleasure has worth or value and only pain or displeasure has disvalue or the opposite of worth."
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#30
RE: Objective vs Subjective Morals
(April 25, 2014 at 12:04 am)Coffee Jesus Wrote:
(April 24, 2014 at 11:33 pm)bennyboy Wrote: 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.
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