[extropy-chat] Pleasing Oneself

[A B]

I apologize for disturbing the peace by resurrecting a long-buried post, but I thought it was worth a comment, and I've been away from the Internet for a while.
   
  Some time ago Jef Albright wrote:
   
  "Seeking pleasure is ammoral , but tends to correlate with activity that we would assess as "good"."
   
  I would go so far as to say that achieving pleasure for oneself is, per se, beyond just being ammoral. I would argue that achieving pleasure for oneself is positively moral. It is only incidental that the entity that appears to sense and enjoy the pleasure is the one who is commonly considered to be "oneself". IOW, pleasing oneself is a special case of a more general condition (what Jef might consider "greater scope") of the whole of sentient beings experiencing pleasure. That's not to say that all sentients have a desire to please any sentient apart from themselves - as many examples will testify. However, I think that most humans would want other sentients to experience pleasure, all else being equal. IMHO, pleasing oneself only becomes arguably immoral (or ammoral) when the cost of the self-pleasure is a loss of pleasure in other sentients or a gain in suffering of other sentients.
   
  Best Wishes,
   
  Jeffrey Herrlich 



 
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