[extropy-chat] Pleasure as ultimate measure of morality [Was: Pleasing Oneself]

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 2/28/07, Jef Allbright <jef at jefallbright.net> wrote:

On 2/27/07, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > If I could interject, I think what is commonly understood by "pleasure"
> is
> > too simplistic in this context. Shall I eat the cake or shall I abstain?
> > Eating the cake will be pleasurable; on the other hand, eating the cake
> may
> > cause me to put on weight. If the anticipated pleasure of eating the
> cake
> > outweighs the anxiety about putting on weight, I will eat it; if the
> other
> > way around, I won't. Every factor is added to the mix when making a
> > decision, including more complex emotions such as a sense of
> responsibility
> > and ethical and aesthetic considerations. At each point, the path taken
> is
> > the path of greater total pleasure.
>
> Stathis, yes, yours is a slightly more refined view but it suffers
> from the same assumption--that consciousness is effectively in the
> loop.  It's a variation on the the same confusion of context that has
> agents acting to achieve goals they set for themselves, as if it were
> possible that they could have such a privileged view of themselves.


The whole example (will I/ won't I eat the cake) could in theory be analysed
by an external observer, who perhaps might be able to predict what choice I
will make if he had enough knowledge about my brain and my environment. If I
set about modifying my behaviour to make it less likely that I will eat the
cake, for example by putting it away or even taking an appetite-suppressing
medication, the hypothetical observer would also have been able to predict
this, and predict its effect on my subsequent behaviour. I know all this,
but it still feels like I am making decisions and trying to alter my mind so
that I am more likely to make one decision than another. I'm not claiming
that this fact has any causal significance, just that it's important to me.

It's the same conceptual form as Cosmides and Tooby's statement that
> organisms are not fitness maximizers but rather they are adaptation
> executors. It's nearly the same as the Buddhist's understanding of
> annata.
>
> You, Stathis, are so close that you know all the details of the
> perimeter, but you have yet to break through and find that once inside
> everything stays the same except clearer.


I wonder if we are just disagreeing about terminology, or about what is
important rather than what is the case.

Stathis Papaioannou
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20070228/a9e1778b/attachment.html>