Thoughts on ethics... pleasure = good

Miscellaneous General
1

I ate a Dove chocolate today and the foil wrapper said inside: “Indulge your every whim.”

This is obviously bad advice but I think this is what people actually hear when they are told of the Epicurean ethic: what is pleasurable is good and what is painful is bad/evil.

Epicurus was careful to dispel this notion, noting that humans can foresee the long-run consequences of their actions and to act without regard to long-run consequences is, in fact, bad since you are choosing your own pain. For example, if you drink excessively, you will suffer a hangover and other health effects and there may be social consequences, as well. To drink to excess simply because of a whim is not to act morally in the Epicurean sense, it is to act immorally. Or, to put it in more economical language, it is a failure to balance the costs and benefits of a present course of action with the costs and benefits of its long-run consequences.

It is my view that one of the most important objectives which will contribute to human freedom and flourishing is the promulgation of Epicurean thinking about right and wrong. While Epicureanism does not provide a complete science of human ethics (i.e. prescriptions of what ends you should or should not have), it provides the framework for such a science. What remains is for people to begin talking about how to live life within this overarching framework that what is pleasurable is good and what is painful is bad.

Most ideas regarding morality are self-frustrating; they aim to achieve happiness through some form or other of self-affliction. For example, the Christian believer is supposed to agonize over his sins, donate a portion of his money to the Church and forego a litany of harmless pleasures in order to attain the pleasure that really matters, that is, being right with God and going to Heaven. But it is this metaphysical dichotomy between “pleasures that matter” and “pleasures that don’t matter” that is problematic.

There is no good reason to believe that the pleasures of Heaven and being in good standing with a spirit being outweigh the other pleasures of life in importance. The Dawkins/Dennett anti-religionists insist on the abolition of belief in God and religion as the solution but this is an obvious mistake. It is possible to believe in spiritual entities without sacrificing one’s morality (seeking pleasure/avoiding pain) and there is no necessary reason that a religious organization must interfere with right living more than any other organization (such as a business or charity).

It’s not as easy as it sounds to live an Epicurean life, either. It really entails undoing all the bad training you’ve received through your whole life to neglect thinking about your own pleasure and, instead, rethinking the way you live your life entirely through the lens of the long-run consequences of your choices on your own happiness (pleasure or satisfaction).

In fact, I see it as a sliding scale… the more accurately you predict the long-run consequences of your choices, the better you can live your life, that is, the more successful you can be in attaining satisfaction of your own wants. What the critics miss is that, in the course of doing this, you must please many other people along the way. Social cooperation is already built into the very fabric of society and it is primarily by pleasing others that you will be able to attain your own highest happiness. Selflessness is not some onerous duty that we need wise leaders to coax everyone into performing so that society doesn’t disintegrate. It’s like any other law of cause and effect… when you make yourself available to do something that others need done, they will solicit your help with the offer to do something in return, that is, to trade with you. By exchanging with others, you improve your lot in life and increase your ability to satisfy your wants (including the want of leisure).

But until you undo the years of brainwashing and commit to achieve unhampered self-expression, you will have no incentive to go out and act in order to bring about the conditions under which you will best flourish. Teaching people the importance of this and teaching them about the ways in which society attempts to impede them from single-mindedly pursuing their own satisfaction is necessary to realizing greater human liberty and prosperity. The less amenable people are to forsaking their own pleasure, the less servile they will be and the less servile people are, the more hostile they will be to being yoked to the ends of the State and to endure tyranny. This is the Kraken versus the Establishment’s Titans - once released, their destruction is inevitable.

Clayton -

Moral Nihilism Explored
2

Man, if this is what chocolate does to you…

3

Something to think about: at what point is that hangover immoral? Is it wrong for someone to celebrate his 21st birthday and get drunk? Is it wrong for him to smoke pot? If he has cancer? Not even then?

What a lot of people are incapable of is seeing that there does not have to be a one size fits all view of immorality. Epicureanism may be a good way to demonstrate that morality need not be viewed that way.

4

What happens when I have to choose between present pleasure at the expense of future pain, and present pain for the sake of future pleasure? Either way, I have to choose pain, so why should I always choose pain now?

5

I think the key is to realize that only the individual can make that call for himself. Some people consider any hangover at all to be too high a price to pay for drinking and simply forego drinking. Others feel that the pleasure of drinking can be traded off with a certain amount of hangover. But the key is that the Epicurean ethic is not a prescription for lobotomized, ultra-high-time-preference Hedonism, it is about calculating the relative costs and benefits to yourself - as best you can - of the various courses of action available to you at any point in time.

Clayton -

6

See my response to gotlucky. It’s up to you to decide which is the lesser of two evils. But the point is that you should calculate right/wrong with respect to your own pleasure/pain, not with respect to the pelasure/pain of others. On the surface, this sounds like heartless selfishness but it really is not - the pain of others also causes us sympathetic pain. The point is that you should alter your course of action in response to your sympathetic pain, not in response to any pain of another.

For example, killing an intruder to your home will cause him pain. It is not likely you will be sympathizing with his pain as you are busy protecting yourself from his aggression. Hence, the fact that he is going through pain is inconsequential to your right course of action. There is a reason that you do not sympathize with him: your brain is incapable of sympathizing with the suffering of someone who is aggressing against you. This is a feature which was apparently necessary for the survival of our ancestors.

Clayton -

7

So if I have a high time preference and always prefer to spend paychecks now, then it would be immoral to save money, right?

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@mik: That’s up to you. I would say that you should explore life a little and see if you aren’t happier after saving a little money and enjoying increased peace of mind and higher total income but it’s ultimately up to you whether or not to follow that advice.

Clayton -

9

Clayton,

The point I’m trying to make is that since we are regularly in a position where we must choose between pleasure now or pleasure later, and since we are our own judge as to which is better, then Epicureanism* boils down to “do whatever you want.”

EDIT: *I don’t think this is really the Epicurean position, but it is how you’ve presented it.

10

Hmm, I think you’re right that this is not the Epicurean position as it is understood today but I wonder if it is, indeed, what he thought. If you formalize the concepts of pleasure and pain then, yes, it does boil down to simply “do whatever you want.” And that’s the whole point: there’s nothing wrong with what you want. The lapsarian narrative of the human condition implies that there is some sort of deficiency in human will which needs to be corrected, by religious leaders or social leaders or some kind of wiser individuals who have the heavy duty to continually chastise and correct our errant will (don’t ask me who is tasked with keeping the leaders in line).

When you abolish the idea of congenital moral deficiency - without jumping off the abyss into tabula rasa - you end up with a moral system that boils down, simply, to “do whatever you want” or, as the Satanists put it: Do What Thou Wilt. Is this not the essence of liberalism? That each individual is a whole and responsible being born with all the faculties required to chart for himself his own course in life, however wise or foolhardy he may be? Bear in mind that a person’s chosen course of action can include seeking out moral instruction. So, those who sense a moral deficiency in themselves always have at hand the means to correct this deficiency. We do not need this imposed upon us.

Clayton -

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I dont see quite how you managed to skip over the facts that humans are born with many faculties, but few capabilities, and in urgent need of instruction in all facets of life, not simply moral or social. One might expect the one law of liberalism to be the non-aggression principle, or perhaps the Golden Rule. “do whatever you want” resembles the propaganda version of anarchy.

I also take issue with your mischaracterization of Christianity in the op, but I will address that when I address the substance of the op, as it (the op) is a subject that interests me greatly.

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@Clayton

I agree with you. I’m trying to figure out how to demonstrate to other people that this is a good point of view. I suppose it’s just like any other debate…you don’t argue to convice the people who are dead set against you, you argue to convince the observing third party who has not yet made up his mind.

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@gotlucky: I think a large part of it is also coming to really understand that evolution really is a self-correcting process. Sure, things are out of whack and yes lots of people are doing lots of really stupid shit (that affects you and me) but the process of evolutionary correction is always in operation.

I realized this when reading about the evolutionary psychological theory of male jealous rage. Cuckoldry is a serious problem when you don’t have DNA paternity tests. It is really difficult to be sure that the child you’re pouring your energy into raising really is your own, especially when there are many genetically superior alternatives that your wife could have sneaked out and mated with. But Nature is unforgiving… men who failed to discern that a child was not theirs and poured their energies into it anyway doubly lost out in evolutionary terms… not only did they fail to propagate their genes, they actually contributed to the propagation of the genes of other, less-duped men. Such genes die out quickly and what replaces them is not so nice. Basically, male jealous rage is an ugly part of Nature’s solution to this problem. Men who were mad with jealousy really did succeed in preventing their wife from cuckolding them more often than their less jealous peers.

I see the State in a similar light. It exists so, clearly, it is part of the natural order. But my view is that it’s part of the natural order like rape or domestic violence are part of the natural order: an ugly and undesirable evolutionary adaptation that solves some other problem that is even worse from Nature’s point-of-view (such as passing up opportunities to reproduce or being cuckolded). But since we are flexible, social animals with a frontal cortex, we are capable of improving on Nature’s worst-case scenario solutions with social norms (morality) and law. We will be rid of the State when our social norms and our laws adapt to remove the need for the State altogether and remove the large material benefits that come with being a State. It’s not just an intellectual problem, it’s a problem of values, mores, culture and law.

In the end, I think this process will unfold regardless of how well or poorly libertarians “spread the gospel” or to what desperate measures the Establishment resorts to halt or slow it. The Nature which created this scoffs at the machinations of men.

Clayton -

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Well, I think you’re looking at the issue at too low a level of abstraction. Start with Robinson Crusoe alone on his island. Assuming his biological instincts are well-adapted to his environment, it is clear that “do whatever you want” is exactly the right moral rule. He ought to do whatever he wants to do.

And introducing Friday into the picture doesn’t change anything, since Friday is now simply another part of Crusoe’s environment (and Crusoe a part of Friday’s environment).

What makes you need some kind of “corrective” moral principles is when your biological equipment is not well adapted to your environment (or if you are a tabula rasa, a view which is being thoroughly discredited these days).

Another way to look at the GR or NAP is as barometers of the relative power of individuals. A very powerful individual treats his inferiors in a very different way than individuals who are peers treat each other. Peer relationships are governed by rules which conform, more or less, to the NAP/GR (one can make the case that the NAP is just a restatement of the GR). So, we can actually make this tautological… an individual is powerful exactly if he is someone who treats his inferiors by rules very different from the rules by which they treat him.

The need for corrective morality arises from our maladaptedness to the modern environment but the essence of right and wrong remain. The means for correcting the mismatch between our built-in wiring and the actual circumstances into which we are born lies within our frontal cortex, that is, our capacity to form social norms and laws which alter the equilibrium of psychic benefits of various courses of action. Rape is a lot less attractive course of action when you know you are likely to be killed by a vindictive family member.

Clayton -

15

@Clayton

Well I suppose all I can do is just try to plant the seed of doubt whenever I can. The bigger the State gets, the easier for people to see its harm to society - but one problem is that instead of trying to diminish the State’s power, people try to wield it for their own purpose instead. It’s like the One Ring. Everyone can recognize its power, but instead of trying to destroy it, everyone (or most people) just try to take it and use it themselves (or their politcal party).

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Good analogy. I wonder if Tolkien had that in mind.

Clayton -

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From Wikipedia on JRR Tolkien:

My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy(philosophically understood, meaning the abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs)—or to 'unconstitutional’Monarchy. I would arrest anybody who uses the word State (in any sense other than the inanimate realm of England and its inhabitants, a thing that has neither power, rights nor mind); and after a chance of recantation, execute them if they remained obstinate! If we could get back to personal names, it would do a lot of good. Government is an abstract noun meaning the art and process of governing and it should be an offence to write it with a capital G or so to refer to people.[94]

Maybe he did have it in mind.

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the environment has become a social environment. I dont see how Crusoe’s unmodified reaction to Friday is moral except in that you have defined morality as satisfying one’s desires. As far as I am aware (although I am going off of hearsay here) feral humans are not good company.

Advocating “do what you like” as a moral principle is akin to filling the pantry with bottles of baby food and bottles of biowarfare agent and labeling every bottle “this bottle contains EITHER nourishment OR poison.” the only difference is that my example is binary, whereas the number of possible acts for any actor ranges from many to infinite. In both cases, the instructions are devoid of instructional content.

we agree that people become happy by doing what they ultimately want. We disagree on whether they are born knowing what these acts are.

19

I think you are confusing what Clayton has proposed as morality with what he has proposed as law. Whether or not feral humans are good company doesn’t change morality. That has to do with law. If I agress against Clayton, it doesn’t matter if it was moral by anyone’s standards. He now has a beef with me and that needs to be settled one way or another. Depending on the case, some people might say my aggression was moral. Consider:

  1. Clayton engages in prostitution (Clayton, forgive me!). The State then assaults, kidnaps, and jails him.

  2. Clayton looks at me funny. I assault him.

In the first scenario, many people would make the case that Clayton acted immorally. However, does that immorality justify aggression? Most of us here would say no - and we would even say the State has acted even more immorally. But obviously, most people disagree with us. They enforce their view of morality onto others. In the second scenario, clearly I have acted immorally as I have assaulted Clayton with no good reason.

Just because Clayton is defining morality as “What is good is what is pleasurable, and what is bad is what is painful” (taken from wikipedia/epicurus) does not mean that he is throwing away the NAP. They are separate from each other.

This does not seem to be true. How can a man be born not knowing things that make him happy? Certainly others can suggest things that may not have been obvious to him, but how does this stop him from knowing what makes him happy?

Also, how would you define what is moral?

20

people are born not knowing all sorts of things. They usually become even more ignorant once someone starts teaching them (ha). Seriously, have you ever seen actual newborn human young? Are you suggesting that a human infant knows how to create shelter and procure food? Let alone persuade a human of the opposite sex to mingle gametes?

in my opinion, “moral” refers to being in accordance with a divinely created, self-evident code of behavior with the principle characteristic that moral behavior creates the greatest possible amount of psychic profit.

as for your suggestions that I misunderstand Clayton’s points, that very well might be true. I will return to this thread later when I have more time and try it again.