I'm a stoner and my friends are stoners. But the difference between our smoking experiences is that I smoke as a means to an end, like to enhance the experience of watching The Never Ending Story for the twentieth time or to allow for an altered view of flowers on the side of the road, but my friends smoke as an end unto itself. Like they just sit around and talk about how high they are and how great that is. I always sort judged them for that outlook, thinking that because they were more interested in pleasure rather than new outlooks or experiences. I want to go exploring in the woods but they want to sit around in the garage and keep smoking. But after seeing your philosophical view of the matter, I think I can appreciate that they are just living what they view to be the good life and its just different than my own. So...thank you for making me a less judgmental person.
Hi Olly, Greetings from India. Just love your videos. The theory of 'preference hedonism' says that the attainment of desires leads to a happy life but i see following flaws. 1. Whenever you tie your happiness to a desire , you also risk being sad by not satisfying the desires. 2. Where do you stop ? Say you desire few things and achieve all of them , do you stop now ? You won't stop as happiness due to a sense of accomplishment lasts only for some time and then it becomes boring. Now you move on to the next level of desires , which are even more difficult to achieve ? which means you are actually hurling yourself to a life which offers a higher likelihood of sorrow than happiness. 3. Moreover, the short lived happiness leads to more pain as there is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in the times of misery. In my humble opinion, If the happiness of your mind has a cause then you can never be happy forever. Anything which is an effect of a cause will cease to exist without the cause but once something becomes a part of your own existence it becomes your nature. In Buddhism and Hinduism, there is a term called 'Satchitanand' to explain this, which means the 'everlasting nature of happiness' and it can be only achieved by gradual elimination of all desires rather than feeding and fulfilling them .
I would distinguish between happiness and well-being, but otherwise I think you're right. Well-being I think is when a system is working, whether a job or relationship or the human body system, that is on a scale it is at the higher end of the "working well" scale. then we achieve a state of well-being. Happiness or displeasure are fleeting and are influenced by different things but notably the physical part of the system (I'm referring to the human system of the body/brain now). An example would be a person who has bad constipation but everything is going well otherwise, they would be phlegmatic in their dealings with others, inclined towards irascibility. Now if something goes wrong like a flat tire on the way to work, it puts them in a bad mood, or two flat tires then they are angry. The fact of their body state not working well had a primacy about it that affected the brain and decided their mood of happiness/unhappiness. It's not an on/off state either but a range or scale of emotion. A person who has a body that is clean internally, receives fresh air, exercise and sunlight experiences more happiness. A person who eats bad food experiences more negative emotions. It is possible to overcome these negative emotions by mental conditioning or training (education and religion) but this "mind over matter" approach leads to something of a facade which can crumble under duress. Also, whether a person is an optimist or pessimist has nothing to do with happiness since these states are just the mental conditioning of parental influence. I like the concept of Satchitanand and will investigate it further, thanks; is it possible that well- being would be a better word than happiness ie "the everlasting nature of well-being" ?
When I was in college our professor asked us who'd want to be plugged into an experience machine. I was the only one who raised hand. I tend to think that this is due to us being Asians and you know how Asians aren't supposed to display individualism, but deep down actually they all liked the idea. An experience machine sounds so awesome. Most of us work our asses off so that we could be happy. Now you get to be happy without the working part. How could anyone not go all shut-up-and-take-my-money for it?
The Experience Machine and the concept of unexperienced harms in a desired state of mind remind me a lot of abusive or codependent relationships. Probably because I come from a background with abuse, have codependent tendencies, and have watched my friends go through codependent relationships. They THINK they're happy. And so did I, like, I THOUGHT I was happy. But the minute the abuse stops or the codependent relationship inevitably breaks down, your whole house of cards falls down. You either crave the abuse or codependency again to the point of anguish, or you realize how fucked up parts of your life were, how fucked up and unpleasant your coping strategies were, and you realize that not only are you extremely unhappy now, but that you were also not happy in your past. You didn't experience those harms in the moment, but looking back, those harms hurt you. So I guess now they're experienced harms. It's fine to say that an unexperienced harm doesn't actually make you unhappy, as long as you're achieving the mental states that you desire, because on its face, that's true. But that's true only for so long as you never, later, experience or recognize those harms. But the odds of never doing that are pretty low. At some point, you're going to realize how fucked up your life is/was and it's gonna catch up to you with a vengeance. Imagine a person suddenly falling out of the Experience Machine because there was a power failure or something. Suddenly their imaginary happy life is gone, and they realize their imaginary happy life was fake. I'm already passively suicidal, but shit, I think I'd go actively suicidal in that situation. The inverse of this case doesn't necessarily have to be true in order to argue that unexperienced harms are actually bad. Unexperienced benefits don't have to make you happy in order for unexperienced harms to eventually hurt you. There surely are privileged people living comfortable lives where they have everything they'd need to live their good life, but don't, and are unhappy, and who would have been happy if they'd been able to experience an appreciation of what they had. When they realize that fact, it probably won't make them happy. It probably won't make them reflect positively on their past experiences, either, because their experiences were negative. They have a better chance at living their good life in their future, but thinking about their positive-environment negative-experience past doesn't have to make them happy. But if I'm not understanding unexperienced harms correctly, I guess this comment is mostly pointless. Unless it's to bring up the argument of "what is an unexperienced harm, and what is just a harm that hurts you later on, and are there truly any unexperienced harms". Which is a discussion I'd be interested in!
As a recovering addict who was on methadone for years, talking about forcing someone to take a drug even if it was pleasurable is an interesting thought. I personally decided to get off methadone, because although it was satisfying a desire, it was also not how I wanted to live my life being dependent on it for the rest of my life. Along with the other negatives of traveling and being beholden to the clinic. I had other desires override my feeling of pleasure and satisfaction from the methadone. And Abby, you are fucking awesome.
I agree with Nozic on this one. My strongest desire is to experience reality and gather knowledge about it. This outweighs any other desire. So in this sense this is a second order desire for me. I say that this is my desire, because I know a lot of people won't feel this way about the question. But I'm with Kant on this one. I try, to the best of my ability, to have desires that would be applicable, and beneficial to everyone if they also followed the same rule I do. I don't think preference hedonism is enough. Mostly because I think reality is objective, consistent and logical, while personal preferences are not. The fact that pps would be subjective is the least of the problem (mostly regarding how those preferences affect others, so let's leave that aide for the moment), but the inconsistent and not logical parts are worse, since they lead to a detachment from reality. While avoiding this is a personal goal of mine, it's not subjective as one could argue, that other desires are. Not being a part of reality is an additional effort forced upon the being experiencing the distortion. This has the consequence that this being would need to constantly adapt it's mental model and behavior so that it keeps up the illusion it has got itself into. This is a waste of resources, that could be used to experience reality more fully. By not experiencing the most of reality that you could, you're potential of pleasure and happiness is also diminished, because reality can provide more pleasure for less effort (you don't need to bypass the errors in order to experience pleasure, but can experience it directly) since it's always consistent and logical. (a side note to this, physicists will not fully agree with me on this one, since there are quantum states that are not logical or consistent, but since we can't directly experience these states, I usually leave that out of this model)
My hedonist brother! Psychology is pretty supporting of preference hedonism as well, or at least the consequences of it. Self-determination theory for instance has given a great deal of evidence that humans get a great deal more "psychological well-being" in life when they engage in intrinsically motivated tasks (which involve satisfying needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness) than extrinsically motivated tasks. That is, we naturally seek out and derive the greatest satisfaction, enjoyment, etc. from activities which give us those craved feelings of expressing our will, being competent at what we want, and bonding with others, as opposed to extrinsic motivations like money, acceptance, security, moral obligation, etc. Not to mention all the neurological support I'm sure one could drudge up. Of course practical/scientific discovery doesn't conclude philosophical quandary, but personally I'm a pyrrhonian skeptic so when deciding what to do it's what 'realistically' makes the most sense that I go with.
I have always believed in (at least a form of) preference hedonism but I never had a word or phrase to categorize it, so first of all thanks for that. I had also fallen into the common social trend of shunning hedonism or at least believing it was intrinsically morally bad, though I never really thought about why. I appreciate your earlier video as well as this one for explaining the difference between moral values and prudential values and that it makes sense to have two separate philosophies for each because they're quite disconnected in many ways. I think videos like this one that explain some of the basics of philosophy prior to delving deeper into the subject are some of your best, rather than just jumping into the meat of the situation, which works well, especially for more complicated matters that require more time to explain, but it can also alienate some audiences who either don't understand the basics of the matter of discussion or haven't seen an earlier (or sometimes later) video explaining the same. Just a thought from someone binge watching a newly discovered channel, not sure if this is a suggestion or a topic of discussion or just a very wordy rant. Thanks for making some quality content to keep my brain running :)
The threat of pain + the invalidation of your experiences sound like .. idk, maybe your parents were adding pain into your life themselves that they didnt acknowledge and were therefore biased observers
Isn't every desire (with the exception of one's core desire, e.g. happiness) an extrinsic one? I want to see my friend, because it makes me feel better, I want to save the environment, because it makes me feel better, I want to... You know what I mean?
Not necessarily if you follow a moral code then following the moral code can be an intrinsic desire. The moral code doesn't have to produce happiness to you and can cause even sadness but the need to follow it can be intrinsic.
I think Nozick's thought experiment is a good argument against preference hedonism, and I think that unexperienced harms and unexperienced benefits both exist. Here would be an example of an unexperienced benefit: say an artist is woefully unappreciated in his own time, but a fairy offers him a deal: in return for more suffering and misery in his own life, he will be loved and widely studied and appreciated after his death. Also, if he takes the deal, he will lose all memory of having made the deal, so he won't know that he will be appreciated after his death. I think it would be perfectly reasonable for him to take the deal, because he would know that he would be receiving an unexperienced benefit. Basically, we have intrinsic desires for things unrelated to our own mental states, which seems to me to conflict with hedonism of any sort.
I disagree with you there. I don't think an artist in that position would choose to accept the fairy's deal. In fact, I think being offered that deal would serve to highlight to the artist the fact that fame is only good for the experienced benefits it gives you, and perhaps it would lead him to reassess how he thinks about fame and perhaps make him less concerned about his legacy. Looking at it from his perspective, he knows that if he accepts the deal, while he may experience some pleasure after deciding to accept it, he will soon have no memory of that pleasure, and then have to endure more suffering than he would have had to otherwise. Surely there is no reason for him to accept the deal? From his perspective, he stands to gain nothing.
+Rory Meade I would take the deal. I have no reason for it, I just have an intrinsic desire for fame, and more broadly for the things I make to be appreciated. Am I somehow wrong to want that? Do I have some sort of misconception about the world that causes me to want that? That doesn't make much sense to me, since I believe this is an intrinsic rather than extrinsic desire. Perhaps this desire of mine has no baring on what "the good life" is? In that case, I have to wonder what we're even talking about when we talk about "the good life" if it's something I might not want when presented with an alternative that has no morally relevant affects on other people.
+Xidnaf I have a different argument. In this situation, I would take the deal, but it wouldn't be about getting famous. I would reason (at least subconsciously) "If I take the deal, then I will be sad in life but remembered. I already deal with sadness, so I likely wouldn't notice a sudden increase in it as anything other than more bad luck. On the other hand, if I do not take the deal, I will remember this conversation, and thus know that all of my suffering is for nothing, which would feel even worse. Therefore, I'll take the deal." Notice that, from this perspective, I am still making my life better, even though I end up worse off. I make a good choice only if the consequences of both choices are analysed. I am therefore not really living a good life either way; the fairy telling me about the deal inherently makes my life worse. I am not profiting from an unexperienced benefit, I am just minimizing experienced sadness. This is, of course, assuming that I deeply want to be an artist. If the fairy came to me in real life, I'd be like, "Meh, I'd make a better teacher, anyways."
TheBasikShow Yeah, I agree, if you remember having made the deal that definitely changes everything. That's why I said that part of the deal is forgetting ever having made the deal.
+Xidnaf However, you forget the deal only if you take it. If you don't take the deal, you will remember the offer and your life will be worse for it since you know that your art won't ever be appreciated. If we change the thought experiment so that you don't remember the deal either way, then I agree with your argument against preference hedonism since I value my ability to influence the world even if I can not know that I did (which makes it not a mental state that can be desired).
Let's assume that people get happiness from living as they desire. This assumption is relatively intuitive. Let's also assume that this premise is always true. True desires (that is to say, not having overriding contradictory desires and the desire not being extrinsic) do always lead to happiness if they are fulfilled. I think the premise that not fulfilling a desire causes unhappiness, as it will leave you with some sense of failure, is equally true. This causes a problem for your idea of second order desires. Second order desires are infinite. If I desire something about my desire, I must also desire something about my desire to desire something. If not, it follows that I do not truly care for that second order desire,, meaning that it must be extrinsic (in which case you have failed to give a reply to Parfit's criticism). Therefore, I must have an infinite amount of desires. While this might be problematic from a psychological viewpoint, I do not yet believe this to be problematic from a philosophical one. The problem arises what a third order desire (as I would call them) would be. If I have a second order desire that is unfulfilled and cannot be fulfilled (at least not easily), it should follow from a purely hedonist perspective, that I would wish not to have this second order desire. This third order desire then, would also cause unhappiness, meaning that I would also have to have a fourth order desire not to desire that third order desire, ad infinitum. The same would be true for desires that are fulfilled. If someone had a desire that is fulfilled, he should wish that he continues to have this desire, and he should desire that he should continue to desire that desire, ad infinutm. This would mean that any kind of unhappiness should create an infinite regression of unhappiness (a state I will from now on describe as depression) and that any happiness should also create a state of extreme happiness, euphoria. An answer would be that states of euphoria and depression cancel each other out (as i have a mixture of fulfilled and unfulfilled desires). This would mean that people would experience a very conflict of intense emotions I do not believe that this is the case. I think most people's emotions are relatively moderate, something that cannot be explained by your account of second order desires, unless we would consider these desires to be extrinsic, in which case they would fail to counter Parfit's objection to preference hedonism. Looking forward to your reply!
*4 years later* Also Hedonism is so elusive, you can attribute pleasure in so many ways that I can't think of a philosophy that grants you with the same denial potential. I think it doesn't work as philosophy under any of it's aspect, no matter how thoughtful you make it, but I also think it doesn't work at all on a psychological level.
To me there is a very clear problem with your argument: you assume that an n-order desire necessitates an (n+1)-order desire. This is clearly untrue: I can [want to go outside] without wanting to [want to go outside], and I can [want to want to stop taking drugs] without wanting to [want to want to stop taking drugs]. In short, I can want things that I neither want to want nor want to not want. You attempt to justify this by arguing as follows: If something gives you unhappiness then you don’t want it, and if it gives you happiness then you do want it. If a desire is unfulfilled then it gives you unhappiness, and if it is fulfilled then it gives you happiness. Therefore, in either case (fulfilled or unfulfilled) you have a higher-order desire about the original desire. The problem with this argument is with the first statement. Sometimes your desire for something is detached from the happiness it gives you, like the example of taking a pleasurable drug which you do not want to take. This is an example of a desire whose higher-order desire contradicts what you would expect if the first statement was accurate.
The reason I wouldn't choose the pleasurable hedonistic life is that only pleasure simply isn't a goal in itself for me. Surely it's a benefit of some aspects of life, but real meaning for me would be made outof having a real (good) impact on others - say helping or loving other people or contributing to make the world a better place. Obviously my brain could be put in a jar for me to live an imaginary life thinking that I'm bettering the world, but since it wouldn't be true, it would be pointless, and I'd definately rather live an unhappy but meaningful life than a pleasurefilled one that has no impact on anyone whatsoever and essentially is a pointless one.
I see your opinion, however I disagree. Meaningfullness is a state of mind, in your (and my) case a desired one. I even share your opinion on spesifically what things could be making a life good, I just considder them desired states of mind. For all I know I am a brain in a jar right now, but if I spend evry second of my life attempting to improve the world, I will from my own perspective be having a good life (given I sucseed). I wouldent have been right about my life being meaningfull, but from my perspective it would be a good life. I don't like the thought that I might be living in a simulation, however to me, that suspiccion is a fact reguardless of weather I live in one or not, so again no change. Also you seam like a really awesome person (based on your opinoons and not to mention, how you seemingly come to attain them) keep being you, and I think that goal of contirbuting to the improvement of the world is exactly what will resoult.
Linda Sebbas you have an intrinsic desire to make a positive impact on others (in the real world). If pleasure is any mental state that is desired, satisfying your intrinsic desire by doing good to others would still give you pleasure. So I think it still works out :D
I really enjoy your videos! Your words are precise, the way you speak is encouraging me to listen and the gifs and pics are making watching your videos easy and enjoyable :) Thank you and keep it going!!!
It's about a filmmaker going to different countries searching for the meaning of happiness. It talks a lot about flow activities, community, and being mindful. It's in a very hedonistic approach as well. I think you'll like it
FYI, amongst addicts, what one might call a third-order desire is extremely common, often expressed as "Wanting to want to be sober". It's a little bizarre to consider, but very common and I thought you might find that interesting.
About the machine, if I want to improve the world, it means that I don't want to be tricked into thinking that I'm improving the world. By entering into the machine, I'll think I'm helping, and my personal satisfaction would be there, but my actual desire wouldn't be fulfilled.
I'm a newbie to philosophy in general and I don't know how much of it takes biology into consideration. But, I'd say the last theory of "play" is pretty solid from an evolutionary perspective. It isn't much of a stretch to imagine that life used to be much more "scary" for the average human, for the last thousands of years, than it is now. Our desire (which I don't share lol) for horror may simply be a remnant of that. I think my main objection to preference hedonism (and I use objection lightly because really, I agree with it...more of a problem that I see with standing by it) is the definition of intrinsic and extrinsic desire. I think it takes a REALLY self-aware person to even know which desires (outside of basic survival ofc) are intrinsic and which ones aren't. Like if I say I want to go to the gym, it could just be that I really want to have a good body, which could just be that I want to be attractive, which could just be that I want to be well-liked and accepted by my peers, which could be that I desire a healthy self-esteem. I mean, how many layers does one have to peel back to get to the "REAL" intrinsic desire? And by then, does it even matter? Another problem I have with preference hedonism is the issue of someone who desires something that is "bad" for someone else. And I *know* that it's not relevant because my understanding of the discussion is that it only involves what would be a "good life" for that particular person but still...if someone desires to cause harm and they accomplish it, sure it is a good life for them, but it still makes me uncomfortable calling it "good". I guess that's the whole point of hedonism.
I largely agree, but I make a distinction similar to your intrinsic/extrinsic desire distinction (and the first- and second- order desires) that I think grounds hedonism a little more solidly. Just as in the psychology of perception we make a distinction between sensations, perceptions, and beliefs, I think we also need to make a distinction between appetites, desires, and intentions. A sensation is the raw signal received from your sense organs without any interpretation yet, things like colors and pitches rather than shapes or words. Perception is the automatic interpretation of sensations into more symbolic objects, like shapes and words or more complex things built up out of things like that. Belief is a kind of second-order perception, in a way: it is a judgement that something is the correct thing to perceive, as opposed to when you might disbelieve your perceptions if you think you're seeing an illusion or hallucination. Likewise, an appetite is the prescriptive analogue of a sensation, it is a signal from your body that doesn't just signal something about how the world is, it signals something about how it ought to be: it is something feeling good or bad, like pain, hunger, thirst, etc, or the pleasure of the relief of these things. You can feel hunger, for example, without specifically desiring anything in particular. A desire to eat a burrito is an interpretation of that hunger, it's a more abstract thing made to satisfy those appetites, the same way perceptions are abstractions made to satisfy our sensations. A second-order desire, analogous to a belief, I call rather an intention: it is a judgement that something is the correct thing to desire, as opposed to, as in your example, someone who is addicted and doesn't want to be, who has desired they judge that they shouldn't have. I hold that just as empiricism is not beholden to perceptions but rather to sensations (or observations), and says that we ought to believe in accordance with those sensations rather than those perceptions, so too hedonism should not be beholden to desires but rather to appetites, and we ought to intend in accordance with those appetites rather than those desires. This has the benefit of being extensible to interpersonal morality, because while it may be impossible to satisfy everyone's desires simultaneously, just like multiple people may have conflicting beliefs or perceptions of the same reality, it is always in principle possible to satisfy all appetites simultaneously, so there is no necessary contradiction in saying that morality lies in doing so.
Your arguments sound rather convincing to me. The intriguing problem I have is this: Suppose that preference hedonism is, indeed, correct for an individual person. If I act according to it I will live the best life I possibly can and so do you. But there are (partly credit for inspiring me to Paradoxar earlier in the comments section) who make in general more harm than good if they put preference hedonism into practice. We might end up in a situation where peoples attempts to live a good life hinder each other's. Let me clear things up with an example. Let's imagine a community with three people who live rather happily. One of them is a sadist who has an intrinsic value for torturing others. He, however has a moral viewpoint that he should not do harm to others, even if he wants. But if he watches your video and becomes convinced of what you say, he would start fulfilling his desires and making the others in the community unhappy. The situation would be better for the sadist but worse for everyone else. It could easily be imagined that the overall happiness of the village would decrease. I'm a bit of an utilitarian myself, so at least for me this seems to be a problem. If everyone fundamentally only thinks about themselves, the greater picture could be harmed resulting in a sadder society on the whole.
If your explanation is correct, I agree. I must admit I somehow had hedonism in any form sorted as negative. But looking at it like that it makes total sense - if your pleasure seeking is beneficial and not detrimental.
I know it's not good practice to respond to the comment responses, but you responded to the argument that we enjoy horror for the relief afterwards by saying that would mean people enjoy real life horror, but they do. I am absolutely terrified of heights, but I enjoy rock climbing because of the nice feeling afterwards, the relief that it's over and the joy of having conquered my fears.
+somewony You should probably say whether you climb with safety equipment or not, it makes a big difference potentially, whether or not you feeling safe factors in.
somewony Well if you are conquering your fears in safe context then that makes a difference, though depending on what model you use the reason why may vary...
Filipe de Brigard makes another argument against Nozick -- when you poll people whether they'd *exit* the machine after finding out that they actually have been living in the machine all along, people generally want to stay. So what Nozick shows is that people show a status-quo bias -- and there's ample support that that is generally the case, see for example the research on loss aversion.
In sociology they speak of back stage and front stage personas, psychology speaks of the real self and the ideal self. There is a tension between these social and psychological states and we suppress our authenticity to achieve social acceptability/an ideal psychological identity. This tension creates anxiety. Anxiety will always find a way to be released. ALWAYS. What horror does is what any tension reliving activity does, it gives us an avenue to release this retroflected anxiety. By it screaming at a referee, screaming at a horror movie, screaming while having naughty cuddles with your significant other, the mastery of self writing down our thoughts or a satisfying grunt as you bang and clang weights. Horror IMHO is about release, even if it is just dropping the strains of reality for a bit and rewatching your fave slasher film for the iffy dialogue and overacting. Also, adrenaline sharpens our senses and that can be enjoyable, the way the mindfulness of being with someone and their body or physical exercise can enhance our senses. Don't believe that? Next time you are feeling low, get up, open that front door and march around your house. Blood pumping? You get that now, right? I liked Carl Rogers' description of the good life in his Fully Functioning Person definition.
As someone with ADHD, this sounds awfully like my brain is forcing the addiction to dopamine, and every time I get some it’s bittersweet because I know I’m just gonna want more soon.
There is no need for it to be merely reality or merely experience. It can be both. One is the objective moment of happiness, one is the subjective moment of happiness.
I think the good life is the art of consciously striving for what Socrates called Eudaemonia and what Abraham Maslow would call self actualisation. In order to stay 'self actualised' your basic needs must be fulfilled and by this I mean the first two rows of Maslow's pyramid. Now using Socrates model of the tripartite soul I feel it is possible to move up the next two rows of Maslows pyramid to reach 'self actualisation'. We must enjoy the things which make up our [1- appetite side of our soul] but in moderation. If we let hedonism rule then it will become self destructive (Buddhist philosophy explains this well). Secondly we must work on the [2-Spirited side of our soul] by building relations with our family, community and friends. Even if you have no friends, a focus on community will no-doubt gain you many friendships. The third is [3-wisdom side of our soul]. We have a duty to our bodies for continuous learning as staying in a constant state of wonder heightens the feeling of life!
I just want to congratulate you Olly for this and all of your videos. You make a great job, and I really like to see how you doesn't really put your opinion on the script so the viewers can analyse the theories that you present which makes the impasse of the subject. And when you do express you views on it, you still recognizes the qualities in the argument that you don't agree on. That, for me, is a great feature of your channel and that is why I appreciate so much your material. Thanks for the opportunity to start discussions about philosophical questions with an "authority" like yourself haha Congratulations and hope you keep doing this for as long as you can. P.S. I also made a argument down here. Destroy me as much as you like
Love your work Olly, but can I politely point out, pistons, or at least the ones in your car engine, don't rotate. If they did, you most certainly wouldn't "get moving". :P
This isn't about this topic but instead your response to Yang (at 10:00 about). I would argue it's still possible to say we enjoy horror for the relief because there is a difference between horror in media and horror in real life. In media when the story ends it is over, even if there are sequels the horror is done for that story, it has been wrapped up so to speak. But in life we are aware that the story isn't over just when we are done watching it, there are still after effects. For example if we see a story of a murder, once we are done with it we still know there are real people who have to live with it because it drastically changed their life. If the event were done, and the after effects are no longer as obvious or foreign to how we expect things to be then it is more suitable to be enjoyed like horror media.
You could also group most desires into various branches. In your example, the desire to 'get moving' could be an overarching desire over 'hope the engine works' and 'hope the traffic's not bad'. The former could be split into the spark plugs and motor, which could in turn be split into more and more and more. Basically, you'd end up hoping for every single desire "I hope the laws of the Universe work as they usually do. And your desire catch the bus could be part of going to a party, where you will see your friend, where you sate your desire to socialise. And, of course, all of these work towards the desire to be happy and/or live the good life. So, perhaps, as with so much, rather than categories ('intrinsic' and 'extrinsic') we need a spectrum from intrinsic to extrinsic. Also, I'm sure I've seen people (can't remember if real or fictional) wish they wanted to be more grateful, or something - a third-order desire. you can see already how this could get messy.
And, of course, each tree would occur per action. For example, you can want to have sex with someone to get closer to them, but also you can want to get closer to someone to have sex with them. Just another thought.
If pleasure is defined as any desired state of mind, and well-being is characterized by achieving pleasure, then as long as someone does whatever they want they, they are having a good life. There is no such thing as sacrifice. Let’s say I give all I have out of love. It might hurt, but I did it because I wanted to and achieved a desired state of mind, so in the end, it wasn’t a sacrifice because I chose to value something more than something else, and got the thing I considered of highest value, my well-being. So the question becomes: “Why is well-being valuable?” Is achieving a good life the purpose of life? It must be because no matter what I choose, as long as I had a choice, it must be the good life. There is no such thing as doing something for somebody, because in the end, it was for oneself, and other people don’t matter except for the fulfillment of one’s well-being. And then we must inevitably turn to the morality of such a worldview. If one believes morals and ethic to be as inseparable from the world as physics, then one must reject preference hedonism, because it’s unethical, as all actions are intrinsically self-centered. If one believe ethics are subjective then one must accept preference hedonism, because in the end, the purpose of life is to fulfill one’s pleasure, and other people are just means to that, whether one chooses Paragon or Renegade. Preference hedonism is fundamentally solipsistic because the hedonist becomes the center of events, no matter others; preference hedonism can only work ignoring ethics.
Most accounts of 'the good life' seem to dwell on the experiences only of the ideal autonomous subject, and whether that individual is satisfying their desires divorced from the wider context of community or society. Is there an account of hedonism which embraces larger circles of concern?
+conferencereport You might want to check out anthropological concepts of community, like Durkheim's "collective effervescence" or Turner's "communitas". Not exactly hedonism, though.
+conferencereport One keyword in that regard might be what some people call "enlightened self-interest" in the context of hedonism. One could argue that while it is very popular to argue for the benefits of a very autonomous life of fulfilled individual desires, we actually have a lot of evidence from psychology and related subjects that suggests that this proposed path towards happiness does not actually make us as happy as it promises. Instead, communal desires that favour the well-being of others contribute a lot to people's actual experience of happiness, despite the potential sacrifices involved. And this is not just the case because of opportunism (=do sth for someone so you get sth back), but also because of real altruism (= do sth for someone else's sake...which in itself can make you feel happy). Hence, a person who possesses enlightened self-interest would know about these facts and incorporate them into her own strategy of how to pursue happiness. This person would therefore realize that it is not in her own interest to act exclusively in her own interest, so to speak,...at least as far as actions are concerned. Altruistic actions are, in a sense, also in one's own interest, but not because the act itself is selfish, but only because being nice can make us feel nice in itself. PS: Technically, the purely autonomy-focused concept of happiness can also incorporate communal concerns, but such concerns will be primarily opportunistic, as in: "I should support education and job opportunities for others...because I am interested in other people having jobs that are of service to me".
I propose an alternate version to the experience machine thought experiment. Lets say you start out inside the machine, and you have constant pleasure, and you think you are living a real, good life. Then, for whatever reason, you realize that the world you are in is not real and never was, and you have a way to leave the machine, and live a real life. You get one chance to leave, and if you decline, you instantly forget that there ever was a way to leave, or that any of it was just virtual reality. Also, you know full well that a real life would be harder, and less pleasurable than a life inside the machine. Would you leave the machine? If the answer is yes, then clearly you think that a real world is better than the experience machine, even if there is less pleasure involved. I think this is because of a separate feeling all people want to experience, which I'll call "the feeling of real". Most don't realize that they have this feeling because we are constantly living in the real world, and thus, the feeling is constantly satisfying us.
I think your ideas on preference hedonism are pretty spot on. I think one thing I thought you would to talk about is the hedonic treadmill. im sure u know off it. and I think that was an important thing you could have talked about in this video because it works pretty well. for example a child usually wants like hot wheels or a barbie but as they get older they might desire larger and more expensive things into their later years they want a car or a gaming console ect. and I think you should talk about the hedonic treadmill in a later video. anyway thank you for the video there very inciteful and educational and I wanted to say thank you and your awsome olly.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the idea of hedonism, but it sounds like it I wholly based on feeling good. And by feeling good, you will have a good life. My problem with this idea is the in-between moments. If we live our lives constantly searching for pleasure, I believe we might get jaded. Our sense of joy would be dulled, and we'd search for even greater sources of pleasure. In these in-between moments we would feel the absence of pleasure more and more. Besides, we'd be losing emphasis on other important emotions. We'd be living life like a rainbow that only has one color, while the others are dulled out. We need to feel each instead of pretending to suppress the others.
I agree that hedonism isn't a way to the good life, but Nozick's thought experiment is about an ideal world, presumably one where our sense of joy does not become dulled. This doesn't reflect reality of course, but neither does the experience machine. I get that you're saying pleasure isn't the only thing you should focus on in real life, but a hedonist could say that in that case, you need to restrain yourself a little so you have more pleasure in the long run. I do agree that you need to be in a variety of different mental states in your life though, just for different reasons.
not really strung out far,but the idea popped into my head about the enjoyment if horror... maybe we like it because it gives us a safe place to feel fear, for whatever reason we would want to, much like the play idea at the end.
Well, personally, I think that if pleasure is the way of conducting a good life, than there is only a especific kind of pleasure that can make that, which for me would be the katastamatic pleasure, from Epicurus. To try to state my argument, I want to divide the human mental states in only three: ecstasy, dissapointment and serenity. From empirical knowledge, I understand that when one seeks for accomplish something, one is desiring to be in a mental state where one feels pleasure in that moment, and that I can call ecstasy. When one seek to be in this mental state and fails, one gets dissapointed, and feels pain. Now, when one is simply glad about his current situation, he is in serenity. That is the katastamatic argument (I didn't actually read about it, I'm just quoting what Olly said in his older video about hedonism). This states, I think, can be the result of the amount of certain substance (endorphins or dopamine) that makes us feel pleasure. So if one only seeks and fulfill one's desires, one reach ecstasy, releasing great amount of the substance in one's organism. But is known that after a while, the brain doesn't releases this substance anymore for a determined ocasion that it used to release before. So the person won't get in ecstasy anymore, and will get dissapointed. So the answer here would be to make the mind convince the brain to only produce normal amounts of the substance, which is to be in serenity. I'm saying this to make the point that, in practice, preference hedonism cannot work. But in theory, it is perfectly valid, since the person would always get in ecstasy and would never get dissapointed. And I think that this argument can be used for moral reasons aswell, but I didn't mean to do so, as I only tried to state my idea of why preference hedonism, in practice, would not be the answer to the good life. Thanks for reading. I'm brazilian, so is a little bit hard for me to express myself in another language, so if my points aren't very clear, I apologize. Happy to read some counter-arguments, but don't expect me to answer them cause it is a little bit hard for me to do that. I just want to star a discussion under this argument.
There are desires that are not related to mental states. Like the desire that your loved ones are safe. You may argue that, what is desired, is the mental state of knowing that your loved ones are safe. However, anyone, who has been in a situation where he was worried about someone else, will tell you that he wants to know how that one is doing rather than living in the comfort of some lie. In general, there is an intrinsic desire that our mental state matches reality in the best possible way, and this specific desire is not fulfilled in Nozick's experiment.
+Khaldoon Ghanem Cases like that one have been brought up and I think the preference hedonist would point out that for someone to believe their loved ones were OK and for them to really not be, like in the experience machine, would be an unexperienced harm.
In psychoanalytic theory we tend not to know what we desire. We desire things to fill the lack created by unknown desires. I think we have desires that are intrinsic and existential. Attempts to satisfy those desires are displaced.
Re: Second-Order desires. Your contention is that what makes it wrong to addict the person is that it may frustrate second-order desires, but it's easy to imagine someone who just doesn't care either way whether she's addicted or not. This person would have a strong reason to freely choose on her own to become addicted because doing so would provide her with easily satisfied desires. On this view you live a better life if you decide to take an interest in easily fulfilled desires. If you could train yourself to be ecstatic about breathing, then you ought to do so on this picture because breathing is something that you'll do almost effortlessly (and you need to do in order to stay alive... to fulfill all those other desires). To bring this back to your intrinsic/extrinsic case; the woman who trains herself to get excited at sparkplugs firing will seemingly satisfy more intrinsic desires, and you're left with a problem similar to the one that prompted you to subsume purely extrinsic desire-satisfaction under the corresponding intrinsic desire-satisfaction: On this view, one can live a better life by simply wanting more... provided what they want is easily achievable. The man addicted to breathing might have copious psychological activity, but his life seems far from a good life.
Great vid - always good to hear thoughts from a fellow Utilitarian. The reversal of Nozick's argument was an interesting move. Personally, I went more along the lines of practical denial and intrinsic acceptance. Practically, we would deny ourselves the pleisure machine because one couldn't really live a life in there - the response of 'What if you could, safely?' seems a little flacid when one realises that nobody has come up with a consistent story of how a country, nevermind a planet, might operate such machines. However, in principle, since I approve of computer games and play Dungeons & Dragons, I don't see why I should stop there - why not move to total plaisure? The only caveat I would have is that my pleisurable activities should aid others. Currently if I enjoy a party, others enjoy it. If I and my friend attent simulated parties then all the work is done twice - once for each of us. In some sense, we would be each better, i.e. more efficient, attending to each other and being happy together than we would be if each of us required the resources for a pleisure machine. That's why D&D's ultimately a better game than single-player Fallout 4. *ducks head from flurry of bottlecaps*
- One other point: Nozick was trying to show there's more to life than experience, not, I think, arguing against preference order hedonism specifically. Indeed, preference order hedonism is one way *around* Nozick's Experience Machine example because the preference order hedonist can say 'No, I don't want an experience as of winning sports, I prefer to actually win sports, which is not fulfilled by the Experience Machine', and then Nozick screams and crumbles into a million small Thatcherite reductio chunks. Well not really, but if I were in an Experience Machine he would.
Just a quick note (and open question). Isn't proposed dichotomy between so-called intrinsic and extrinsic desires in actuality a false dichotomy? In the sense that every 'intrinsic' desire already and necessarily falls into the category of 'extrinsic' desires. This holds, in my view, even if we put aside all the reflections on how the desire is manifested in our daily life (with all of its paradoxical nature where desire's only consistency, when your desire is apparently fulfilled, is constant feeling that 'this is not that' i.e. 'this is not what I wanted'), and we consider 'intrinsic' desire in purely 'formal' way. When I say 'I intrinsically desire to see my friend' I actually mean 'I desire the wormth and happiness (for instance) that my friendship with that person brings to me'. By that token, the first statement is automatically reduced to the 'extrinsic' desire: 'friend' simply becomes means to an end. And we can go even further: What does it mean the 'wormth' and 'happiness' that we 'extract' in some way or another from our friend, and so on? We can quickly see the metonymity not only in the desire itself, but also in form that the statments of desire are articulated. We can also say, by extension, that this intrinsic quality (if not all so-called intrinsic qualities) already relies on, let's call it, 'extrinsic or extraneous element', that is to say, an element which is absent from original statement, but in a way that this absence is constitutive for the statement: line or boundary where we stop and say 'This is intrinsic.' (in our case: 'I intrinsically desire to see my friend') depends on the fact that we are silent about what this 'friend' or 'seeing my friend' actually mean. And if my line of thought is correct, does this mean that the preference hedonism is impossible to achieve (even in its own context and by its own rules) and that it's a mere utopia? And also: If preference hedonism is founded on the definition of pleasure: 'Pleasure is any mental state that is desired,' than this very statement presupposes that we know what we desire (and we mostly don't) and also that we want our desire to be fully realized, which would in purely formal way (keeping aside all life experiences, which tell us that sometimes, if not all the time, we like to keep our desires intact and unfulfilled) kill the desire itself and put us under a feeling of pure melancholy. In that sense, the only (formally) true and consistent 'hedonism' (hedonism which meets its own conditions) is an 'unhappy, unfulfilled and unpleasurable hedonism', that is to say, 'non-hedonism' (paradoxically as this may sound).
I'm not sure how we can make the claim the "Extrinsic Pleasures Don't Count". They may not be as powerful as Intrinsic Pleasure but they certainly are very important. In your car analogy the female may not experience the pleasure in the process of getting moving as much as the actual moving BUT her Intrinsic desire will never be fulfilled if the Spark Plugs don't spark. So there is a level of pleasure no matter how small involved in the Spark Plugs. I agree with you, I just think that Extrinsic Values play and important role in maintaining our happiness levels until the Intrinsic pleasure is fulfilled. I get happiness from going to Fight Practice Today even though its painful (Extrinsic) because it will aid in me winning my next MMA Match (Intrinsic).
This is totally off topic: If you think about it, the imaginary drug you described is basically love. There are a lot of people that just don't want to fall in love, but they don't have a choice, nature and surcemstances led them to get addicted to another person. My question is, why do we look down on people who take pleasure in substance abuse, but we celebrate love? And the argument that "Well drugs harms your health..."is invalid. Did you ever see someone going through a breakup?
+Valcor Wabajak What seems to be forgotten is that olie pointed out that the drug has no physical side effects. By your logic the drug is better than love because of its lack of risk.
I've just realised. A breakup is when you've stopped taking the drug of love. If you're in a blissful relationship with someone, then love is having no negative effects on you, so your own counter-argument here is not quite valid, sorry.
Neurochemically we like horror because it invokes a physical response in our bodies that looks like the feeling "love." Our brains are stupid and while we are afraid and disgusted at first by what see, it's both a reminder that our lives are pretty good and we start to wonder if we liked it.
I do very much like the following definition for a good (from any perspective) life: Being happy, spreading happiness, not restricting other people's happiness. The first one satisfying each individual's needs and the other two being there because 'from rags to riches' and the 'American dream' and stuff like that are totally not working for most people. Because our world (and especially humans) are complicated as hell I don't think matters of happiness can be managed in a prescriptive way. What one can do is educate people in a descriptive way (which I suppose requires a lot of skill to remain as objective as possible). I guess Thomas Pogge and John Rawls' Veil of Ignorance would make it into such a curriculum. It would probably not be feasible to absolutely fulfill all three criteria but that is not the point. It is about people deciding educated and freely which desires they want to follow and which they will attempt to get rid of or rein themselves in a little. P.S. Great channel Olly!
Very cool video! I wonder about 2 things though: 1) What if the 2nd order desire is something like "Knowing the Truth about the universe"? This is where a lot of sci-fi films can get their suspense or ambiguous ending mileage between the dissonance of the audiences knowledge and the characters knowledge of the world. 2) I would argue some people change their Desires after new experiences, some of which, can be "bad". The only way I see around this is if one argues that the preferences that should be intrinsic should have the form of something like "Desire to have an Experienced life with lots of perspective". However, this is a somewhat over wrought desire because it could easily lead to a life with a lot of typically "bad" experiences. For instance, one could argue that someone who dies of cancer while in the prime of their life will have amazing and unique experiences that force a lot of learning about how to have perspective in life. I would say that the story of Oedipus encapsulates this argument. He sought Truth, but that truth did not lead to a "good" life, at least by most people's first instincts.
The thing you said about second level desires is something that I had problem understanding for a long time. But i would argue by same method that even an experience machine would be something that doesn't satisfy my second or third level desires , primarily of free will and a desire to know the ultimate truth no matter how unpleasant. So that begs the question, what makes second level desires special? Preferential heroism doesn't answer that.
Say I agree with preference hedonism, I still don't think that a person should choose to enter the experience machine. The problem is the following: If the life inside the experience machine is such that your desires are being fulfilled, then you should desire for this life to continue and to continue continuing. If however the duration of that experience goes towards infinity, any chance that you would awaken from the experience, no matter how small, becomes certainty. (And if we impose the restriction that real technology can't sustain something to infinity, then we also have to apply real rates of failure which are again, almost certain). All inexperienced harm becomes experienced harm. The life in the machine is devalued 1) due to not being real (which you are now aware of) and 2) due to peak-end-effect ignoring the length of the duration. The live that you awaken to on the other hand is something that you had no ability to shape and is therefore random and in no way optimized to fulfill your desires. The experience machine is now only a variation of the countless short-term versus long-term fulfillment dilemmas (i.e. +Sebanoe 's example of eating Pizza all the time versus good looks and health). And while we would have to carefully weigh the two sides for individual cases, preference hedonism usually argues in favor of long-term fulfillment in those problems. It would be really interesting to hear your response to this. I know there are a few things where I argue as if unopposed and others where I could still go on, but it's not all that easy to debate with you only answering once in video.
It seems to me that preference hedonism is intrinsically limited in it's scope. Chiefly, it only works if you narrow your definition of "the good life" to instantaneous moments in time, from a specific perspective at that moment. Beyond that narrow field it falls apart as a model for "the good life", as I hope to demonstrate. To start with, I think we can agree that, for a given person, the desired mental state changes with time. The mental state of sleeping in on a Saturday with a lover in your bed, and the mental state of a playing in an exciting sports game, are both desirable, but mutually exclusive states of mind. Therefore, we have to decide which mental state we intrinsically desire the most at any given moment. I think we can also agree that human beings are imperfect decision makers, both because of a variety of automatic biases as well as our limited perception. We can only weigh a limited number of possibilities, with a limited number of influencing factors, for a limited amount of time. As such, every decision will have some flaws in it, due to our ignorance. These two facts together lead to the fundamental issue with the idea of preference hedonism adequately defining "the good life". Consider a man who lives the first 50 years of his life in such a way that at every single instant, he is living in his most desired mental state. According to preference hedonism, he would be said to have been living "the good life". However, suppose that after those first 50 years, his fortune is spent. Worse than that, suppose he comes to decide that he had squandered his time and money on frivolous things of little true value. That he had formed no true bonds with the people around them, instead treating them like disposable playthings. Suppose this man dies a year later, alone and destitute, wracked with withdrawal symptoms, desperately wishing that he had lived a different life, made different decisions. From his point of view, looking back, did he live "the good life"? I think you are too quick to dismiss unexperienced benefits and harms. Fundamentally, one doesn't even need an experience machine to have to deal with them. Everyone has them, though I would say that "unrecognized benefits/harms" would be a more generally applicable term. Rather simply put, we don't experience/perceive/recognize everything that affects us. If you asked him at any instant of his first 50 years, the man in my example would tell you (and believe fervently) that he was living "the good life". He certainly appeared to be, in his own mind as well as many other peoples perceptions of him. However, he didn't recognize that he was burning through his fortune at an ultimately unsustainable rate. He didn't recognize that he was lacking true human connection, thinking whatever pleasure he got out of them was all he needed. He had the preference hedonism definition of "the good life", from his own point of view, but he didn't recognize the harms he was causing to himself and those around him. A similar argument from simple ignorance could demonstrate the existence of unexperienced benefits. They aren't some mystical thing. They're simply benefits you have that you don't recognize from your current point of view. Since they are a thing, then it seems prudent to consider their ramifications when considering what living "the good life" entails. In summary, preference hedonism is really only able to say whether you *appear* to be living "the good life", when seen from a specific point of view, at a specific instant in time. As a complete model of what it means to truly *live* "the good life", however, it is severely lacking.
Overall, I do agree with you! The reason being is because I believe only the agent of one's actions can truly determine how good they're life was! Like for example most people would think I lived a terrible life, but they will never understand why I live the way I do and it is simple I enjoy pain! Not sexually mind you, but true gut wrenching pain! I only feel alive then and otherwise I feel depressed. It is honestly hilarious how my experience should be an antithesis to your idea of pleasure, but my idea of pleasure is well pain.
Your main point lies in pleasure being intimately connected to desire and happiness...desires are not always pleasurable, some pleasures are not desirable and happiness is not always attained through doing pleasurable and desirable acts.. i feel the connection is more like a hypothetical imperative than a hard categorical one
+Raza Khawaja Yes, it's a definitional one. The preference hedonist defines pleasure as mental states that are desired, not necessarily mental states that are enjoyable, so that for example masochists can still have a good life though it may feature physical pain. The fact that not all physical pleasures are desirable is neither here nor there.
Nice detail on the "girl" in the picture knowing about the engine parts, as opposed to the "boy" knowing which most people would have used without thinking about it. So much useful effort in the details !
I found that bit depressingly PC. I would guess that one woman in a thousand could give you a reasonably detailed description of how an internal combustion engine works. Why deny reality?
I think your magical pleasure drug is _very_ close to "fast food" and takeaway meals in many modern cultures. Most of it tastes pretty good, and the economy of having a few people paid to cook vast amounts of (largely factory pre-prepared) food means you get the pleasure of eating a lot of the foods our taste-buds crave (all the fats, sugars, complex carbs and salt) without any of the pain of cooking a meal. Which fits into a busy life and means we have more time for work, and other things which give us pleasure too. However, most of us would like to live a _healthier_ life, and get more exercise. This kind of food doesn't help that at all, and we all know it's very bad for us to eat on a regular basis. Very few of us _use_ that extra time to spend, along with more money going to the gym, or just going for a run or bike ride, even though we know that if we did it regularly, the act of exercising is actually pleasurable too. We also forget about the pleasure of _sharing_ a well prepared, home cooked meal with family and friends. :( BTW: Congratulations on making me blush. Other commenter's on your channel have taught me quite a bit, and really made me re-evaluate, at least the language I use to describe things. Some of my "unusual" comments are probably because I am not "learned" in this field. I haven't studied psychology at all, I'm just interested in what people think, and believe. Why they think and feel as they do, and how they rationalise those thoughts.
The thought experiment about the experience machine also provokes the question "What is real?" Because, if the machine makes it so that it is impossible for the person that plugs in to know that it is not real then... well the virtual reality of the machine becomes real, as far as the person that plugged in is considered. It is useless to talk about a reality which one can in no way observe. Reality is relative. For everyone outside of the machine, the outside is reality, for everyone inside the machine, the inside is reality.
I think it might be interesting to include some Nietzsche into this discussion about pleasure, because his ideas provide some of the best challenges to hedonism. Parfit defines pleasure as any mental state that is desired, so, sure, we can include types of suffering within that definition, but maybe this is just goofing around with words too much. I'd say most of us have had experiences of suffering which we've never desired, neither before nor after they happened, yet some of these experiences have nevertheless shaped who we are and are necessary to the building of a strong character. Does it make sense that the act of becoming a more self-realized individual is "pleasurable," even though the process is filled with sometimes unbearable struggles? Nevertheless, I'd venture to guess most of us value becoming more of who we are. Such a process is fundamental to the nature of our entire lives. That's not to say that suffering is good because it achieves some end, but that our ideas of "good" can sometimes be wrong. We don't always know what we desire, or we may desire things that never truly satisfy us, even if we do take into account "higher" intellectual pleasures. Sometimes, your concept of what's good needs to be destroyed in order to come out with a better understanding of your own self-becoming. In a way, we have to abandon our desires in order to become more of who we are, not because we are always desiring becoming more of who we are, but because becoming more of who we are is a natural process we're forced into whether we like it or not, whether we're good at it or not. So we can either embrace the struggle that comes along with that process, as Camus suggests when he talks about embracing the absurd, or we can choose to constantly be trying to squelch or ignore our struggles by satisfying our desires and always being disappointed or confused when struggles inevitably befall us. No matter how much effort you put into satisfying your desires, you're going to suffer. So use that suffering to become a better and stronger self.
The biggest caveat I would put on Preference Hedonism is that you need to keep your pleasure from intruding too much on the pleasure of others. If my desired state is, to pick a hyperbolic example, savagely beating innocent children, then it doesn't matter how happy I am; that's a bad thing to do.
Have you considered max scheler criticism of stoicism? Max scheler said that when the stoic said that the good life consist of pleasure he said that is they maid a mistake because they are traying to make it a virtue because pleasure is not mean in its self .
The problem with choosing the Nozic machine for a "perfect life" is that you don't know all of the good things. The real world can actually surprise you. It can have things in it that you, or a programmer of this machine, could never even imagine. A life will always have better potential in the real world.
I think the problem with the experience machine is that it would cause the greatest harm of all, which is to cause someone to die having left no accomplishments behind. Inside the experience machine, I may be writing novels that no one will ever read, or raising children who won't really exist beyond me. Death is really the biggest unexperienced harm there is (putting aside, for the moment, any possibility of an afterlife), and to die with nothing left behind is being "more dead" that a person who dies but leaves a legacy.
Love this channel. Your videos put me in a mental state that is desired. Surely their is value to truth. Living a life of compete delusion seems quite sad, even if that delusion gives you intense pleasure.
I agree with your point of view but in "real life" I think we can agree nobody can live a good life all the time. Negative situations creep in in the lives of everybody so although theoretically hedonism is preferable, it is not plausible. In fact, from the beginning of times human life is beset by the sling and arrows of outrageous fortune. As a response humans try to maximize their moments of joy, but more often than not these attempts involve infringing on others' own feelings of happiness creating more suffering (Samsara).
I think i have a possible counter-argument to preference Hedonism, although it's very rough. If the good-life is one filled with pleasure wouldn't suicide be a rational action to take if you predict your future experiences would be less pleasurable then your current ones. One might counter by saying all people instinctively desire a long life, yet in the hedonist model, why should someone desire a long life when the goal is intensity of pleasure not duration of it.
Let's say that, for me, the most desirable thing is to be in a good, loving relationship with a significant other. From the point of view of preference hedonism, really the mental state that I desire is that of a) being in love with someone, b) believing without a doubt that that someone loves me in return, and c) believing that our relationship is a good one, good being based on a number of particular criteria (Are we cooperative? Does it seem lasting? Do we have a good sex life? etc.) Now let's say that I plug myself into an Experience Machine and it crafts around me that dream life: a SO appears and the machine convinces me that I'm in love with them, that they're in love with me, and that our relationship couldn't be better. Of course the SO doesn't actually exist and therefore doesn't actually love me, but I'm convinced of them nonetheless, so ideally this is a perfect life. Now let's say that I am not in an Experience Machine, but am in a real relationship with a real person in the real world. Here, again, I am convinced that I am in love with them, that they're in love with me, and that our relationship couldn't be better. However, this SO actually feels nothing for me, and, for whatever reason, is choosing to make a fool of me by pretending to love me and create for me the perfect relationship while actually cheating on me or stealing from me or whatever. Let's say that this SO is, for whatever reason, both very good at fooling me and very dedicated, and let's say that we have both achieved immortality and can continue this fake relationship indefinitely just like in the Experience Machine. Now let's say that, once again, I am not in an Experience Machine, but have the same mental state as I had in the previous two scenarios, except this time everything I believe is true - I really have, by some miracle, found an SO that I do love, who loves me, and with whom what is, in my eyes, the perfect relationship is possible and I can live out that perfect life indefinitely as before. My mental states in all cases are identical, and since there is no reason to take into consideration any unexperienced harms (like those of being robbed or cheated on or lied to [whether this is by the real lying SO or the Machine]), there should be no reason to prefer one over another. But surely, if it were only a choice between the the second and third scenarios, you would prefer the third?
Another thing to do with Parfit's argument: if taking the drug gets in the way of things, then, even if the addict doesn't care, it could be the not-good (bad?) life. Also, music is very much like a drug: it releases dopamine in your brain, and has what you could look at as withdrawal symptoms. And most people don't purposely get addicted to music - it's just there. I guess you could look at this as being tricked into taking the drug. So, if in Parfit's example, you're tricked into taking the drug? Then you have only pleasure, and maybe slight annoyance when you find out.
I guess preferential hedonism wouldn't work if one's desires conflict with each other, for example a person who values challenge and disciplines. In this case a person must sacrifice one desire's fulfillment for another, and because it is difficult to calculate the "unexperienced harm," there is always a potential for devastating loss when upholding preferential hedonism. Of course, the argument presumes a conflict among one's desires, but to be honest this circumstance is not so uncommon: "I want to sleep a bit longer but I also want to be promoted at work"; "I want to eat chicken and pasta but I can only afford one entree". In fact, an action always has some temporal opportunity cost (due to finite lifespan of a human being) and therefore any time-consuming action requires concessions to any other future time-consuming desires that may arise. A preferential hedonist may argue at this point that they get to decide on which desire they "prefer," but because there will always be ambiguity associated with outcomes of decisions, there remains the potential for a regret significant enough to harm the "goodness" of one's life.
Great video. I wasn't all too familiar with the concept of preference hedonism, but the "preference" part certainly seems to solve a lot of issues that would commonly arise with narrow definitions of hedonism, where any kind of painful or exhausting physiological experience, for instance, would be automatically count as undesirable. The question of whether or not (or how) we should count extrinsic values in our final pleasure sum is still confusing me though and I'm still not sure about my own view on this really. For instance, when we spend 10 hours on an activity that has purely extrinsic value to us, we do seem to value those 10 hours more than if we had spent 10 hours on a seemingly pointless activity. Granted, we enjoy these 10 hours of preparation less than the future moments which hold intrinsic value and we only value these 10 hours in anticipation of its intrinsic payoffs...but we have nonetheless experienced 10 hours that seemed somewhat more valueable than if we had done something that seemed utterly pointless. So if we measured pleasure-per-hour over time, we seem to have additional pleasure. Could this mean that extrinsic value does count somehow? Or could it be that it counts towards our total sum of pleasure, but as a fraction of the total sum rather than an additional unit? And could it be that it matters a lot whether extrinsic and intrinsic values occur over time vs. simultaneously? In the car example, it does seem silly for the engineer to get extremely excited after starting the car. After all, it seems that the primary value of the situation is defined by "get moving", while the many workings of the engine simply form a constituent part of the final result in that moment. Hence, the pleasure of all these things working might count as a fraction towards the sum, but not as an additional unit. In comparison, however, if a person had spent months constructing a car, putting hour after hour into making the car work so that it would actually allow them to "get moving" when turning the ignition key, we would actually expect them to be much more excited by the final result than a person who was also just interested in getting a move on, but had put no work into making it happen. Does that mean that the extrinsic value does count...or is the added value just a result of the instrinsic joy of having completed a difficult challenge? Lastly, even if two people did not work on the car, but simply got into the car and turned the key (as it is the case in your example), would we really be surprised if an engineer was more excited by the whole event than a random person? After all, could it not be that the engineer derives additional joy from grasping the full complexity of what allowed for the car to move? Or is that additional joy just a result of an independent, intrinsic appreciation of mechanical processes beyond the interest of just "get moving"?
addiction seems to me to be a great counterexample simply because getting your desires fullfilled isn't the same as being happy. i know we are talking about pleasure here, but that's the same problem. there's this cliché (i happen to find true) that happiness is not a destination but a way of travel. pleasure then, would be a destination. another problem with this desire-pleasure viewpoint is these are things you can't just assign values and add them together. for example "did he have a good life? well he had 16 units of pleasuer and only 12 units of pain in his life, so yes" life is simply more complex than this. another part of the problem (or simply MY problem with this) might be in the definition. instead of desired mental state, we might want to say desirable mental states. again addiction would be a great example where this distinction might work. i might desire a drug, but knowing it's side effects, i intellectually find it undesirable both to consume the drug and to desire it. so again, my main problem with preference hedonism seems to be that life and being happy is just more complex. also some modern interpretations of buddhism would be interesting here
1:41 Well if Marco Rubio's advise had been more timely I would be following WeldingTube (Though 2:08 makes me wonder if "Autotube with Ollie" would have every gotten off the ground.) This video filled both intrinsic and extrinsic desires.
Maybe preference hedonism is an incomplete plan for the good life? I'm glad you brought up drugs because it's definitely my core objection. First, I don't like Parfit's example, because that's not how drug addiction works IRL except in cases of slavery. Most of the time, while there might be peer pressure or unfortunate circumstances involved, drug addiction is at least partially due to the actions of the user. If addicts are just following their preferences of their own free will, but are still harming their bodies and their livelihoods, I think that represents a failure of preference hedonism. I don't know precisely if that counts as an unexperienced harm or not, or whether that objection could be circumvented by appealing to second order desires, but certainly doesn't feel right. It's rough watching a friend or relative have their life destroyed by addiction. I imagine preference hedonism is like a basic hill climbing algorithm. (Check out Computerphile's video: "Hill Climbing Algorithm & Artificial Intelligence" for a great intro to the concept) To give a basic idea what a hill climbing algorithm is like, imagine blind person walking in a field. If they feel themselves going uphill, they'll continue that direction, otherwise, they'll turn in random direction and try again. To make this analogous with preference hedonism, the elevation of the blind man represents how much pleasure his mind is feeling. The problem with hill climbing algorithms is that they can be "tricked" fairly easily. If the blind man reaches the summit of a small hill, he'll stay there because every other direction will represent less elevation, or less pleasure. But there could be a whole mountain off in the distance, but since our algorithm is naive, it'll never reach it. Drug addiction is like one of these small hills to preference hedonism. It's really easy reach the summit, but in order to get to an even higher peak, you'll have to walk through a really deep, unpleasant valley. The solution to the hill climbing problem is to make a more sophisticated searching program, say one that plans two steps in advance. And I think that's what you're trying to do with the idea of second order desires, Olly. You're trying to give the preference hedonism a more sophisticated set of rules to go about searching for the most pleasurable experiences and desires. But optimization is hard. Like, really hard. It's not adequate in my opinion to say, "well you'd prefer to be on the Mountain of Self Actualization, if your desire to get there is strong enough, you'll climb down from the Hill of Heroin Addiction." I think that kind of statement leaves a lot of people stranded on the Hill of Heroin Addiction. That fails to account for the path from A to B. No matter how strong your secondary desire to get on the mountain, there could be an arbitrarily larger valley, blocking your path there. One's personal hedonist optimization algorithm can't perfectly account for the obstacles that will block your path. One might get lucky and reach mountain, but lots of people wont be lucky even though they were following the same philosophy as you. What I think all this boils down to is that we as a society have to agree that some of these hills don't represent the good life for most people, even though if we let them follow their preferences of their own free will, most of them need help climbing down. Maybe that means we need to build a fence around the Hill of Heroin Addiction, or maybe we need to build a bridge to make crossing the unpleasant valley easier. It's not an easy job to identify which hills that are not the good life, and it's not easy to decide what should be done about them. However life, and AI optimization are complex problems, so it's to be expected.
How do you distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic desires in such a way as to not cause special pleading when confronted with an alleged intrinsic harmful (would lead to a worse life if fulfilled) desire? For example, what about a sadist who desires to make other people suffer and who has no other desires (so any trade-off counter arguments won't work)? Can we really say that by fulfilling his desires, he is living a good life? I would say no. To put my argument in a more general form: 1. If preference hedonism is correct, then the fulfillment of any intrinsic desires will necessarily lead to a better life unless it hinders the fulfillment of other intrinsic desires. 2. There are some intrinsic desires which possibly could fail to lead to a better life if fulfilled despite this not hindering the fulfillment of other desires. 3. Therefore, it is not the case that the fulfillment of any intrinsic desires will necessarily lead to a better life unless it hinders the fulfillment of other intrinsic desires. 4. Therefore, preference hedonism is not correct. Notice that this argument does not say that preference hedonism is incorrect in practice, merely in theory since there exists some possible world in which preference hedonism is incorrect in practice. One could also make a stronger version of the argument above in order to show that preference hedonism is wrong in practice as well as in theory.
+Paradoxarn The problem here is that he specifically said that this isn't about some moral conception of a *morally* good life, but instead about what is good to the person living it. As thus the fact that the sadists desires, contradict other peoples intrinsic desires isn't really relevant, the sadist would certainly consider their life good. The problem with objecting to that, would be that you seem to be going back to the idea of unknown harm.
+Paradoxarn I would say he does. You're taking morality into account, and to you, making other people suffer is intrinsically bad and makes you feel so. But morality is subjective, and for this person, making someone suffer only because you can be considered fair by his society's standards or its own. Just alike revenge was in Ancient Greece. I also think that hedonism in itself, is selfish. It's also recognizing that when you do "good" things, you do it for the "wrong" reasons : You're volunteering for an association that gives meals to homeless people, but you maybe will do it for the social recognition it will get you, or to be closer to someone you like, not intrinsically because helping those people gives you pleasure. Trade-off arguments don't work because they're not selfish, and include morality, which Nietzche describes basically as "everything that is going against the society/community's interests is morally wrong or immoral", and therefore also conservative and selfish for the society.
Allinim M. Well in a sense no good deeds could be considered good by that standard. After all no matter why you help people you are getting something out of it (unless you are avoiding displeasure) mainly pleasure.
+Valcor Wabajak How is that ? Because you feel helpful ? Because you're doing the "right thing" ? Both of these feelings come from moral or religious values, and the fact that you internalized them will give you pleasure. Nietzche, and I reckon he's right, thinks that there is no good or bad, that they're just constructs of society or an individual. Then what you're looking for is not to do "good" things (which doesn't mean anything), but what brings you pleasure. Society works around that with penalization of certain acts. Therefore, I will not kill my neighbor because he's too loud, because the displeasure of it is smaller than the one I would get by being researched by the authorities or even convicted.
I intend, in this comment, to present further arguments against the conception of preference hedonism presented in the video. First however, I will clear up some misunderstandings which might have arisen concerning my first comment. +Valcor Wabajak You have misunderstood my argument, I'm not assuming that this is about the morally good life, in fact I'm aware of that and arguing against preference hedonism in that context. You do have a point about my argument referring to an unknown harm. That was not my intention but I certainly did not make it clear exactly what I think is the harm, I merely said that I would not agree that the sadist who indulges his or her desires is living a good life in a non-moral sense. --- Having made that clear I intend to make my own position more clear on this matter. As I understand it, when Philosophy Tube talks about "the good life" in a non-moral sense, he is talking about what we usually call the happy/meaningful/fulfilling life. My view on this matter is that the good life in this sense is a virtuous and productive life. That is, in order to live a happy, meaningful and fulfilling life, one must also live a virtuous and productive life. What does "living an virtuous and productive life" mean? Living a virtuous life means to live according to virtue. Wisdom, moderation, benevolence and courage are examples of such virtues. To live a productive life means to live a life in which one contributes to making the world a better place, the opposite would be a destructive life and the middle ground would be an inconsequential life. It might therefore be natural to think that I assume that I conflate the happy, meaningful and fulfilling life with the morally good life. In actuality, instead of failing to notice the difference, I'm denying that it is legitimate to make that distinction. My view is similar to Plato and Aristotle in this regard. I will now explicate what problems I see with preference hedonism. The first problem concerns irrational desires. Consider the desire to not have any desires fulfilled. Such a desire will fail to be fulfilled no matter what the circumstances. Consider contradictory desires, perhaps one desires to sleep and desires to stay awake at the same time. Given such contradictory desires, the common sense desire of having all one's desires fulfilled becomes irrational since fulfilling it would entail the realization of a contradiction. One might of course object that such irrational desires are impossible but I see no reason to think that desires must be rational, in fact I suspect that most people either has or can remember having such irrational desires. For example, I have in the past desired for things to stay the same yet for things to change, something which clearly is impossible. Another objection might be that irrational desires are not a problem for preference hedonism since it does not prescribe the fulfillment of all desires but rather the fulfillment of as many as possible, irrational desires should thus be ignored. That objection might work for these simple cases but if we continue our line of reasoning, I suspect that it will not be enough. The second problem concerns changing desires. Our desires are constantly in flux, for every desire we fulfill, we gain another and change others. But given that we know that our desires will change and that we will always have new desires, how does it make sense to strive towards fulfilling our desires? We might fulfill a desire merely to find ourselves desiring the opposite of what we previously desired. We might for example want to give away one of our possessions just to want it given back as soon as we gave it away. It might be objected that such an occurrence is quite unlikely but even if we accept that, we must still contend with the fact that our desires seldom becomes fewer as we fulfill them. If fulfilling our desires is something good independent of how many our desires are afterwards it would seem to have two strange consequences. The first is that it would be rational to have as many desires as possible at the same time since that would increase the chances of our desires being fulfilled. The second is that the reason that fulfilling a desire is good is not that the desire is eliminated. To explain why the second consequence is strange, consider the intuitive view that we fulfill desires because we want to get rid of them. Hunger is a good example of this, when we are hungry we feel uncomfortable and thus desire to satisfy our hunger. On this view, desires is something we want to avoid in the same way we want to avoid pain. This cannot be true for preference hedonism to be true. This brings us to the first consequence. According to preference hedonism, we would rationally seek to gain as many desires as possible since that would allow us to fulfill as many desires as possible. This seems strange since it would mean that we simultaneously would want to have as many fulfilled desires as possible and as many unfulfilled desires as possible. Maybe the preference hedonist can argue that this isn't contradictory or irrational but I certainly cannot help but find such a life to be quite vulgar. If we say that the fulfillment of desires is pleasure or pleasurable as the preference hedonist claims, then would it not be natural to say that unfulfilled desires is pain or painful? The preference hedonist may perhaps escape this problem if they claim that the fulfillment of desires is not good independent of how many desires we have afterwards. We would thus want to limit our desires and prioritize the fulfillment of desires which are likely to not result in new desires. This would of course be more palatable in my view since it would be a view which advocated for the virtue of moderation. The fundamental problem such a view would have however, is that it would seem to either to advocate for people to preferably lack desires (assuming that everything else stays the same) and thus never fulfilling any desires or it would advocate having only one desire at a time and fulfilling it as soon as possible. The first alternative seems self-defeating and the second seems to only differ from the position we wanted to avoid in terms of degree. The third problem concerns unsatisfactory fulfillment of desires. Consider the cases in which you have fulfilled one or more of your desires. Has this always (except in cases in which something bad happened during about the same time) been followed by a feeling of satisfaction or happiness? I would wager that it hasn't. It would seem then, that fulfilling your desires doesn't necessarily make you feel more fulfilled. It is not hard to imagine a person who fulfills all of their desires yet does not feel satisfied or happy. It is not the case, as one might think, that this person has the unfulfilled desires of feeling happy and satisfied, rather they, after fulfilling their desires, always have new desires. They buy their dream house just to immediately desire a new car, they buy a new car just to desire to go on a trip to Hawaii and so on. What's worse, they might fulfill their desires just to regret what they did and feel bad about it. This is not something which can be dismissed as a mere anomaly, while my example might be somewhat extreme it contains something which we can all experience. Here the preference hedonist might make a distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic desires. When we are not satisfied by the fulfillment of our desires, they might say, it is because we tried but failed to fulfill an intrinsic desire by fulfilling an extrinsic desire. This may explain away some cases but to apply this explanation to all of them has the appearance of special pleading. It may be true that we are not satisfied by the fulfillment of extrinsic desires but that does not mean that all unsatisfactory fulfillment of desires are the fulfillment of extrinsic desires. We have all done many things we desired which we either regretted or which ultimately did not satisfy us, many of these desires were intrinsic. But given that, how can preference hedonism be true? It says, after all, that fulfilling our intrinsic desires means that we live a fulfilling life, "the good life". The preference hedonist may respond that finding a few exceptions will not undermine their position since all they need to claim is that it in general will be the case that fulfilling one's desires will result in a better life. The question I would like to pose is if that is true for everyone, something which we will soon examine. The fourth problem concerns the egocentric nature of desires. This problem is closely related to the experience machine thought experiment as it can be used to counter the objection that it relies on the concept of unfelt or unknown harm. We might object to preference hedonism on the grounds that it ignores the relations we have to other people and how they contributes to our well-being. The rejoinder will of course be that it does not since this would be included within our desires, we desire the company of others and therefore our well-being is increased by the company of others. I would argue however, that this misses the point. Our relations to others contributes to our well-being even if we did not generally desire the company of others. The company of others is psychologically healthy and it makes our life more meaningful among other benefits. An important part of the good life is therefore the cultivation of and a pro-social attitude towards the relations one has with other people. This is something which preference hedonism can't fully capture since everyone does not always desire the things which thus far has been listed. The experience machine is a case in which we may lose these things since it merely fulfills our desires which may not always contain pro-social ones. The fifth problem concerns the desires of the mentally ill. This problem more or less combines all the previous problems into one since the desires of the mentally ill often are irrational, changing, unsatisfactory and egocentric. Take the psychopathic sadist which I referred to in my first comment for example, such a person revels in causing suffering for others. What would the preference hedonist say about such a person? Would they say that such a person in fact is living a happy, meaningful and fulfilling life when he satisfies his desires? It would seem that they would have to say that in order to stay consistent. But it seems to be something wrong in saying this, it seems akin to saying that a person who itches continually can live a good life by scratching his or her itch continually. Perhaps one might object that we cannot have just one desire, we must fulfill more than one in order to live a good life. But consider a person for whom the vast majority of desires includes self-destructive or anti-social activities as sometimes is the case for the mentally ill. Could we really say that such a person can live a good life by fulfilling their desires? I'm certain that most could not and the reason should be obvious, the mere fact that we multiply the number of itches (or their equivalents in this case) as well as the number of hands scratching them (so to speak) cannot make the life one leads to be happy, meaningful and fulfilling. With this I think preference hedonism has been refuted but I know that there will always be those who will cling to their beliefs no matter how many or powerful counter-arguments one brings against that belief. I would give arguments for my view (that the good life consists of a virtuous and productive life but I have already written too much text for what is appropriate for a RU-vid-comment.
To start, you said the "good life" was a life desired by the individual, not moral good. I think preference hedonism does give a good account of what it means to want something and then get it. The objections, I think, still seem to be about the moral good. If your life were an illusion, you shouldn't want it they seem to insist, but that's a moral position and has not much to do with whether a person actually wants it. In the first example of the couple that wants to get moving, I think whether the knowledgeable one is should have more happiness (or not) depends on what other 1st order intrinsic desires like the desire to solve a problem or be lazy might be in play.
The hypothetical person would have a perfect life would have a bad life. According to occupational science, we define ourselves as much by our failures as our successes. A failure let us engage in the activity to do better the next time if we care about that intensely. A success would just be interpreted as success and then we'd move on. Being engaged in what we do give us happiness, I have a personality where I have to have different challenges all the time. If I have a job where everything is by rote then eventually I tune out mentally since my pattern recognition is so good I can eventually predict what'll happen, If that person's only prediction is "success" then they'll eventually tune out and find it boring Perfection is imperfect. It can also be seen in how we often value the imperfect higher than the perfect, especially amongst collectors where an imperfect printing is rarer and thus more valuable. To anyone else, it would just be a mistake which we would use to prevent further mistakes. This is a philosophical argument that shows its age as it has been answered by advances in behavioural science.
I like your view. I mean, if others say you are living a good life but you don't feel it is so, then that's what matters for that individual, right? Maybe you can live a bad life (generally agreed or seen as so by some), yet subjectively, individually, you may find happiness in it. So you are happy. I think the difference is between ethics and benefit.
Maybe the only real intrinsic desire is a certain mental state, and what we call intrinsic desires (like seeing a friend or watching a movie) is only the association we have with this mental state. All desires for things to happen outside of you, are actually really extrinsic desires, because what you really desire is a certain mental state. If this mental state were to be reached by a different method, say by drugs and/or virtual reality, this intrinsic desire would be satisfied as well.
