Kane says three things that I’ve often heard from anti-realists who do not understand Parfit’s moral realist arguments and, I confess, these misunderstandings were also mine. *(1) Pain does not have intrinsic disvalue because it isn’t necessarily bad for everyone - take Buddhist monks, for example, who can reduce or eliminate their suffering through meditation.* This point is irrelevant because it’s the suffering normally associated with pain that matters. Buddhist monks use meditation to reduce their suffering because they understand that suffering has intrinsic disvalue. *(2) The fact that I know your suffering is bad for you does not entail that I will care about it. I might even want you to suffer.* This point is irrelevant to Parfit's realism because he is not talking about what will motivate us or what we will care about. He provides an example of a man called Scarlet who doesn’t even care about his own future suffering. In one example, Scarlet is not motivated to avoid a few minutes’ mild discomfort later today even though he understands that this will cause him to experience an hour of agony tomorrow. Scarlet knows that the agony will be far worse for him than the mild discomfort, but he just doesn’t care. If we use “a reason” to mean “being motivated”, then Scarlet has no reason to care more about avoiding his hour of agony tomorrow than his few minutes’ mild discomfort today, but Parfit is not using this instrumental sense of “a reason”. When he says that Scarlet has “a reason” to care about his future agony he means that the way Scarlet’s suffering will feel to him; i.e. his intense dislike of that feeling, gives him a reason or counts in favour of him wanting to avoid it. But that does not entail that Scarlet will want to avoid it, it just suggests that Scarlet would be irrational/stupid/crazy if he didn’t. People can be indifferent to their own future suffering and, when they are, Parfit thinks that they are making a mistake. Just as we may not care about our own future suffering, we may not care about other people’s suffering despite understanding that it will be bad for them. And we can still acknowledge that a happy world is better than a miserable one without caring about it. We could channel Nietzche and “entertain the hope that life may one day become more evil and more full of suffering than it has ever been.” The point here is not that we will necessarily care about what is better or worse for people, only that things really are better and worse for them. That gives us a reason to care, but it does not force us to care any more than Scarlet can be forced to care more about his hour of agony tomorrow than his few minutes’ mild discomfort later today. *(3) To say that the experience of pain reveals its badness seems to say no more than that we don’t desire to experience what we don’t desire or that we don’t value what we don’t value.* Realists like Parfit are not saying something so trivial. They are saying that, if we are sensible, we will desire what we will like. That’s not the same as desiring what we will desire or valuing what we will value. When referring to pleasure and pain, the words “liking” and “desiring” can mark out different mental states. The first word “liking” can be used to describe how our present sensation feels to us, about which we have little if any choice, the second word “desiring” can be used to describe looking forward to what we want to experience in the future, about which we do have some choice. A prudent person will desire what they will like. This is not a mere tautology, but a substantive claim. Anti-realists often miss this. (I did.) This distinction is also central to debates about the adequacy of desire satisfaction theory. Parfit provides a number of arguments against desire satisfaction that philosophers have found persuasive. In one, an altruistic drug pusher makes people addicted to a certain drug because he knows that he will be able to satisfy their intense desire for the drug, which he will supply at no cost for the rest of their lives. The drug brings no pleasure at all, but also does no harm, as long as the desire for it can be met soon after it begins. According to desire satisfaction theory, the altruistic drug pusher is benefiting the people he has addicted, but who would think their lives would go better for them if they were addicted in this way? It’s important to remember that these kinds of arguments are not intended as incontrovertible proofs. They appeal to some intuitions that, I believe, most people find inherently plausible (“self-evident”) without being based on further intuitions. Philosophical certainty is hard to come by. Jeremy Bentham understood this. He asked about his principle of utility, ‘Is it susceptible of any direct proof?’ and answered that it is not, for ‘that which is used to prove everything else, cannot itself be proved: a chain of proofs must have their commencement somewhere’. In other words, any argument has to start with some assumptions and, if someone disagrees with our assumptions, there should be no surprise if they disagree with our conclusion.
Suffering is intrinsically bad. It's the degree to which we dislike an experience that matters. Kane refers to Buddhist monks whose meditation techniques can reduce the suffering caused by painful experiences. They would understand that it's the suffering that is intrinsically bad, not the pain itself. Kane says _“When you say the badness of pain is revealed in the experience itself, it’s kind of a tautology. You’re just saying that you desire not to experience the things that you don’t desire.”_ I think he would benefit from reading _On What Matters,_ Vol 1 Ch 6, where Derek Parfit draws a relevant distinction between “meta-hedonic desires” and “hedonic liking”. It was analyses like Parfit’s that pushed me and others away from desire satisfaction as an adequate account of wellbeing. To cut things brutally short, Parfit is not saying that we desire what we desire, but that, if we are sensible, we will desire what we will like. The words “liking” and “desiring” mark out different mental states. The first is how our present sensation feels to us, about which we have little if any choice, the second is looking forward to what we want to experience in the future, about which we do have choice. A prudent person will want what they will like. Parfit provides some striking examples of imprudent people, like Scarlet who, despite being fully aware of the consequences, prefers to avoid a few minutes’ mild discomfort later today more than an hour of full-blown agony tomorrow. Parfit is telling us that there really are better ways for Scarlet to live his life, and that anyone who disagrees is mistaken. That represents a kind of "stance independent" assessment, though Parfit is arguing that this would be the stance of any sensible/rational person who gave adequate consideration to the matter. I agree with him. Suffering is intrinsically bad for all sentient beings. And it’s not about them not desiring it, as Kane seems to assume, it’s about them not liking it. That's what gives them their reason not to want it. I believe that it's best to read Parfit himself. The clarity, precision and force of his arguments help explain why _On What Matters_ is the most peer-reviewed work in academic philosophy. That's all the more impressive given that the previous work to earn that accolade was Parfit's own _Reasons and Persons._ No surprise that some of Parfit's peers call him "a philosophical genius", "the greatest moral philosopher since Kant", and "the greatest philosopher of his generation". He changed many minds. Of course, plenty of people disagree with Parfit. That's philosophy for you!
Interesting video - I have generally found the 'hot stove' argument compelling, so good to hear a rebuttal. I think it works something like this: Pain has the phenomenal property that it's intrinsically unpleasant, it is not *defined by* the fact that I desire it to stop. We have evolved to feel pain as unpleasant, to have a behavioural/desire response to the qualia to stop it - that's its purpose. The intrinsic unpleasantness of the experience is *generally yoked to* the desire to make it stop, rather than being identical to, for good evolutionary reasons. The counter examples of burning monks etc show how the intrinsically bad phenomenal properties of the pain experience can, with training, be de-coupled from the desire/behavioural response. Equally, one could conceivably have pain experience simultaneously with a desire for it to continue. This highlights that there is an intrinsic nature to pain that is different to its behavioural/desire/dispositional functions (i.e. functionalism is rubbish and qualia have to be taken seriously, but we knew that anyway). The fact that the two aspects (function and qualia) can be decoupled in some unusual circs doesn't convince me that the qualia are not intrinsically bad. They are intrinsically bad because evolution made them that way: without unpleasant phenomenal properties they wouldn't work in generating the appropriate functional/behavioural outcomes. So, while I agree that "pain is intrinsically bad" isn't true in the watertight sense that philosophers like, it's true in the sense that it's almost always true and has good reasons for being that way, the way laypeople and scientists (except physicists) think about truth. For me, this is sufficient basis to go forward with a constructivist approach that says we're all be better off if our actions tend to minimise suffering and generate wellbeing. Is this a form of realism? It's saying there's right and wrong answers discoverable by analysing facts about how human or conscious creatures feel. But it's certainly not saying that moral truths exist independent of human consciousness. Get well soon xx
What do you find compelling about the hot stove argument? I find it to be remarkably uncompelling. Part of the problem is that I do not even know what the argument is supposed to demonstrate. I don't see how you get to any kind of stance-independent badness, nor does that even strike me as intelligible. To me, it sounds a lot like someone insisting that when they eat cake, they experience its "intrinsic tastiness." As though its tastiness is something other than an evaluative stance they take towards their experience of the cake, and instead represents some property about the cake or the world independent of their attitude about it. I don't have many philosophical intuitions, but this strikes me as obviously absurd. And pain doesn't strike me as any different than this. //Pain has the phenomenal property that it's intrinsically unpleasant// Yea, I suppose this is what I'm denying: I don't know if there are "phenomenal properties" of this kind. I don't think it is part of the phenomenology of any experience that the experience is bad. That it is bad seems to be a distinct mental state *about* the experience, rather than part of the experience itself. For instance, I wouldn't think it made any sense to describe the experience of playing a game as "intrinsically fun." Whether the game is fun or not is an attitude one has about the game. Likewise, whether an experience is bad or not is an attitude about the experience, rather than part of the experience. I think people mistakenly project their own theoretical stances or attitudes about an experience to the experience itself, a kind of phenomenological / non-phenomenological conflation that causes them to bake their inferences about their phenomenology into the phenomenology. //it is not defined by the fact that I desire it to stop// Well, if you didn't desire it to stop, in what respect would it be bad? Bad to who? //The counter examples of burning monks etc show how the intrinsically bad phenomenal properties of the pain experience can, with training, be de-coupled from the desire/behavioural response.// This seems more conceptually extravagant than just being an antirealist about "badness." //For me, this is sufficient basis to go forward with a constructivist approach that says we'll all be better off if our actions tend to minimise suffering and generate wellbeing. // Why would this follow? Even if my painful experiences were usually or even always bad for me, that doesn't mean they're bad for or according to anyone else. Someone else could want me to suffer, or be indifferent to my suffering. What facts would that person be getting wrong if they wanted to cause me suffering? I can't see any. They could agree I would suffer if they tortured me, but far from that disincentivizing them to do so, it could be why they want me to suffer. //Is this a form of realism? It's saying there's right and wrong answers discoverable by analysing facts about how human or conscious creatures feel.// It seems to me you only end up with facts about what how good or bad experiences are for the people experiencing them. It's unclear to me why we should consider this to be morality. Lots of people are not going to assign the same moral status to everyone's good and bad experiences, and are going to moralize things other than how good or bad experiences are, so it's not clear why we should restrict morality just to experiential states.
@@lanceindependent //I don't see how you get to any kind of stance-independent badness [from the hot stove argument], nor does that even strike me as intelligible.// Your objection to value realism is "who's to say that suffering is bad?" and my response is "everyone!". What's compelling here is that there really is universal preference in which having your hand not on the stove is better than having your hand on the stove (ignoring the counter-examples of the burning monks). We've got something here to motivate our actions which is universal. Suffering is real; it affects everyone; you can't reason, or lie, or feel your way out of it; it's a fact of the world on which we can, if we want, base an understanding of right and wrong. I add "if we want" because I think we construct this system of morality, it isn't Real. // To me, it sounds a lot like someone insisting that when they eat cake, they experience its "intrinsic tastiness." And pain doesn't strike me as any different than this.// The difference is pretty clear to me: some people like cake and others don't. I like some cakes but not others. Sometimes I've just eaten three cakes and the last thing I want is another bloody cake. Pain, on the other hand is universal: the experience of the hot stove is not something you like or dislike depending on whether you're in the mood, or whether the stove is a state of the art Aga or a crappy electric one. It hurts! Every time, for everyone. And unless you're a zen monk trying to prove a point, you take your hand off it, pronto. The experience of eating your favourite food when you're hungry *is* intrinsically tasty, but it's very contingent. //I suppose this is what I'm denying: I don't know if there are "phenomenal properties" of this kind.// OK, so you're a zombie. Not much point in discussing the properties of conscious experience with someone who doesn't have them. Off to Dennett-land with you! // I wouldn't think it made any sense to describe the experience of playing a game as "intrinsically fun." // No one would claim that playing a game was "intrinsically fun". The best claim one could make is that playing a game is likely to move your conscious state in a direction of fun, in normal circs. No one who's just stumbled upon the mutilated body of a loved one is going to experience the fun of playing a game. The fun is a property of your experience, not of the game. Hot stoves are very reliable stimuli of bad experiences, games not so of fun ones. //Well, if you didn't desire it to stop, in what respect would it be bad? Bad to who?// I do desire it to stop, but that's not sufficient to define it. Pain is the quale, wanting it to stop is the function it serves. //Even if my painful experiences were usually or even always bad for me, that doesn't mean they're bad for or according to anyone else// I agree there's more needed to get from the sort of value realism implied by the hot stove argument to Harris-style utilitarianism. The argument is "all other things being equal, the world in which fewer people's hands are on hot stoves is preferable, because we can all agree that we don't like our hands being on hot stoves". I think your question is, "but what if one hand on a hot stove means a hundred people experience tasty cakes?". This is an empirical question of psychology: is it plausible that causing suffering, or even knowing about the suffering of others, makes human beings happy? I can't be certain, but if other people are anything like me, then when they cause suffering in others, they feel bad. We evolved this way, it allows us to cooperate in societies. If you believe that in general, when people cause suffering to others they feel great, or are indifferent, then your objection holds. This just doesn't chime with my experience of making other people feel good and bad, or make any sense when looking at how societies work. I do wonder whether moral egoism is actually on the money. If we really knew what would make us happy, perhaps we'd help others and live our lives conducive to minimising suffering and maximising human suffering, similar to utilitarianism? //What facts would that person be getting wrong if they wanted to cause me suffering?// I'm defending constructivism, not realism. If you've reflected on your experiences realised that suffering is bad, and you've used some practical reasoning to decide that a world with less of it is preferable, then when you choose your actions there are right and wrong answers *within that constructed framework*. If you choose to inflict suffering without good justification then you haven't got facts wrong, you're being inconsistent. I can't make you sign up to this constructed framework, but I can ask, "so what have you got to offer me instead as a way to evaluate behaviour and make moral choices?". I used to be a moral nihilist, but I think we can do better than that. //Lots of people are not going to assign the same moral status to everyone's good and bad experiences, and are going to moralize things other than how good or bad experiences are, so it's not clear why we should restrict morality just to experiential states.// It only works as a description of morality if you believe in a natural world and there's no competing (supernatural/nonsense) beliefs. If you think there's a god that has some say about right and wrong, or that there are some mysterious duties we all must comply with derived from who knows what, then I agree there's no reason we should all care about each others' conscious states. If you're actively searching the void for something to anchor moral beliefs to, then the experiences of conscious creatures seems to me to be the only game in town. As I said, what alternative have you got to offer?
I find most pain unpleasant, but what is meant by the claim that it's intrinsically unpleasant, and how would we establish that it's intrinsically unpleasant, as opposed to merely unpleasant from a particular point of view? It's especially puzzling to me to say that an experience is intrinsically bad, but the person undergoing the experience might nevertheless desire it to continue just for its own sake (which you seem to grant is possible). In that case it's not bad even from the point of view of the person having the experience, let alone "intrinsically", or least that's how it seems to me. I'm genuinely not sure how to interpret your view here.
Also... >> For me, this is sufficient basis to go forward with a constructivist approach that says we're all be better off if our actions tend to minimise suffering and generate wellbeing What's the reason for preferring this to a constructivist approach that instead focuses on satisfying people's desires? (Or "fully informed desires", or whatever.) That way, we wouldn't have to worry about identifying which experiences are intrinsically good or bad. Maybe there are some people who desire to experience pain for its own sake -- well then, pain is good for them, and society would be better off if we could figure out a way to inflict pain on them without violating their other desires (say, a "pain machine" that doesn't cause bodily damage). This strikes me as a much more straightforward way of developing the kind of constructivist position you suggest. After all, why should I care if something is intrinsically bad, if I happen to desire it even when fully informed about what it's like?
@@jonstewart464 //Your objection to value realism is "who's to say that suffering is bad?" and my response is "everyone!". /// That is not exactly my objection. As an aside, I have a personal dislike of the phrase “Who’s to say?” as I think it’s fairly unclear what this means. At any rate, when you say “everyone” in response to this, well, what do you mean exactly? Are you claiming that everyone considers pain bad in a stance-independent way, or that everyone finds their own pain to be bad, or something else? For instance, imagine there was some food that all people on earth liked. Let’s say it was pizza. The fact that everyone considers pizza good does not entail that everyone thinks pizza “is good” in a stance-independent way. That is, the mere fact that people agree about pizza being good (an first-order evaluative stance towards pizza) does not entail that they have a second-order meta-evaluative stance towards pizza (that it is good independent of their subjective evaluation that it is, or it has the property of objective goodness, or something like that). So, I want to be clear on what you’re claiming: that everyone agrees about pain being bad as a first-order evaluative stance, or as a second-order meta-evaluative stance? //What's compelling here is that there really is universal preference in which having your hand not on the stove is better than having your hand on the stove // Everyone sharing the same first-order evaluative standards would not indicate that there is a stance-independent evaluative fact in accordance with that agreement. So I’m not quite sure what the claim is. //ignoring the counter-examples of the burning monks// I don’t think we should ignore these counterexamples, so that’s a substantive problem. It won’t be very convincing to say “aside from counterexamples to this claim, this claim is true” if the counterexamples are the very point made to demonstrate that the claim isn’t true. And if the claim is one of universality, and we can find people for whom something isn’t the case, then it’s not universal. Near-universal isn’t universal. //Suffering is real; it affects everyone; you can't reason, or lie, or feel your way out of it; it's a fact of the world on which we can, if we want, base an understanding of right and wrong.// Let’s say it’s a fact everyone suffers. This seems very far from a sufficient foundation for a system of right and wrong. What follows from that? (I’m setting aside for now the issue of not knowing what exactly you have in mind by suffering) //I add "if we want" because I think we construct this system of morality, it isn't Real.// Okay, if that’s the case I wouldn’t consider you a realist. My primary concern is with objecting to realism. //Pain, on the other hand is universal: the experience of the hot stove is not something you like or dislike depending on whether you're in the mood, // I disagree: I think it *is* something you can like or dislike depending on your mood, unless you stipulate only instances of touching hot stoves that cause people to have experiences they dislike, and then you’d be stuck in the tautology. So either it isn’t the case that it’s universal to dislike touching a hot stove, or you’re just stipulating only those instances where it is, which is tautologous. This is similar to the point Kane raises in the video. //. It hurts! Every time, for everyone. // What do you mean by “hurts”? We have pain receptors, and our brain can detect them. But we do not always dislike our pain. We can enjoy our pain. So if by “hurts” you mean merely to recapitulate awareness of the pain response, as in “I am aware I’m in pain,” it does *not* follow that people are suffering or that it is bad, because this experience is consistent with liking, wanting, and enjoying the pain. If instead by “hurts” that it is the kind of experience that a person must necessarily dislike, then all your position amounts to is that it is possible to stipulate “a set of experiences such that all those having them dislike having them,” which would bring you right back to stance-dependence and does not get you to pain being “intrinsically” bad or stance-independently bad. I don’t see how you’re escaping the dilemma in the video: every response I’ve seen to the antirealist’s rejection that pain is “bad” in some way inconsistent with antirealism is either that it’s false (or at least, not obviously true), or a tautology that is trivial and actually inconsistent with antirealism. //The experience of eating your favourite food when you're hungry is intrinsically tasty, but it's very contingent. // I’m not sure what you mean by “intrinsic” if that’s the case. We could just say that the experience of eating something under conditions in which stipulate that you like eating that thing are situations in which you like eating that thing. Which is a tautology. If that isn’t what you mean, then I don’t know what you mean or what is added or different about saying anything is “intrinsically” tasty. One way I’d want to address this issue is to ask anyone that thinks things can be “intrinsically” good or bad or tasty and so on to explain what they mean without using “intrinsic” or some substitute term. //OK, so you're a zombie.// I don’t think zombies are conceivable, so I don’t think I am a zombie. //Not much point in discussing the properties of conscious experience with someone who doesn't have them. Off to Dennett-land with you!// This is an amusing response, but if our fundamental disagreements concern the nature of consciousness, your views on pain/morality depend on those views, and those views are mistaken, then your position on pain/morality are going to be mistaken too. My position is more extreme than Dennett’s. I do not endorse illusionism. Instead, I endorse meta-illusionism and qualia quietism: I don’t simply claim that it seems to people like they have qualia, but they don’t: I deny that it seems to people like they have qualia. I think the concept of qualia, like stance-independent normative facts, is vacuous and unintelligible, and that the discussion surrounding qualia and the hard problem of consciousness is a pseudoproblem constructed by philosophers; it involves a mutually interdefining and ultimately vacuous set of terms that have no intelligible referent, i.e., it’s a bit like saying “I have X” and when pressed on what X is, saying “X is Y,” and that “Y is Z” and that “Z is X.” I regard the persistence of the notion of qualia as a kind of contagious intellectual error induced by training or reflection in psychology coupled with a predisposition to make the mistake born of preexisting features of human cognition; hence philosophy has crafted a kind of meta-illusion: the illusory appearance that people are subject to an illusion, when in fact few if anyone actually is and the whole conversation is attributable to linguistic and conceptual errors that, once clarified, result in the problem dissolving (hence qualia quietism). Your response regarding the comparison may have missed my point. My point is that we have little trouble understanding that our evaluative stance towards experiential states is external to the states themselves in other contexts; that there’s a much closer correspondence between pain and us having a negative evaluative stance towards the state may give the impression that the experience is itself bad, but it isn’t; it’s just like games in that to the extent that pain is good or bad, it can only be good-to-you or bad-to-you as an evaluative stance about the state; it isn’t part of the phenomenology. //Pain is the quale, wanting it to stop is the function it serves.// I don’t agree that pain necessarily functions to motivate acting so as to stop it. Pain may have evolved primarily for this function but it isn’t the only or exclusive function. In any case, I don’t believe in pain quale. //The argument is "all other things being equal, the world in which fewer people's hands are on hot stoves is preferable, because we can all agree that we don't like our hands being on hot stoves". I// That such a world is better does not follow from the fact that we all agree we do not like our hands being on hot stoves. So I am not sure what the argument is, but I don’t think it could be this. //I think your question is, "but what if one hand on a hot stove means a hundred people experience tasty cakes?". // No, that is not my question. //This is an empirical question of psychology: is it plausible that causing suffering, or even knowing about the suffering of others, makes human beings happy? // There is a definitive answer to this: Yes. Some people like inflicting pain on others, and this is illustrated by the fact that they go out of their way to do so, and will tell you that they like doing it. I see no reason not to take them at their word. //I can't be certain, but if other people are anything like me, then when they cause suffering in others, they feel bad.// Psychopaths and sadists exist. And lots of humans often feel retributive impulses or otherwise enjoy hurting others. Think of bullies or how people used to enjoy watching executions. //As I said, what alternative have you got to offer? // My goal is to argue against moral realism.
I agree. I would perhaps say that the value of pain is relative to a combination of genetics, personal history, and institutional setting. For certain people in certain settings certain pains are bad; and vice versa. Get well soon!
Talk about indifference to agony is incoherent. If one is indifferent to it, then it is not agony. I am one of those people who experienced, as a result of taking pain killers, a case where I had the sensations of pain but was indifferent to it. I learned that this is because pain is processed in two different parts of the brain. The sensation is processed in the cerebral cortex (what is called the sensory homunculus), while MAKE IT STOP! is processed in the limbic system. These drugs inhibit the limbic system, allowing a person to experience the sensation without the MAKE IT STOP! I was not indifferent to agony. In virtue of my indifference to the sensation, there was no agony. The limbic system has to be activated for it to be agony. But, if the limbic system is activated, then one is not indifferent. Also, a sensation can be associated with both pain and pleasure - the pain system of the brain and pleasure system of the brain are two different systems. So, it is possible that an agent can have a pain sensation (processed in the sensory homunculus), lack an aversion to the sensation (processed in the limbic system), and experience pleasure (processed in the amygdala). But it is incoherent to call this agony (which requires that the limbic system be activated) and say that the individual is indifferent (which requires that the limbic system not be activated). Now, a question: Can it be an objective, stance-independent fact of the world that a particular agent's pain sensation is accompanied by an activation of the limbic system motivating a "make it stop" response? Can this be objectively true? It is true that pain contains no objective, intrinsic prescriptivity. However, the badness of pain where it exists is very real. It is not the case that the limbic system of the brain has been activated only if somebody believes this to be the case or desires that it be the case. It is an objective, knowable, even empirically verifiable fact. I can verify it with respect to my own limbic system whenever a physical sensation is accompanied by a "make it stop!" response.
I want to take a jab at this. I agree that the definition of pain which states that "pain is that which is not desirable" is not a good way to establish. A better definition in my opinion is "pain is a bad sensation". The badness of this phenomenal property in my opinion at least is irreducible, so I don't think it makes sense to ask as to what makes a sensation bad. If I were to stub my toe and say that it feels bad and then a robot comes over and says "what makes the feeling bad". I wouldn't be able to describe the "badness", and I think pretty much anyone who's felt pain can agree that this is the stopping point. About the monks and hypothetical people who may be indifferent to pain or perhaps willing to seek pain, I would say that we need to clarify a few things first. Pain can seeked. I as a value realist and a moral realist would not deny this. But no one seeks pain for it's own sake. If people seek pain, it isn't for the pain itself, but for the greater pleasures or greater goods which come about. If I watch a scary movie, I don't seek the fear in it of itself, but the excitement which the fear causes. The monk who burned himself alive for instance didn't just burn himself for its own sake. He burned himself alive as a form of protest against the government if I'm not mistaken. Yes, he looked quite calm, but the value realist can arguably explain that. Some people can find ways to resist certain pains. If I'm about to get a shot, I might try to distract myself to resist or ignore the pain. Not the best analogy, but hopefully it helps. Lastly, I think the value anti-realist will have trouble explaining certain things. Why is it that certain sensations and phenomenal experiences motivate organisms to do certain? Why is it that organisms seek to avoid or seek to gain certain experiences for their own sake? What is it about these experiences which causes these things? I think the value anti-realist has an unsatisfactory stopping place.
>> But no one seeks pain for it's own sake Unless you're just defining "pain" as a state that is not desired, or something along those lines, I see no reason to accept this. And if you are defining "pain" that way, then this is just a tautology. >> If I watch a scary movie, I don't seek the fear in it of itself, but the excitement which the fear causes That might be the case for you, but as far as I can tell, it isn't the case for me or many other people. I've never felt like "hedonic compensation" theories of painful art ring true to my own experience or motivations. When I engage with such artworks, I usually enjoy experiencing those apparently "negative" emotions for their own sake. (It's been a while since I've read up on this, but Aaron Smuts's "rich experience" account struck me as being more plausible.) >> Not the best analogy, but hopefully it helps The problem is that they do not view this in terms of "resisting" the pain. It's literally that the pain just doesn't bother them. That's the impression I've had, from reading about such people. Of course, they might be lying, or mistaken about their own experiences, or whatever. >> I think the value anti-realist will have trouble explaining certain things Those questions are a matter for psychologists, biologists, etc., and I don't see how postulating stance-independent facts about value gets us anywhere in providing explanations of those phenomena.
Hey, real extreme long term Zen practitioner here. It is not that you distract yourself from the pain in a way as not to feel. You actually feel the pain more than the regular person does, because you are directly experiencing it and not overlaying it with a bunch of mental thoughts about it. If I stubbed my toe badly for example, I would still physiologically react the same as you, and I would feel more of the actual sensation because it's not crowded with competing psychological commentaries and sensations about the pain. But all the while my well being wouldn't be effected. There simply stops being inner commentary that "this is bad, this is negative" that inner commentary stops existing. You are not distracted, you feel the pain more than ever. But the pain simply has lost its ability to make you suffer. I can get my teeth drilled without numbing, I feel the extreme pain very very deeply, but my well being is utterly uneffected, I'm not distracting myself, I'm feeling it, but there simply fails to be any judgement about it one way or the other, it is neither good nor bad, it is simply neutral, and I go on my merry way as happy as ever. Even if pain wasn't sought out and was a surprise, it would have zero effect on my happiness. If we were an entire society of long term zen practitioners your framework would simply fall apart and no longer make sense. Thus your thesis is contingent on the fact we don't culturally put emphasis on long term meditative practices.
// A better definition in my opinion is "pain is a bad sensation". // What would it mean for a sensation to be "bad"? How could that be the case? What would that mean? Part of my concern with positions contrary to Kane is that they strike me as unintelligible, and that we have clear, alternative, antirealist explanations for what people are saying, doing, thinking that make better sense (in fact, I don't think anything else is even coherent, but I'm open to someone explaining what it would mean for pain to be bad in a nonrelativistic way that makes sense). //I wouldn't be able to describe the "badness", and I think pretty much anyone who's felt pain can agree that this is the stopping point. // When I experience pain, I usually consider it bad. I do not experience "badness," and have no idea what that could possibly mean. So our experiences appear to differ here. I think the notion that my pain isn't simply something I consider bad, but that I am experiencing "badness" itself is incomprehensible and an unnecessary and extravagent inference tacked onto an otherwise mundane experience explicable in antirealist terms. For comparison: if I eat a chocolate truffle, I will typically consider this a good experience. I enjoy how it tastes, and consider it tasty. But I do not think I'm "experiencing tastiness." This seems like a strange and unnecessary reification of the concept of "tastiness," as though my experience of a thing is itself a part of the world, or that there is some special realm of facts that I am accessing when eating food...or something else. I'm not sure, because I struggle to make sense of normative and evaluative realists who believe that realism comes right out of their phenomenology. It's not part of my phenomenology!
@@unknownknownsphilosophy7888 Hey I am very interested in achieving this state of indifference you have described. I have an intellectual fascination of zen and I would like to experience what it is like to not have a representational interpretation to my inner life. I saw your conversation with Kane and enjoyed it. I was wondering what form of meditation you would recommend to reach this state?
Well, I will consider myself of the moral realist stance, but I don't think that any existent thing is intrinsically bad. If smth exists it is good, because it is good enough to exist.
Yeah, to be clear, I don't want to suggest that all moral realists would endorse this kind of view. It's more common among moral naturalists, but even in that case, there are other ways of defending moral naturalism. (As far as I can tell, a naturalist like Peter Railton, who I did a video on recently, would agree with the views I express in this video.)
Something just to consider, is how Plato’s Euthyphro dilemma could also be applied to this question. Is pain bad because it is preferred against, or, Is pain preferred against because it is bad? If the former hypothesis is true, then it would seem that those that prefer to not be in pain have no reasons to justify their dispreference, since there is no fact about the pain itself that the subject is aware of that would support their judgment regarding what actions they should do in avoiding it or seeking it out, given their knowledge. However, if we consider the second thesis, then it seems that those who disprefer experiencing pain do have a reason which justifies their dispreference, since there is some fact of the matter regarding that experience which would ensure that a rational actor aware of these facts would never choose to be in pain (all other factors being equal), and, the intrinsic negative qualities of pain would ensure that it is no arbitrary matter that a rational person prefers not to be in pain, or prefers to be in pain, as if it were merely a matter of taste.
Anyone who enjoys working out would agree that pain isn't intrinsically bad. Also get well soon mate (also no reason to fear omicron more than delta, the main difference it seems isn't in the severity of the disease).
Not a good example. Compare the pain of working out, which is situated in its context of expectation and anticipated rewards, with the same pain without that context, as in one day you wake up and you have that same pain unexpectedly. There is no silver lining ("I will get stronger and will look better.") and no account of it. Is it still not intrinsically bad?
I hope you get well soon and avoid any issues with covid. I have a few thoughts on this topic I guess. You give two definitions for pain. 1) pain is such that it is not desired - we are motivated to stop the pain (pain is an undesirable state of consciousness). 2) The phenomenal qualities of pain are bad. Singer and Lazari-Radek seem to use 2) but also leave open the option for 1). Colin Marshall takes the view that 3) pain is felt aversion/disvalue and that we sort of bridge the gap between ourselves and others through compassion/empathy. I am most sympathetic towards 2), but 1) and 3) also seem like they are worth exploring. Since I endorse 2), I want to sort of give my thoughts on the Zen monk counter-example: I'm ignorant of Zen monks, so, I may be way off here. But the first sort of question I would want to ask is something like "Is the Zen monk's experience of pain the same (sort/type) experience of pain that non-practitioners are experiencing?" If they differ, then, does an account of that difference provide reason(s) for giving different moral evaluations of pain in each case? Again, ignorance, but is part of Zen monk practice aimed towards disassociating from the experience of pain? To take a sort of indirect observational view of pain as opposed to a direct experiential engagement with the phenomenal experience itself? If the Zen monk is indifferent or unphased by burning themselves alive or placing their hand on a hot stove, then, there seems to be room here for doubting that they are experiencing pain in the same way - if I am understanding this correctly. I want to give two examples here and compare them: 1) A Zen monk places their hand on a hot stove. You have the ability to turn the stove off but do not do so because the monk is indifferent to the pain. 2) An average Joe places their hand on a hot stove. You have the ability to turn the stove off but do not do so despite them being overwhelmed by the pain. These two cases seem morally different to me, I think 2) is morally wrong whereas 1) might not be. --------- You also say that you can understand that pain is really horrible for others, that they may want it to stop - that you can know all the facts of the matter and yet not care about their pain. Worse, you could even want their pain to continue, that you enjoy their pain or seek out some form of retribution. I think there are a number of possible responses available here. Isn't it just possible that there are people who fail to realise or apprehend the badness of pain? Or that there are people lacking in compassion/empathy and that this explains their disposition towards others in pain? Maybe they believe that the instrumental value of pain in some contexts outweighs the intrinsic disvalue of pain. Also, couldn't they just be factually mistaken about, I dunno, things like divine justice and that this sort of thing is leading them astray morally? This post might be unreasonably long for youtube. Anyway, thanks for the video Kane - I think you raise some interesting challenges for my view.
My concern with (2) is that I am not sure what it means, and suspect it may be unintelligible. When you say this "the phenomenal qualities of pain are bad," what does that mean? How can they be "bad"? And what would that mean?
@@lanceindependent These are straightforward questions that you're asking and yet I'm finding it difficult to answer them. I'll attempt to do so, but I may lack the knowledge or attention to detail needed to give a proper account. When I say that pain is bad, I mean that the experience felt is bad. A few examples; the burning sensation of your hand on a stove, the stabbing feeling of a knife in your thigh, or the ache of an infected wisdom tooth. What I am calling 'bad' is some negative feeling that seems to be shared across different kinds/types of pain. I'm not even sure if much introspection is needed here, when I've experienced pain in the past, especially of an extreme sort, the feeling of it being bad is essentially immediate. This is the sort of view defended by Roger Crisp and Aaron Smuts - that feeling bad is a 'feeling tone' or 'felt quality'. On pleasure, Smuts says the following: "Something about pleasurable experiences just feels good. The experience overall has this quality, this tone or hue. It cannot be cleanly extracted from the experience itself. My suggestion is that pleasurable experiences - whether of eating a peach or solving a puzzle - all have this, pick your metaphor, warm hum." Neil Sinhababu: "Occasionally I doubt that pleasure is really good. Seeking evidence, I eat or drink something with a pleasant taste. When I consider my experience, I become convinced again." I don't like to pile on quotes from others, but I feel that I may be doing a disservice to the view by explaining it poorly. Hopefully, what I have said above clears up my meanings a bit. Also, Merry Christmas.
@Just Questions I think it does make sense to say some things are bad. A house is bad if it doesn't have a roof. It can no longer provide shelter and adequaltely perform its activies. A racehorse is bad if its lame, if it can't run like its supposed to. A wolf is bad if it can't hunt properly. X is bad in S, if X inhibits the activities that are typical of the life-form F and S belongs to life form F. Maybe these are not stance-independently bad but only bad from the standpoint of the form of life that S belongs to. But why would we care about anything else? pain is bad because it usually leads to injury which can inhibit our normal activities.
@@frasertierney7044 Thanks. I appreciate the response. I've asked this question to quite a few people and am often disappointed by their answers. I don't think I'm disappointed with yours! Unfortunately, I'm still not convinced. However, often what I have to do is make clear that I'm asking what people mean by "bad," and you address that directly. Specifically, you say this: "What I am calling 'bad' is some negative feeling that seems to be shared across different kinds/types of pain. " You go on to say that it doesn't require much introspection to recognize this. So, here's my concern: I'm a moral antirealist, and I deny pain is intrinsically bad. What I do not deny is that lots of experiences are "bad." I use the word bad to refer to some of my experiences. But what I mean by this is that I consider them bad; they're "bad-to-me" so to speak. I'm not detecting objective badness, or experiencing something anyone else would have to consider "bad." //This is the sort of view defended by Roger Crisp and Aaron Smuts - that feeling bad is a 'feeling tone' or 'felt quality'. // Without knowing more about what they mean by these terms, this isn't going to help me very much, though I appreciate linking your views to other people's claims and terms. //Neil Sinhababu: "Occasionally I doubt that pleasure is really good. Seeking evidence, I eat or drink something with a pleasant taste. When I consider my experience, I become convinced again."// Yea, I've seen this remark before. I don't know what Sinhababu means by "really" since that could mean "very" or it could mean "real" in the sense realists think some things are real (that is, stance-independently) or it could mean something else. I don't recall if Sinhababu directly addressed this remark when I've interacted with him before, but I've directly engaged with him on his thoughts on the matter and read some of his papers and my suspicion that what he's referring to does not make sense is precisely one of the conclusions motivating my objections to claims that "pain is bad." Maybe this question won't cut to the heart of the issue, but when you say that pain is bad, whose pain are you talking about? Is my pain bad? To you? Or does "to you" not make sense? What I do not understand is the use of "bad" in a non-relative way. For instance, if I say "The moon has less mass than the earth," I do not mean this in a relativistic way. But if I say "I think cheese is good," I mean to convey something about my personal subjective preferences about cheese. I don't mean the cheese has "goodness" or that people who think cheese is bad are incorrect. When people say "pain is bad" I don't know if they mean it in one of these ways, or in some other way. The problem is the use of evaluative language, i.e., "bad." The same holds for "good." I only think these terms make sense if they index a standard. So, let me put it this way: I think relativism about normative and evaluative terms is intelligible. I think nonrelativistic evaluative claims are literally incomprehensible - not just to me, but to anyone.
@@ruthlesscriticism6900 //A house is bad if it doesn't have a roof.// Why is a house bad if it does not have a roof? // It can no longer provide shelter and adequaltely perform its activies// I don't see why not. If I lived on a tropical island I might enjoy a house with no roof, just walls. Maybe I want to keep the wind off me but enjoy the sunlight and the starlight. Whether having a roof is good or bad seems to me to depend on some goal or standard; it can't just be good or bad without reference to some goal or standard in some nonrelative way. //A racehorse is bad if its lame, if it can't run like its supposed to. // It's bad relative to the goal of being good at winning races. It may be good in other respects, or at least not bad. This is still relative badness, not stance-independent or intrinsic badness. // X is bad in S, if X inhibits the activities that are typical of the life-form F and S belongs to life form F. // X is bad relative to the some goal or standard whereby it is good to engage in activities typical for life-form F. That's still not intrinsic or stance-independent badness. It's not necessarily good for an animal to do what's typical for members of its species. There's no obligation that they do so. For instance, if members of a species typically walk, but one was born with a strange mutation such that it could not walk, but it could swim, and there was lots of water, and it had a massive adaptive advantage due to being able to swim, it would have greater reproductive fitness, and could be happier, healther, and less threatened by predators, even if it was extremely atypical. It would be nonsense to say this was "bad." //Maybe these are not stance-independently bad but only bad from the standpoint of the form of life that S belongs to.// They wouldn't even be bad from the standpoint of the life form; see my example above. They'd only be "bad" relative to some stipulated standard that the life form may not care about or benefit in any way from conforming to. // But why would we care about anything else? // I'm not sure I understand the question. Why would an organism only care about what acting and being what is typical for a member of its species? // pain is bad because it usually leads to injury which can inhibit our normal activities.// So pain might be bad relative to the goal of pursuing certain activities. That's still not intrinsic or stance-independent badness.
"Pain" and "badness" are inextricably linked in terms of human experience. You'd be hard pressed to describe a state which is "bad", if pain did not exist in this world.
Pain is intrinsically (at least) good in one way and bad in another. Pain is a mode of awareness that's specifically hard-wired to apply to awareness that something is physically wrong with one's body. It's possible to be mistaken, same as in any other mode of awareness. Just as there are optical illusions where you see a straight line as being curved or whatever, there are somatosensory illusions where you feel injury that isn't happening. Nonetheless, awareness is intrinsically good. It's good to be a perceiving being. Accordingly, it's better to perceive in greater detail, or in ways that have more sophisticated understandings built into them, or in additional modes. Modes of awareness per se are intrinsically good; pain is a mode of awareness; therefore pain is intrinsically good. On the other hand, pain is intrinsically urgent. Part of what makes it pain is that it preempts other modes of awareness, i.e. it interferes with central aspects of what makes existence good. That's bad. Sure, this interference is often necessary as a means to avoiding further injury and enabling one's continued existence, and sure, it's possible to overcome this interference. But the interference still happened, which was still bad, even if it was necessary or overcome.
I learned in my Aesthetics course that the notion of “sublime” has an association with pain, at least with Burke and Kant. Burke views it as when we are “distant” from a threat, like a thunder storm with lightning, and are “awed” by its power. This fear (a kind of pain, or anticipation of such) fuels a kind of pleasure. It’s a bit of a conundrum with, say, horror similarly to how Aristotle tackled tragedy: how can we get enjoyment from something that hurts you? Perhaps it’s a kind of masochism in that way. I know that I enjoy some incredibly controversial horror films that are gross and/or graphic, which I recognize as disgusting (sometimes I flinch and cringe!). I know you were looking at it at a different angle, which I do find valuable. I don’t see pain as a “inherent” evil or that pain is something to always avoid. Sometimes you want to confront it, and it seems to me that there are times when such a feeling is reasonably desired.
The veil of perception is deduced not experienced. What we experience is the lack of predictability of the absolute. Also feel better my dude! Channel dat vitamin c! I send love
I think neuroscience and literature on stress responses and fear memories regarding pain being located in the amygdala may have something interesting to look at from your argument.
The fact that a person can wish for pain or desire it for some individualistic reason cannot of itself establish that pain is neither good nor bad. Pain can be an end in itself such as to prove a point, set a record, inflict a just punishment. However, pain is avoided by most people. From that point of view, pain is a wrong. The law recognised this in many circumstances. The medical industry thrives on it. Contra this persons view, weight can readily be given to avoiding pain as a good. Exaggerations on this subject are often spun by philosophers merely to be contrarian. Avoidance of pain is not an ultimate good or value, that is hard to counter. Get well soon
I think what you are eluding to with the buddhist monk is best cashed out in terms of the transparency of internal models. The same transparency that is appealed to in the case of perceptual models, which is supposed to explain visual qualia or phenomenal character of visual experience. I think it stands to reason that transparent regulatory models pertaining to homeostasis would generate exactly the phenomenology we associate with pain or pleasure, also it would explain the reports of the monk’s behavior if we assume that these models can be made opaque through their practice. Furthermore viewing the issue through this lense is neutral with respect to the question of whether one adopts a realist or anti realist stance (actually the realist might have an interesting candidate property to identify with intrinsic goodness/badness, namely a transparent regulatory model pertaining to a systems homeostatic bounds)
"My fucking fingers go blue man" 😂 Your soliloquy on hypochondria was unintentionally hilarious my friend. Please don't misunderstand, I'm not laughing at your misfortune and catching covid-19 etc. It's just that your nervous energy whilst discussing it was quite endearing. Great video like always. Get well soon mate 👊
An interesting thing to keep in mind is that maybe there are some objects which is not phisycal but at the same time are not purelly imaginary. Take for instance marriage. It's true there are no such thing as an objective marriage. But it's true that when we say "John is married" we are not talking about something that is purelly imaginary. Marriage will definitelly shape John's life in such a way is indistinguishable from a phisycal object or event. Social relations like marriage, class and culture can be more real and independent of our imediate volition than hurricanes. In this sense, even if pain is not intrinsically bad it still shape our lives and dictates what we usually do to ourselves and others. In this sense then, there is an ethical possibility. A social human project that we build historically. Not set on stone, but socially cultivated
You know it's more simple. If the pain is defined then Socrates has said what it is for or the why. Pain exists for this and this. Commands one to do this and this with respect to it. It's /das Sollen/, the ought of the moral scientist. It's no longer a fact.
a relevant point is that also sometimes we enjoy pain, as in being choked during sex, or perhaps while we do strenous exercise, so those are cases where pain is not just not bad but actively desired. sure, no one enjoys stove hand but i mean, then Harris should make up a philosophy about not touching stoves specifically
I will watch this after I get back from work. But my initial thought is "no". I shall see how you get to there once I have the time. [: Edit: I find more and more that I dislike the idea of intrinsic vs non-intrinsic as a descriptor for what is "good" or "bad". It is apparent to me that pain necessarily requires an actor to be receiving the pain, and that it is the case that pain is an evolutionary advantage for survival (at least on earth). To that notion I think that pain for 2nd stage evolution species (civilization building species) is a complicated thing, because it has a function in building character for a large portion of humanity, and it also has a minority--as you pointed out with Marquis De Sade, that like to inflict or their inverse who like to receive pain. I don't know what "camp" my framework of ethics falls under, but I don't think that things can have intrinsic moral "weight" to them without the necessary actor/agent, so the whole idea of actions having moral weight to them absent a mind makes absolutely no sense to me at all. Moral "facts" can exist without actors/agents, sure, but there is no weight to them.
Nice video. Regarding your blue fingers, have you been able to find out what causes it? My immediate guess was the Raynaud syndrome, but it's fairly common so a doc should have been able to diagnose it... "The episodes classically result in the affected part turning white and then blue." (wiki) I'm not a doctor though.
Just because a buddhist monk can stand pain, it doesn't follow that pain is not intrinsically bad. Just because someone may do something to obtain pain (a BDSM kinda person), doesn't mean that pain is not intrinsically bad. Your claims are non sequiturs. Further, what do you experience when you experience something you call pain (especially a high intensity pain)? There really is no "badness"? If pain is not intrinsically bad, why do you avoid it so much? Why do all animals avoid pain as much as they can? Can't you just "change your mind" through rational argumentation (like the one provided in this video) and stop viewing pain as bad, and instead be indifferent to pain? No? I wonder why that is....
The point is not that Buddhist monks "can stand" pain. That completely misdescribes what they claim about the nature of their experience. Of course, they might be lying or mistaken about what their own experiences are like, but that would be a different argument.
Also, I can't just change my mind and decide that I like vanilla ice cream more than chocolate ice cream. Does this indicate that chocolate ice cream is intrinsically tasty? No. It's simply that people tend to have fairly stable tastes, desires, and attitudes.
@@KaneB Can you point me to an account of a Buddhist monk that describes his experience of pain? I think you still "have to" respond to the non sequitur objections, even after accounting for the updating of the first item on the list (for example, we'll say that the monk is neutral towards or not bothered by the pain). I don't think the claim that pain is intrinsically bad is a realist position. It's just a characterization of experience. Interestingly, if pain is not intrinsically bad, then maybe pleasure is not intrinsically good.
@@WackyConundrum There's a guy elsewhere on these comments called "Unknown Knowns Philosophy". Have a chat with him. He's not a Buddhist monk but he has a similar take on pain. I don't see why I have anything to respond to. I don't know what your objection would be. Maybe you can explain why you think it's a non-sequitur. If you don't want to call it "realism", fine. However, it's a silly view, for reasons common to realist views (specifically, the very idea of stance-independent value is absurd).
@@KaneB I mean, if you are making a claim that a Buddhist monk can have a mental state involving pain, where this pain is not bad, then you have to explain what you mean by that. I am saying that your points (refer to me in the first comment) are non sequiturs, because you haven't made logical arguments that would show that from any of the claims it follows that pain is not intrinsically bad. You just made assertions to the effect of "because a monk can be neutral towards pain, pain is not intrinsically bad". But you haven't explain what is the connection between the premise and the conclusion. So, it doesn't follow. I don't see what "stance" has to do with pain being bad (meaning, an aversive experience). Unless by "bad" you mean something more complex and involved. If you use a much more abstract conception of "bad", then yes, maybe. However, when a normal person says "pain is bad", they actually refer to this aversive aspect of the pain experience, not to some abstract, high-level conception of "bad" (like in "morally bad").
Great points Kane, glad to hear something on this topic as it seems in the past you’ve spent more time addressing the moral anti/realism debate. The second way of defining pain does not by itself substantiate value realism. Maybe I am lacking imagination but I cannot understand how an agent could sincerely recognise pain as bad without desiring it to end. The badness of pain may be identical to the phenomenal properties of pain. However, I would say that a desire for pain to end must occur if we are to believe that pain is bad. Also, reading the thread it seems like some people think that if all people evaluate pain as bad (and I would add, therefore, desire it to end) then we have reason to accept value realism. As others have pointed out, this rests on a misunderstanding of value realism. Value realism endorses a stance independent account of the badness of pain. On this account there is no evaluative stance to take on whether pain is bad. Its badness is instantiated in the pain itself, not in any evaluative stance we take toward it. On a slightly different note I would argue that even if it were logically true that all agents must experience pain as bad we still would not be able to argue for value realism. We would still be evaluating pain which suggests its badness is implicated by our stance toward it.
Just on the monks who subject themselves to pain: Would it be possible that the monks are experiencing pain for the reward of tolerance in the future (or some other reward)? In other words, the monks are subjecting themselves to pain to reduce their pain in the future. Would it be possible for a monk to be told beforehand that the experience of pain would not bring them a reward, but still do it anyways? Cheers.
I like the pain from fighting. I like the pain in sauna. I like the pain from sore muscles after hard training. I like the pain from doing hard work or studying. I like the pain of thirst when I know I will sate it soon.
So basically you willingly pursue some amount of pain way below more extreme forms of pain with an end goal and the knowledge that it will end at some point, and there will be some kind of reward. Well I'm glad you have those luxury to experience pain like that
@@noah5291 well the argument was about pain being intrinsically bad (which is where he is agreeing with kane), not that some instances of pain can not be very bad for the person experiencing it(which is what you seem to be saying, but isnt what kane or the guy you reply to actually said)
@@patrickthomasius I'm saying that all experiences of extreme pain for all individuals with the specifics I specified above would be considered bad by the individuals experiencing it. I'm not sure that makes it objective but I'm not sure it gets more universal (using this term loosely) than that
@@noah5291 what im saying is that "extreme cases of bodily pain are bad" does not necessarily entail that "pain is intrinsically bad", i.e. it might be that some phenomenological quality arises for extreme pain that isnt present in moderate pain, and vice versa in ppl that have preference for pain in some scenarios. This is used as an argument for preference util over hedonic util, which quite a few people find convincing. About extreme pain being bad or not, i think its clear that is most likely leads ro complwx or intense suffering, so its hard to argue against it being a dispreferred or bad for the organism it experiences it. Ofc this doesnt answer yet whether it is morally intrinsically bad, different systems diverge, although the two utilitarian views above converge with extreme pain. Pain is nit intrinsically bad for the preference utilitarian bevause someone can have a preference for moderate to quite intense pain, but it seems plausible that the preference utilitarian would have a preference against most of all instances of extreme pain.
@@patrickthomasius, let’s consider the claim that it is not because pain is universally unwanted, with the important clause of all else being equal, that it is intrinsically wrong, but that it is universally unwanted because it is intrinsically wrong. Call this an abductive account, if you will.
To say no is to ignore what pain is...the fact that a monk (or masochist)can rewire their neural network to redirect the senses has nothing to do with what pain is...being able to experience pain is good as pain is a part of allostasis...being in pain is bad as it indicates you are going out of maintaining homeostasis. Failing to maintain homeostasis is bad for the life of the unit maintaining homeostasis.
>> being in pain is bad as it indicates you are going out of maintaining homeostasis It sounds like you agree that pain is not intrinsically bad, then. What's intrinsically bad, on your view, is failure of homeostasis. I don't see why anybody would care about homeostasis for its own sake, but this is kinda beside the point in this context.
You actually seem to not know anything about what the Zen monk is doing or the neurology of it. I've done 20,000 plus hours of meditation and can get my teeth drilled without being numbed. You are still actually experiencing the extreme pain, it feels extremely painful, but your judgements about it have ceased appearing. So it is not in fact that the neural networks have been rewired such to discontinue the pain, but rather that there simply isn't an inner commentary "this is bad" and in fact simply the total removal of this commentary is what makes extreme pain not have any effect on your well being. They are simply no longer overlapped. It's the lack of that psychological commentary not the lack of the pain which is relevant
@@KaneB i think I fail to grasp in what sense you use "intrinsic ".. Intrinsic to some greater purpose? Intrinsic to life? Intrinsic to the survival of the organism? I think the latter. Then also pain is good as it has a function...but it is bad to be in pain as it indicates the function is being fulfilled..
Not being familiar with philosophical arguments, as opposed to psychological stuff, - you are a source of food for thought. COVID19 can vary in the time to recover. But you will.
I don't quite understand your argument saying that defining pain as something we don't desire is not a good definition because it is a tautology. Isn't pain precisely what humans and animals seek to avoid ? And if your argument is correct that would mean that pleasure isn't intrinsically good, which seems to be hard to defend.
Oh, I'm not saying it's a bad definition. It's a fine definition! But then if that's how we're defining pain, then the fact that pain is necessarily not desired, from the first-person point of view, doesn't tell us anything with respect to value realism. I would also say that pleasure is not intrinsically good, for much the same reasons.
I think the point is if we take "pain" to simply mean that which one seeks to avoid, then there's no reason to be confident that what's painful for you would necessarily be painful for me.
// Isn't pain precisely what humans and animals seek to avoid ?// Not always. Sometimes pain is useful or enjoyable. // And if your argument is correct that would mean that pleasure isn't intrinsically good, which seems to be hard to defend.// I don't think that's hard to defend. I don't start from the default assumption that it makes any sense or is at all plausible that pleasure is "intrinsically good." I don't know what that means, and if someone wants to make this claim, it's incumbent on them to make a case for it. What would it even mean for anything to be *intrinsically* good? I think that's a hard claim to defend, or to even explain.
@@lanceindependent extreme pain, in which the majority of your attention is focused on the sensation, in which you cannot adapt and refocus on other things, that kind of pain specifically with no end or internal goal beyond it, absolutely would be considered "bad" or negative or whatever term you want to use for it by all pain experiencing creatures. All pain experiencing creatures would not want to experience it, and none would walk into it willingly without later wanting for it to end. I don't really care if people want to say that experience is "objectively bad" because all beings would consider it bad. I'm not sure that makes it objective. I do think that the fact that all beings that experience pain have the potential to be put into that state--of extreme pain with no goal or potential termination--convincing enough to want to advocate for the material change of conditions that reduce the pain of pain-experiencing beings. What is another word I can use besides objective to refer to something that is true to experience of beings of the same type? If such a word does not exist it certainly should.
@@noah5291 //absolutely would be considered "bad" or negative or whatever term you want to use for it by all pain experiencing creatures. // This is still not going to get you out of the problem Kane lays out in the video: either it is bad relative to your standards (or some other set of standards), or it is unclear in what sense it could be “bad,” because it is not at all obvious to me that extremely painful experiences are stance-independently “bad.” My concern with the kind of response you are offering is that it leaves “bad” underspecified. And it isn’t going to get us very far to say that it “would be considered ‘bad.’” That something is considered X does not mean it is X, or that X is true. In any case, I’m a pain experiencing creature, and I outright deny that that it is the case that my experiences of extreme pain were stance-independently bad. So if that’s what you mean, then I am a living counterexample to the claim that it would be considered “bad” by all pain experiencing creatures: I’ve experienced extreme pain. I considered it bad, but I do not think it it was “bad” in some nonrelative way. //All pain experiencing creatures would not want to experience it, and none would walk into it willingly without later wanting for it to end.// Kane’s dilemma is still present. If by “extreme pain” you mean very painful experiences, then it is false that nobody would want to experience these states, or would not willingly initiate them without wanting them to end later. If by “extreme pain” you stipulate that, by definition, it only refers to states where this is not the case, and those who experience them don’t want to, then you’re narrowing the set of experiences to “those experiences an agent doesn’t want,” which is merely to assert a tautology: some set of experiences people do not want are those they do not want. //I don't really care if people want to say that experience is "objectively bad" because all beings would consider it bad.// That everyone would agree under conditions in which you explicitly stipulate that everyone would agree does not strike me as having any interesting implications. That everyone happens to share a normative or evaluative stance does not entail that the stance is true independent of their stance towards whatever it is their normative or evaluative stances are about. If everyone who did not like chocolate died, it would be the case that everyone considered chocolate good. Taste preferences would still not be objective: they’d still be subjective; it would just happen to be the case that everyone shared the same preferences. If it isn’t of concern to you whether pain is stance-independently bad, or “intrinsically bad” etc. that’s fine. That’s what I object to, and you don’t have to endorse views I object to! //I do think that the fact that all beings that experience pain have the potential to be put into that state--of extreme pain with no goal or potential termination--convincing enough to want to advocate for the material change of conditions that reduce the pain of pain-experiencing beings.// I want to end suffering for everyone myself. I just do not think someone who does not want to is therefore “incorrect.” They just have different goals than I do. //What is another word I can use besides objective to refer to something that is true to experience of beings of the same type? // I’m not sure. I’d generally use the term “universal” in contexts like these, but you may want to go for something more specific.
No living creature wishes to experience extreme pain without a reason. Infact, you have no control over your body in situations of extreme pain, you don't even get to make a decision over your body's avoidance. When there is no goal in mind beyond the pain, then the creature will absolutely seek to end the pain. We see this in every living creature that exists. Your fringe example of the monk likely involves some kind if goal beyond the pain. Another example, a creature that is actually experiencing extreme pain, with no foreknowledge that the pain will end, and with no goal in mind or reason to be experiencing the pain, will absolutely be suffering with a wish for the pain to end. So I do think there are some holes your example. I would say any creature that exists with capabilities to feel pain, given enough time, would be able to put in a situation in wish they would want for the pain to end. Even that monk you are talking about.
Idk i know some ppl who enjoy quite extreme pain in certain activities. Also check more sources on stuff those monks do, there are instances where they deliberatively expose themselves to massive pains. Just an empirical observation here, maybe these ppl are extreme, but then some exceptional ppl is all kane needs for his argument:)
@@patrickthomasius I'm actually one of those monks. I've practiced 20,000 plus hours over 16 years, and have directly experienced the inability to be phased by pain. The commenter whose post you are responding said in another thread that I'm "faking it" haha... there is actually replicated research on monks and extreme pain tolerance.. but this dudes reaction is "your faking it" based on nothing... you're not gonna win with this guy haha
@@unknownknownsphilosophy7888 post your studies, and post a video of you inflicting extreme pain onto yourself. Better yet post a video of someone else inflicting extreme pain onto you and without foreknowledge of how said pain will be inflicted. Post it on another site and tell me where to find it.
@@patrickthomasius I would say none of the people that he is referring to actually exist, or at least they are poor examples. Like I stipulated: pain with no knowledge of it potentially ending, and no goal or objective or reward. No being would willingly experience that. They would choose not pain over pain in the instance I stipulated
@@noah5291 Dude you're so simple it's comical. I avoid injury just like everyone else does. Even if breaking my leg doesn't entail unhappiness, it still entails that I can't walk and every life plan I had that involved walking gets canceled. Other people in my life depend on my legs working, thus I don't just have people break my legs for fun. The point being that if my legs were to be broken whether intentionally, accidentally or maliciously is that it wouldn't effect my happiness at all. Even if torture doesn't entail unhappiness it does entail exhaustion, being tortured is exhausting even if it isn't intrinsically bad, I'm not going to exhaust myself cause some idiot named Noah doesn't believe a claim I made. Pain does not control my happiness and the claim was that simple. There are people who reported tremendous inner peace within the Nazi death camps as they were starving and doing hard labor because of an inner acceptance they had of their fate, if they can do it anyone can do it. If you can be happy in a death camp while starving to death you can be happy anywhere. There is almost nothing more extreme than waterboard torture, but they actually teach special military members how to withstand it calmly. You have to understand I'm not claiming that I don't feel pain or that the sensation is not extreme, I making a very basic claim that my psychological well being isn't effected. That doesn't mean that my body doesn't recoil in a reflex sense or the vocal chords don't cry out just like you would, if I get my teeth drilled without Novocain I still moan a little in pain, it really hurts, but I'm still happy anyway. I'm talking about an inner psychological peace that is unaltered. Not physiologically normal reactions of which I share every one with you. There are limits to physical thresholds of torture (I AGREE WITH THIS!!!) my point is a psychological one, which is that psychological well being need not be effected. Look up Mckamey Manor where people submit to no holds bar torture for their own entertainment (torture which is kept a surprise until it happens, so no mental prep) You are woefully unread on this subject.
It wouldn’t be the same experience. Pain also has multidimensionality, which means different intensities, durations, purity, etc. The zen monk would then, compared to a laymen, not experience as much pain, since the monk would know how to lower the intensity.
I'm a zen practitioner with more than 20,000 hours of meditation experience. You feel more pain in a meditative mind state, not less. The pain is more intense because it is experienced not in competition with psychological labeling schemes which are trying to label and worry about the pain. It is the judgement about the pain that is altered. There is simply no psychological judgement that it is bad, but the intensity is more extreme not less. But it doesn't effect psychological well being, as it would a normal person. Hope that is clarifying
@@Alex.G.Harper I'd define it as considering ones self as being in a state of suffering or not. There is nothing about pain that ever makes me feel like I'm in a state of suffering. No matter how intense. I simply don't judge it like that. My body reacts the same way as yours, I have the typical reflex stuff. But there is no sense in which it is suffering. I remain perfectly happy regardless
@@unknownknownsphilosophy7888Do you care about making money? You should probably just have people pay you to "torture" you and fake feeling suffering in that case since you can withstand it no problem. I bet you could make a lot of money. Or you are delusional or just being deceptive online because it's easy. Good troll though.
@@noah5291 I don't care about money, why would I care about that. Your comments aren't based on replicated research on the brains of long term meditators and the insane benefits that are provided. Your comments are based on nothing, so why care about them?
What I like about utilitarianism is that it's both an accurate descriptive and prescriptive moral framework. It's for this reason that I cannot accept the possibility of the experience of pain being neutral/positive. Irrespective of your take on consciousness, I think we can agree that theres a 100% correlation between the triggering of neural pain pathways and the phenomenal experience of pain. The triggering of pain pathways necessarily leads to a reduction in the likelihood of the preceding behaviour from recurring. As such, the experience of pain Is ALSO necessarily followed by this aversive behaviour and so it can't be neutral/positive. What I would want to say for the zen monk is that they're able to prevent themselves from experiencing pain in the presence of an otherwise painful stimulus.
maybe a more interesting experience than zen monks is masochists who enjoy pain in a kink context. masochists (in some contexts) experience pain as positive, and don't show aversive behaviour but will deliberately seek it out
Buddhist monks don't seek to withstand pain; they seek to withstand harm without being in pain. No human being desires or is indifferent to extreme amounts of pain; that's a hypothetical that can never manifest among our species so long as we're still human. Even masochists have a very light tolerance to the harm they find pleasurable as opposed to truly painful or else they'd quickly go extinct. Morality from an anthropological perspective is far more complex than "pain/suffering is bad, pleasure/well-being is good". Human beings can withstand enormous amounts of harm, and even with accompanying pain and suffering, in attempts to protect others from it. Such was the case of Thích Quảng Đức whose self-immolation was intended to protect his fellow Buddhists from further massacres. He largely succeeded when we look at his actions in hindsight since this finally pressured the Vietnamese government into changing its laws. Instead, notions of morality looking back at history appear to be behavior that is well-adapted to the given environment. "Immoral" individuals, societies, and even ideas are those maladapted to their environment, and just like a maladapted species, tend to go extinct given sufficient time. We then iteratively learn (albeit often stubbornly and reluctantly) while observing those extinctions what to avoid in the future while revising our notions of what is and isn't moral. Health is very similar. We used to lack "health realism" and viewed health as a mystical and immaterial concept grounded on notions like balancing the four humours based on earth, wind, water, and fire. Yet the ultimate goal of health was still rooted in survival, just like morality. As we progressed our understanding of health through empiricism, we started to be able to better and better optimize our survival doubling life expectancies and finding cures for common diseases. That's why we can look back and call a lot more things unhealthy such as the common historical practice of bloodletting. We still debate endlessly about what's healthy since our understanding is astronomically far from perfect, but those who value empiricism are iteratively understanding the concept better and better.
What is the benefit of a moral anti realist position if the vast majority of the world (yourself included) “acts as if” pain is bad? Is this just about being intellectually correct? I’m not being argumentative. I genuinely can’t figure out why it’s worth debating. I do agree with the scientist in your last debate that a healthy understanding of other sciences like quantum physics and string theory, and I’ll add Jungian psychology (not necessarily expert level in any of these fields) may alter your views. I feel like you’ve isolated yourself in a way that most influential thinkers don’t, The same would apply to your personal life. For instance, you are indifferent to animals, and my guess is that you have never cared for a pet. I think until you’ve truly cared for another being, there is a quality element you are missing. Anyhow, I love the channel.
I'm interested in metaethics. I want to have correct beliefs with respect to metaethical topics. It's as simple as that. Other people might not care about this, of course. >> I do agree with the scientist in your last debate that a healthy understanding of other sciences like quantum physics and string theory, and I’ll add Jungian psychology (not necessarily expert level in any of these fields) may alter your views. I feel like you’ve isolated yourself in a way that most influential thinkers don’t I don't think I've isolated myself at all. It's simply that (a) I do not comment publicly on topics unless I'm sufficiently educated about them and (b) there isn't anywhere near enough time in my life for me to learn about every field. (b) is true for everybody. We all have to be selective. (It's worth keeping in mind that there's a good chance that a lot those influential thinkers who apparently haven't isolated themselves might just be BSing about a lot of topics.) I happen to be much more interested in, for example, biology, astronomy, and modern art than in fundamental physics and Jungian psychology. I have lots of videos on biology, astronomy, and art. Also, since that debate I read some of the material Brown was drawing on, and I don't at all agree with how he represented it. I don't think the "no alternatives" argument actually says what he claimed it did. >> my guess is that you have never cared for a pet Yeah. I've lived with animals for the majority of my life, and I hate it. I'm willing to compromise on having animals on the house, but I won't lift a finger to take care of them.
@@KaneBThe animal bit is what led me to suggest psychology. I hear how you feel about animals, but do you think that attitude is both normal and healthy?
I'll this video a thumbs down because that's the closest to pain we have here 😜 Someone cheered in the background when you mentioned double jab, that was fun
Yeah that's a load of crap. You absolutely would be able to be put into a situation where you would think "this is bad" and no amount of trying to shift your perspective would do anything about it. You could be put into a situation where you wouldn't even be able to abstract and refocus.
@@noah5291 that is not what the Stoics had in mind. You can feel upset, hurt, etc, all while it still not being bad. The purpose is logical. It's sort of like how it is illogical to curse the sky for raining. It's just an inevitable fact of nature outside of your control. The Stoics separated good/bad from preferred/dis-preferred indifferents. All while explaining that we will naturally be upset, at least initially, then we can review the situation logically. Instead of adding to the set back, they see it for what it really is, and this become virtuous/good. So in every event in life, there is an opportunity to be good. You can be bad while laying in a comfortable bed, and you can be good while burning alive.
@@Human_Evolution- Exactly, this guy "Noah" doesn't understand that you can cry out from being tortured or can cry out from a pleasurable orgasm and still never assign the label "bad" or "good" to either one of them. And just that refusal to assign labels psychologically can alter your whole life for the better. Also his idea that there are situations that would make absolutely everyone go "THIS IS BAD!!" ummm no, there might be situations where everyone universally might cry out "Stop!" but a request for something to cease doesn't entail that the thing being continued or requested to cease is bad. Thus nothing about this guys point logically follows at all. The universal request for something to cease in no way entails that it is bad, just that there is a commonly observed behavior. That doesn't entail it's bad or should be labeled such by us psychologically while enduring it.
@@unknownknownsphilosophy7888 you are missing the point of what I said. I never said that it would be bad on some kind of higher level beyond the physical. I just think all beings who experience pain could be put in a position where pain would cause them to wish to be able to choose otherweise. Avoid the situation. A consensus. I don't think that pain = bad. I think that all beings that experience pain would have consensus on some form--dependent on the being in question--of pain being bad for them. I don't know if it gets more universal (using that term loosely) than that. It's still not objective. To be clear I'm hyper skeptical. I 'think' this is the case. Maybe I'm wrong, hell I'm probably wrong. Let me ask you this as a semi-relatrd question: do you think we should try to reduce extreme suffering for living beings?
@@noah5291 If this were a Zen community of people there would never be a consensus on the pain being "bad" at any limit, there would be consensus maybe on when the pain made there physical body and reactions to it uncontrollable, including vocalizations or requests for it to stop. But any Zen person who was well practiced would not mentally label any part of that process as "bad". They might uniformly label it as "unbearable" but that is not a consensus on its badness at all, just a consensus on how extreme it is.. but inner peace would be maintained, peace would be present even with the body reacting and resisting in the ways normal people would, the difference is that the psychological distress would be absent.
As an extreme Zen practitioner my own experience completely discredits pain being intrinsically bad. There is no amount of pain that would effect my well being. As mentioned in our most recent conversation, I can get teeth drilled without being numbed. But I still feel the extreme pain of the drill, but I don't suffer at all and remain very happy throughout. The thought for me is if pain is "intrinsically bad" than this should be impossible, my well being should be effected, but it isn't. There is neurological evidence to support that the master Zen practitioner is simply unphased. A creepy result of taking pain this way was brought up in our recent talk... we should literally seek out Zen people to torture over regular people if needed in a utilitarian framework.. but anyway... this is something where we completely agree... the realist to me is the same as the religious person that says you can't really be caring or moral without god... so why can't benefits simply be had absent this weird metaphysical postulate of objective morality.. it seems they can
@@notwelcome7795 Would you like a list of studies demonstrating this. I've got a list. Also you can simply watch the video of the meditators who lit themselves on fire and remained seated and calm until they simply slumped over burning to death. People can get dental procedures under hypnosis alone, throughout human history people endured medical procedures without numbing, in certain 3rd world countries it still occurs and we have a variety of reports and many varied reactions reported. Where is the bullshit in the general concept here? Many many meditators get dental work without numbing, this is even documented in Robert Wright's (founder of evolutionary psychology) book on meditation
@@WebHackmdWhere the is "crackpot-ness" in anything I've said? I'm talking merely about my personal experience of pain, I'm not making some ontological claim. The claim is very basic, my personal reaction to pain discredits *for me* the idea that pain is tied to well being. For me it is not. There are many studies on meditation and pain tolerance that support what I'm saying here and have been replicated. There are videos of meditators lighting themselves on fire and sitting calmly until they literally slump over dead. Where are the crackpot claims? They are all supported claims.
@@notwelcome7795 Would you like a list of studies demonstrating this. I've got a list. Also you can simply watch the video of the meditators who lit themselves on fire and remained seated and calm until they simply slumped over burning to death. People can get dental procedures under hypnosis alone, throughout human history people endured medical procedures without numbing, in certain 3rd world countries it still occurs and we have a variety of reports and many varied reactions reported. Where is the bullshit in the general concept here? Many many meditators get dental work without numbing, this is even documented in Robert Wright's (founder of evolutionary psychology) book on meditation
eh, but Zen monks are troubled by it, they only do it as a political statement. Like they are still *in* pain they are just good at enduring it, it seems to me.
Kane spending 10 minutes on his masochism fetish. Joking, but I mean, that's the easiest example to rebut the realists. There are people that literally find the worst torture euphoric.
@@lukecronquist6003 If it's impossible to say whether a subjective experience is actually painful, it is impossible to say that there are people who find the worst torture euphoric.
What people desire is up to them. The fact that they have desires and harms is intractable. What harms them is subjective. The fact that they are harmed is objective, or at least well supported by reason and evidence.
