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Scient
Joined: 27 Mar 2006
Posts: 2
Location: Finland
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 Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2006 8:15 pm Post subject: Semantics |
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To begin, since this is my first post in the boards, I shall quickly tell of myself.
For a basic (and rather vague) idea of what I've learned in my life: I am currently a student of bioanalytics, and I have always had an interest on how things work. In the last quarter of my life (the whole of which is 21 years and rising), that interest has taken the direction on how humans work (though biological systems in general are also interesting).
To give another vague idea, this time on what I believe (other than that my sensory perceptions are trustworthy): I tend to use a phrase "I am atheist by heart, agnostic by brain."
Now to the matter at hand, the Pursuit of Pleasure and Escape from Pain.
After stumbling into this idea, a couple of years back, I think, I've changed the terms quite a few times.
At first I described all human actions as an effort to "build and maintain a wealth of endorphins in the brain". Later I expanded that into other chemicals and lately would only call it "opiates". That's not too important, however.
At some point I figured out that going into too much detail in the mechanisms of the pleasure just makes for a clumsy phrase, not to mention that the said mechanism isn't known. I went for "pursuit of happiness" instead, and since the other half of the whole Universal Motivation-thing had stumbled across my mind by then, I added "avoidance of unhappiness".
"Pleasure" and "happiness", I think, are close enough to each other. My first actual question is, why have you chosen "pain" as the word for what we avoid? It is clear enough to understand, of course, but the small difference seems to widen into noticeable differences when you build upon the theory. I will at another time tell of my thoughts on your writings about plant-eating, which seems to hold such a difference.
Another point I would discuss is Survival Based Ethics.
You've written that every action any creature performs is in an attempt to better its survival. I disagree. It seems to me that every action any creature performs is in an attempt to reach pleasure and/or avoid displeasure (which, of course, you've also written).
It seems to me that due to evolution, most of the actions we see creatures performing today (in an attempt to reach pleasure and/or avoid displeasure) DO have the eventual effect of bettering the creature's (genome's) survival, but that the immediate goal of the action still is not the survival. Again, our exact descriptions on the matter differ only slightly, but I feel the difference is important because it exists.
I think I had more to say of the matter, but I seem to have lost it. Well, what I've written should describe my thoughts adequately for now. I'm dissappointed that they don't come out as fine ready sentences. I sometimes fear that everything I've written on complicated subjects is actually inane rambling, which is why I'll probably never write a book on philosophy. 
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HarryStottle
Site Admin
Joined: 29 May 2005
Posts: 320
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| Posted: Sat Apr 29, 2006 12:23 am Post subject: |
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Damn!
I've only just seen this post more than a month after you posted it. I shall do a full reply in the next few days but I am up to my eyeballs in pursuing survival as we speak, so forgive the delay to date and please forgive me a few more days... |
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intelegant
Joined: 02 Jan 2006
Posts: 74
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| Posted: Sat Apr 29, 2006 7:41 am Post subject: quick aside |
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sudden thought I had while reading your message, Scient:
What if the drive to seek pleasure has evolved out of a previous (and perhaps latent) goal of an organism on its path towards perfection.
p.s. good to see more ground breaking brainstorming here! Your thoughts read clear to me, Scient. |
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HarryStottle
Site Admin
Joined: 29 May 2005
Posts: 320
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| Posted: Sat Apr 29, 2006 12:14 pm Post subject: Re: Semantics |
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| Scient wrote: | To begin, since this is my first post in the boards...
I'm dissappointed that they don't come out as fine ready sentences. |
Your English is a hell of lot better than my Finnish - so don't worry about your ability to express yourself. Your use of language is fine. It's your ideas I'll take issue with - but not much.
The core of your response is
| Quote: | | I went for "pursuit of happiness" instead, and since the other half of the whole Universal Motivation-thing had stumbled across my mind by then, I added "avoidance of unhappiness". |
This, in my view, is a mistake and the reason you make that mistake can be seen in:
| Quote: | | At first I described all human actions as an effort to... |
Stand aside from the human race and look at life in general. In particular, look at the lowest forms (bacteria, fungii etc)
It is clear (and "common sense") that the first things these early life forms had to master was "threat avoidance". Threats can be most easily recognised by the damage or "pain" they cause and all primitive life forms have either evolved ways to recognise and respond to such threats or to develop countermeasures. As early life forms were either static or at least unable to determine their own position, "pursuit of pleasure" (food, water, warmth etc) wasn't even an option. Nor was it biologically necessary, until much later in the evolutionary trail, to develop any other incentive. Pain avoidance works very well at least until we evolve sexual reproduction. Pursuit of food, for example, is at least as efficiently promoted by avoiding the pain of hunger as by the pursuit of the pleasure of food.
Indeed, pursuing pleasure clearly requires a major innovation in evolution - the ability to anticipate the effects of ones actions and this clearly does not emerge until we start seeing central nervous systems and early brains. I suspect the ability to anticipate has been on this planet less than 500 million years, whereas life itself goes back about 3.8 billion.
Pain avoidance, therefore, clearly precedes pursuit of pleasure.
However, once the ability to anticipate has arrived, "pursuit of pleasure" proves to be an enormously powerful motivator and you may be right to emphasise that it is, today, perhaps the dominant mode in human decision making. Addiction studies reveal how powerful the "need for endorphins" can be, with even rats and monkeys being prepared to starve themselves in preference to not getting their next "fix". Human male sexuality is probably the major manifestation of addiction behaviour in homo sapiens, although it is barely discussed in this context, despite the overwhelming evidence of our desperate need to pursue the orgasm and the effects that this need and the millennia of attempts to suppress it have had in forming social policy.
What you cannot do, though, is extend that observation to a prediction of what will happen throughout the universe - which is the point of my attempt at a "Theory of Behaviour". All we can reasonably observe is that all living systems appear to do whatever they can either to escape from pain or pursue pleasure. I then turn that on its head and define Life itself as existing in any object or system that demonstrates such behaviour.
| Quote: | | My first actual question is, why have you chosen "pain" as the word for what we avoid? It is clear enough to understand, of course, but the small difference seems to widen into noticeable differences when you build upon the theory. I will at another time tell of my thoughts on your writings about plant-eating, which seems to hold such a difference. |
You imply that "pain" is merely the absence of pleasure and can thus be defined as "avoidance of unhappiness". Consider, however, what I've said about the evolution of the ability to anticipate - which is fundamental to the concept of pleasure but not to pain (when "pain" is defined in terms merely of the ability to recognise self damage). It is this distinction which renders your definition untenable for universal application - even though it may work well enough in the context of the more advanced life forms we know about.
I would like to hear more about the "difference" you refer to in the context of plant eating.
Later you say:
| Quote: | | Another point I would discuss is Survival Based Ethics. You've written that every action any creature performs is in an attempt to better its survival. |
"promote" or merely "continue" its survival - not "better". (that's a value judgement and we don't do those!)
| Quote: | | I disagree. It seems to me that every action any creature performs is in an attempt to reach pleasure and/or avoid displeasure (which, of course, you've also written). |
then I fail to see on what basis you are disagreeing. I am saying no more than: the way every living object tries to continue to survive is by either pursuing pleasure or escaping from pain (I don't mind "avoiding displeasure" although that doesn't work for the most primitive species)
Your point:
| Quote: | | the immediate goal of the action still is not the survival |
is EXACTLY the point I make myself. Nobody, not even the humble bacteria, as it envelops a food source or dries itself out to spore mode to avoid a drought, thinks to itself "I am doing this to survive" - not least because the lower species can't think at all! But even humans rarely associate their actions directly with survival.
So I fail to see the difference between us - you'll have to try again  |
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intelegant
Joined: 02 Jan 2006
Posts: 74
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| Posted: Mon May 01, 2006 5:00 am Post subject: Please Harry, |
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| *must* you make the "executive decision" to encourage challenge? It's my opinion that constructive conversation is best in all regards (except perhaps when the subject matter is trivial.) |
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HarryStottle
Site Admin
Joined: 29 May 2005
Posts: 320
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| Posted: Mon May 01, 2006 1:36 pm Post subject: Re: Please Harry, |
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| intelegant wrote: | | *must* you make the "executive decision" to encourage challenge? It's my opinion that constructive conversation is best in all regards (except perhaps when the subject matter is trivial.) |
que? |
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intelegant
Joined: 02 Jan 2006
Posts: 74
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| Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 3:13 am Post subject: Re: Please Harry, |
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| HarryStottle wrote: | ...you'll have to try again. | intelegant wrote: | | *must* you make the "executive decision" to encourage challenge? It's my opinion that constructive conversation is best in all regards (except perhaps when the subject matter is trivial.) |
que? |
 Are you serious. |
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HarryStottle
Site Admin
Joined: 29 May 2005
Posts: 320
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| Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 10:08 am Post subject: Re: Please Harry, |
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| intelegant wrote: | | HarryStottle wrote: | ...you'll have to try again. | intelegant wrote: | | *must* you make the "executive decision" to encourage challenge? It's my opinion that constructive conversation is best in all regards (except perhaps when the subject matter is trivial.) |
que? |
Are you serious. |
Ah, I see. I didn't understand that you saw such a comment as "provocative" but, now you come to ask the question, I do prefer critical (and, hopefully, constructive) challenge to agreement.
I am well aware that I offer a number of new perspectives on the human condition. I am also aware that I do not always present these ideas as well as they could be presented. I have found that I benefit enormously from such challenges - even those which are profoundly misplaced (because they don't understand the arguments or are unaware of relevant evidence) because they expose how people react to the ideas. This in turn allows me to reshape my writings to - as it were - steer around their objections.
Occasionally, of course, I am forced to change my mind because I have reached conclusions on inadequate evidence or with insufficient thought (see, for example, my comments on Dresden in my Terrorism essay
So yes, I encourage and welcome challenges. But that doesn't mean I'm going to roll over and accept all such criticism as valid. If I disagree with the challenge I'll say so and explain, usually in detail, how and why. In the case in point "Scient" appears to challenge the very core of my main offering (Survival Based Ethics) and, if he'd spotted something which really undermined it I'd be seriously concerned. As it happens I don't think he has discovered any kind of flaw but he has probably exposed a weakness in my presentation and I'll have to consider addressing that in future drafting. |
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intelegant
Joined: 02 Jan 2006
Posts: 74
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| Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 10:35 am Post subject: entiende: Ok, Harry. |
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i read you proud loud and clear!  |
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Scient
Joined: 27 Mar 2006
Posts: 2
Location: Finland
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| Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 6:04 am Post subject: |
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| HarryStottle wrote: | Damn!
I've only just seen this post more than a month after you posted it. I shall do a full reply in the next few days but I am up to my eyeballs in pursuing survival as we speak, so forgive the delay to date and please forgive me a few more days... |
Oh, no hurries. I hope none of us will be going anywhere in, say, many decades.
| Quote: | | So I fail to see the difference between us - you'll have to try again |
The difference is likely in that you form these thoughts from a universal point of view, while I tend to look at humans, and other "higher" life-forms we know of. The bacteria-example cleared up the use of the word pain, for me.
I will, at some point, do some re-reading and see if I had more to it, and to remind myself of the thoughts I had about plant eating.
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Scient |
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DekaR
Joined: 31 Dec 2005
Posts: 9
Location: Albuquerque, NM
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| Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 6:11 am Post subject: |
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I am Atheist at heart, Agnostic by brain.
Such a beautiful and true statement.
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I am supposed to be the emoticonman but mah buddy chose emoman instead, so pfft |
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Jesus 2.3
Joined: 03 Jul 2010
Posts: 18
Location: Harman Geist Stadium
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| Posted: Thu Jul 29, 2010 1:37 am Post subject: |
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| DekaR wrote: | I am Atheist at heart, Agnostic by brain.
Such a beautiful and true statement. |
In reality do you think this is the truth?
I hope to shed some light on the subject. In reality you may change your mind, but the truth is that I don't actually care.
I was born into the same society as you. We are both part of the same wave. In western society some believe that God chose them as his very own wave, others believe that God was one of the particles.
In the east the situation is different. Some believe that there are many particles that they call gods. Others believe in the natural thing, and just let life flow along. Still others just follow the rules, so as to minimize the confusion of living.
There is one other way they think in the east, but it's manifestation is split.
In reality Buddha taught the truth, but he didn't have any god;
the Truth is that Islam is the same, but they represent the God of Abraham. They've got a book, and the Buddhists don't. Do you see where I'm going with this?
In reality, Islam is where the east meets the west. It's the best of both worlds. And that is why I recited the shahada.
In Islam, God is not a man, and He doesn't choose one over another. He's just the Reason for everything, including our reason for being.
In reality, the truth about religion is the truth about the light. Remember light is both particles and waves, and societies are just the same.
Religion directs us to the common good - that's the wave & what we need;
but you are a particle, what's in it for you?
If you know what Truth is, then you know it really is the freedom of Nirvana (but you reach Nirvana alone),
and if you submit to God's will - you'll be blissfully happy. And this is what everybody wants for themself.
That's where I'm at at the moment, and I hope it never changes until the day I die. That's when we all find out if God is real or not.
I'll let Him be the judge of what I've done in this life, and I really don't care what you think.
I've hedged my bets and become a Muslim man. You see, I can't get God out of my head - it's the society I live in and the language I speak that's done this.
In reality everything happens in sequence, and the truth is that Islam is the last time truth was revealed.
I'm just pointing this out - because that's what kind of particle I am.
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I'm back with a new name, but you may not have known me before.
I have many names, Daniel is one of them.
Daniel was a prophet, this one's a mastermind.
In virtual reality i'm Jesus 2.3 - but i am no god!
i'm just an asswhole who knows it all. |
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