It sounds like you are referring to those "self-reported" type of polls, where people just say they are happy. Not very scientific. You kind of contradict yourself with the data from Scandinavia.I completely agree with you. The data is somewhat contradictory. It's a murky issue. And there is really no way of measuring this vague idea of "happiness" that is entirely satisfactory from a scientific viewpoint. But I stand by my hypothesis which I'll clarify here: Ignorance is bliss for the ignorant, but not necessarily bliss for the society affected by the actions of the ignorant.
It sounds like you are referring to those "self-reported" type of polls, where people just say they are happy. Not very scientific. You kind of contradict yourself with the data from Scandinavia.I completely agree with you. The data is somewhat contradictory. It's a murky issue. And there is really no way of measuring this vague idea of "happiness" that is entirely satisfactory from a scientific viewpoint. But I stand by my hypothesis which I'll clarify here: Ignorance is bliss for the ignorant, but not necessarily bliss for the society affected by the actions of the ignorant. Right. That's part of the problem with Mozart's theory of happiness, it's based solely on personal pleasure. Any decent moral system takes into account the needs and feelings of others. Without that, I might be pleasured in the moment, but I'm going to feel guilty at some point. Worse, who's going to take care of the old guy who only concerned himself with his own pleasure all his life. I'll be one of those zombies in an old folks' home, watching Matlock reruns.
Quoting Lausten:
Worse, who’s going to take care of the old guy who only concerned himself with his own pleasure all his life. I’ll be one of those zombies in an old folks’ home, watching Matlock reruns.Or else you can do as I do, spend your time responding, nit-picking, and being a wise-ass on Internet forums. :lol:
Occam
There is no evidence that religious people are happier. That’s as scientific as I can get.I'm not sure that's quite true. At least in the U.S., most polls consistently show a positive correlation between religiosity and happiness (as well as health and life-expectancy). This is also true of conservatives vs. liberals. What can I say? Ignorance is bliss. Of course, correlation does not equal causation. And besides, the personal happiness granted by religion (or conservatism) may lead to the society around you being worse off. If your faith causes you to vote in an irrational way, the consequences for your society may be unfortunate--even as you personally go your blissful, merry way, happier than those skeptics around you. Which could be why it's hard to argue that people living in theocracies are happier than those in secular nations. The least religious secular democracies--particularly the Scandinavian ones--rate the highest in happiness, health, and life-expectancy. So my take is that True Believers (in religion or otherwise) might be happier than their fellow rationalists, all things being equal. But their world view, in aggregate, makes everyone worse off. Again, I like the way you think. (But this time, I will not take off on a spiraling parody rampage, that, most likely, only I can truly appreciate... as I did in a different thread.)
There is no evidence that religious people are happier. That’s as scientific as I can get.I'm not sure that's quite true. At least in the U.S., most polls consistently show a positive correlation between religiosity and happiness (as well as health and life-expectancy). This is also true of conservatives vs. liberals. What can I say? Ignorance is bliss. Of course, correlation does not equal causation. And besides, the personal happiness granted by religion (or conservatism) may lead to the society around you being worse off. If your faith causes you to vote in an irrational way, the consequences for your society may be unfortunate--even as you personally go your blissful, merry way, happier than those skeptics around you. Which could be why it's hard to argue that people living in theocracies are happier than those in secular nations. The least religious secular democracies--particularly the Scandinavian ones--rate the highest in happiness, health, and life-expectancy. So my take is that True Believers (in religion or otherwise) might be happier than their fellow rationalists, all things being equal. But their world view, in aggregate, makes everyone worse off. Stepford wives are happy, too. Lois
I agree that if someone can't express his idea in 300 words or less, he taking up people's time. Any idea can be expressed in a few sentences. If it's too complicated for a few sentences, the writer or speaker has not worked his idea through. He is trying to talk about too many things at once. Anyone who finds himself writing or speaking more than that should write an abstract of five sentence or less of what he is saying. If he can't do it nobody is going to read the screed, nor should anyone be expected to. You will lose your audience after 300 words. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address has 272 words. The preamble to the Constitution has 52. A good practice is to think what you would say on any topic in an elevator. You have to make your point before your listener gets off. LoisTell that to Daniel Dennet... (Why say something in a few sentences when you can say the exact same thing in a hundred pages or so?) Sigh! I know! A lot of others, too. Lois
And if you somehow now have a pleasurable feeling of value towards that and say something like "at least they are doing something good," if you were to somehow have no pleasure at all right now, then you would not feel that way--you wouldn't feel anything.You're just repeating yourself and re-asserting yourself. This is not a discussion. If you could just review this one sentence, we might make progress. The phrase "pleasurable feeling of value towards" is not well formed, maybe not even grammatically correct. Think about what you're trying to say and rephrase that. "If you have pleasure... then you wouldn't feel anything" is not logically correct. You could be sad, irritated, in pain, confused. Then there is the whole nested if of the long sentence, almost impossible to parse it. You also need to address this zombie thing. You might want to google "philosophical zombies" or "theory of mind". The way you're using it, it's a fallacy. You're reducing what the mind is to some component of it, then declaring that is the only thing the mind is. You're taking something complex that has properties that emerge from the complexity, then breaking it into components and saying "it's just" that component. Repeating it over and over and saying it's obvious won't get you too far. The phrase "pleasurable feeling of value towards" just simply means a feeling of pleasure with the thought of value being the cause of that pleasure (as opposed to the phrase "a thought of value towards" which is nothing more than just a thought of value towards something with no pleasure). And you are right in saying that there are other emotions as well and that if you do have these other emotions, then you would in fact feel something. But without any emotions, you would obviously feel nothing. As for what I mean by "zombie," that is just another description for having no emotions. Also, despite the mind being an amazing organ with many functions, if you did not have any emotions, then you will not feel anything towards the amazing complexity of the mind.
Hey, nice editing on the OP Mozart. I don’t think I’ve actually seen anyone do that before.
I still disagree that there is no danger in believing in god or anything supernatural. The danger at the societal level is obvious and it really doesn’t diminish at the personal level. The only time I would recommend it is if you are in a situation where not believing will result in harm or diminished social support. But that would really be faking belief.
I still think you have pleasure and intelligence and the source of values mixed up and I’m not sure what to say to sort that out.
Those things would still have value because you are giving value to those things (through pleasure) in being motivated to keep on doing those things in experiencing more pleasure.You have a strange definition of "value" then!
As for a situation such as being paralyzed and being able to do nothing but having your pleasure center constantly stimulated, pleasure is still the most important thing because value is nothing more than a thought and pleasure is obviously the greatest life force you can have. Therefore, even if you are paralyzed while having your pleasure center constantly stimulated without being able to do anything in life and not being able to attribute value to anything in life, pleasure is still the most important thing.Paralyzed? Where did that come from? Hey, I can agree that when real life gets too depressing, we have to escape from it sometimes. That's the reason we invented fiction in the first place. But you have to ask yourself would you want to stay in The Matrix all the time, knowing that it's a lie, knowing that none of it is real? Wouldn't that be a kind of empty existence?
Again, as for having value towards anything while having no pleasure, this value would be nothing more than a thought. In other words, they would be zombies doing things in life.What's wrong with thought? I think it was Aristotle who taught that the optimum thing to do was cultivate your mind so that only things that are good for you give you pleasure. Failing that you should still practice moderation. Too much focus on pleasure is bad for you. The ancient Greeks figured this out a long time ago.
Right. That's part of the problem with Mozart's theory of happiness, it's based solely on personal pleasure. Any decent moral system takes into account the needs and feelings of others. Without that, I might be pleasured in the moment, but I'm going to feel guilty at some point. Worse, who's going to take care of the old guy who only concerned himself with his own pleasure all his life. I'll be one of those zombies in an old folks' home, watching Matlock reruns.Actually, I don't think Mozart is being given a fair shake here. I actually mostly agree with him about pleasure (and avoiding suffering) being the ultimate goal of life--everything else is a means to that end. All of the things we value, we value because they ultimately bring us some form of pleasure. Even altruistic acts are ultimately done because we get some sense of satisfaction from them, which brings us a type of pleasure. People that don't get any pleasure from doing good (or don't suffer from doing really bad things) are generally called sociopaths. That doesn't make altruism any less noble or meaningful. It just puts it in the context of human nature. The idea that people do good things to avoid cognitive dissonance is really just another way of saying we do good things to increase our pleasure (i.e. that warm fuzzy feeling) or to avoid suffering. I realize I'm making a form of the "Every Human Act Is Selfish" argument, and that 's not real popular among philosophers. But I think this is not so much because they don't think it's true, strictly speaking. It's because they don't think it's a useful paradigm. I disagree. I think understanding that every act is in a sense selfish could be one of the keys to raising ethical humans. But, as Sam Harris has argued, moral acts should be defined as acts that increase the overall amount of pleasure in the universe. And we should be developing a science that can best determine what actions can bring this goal to fruition. As counterintuitive as it may seem, if it could be proved that all of us being brains in jars, having our pleasure centers stimulated, and living in a perfect Matrix-like computer-generated world was the best way to accomplish the goal of maximizing the pleasure of conscious beings in the Universe, then bringing that about would be a morally good act (though I get a bit of displeasure from contemplating that this might be so). (Sorry for the longish post.) edit: grammar
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... Actually, I don't think Mozart is being given a fair shake here. I actually mostly agree with him about pleasure (and avoiding suffering) being the ultimate goal of life--everything else is a means to that end. All of the things we value, we value because they ultimately bring us some form of pleasure. Even altruistic acts are ultimately done because we get some sense of satisfaction from them, which brings us a type of pleasure....Perhaps Mozart would do well to hire you as an interpreter. Mozart, I had trouble making sense of what you were saying, so I quickly gave up.
I think be as fair as is fair. I think I know what he means, but it's not my job to interpret his words. "Pleasure" is a poor choice of words if what you mean is "overall human health and happiness"I'm not sure there are any perfect words to use when talking about vague concepts like happiness, pleasure, health, contentment, etc. I kind of like Sam Harris' choice of words, "flourishing", although that's perhaps even more vague than the others. Perhaps the best term to use would be "whatever is the opposite of suffering". Actually, "pleasure" is about as good a word as any to fill that roll. Things like happiness, enjoyment, contentment, and even orgasm are all really just manifestations or types of pleasure (and physical health--whatever that is precisely--is a path to various kinds of pleasure).
Especially since the OP started with a discussion about why religion is a good thing. Really, he hasn't defended that and has gone off on this pleasure tangent.That's actually something I like about these discussions--they take us in unexpected directions. But I totally agree with you that he hasn't really supported his original point with any facts or figures.
Actually, I don't think Mozart is being given a fair shake here. I actually mostly agree with him about pleasure (and avoiding suffering) being the ultimate goal of life--everything else is a means to that end. All of the things we value, we value because they ultimately bring us some form of pleasure.Except that's not what he said. He said,
Pleasure is what gives any notion of value life and without pleasure, it would be completely dead. Therefore, pleasure is the only thing that matters and any notion of value is just a thought and nothing more. It is the processes in our own brains that give these things value. Without such a process (which would be the process of experiencing pleasure in the brain), then they will have no value.He actually brought up the context of someone totally paralyzed and hooked up to a machine that would just stimulate his pleasure center, and nothing else. That's not pleasure as a means to an end, that's pleasure as an end in itself. I don't mean to sound as if I'm coming down hard on him. This is a conversation between friends. If he really thinks that pleasure is the sole end of life, that's his right. I'm just giving a different viewpoint.
Actually, I don't think Mozart is being given a fair shake here. I actually mostly agree with him about pleasure (and avoiding suffering) being the ultimate goal of life--everything else is a means to that end. All of the things we value, we value because they ultimately bring us some form of pleasure.Except that's not what he said. He said,
Pleasure is what gives any notion of value life and without pleasure, it would be completely dead. Therefore, pleasure is the only thing that matters and any notion of value is just a thought and nothing more. It is the processes in our own brains that give these things value. Without such a process (which would be the process of experiencing pleasure in the brain), then they will have no value.He actually brought up the context of someone totally paralyzed and hooked up to a machine that would just stimulate his pleasure center, and nothing else. That's not pleasure as a means to an end, that's pleasure as an end in itself. I don't mean to sound as if I'm coming down hard on him. This is a conversation between friends. If he really thinks that pleasure is the sole end of life, that's his right. I'm just giving a different viewpoint. And he might be saying that, it's hard to tell. What I wish he would address is what about the people who have to make the pleasure machine? What do they get out of it? They are experiencing some lesser degree of pleasure, yet they were motivated to make the machine. Are there huge sweatshop factories cranking out these machines? Who gets to have one and be hooked up to it forever? Who feeds those people? At what point do we run out of people who can make the machines because they are all hooked up to them?
Except that's not what he said. He said,It seems to me that that is indeed the point of his example of being paralyzed. Pleasure is the end. Our values are a means to that end. Hence:Pleasure is what gives any notion of value life and without pleasure, it would be completely dead. Therefore, pleasure is the only thing that matters and any notion of value is just a thought and nothing more. It is the processes in our own brains that give these things value. Without such a process (which would be the process of experiencing pleasure in the brain), then they will have no value.He actually brought up the context of someone totally paralyzed and hooked up to a machine that would just stimulate his pleasure center, and nothing else. That's not pleasure as a means to an end, that's pleasure as an end in itself.
It is the processes in our own brains that give these things value. Without such a process (which would be the process of experiencing pleasure in the brain), then they will have no value.It seems fairly clear to me what he means. I could totally be wrong though.
There is no evidence that religious people are happier. That’s as scientific as I can get.I'm not sure that's quite true. At least in the U.S., most polls consistently show a positive correlation between religiosity and happiness (as well as health and life-expectancy). This is also true of conservatives vs. liberals. What can I say? Ignorance is bliss. Of course, correlation does not equal causation. And besides, the personal happiness granted by religion (or conservatism) may lead to the society around you being worse off. If your faith causes you to vote in an irrational way, the consequences for your society may be unfortunate--even as you personally go your blissful, merry way, happier than those skeptics around you. Which could be why it's hard to argue that people living in theocracies are happier than those in secular nations. The least religious secular democracies--particularly the Scandinavian ones--rate the highest in happiness, health, and life-expectancy. So my take is that True Believers (in religion or otherwise) might be happier than their fellow rationalists, all things being equal. But their world view, in aggregate, makes everyone worse off. It could be that believers feel the need to say they're happy, for the PR. I'm not so sure that a person who is aware of what is going on in the world today could say he or she is happy. Depends on how you define the word, I guess. One can be content within oneself and sad when he considers what's going on. It's hard to define an emotion. Lois
You can be so dark Lois. Paul Hawken wrote a book about the vast unnamed movement happening right now. It isn’t connected by financial agreements and contracts but by common concerns for the future of humanity. The revolution is happening and it is not televised. It doesn’t have one .org website.
You won’t see it if you aren’t out on the streets. ]
You can be so dark Lois. Paul Hawken wrote a book about the vast unnamed movement happening right now. It isn't connected by financial agreements and contracts but by common concerns for the future of humanity. The revolution is happening and it is not televised. It doesn't have one .org website. You won't see it if you aren't out on the streets. ]How does "common concerns for the future of humanity" work if there is no money and no political will to support those concerns? All we would have is people mouthing their concerns and no way to do anything to change the status quo. I don't have to be on the streets to know what is going on. I don't have to be in the streets to know that adding to the problems without fixing the ones we already have and are not addressing is going to help anyone. You are living in a Pollyanna world. Incidentally, how many homeless And desperate people--including immigrants, legal and illegal--have you invited into your home to live an be fully supported by you until they can get on their feet? Lois
You can be so dark Lois. Paul Hawken wrote a book about the vast unnamed movement happening right now. It isn't connected by financial agreements and contracts but by common concerns for the future of humanity. The revolution is happening and it is not televised. It doesn't have one .org website. You won't see it if you aren't out on the streets. ]How does "common concerns for the future of humanity" work if there is no money and no political will to support those concerns? All we would have is people mouthing their concerns and no way to do anything to change the status quo. I don't have to be on the streets to know what is going on. I don't have to be in the streets to know that adding to the problems without fixing the ones we already have and are not addressing is going to help anyone. You are living in a Pollyanna world. Incidentally, how many homeless And desperate people--including immigrants, legal and illegal--have you invited into your home to live an be fully supported by you until they can get on their feet? Lois I just said goodbye to a mother and her three children yesterday. They were kicked out of one house and the other wasn't ready for two weeks. Not that I do that all the time. Last year I was busy rebuilding after my house was filled with water up the the countertops. Luckily there were lots of people who offered me a place to sleep while I did that. I live in a world where there are resources and people help each other. You do to, but for some reason you don't see it.