7 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:
Why stop there. Thousands of people signed up for a one way trip to Mars. Suppose it were such a “one way trip” and there was no coming back would you see it as any different?
Different in degree, but no, not different in kind.
The reason why I “stopped” where I did, was because I thought five years (which is not insignificant; I wanted something heavier than the single day I’d proposed as the “cost” for ice cream) was severe but not extraordinary. I thought it more or less relatable – that people could understand it in terms of their own experience; that yeah, maybe we all have some pursuit that, perhaps, we’d be willing to trade a few years in our extremity for some grand adventure in the interim. In my opinion, it would require a truly extraordinary context, a truly extraordinary person, to be able to understand an individual who would be willing to embark on such a “one way trip” in any fashion that I would regard as moral, but I’m not willing to say that no such context or person exists.
As a writer, I perhaps flatter myself to believe that I could one day write a story with such a compelling character.
2 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:
Suppose there was a man who always enjoyed inflicting pain. He enjoyed burning grasshoppers with his magnifying glass and tortuing tadpoles as a child. Through adolescence he grew to love horror as a genre and reveled in the fear and suffering of the victims of those stories … engaging is fantasies of being the perpetrator himself. Finally he decides to act on his desires knowing that eventually he’ll get caught he is obsessed with the thrill of sadism. His first risks most of his values by indulging in snuff film consumption … finds and rewatches film depicting actual violence and killing of women. The final risk is for his ultimate pleasure, to lure a woman into his submarine and slowly engage in the terrifying and killing of her. He knows he has no chance of getting away with it forever but to him this is his ultimate pleasure he will not give up. He eventually does so by luring a journalist and although he tries to get away with it he fails and is caught. He thinks that it’s worth it even if he is executed for it.
Is this immoral according to an objective standard which mixes staying alive but trumped by pleasure?
Maybe the first thing we need to suss out here is who we expect the (primary) beneficiary of “moral action” is meant to be. Is it the individual? Or surrounding society?
I ask, not merely as a preface to addressing your scenario (which I will presently), but also because I’ve noted that you’ve sometimes referred to morality in a negative way – that it represents “restraints” to action. But that’s not how I see it at all. Morality is not a set of restraints on our action, but it is a guide for achievement: for achieving the good life (howsoever we think that is constituted). It isn’t some series of “Thou Shalt Nots,” but more like a treasure map, leading to the most valuable thing in the universe: moral action should be consequently joyful.
Obviously you would like to say that the Sadist you’ve proposed is immoral. So would I. But why? Are we primarily concerned with what the Sadist does to society? Or to himself?
It is the latter that I think we need to address, if we agree that the only true basis for ethics is “rational self-interest”; if our conclusion is that the Sadist leads a truly wonderful life, but surrounding society suffers for it, then I believe we have failed to establish his behavior as immoral (or at least we will have a markedly harder time of it). The goal of morality is not to convince others to spare us in the pursuit of their own happiness; and it is not for our own sake (primarily) that we hold the Sadist to be immoral… it is for his.
And what does the Sadist lose by acting the way that he does? I do not think it’s that he loses (potentially) in lifespan, because he might be caught and executed for his crimes; the freedom fighter runs much the same risk when he resists tyranny; Kira risks everything in her flight to freedom, with tragic results; and if we see some issue of manmade versus metaphysical in examples such as these, well, people have taken extraordinary risks in every type of endeavor imaginable, since the dawn of man. Many of those risks were understood ahead of time and taken on anyways; many people have died in the pursuit of their passions – or following their bliss – in industry, scientific discovery, invention, exploration, etc., etc., etc. So if it is not incurring a greater risk of death (or even certain knowledge of it, in some cases), and not the damage done to society, then what is it about the Sadist’s actions that makes them immoral?
I think it is this: that he is not going to have so wonderful a life, acting in this way, than he could otherwise have. And by “wonderful,” I am referring not alone to longevity, not alone to whatever “pleasures”/thrills he might find in his actions, and not alone to happiness, but a complex and interrelated melange of all three. Yet perhaps this is chiefly represented by happiness, as a ubiquitous emotional evaluation of man’s state – and that’s the chief thing I find missing in your description of the Sadist. I read that he experiences many things that he finds to be pleasurable (just as a dope addict might), but I do not read him as being happy (just as a dope addict will not be). I shudder to think at what his internal/emotional/spiritual state would be like – it is nothing that I would ever want to experience, and I say that having had my own lows.
If we think we can amend this by simply asserting, “Well, let’s make him ‘happy’ then! What now?” then I don’t think we are describing anything more real than a squared circle, because I do not believe that human happiness can be achieved in any imaginable way. I do not believe that sadism is the path to happiness, not even if the Sadist mistakenly believes that it is.
Rand (through Galt) says:
Quote
But neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims. Just as man is free to attempt to survive in any random manner, but will perish unless he lives as his nature requires, so he is free to seek his happiness in any mindless fraud, but the torture of frustration is all he will find, unless he seeks the happiness proper to man.
I believe our Sadist will not alone experience the “torture of frustration,” but deep terrors and a profound unhappiness. Though I have no specialized knowledge in this field, I expect that if we were to survey actual mass murderers, and the like, we would not discover a group of happy folks who simply happen to value things a little differently; we would not discover “hedonists,” either, even if they conceived of themselves as seeking pleasure (which I doubt they would describe themselves as doing; I expect that they would likelier describe themselves as being driven by “compulsions” or etc.). I expect we would find a group of depressed, ignorant, and terrified individuals with a strong correlation with alcoholism and drug abuse; if clinical examinations were available, we would discover a history of trauma or abuse, and consequent anhedonia, etc.
They would not by any reasonable measure (I doubt even their own) be living “the good life.”
So yes, the Sadist is acting immorally (and is immoral), because he is sacrificing a life of pleasure and happiness (of any duration). And if that is not enough to convince him to do otherwise (because his “compulsions” are too strong; or because he thinks the “pleasure” he’s chasing is too great), then the promise of “longevity” certainly will not either. He must be convinced that moral action will be to his own benefit – just as we ourselves require – and what benefit will he see in “more life”? “Life,” such as he conceives of it, is not sufficient to inspire him to want “more” of it. Rather, it must be better life. Not a life of “less pleasure,” but more pleasure, and specifically and importantly: a life of the greatest of all pleasures – happiness.
________________________________
But here’s a question for you:
Suppose the same Sadist, but he has managed to keep a lid on his compulsions (or “passions” or “pleasures”) throughout his life, because he has believed that “survival is the standard of value,” and he did not wish to die early, through execution or etc.
But now he has some incurable, terminal disease – and only a few months to live. Considering that his actions will have no appreciable effect on his ability to survive, he considers himself finally free of the shackles/restraints of morality, and free to indulge his every sick and twisted whim. Finally free to enjoy himself.
What say you? “Is this immoral according to an objective standard?” Why or why not?
50 minutes ago, StrictlyLogical said:
Following up my last two posts while I await response… I wonder whether you believe one can or should judge pleasures as good or bad and on what basis, and is that basis actually objective or not?
I apologize, but I can’t give this a full response at the moment, though I’ve tried to address just such questions, at length, in many of the threads I’d linked to earlier (most centrally “Pleasure and Value,” which you’d also participated in, before… er… excusing yourself).
If you have further questions, we can pursue them here or there, or anywhere (including a more general conversation regarding “objectivity,” which you’ve mentioned a couple of times) – but I’m currently feeling the stress of trying to respond to a lot of deep and difficult questions (not to mention a lack of time, etc.)!
And speaking of which, Invictus, Easy Truth, Harrison, et al., my apologies for delayed responses. I’m not trying to ignore anyone or any responses… I hope to get to everything and everyone eventually…