Thread: what is the point of this bullshit.

dude calm down..there is no point of life so you just make the best of it. Don't get caught up in what other people are doing, other people think that way you do as well. It doesn't matter what they think, there is no point, that's the point, so people just try to make themselves happy, give them that.

Existence is for itself, your a part of it that can influence the rest of it, you can find individual meaning by deciding how you would like to do that. Try not to take it all so seriously, we're all fleeting after all, try to find some playful joy in the freedom of your choices.

Basically.

In the end nihilism is pointless.

I believe you're looking for this thread: http://www.dreamviews.com/f16/rant-r...mplain-114810/

Also, curse words do not make your point any stronger if you overuse them like a little kid who knows his mom isn't watching.

Originally Posted by ♥Mark

In the end nihilism is pointless.

It is when you realize this that you become an absuuurddissttt.

Originally Posted by Seroquel

It is when you realize this that you become an absuuurddissttt.

The order was reversed for me, personally.

What exactly is the "pit of darkness" you are talking about? People are led by instinct sub-consciously. Learn to understand this and illuminate in the "darkness"

Every human sees in other humans what he sees in himself. It is all a projection of perception. You don't understand how others can be happy unless you can be happy yourself. Nobody thinks like you, and you don't think like them. It really is that simple.

Some people live with the pit of darkness, others free of it. But you do have the power to let it go when you're willing to see it for what it is. You don't need to try hard either, you simply have to give up that belief, because that belief causes you sorrow, and you'd be happy without it. It is then when true meaning becomes clearer, and you would have found it out for yourself.

Happiness is so much more a choice you make than a situation you're in. This is so counter-intuitive that I need to say it out loud, often.

here, read this.

http://www.philosophybro.com/2010/12...rathustra.html

You are the universe experiencing itself. Experience yourself.
That is all there is.

Originally Posted by poopman

Greeting friends of the interwebs. i am very fucking uneasy tonight. i am sick of this pit that grows in me every once in a while that hurts and grows bigger with sadness and a sense of nothingness. what are we doing here? i am to the point that i just dont know what the hell i am doing, i mean what is the fucking point to this existence. everyone is so full of shit in my life, family and friends and the faces on the tube and the voices on the radio are all just full of shit. i am sick of people acting so damn happy when they are all addicted to pills or having affairs or whatever. i dont judge them for what they do but i do get discouraged by the blatant hypocrisy i encounter everyday. people are avoiding the pit of darkness by distracting themselves with whatever works for them, drugs or sex or church or whatever horseshit. i dont want to bring anyone down (nor do i think i have the power to) but i have always felt i am alone in these feelings and thought it would a good idea to bring this to a forum of semi intelligent folks that are more conscious than the general public. i know i rambled a bit here but i think my feeling has carried through.

I do not know how you will perceive this post but I will do my best to get my points across. If this sounds harsh, know that I worded it as such to be as clear and as precise as possible. No beating around the bush from me.

I know existence is fleeting. I am aware of what appears to be a meaningless universe. I know what it is like to think I have a much higher awareness of this universe's nature than anyone else does. Everyone seems to be ignoring it and doing irrational things with their lives. They seem to ignore what may as well be hell. Fuck it. I thought I was hot shit when it came to my intelligence level compared to those around me. I saw things they didn't in the world. The hell was still there, I was just a damn prodigy who saw the world for "what it is."

However, this is NOT a full perspective. Not by a long shot. I've been where you are and when I was there, everything and everyone was ugly and evil in some way.

I'll tell you a couple of things that run through my mind now when I consider this sort of mindset that I used to have.

Don't assume the role of a victim. It's selfish and childish when you see it for what it really is. No one but the individual himself can create a meaning for his existence. We make our own purposes. To wait for someone or something to give us a meaning is not the way to live what should be and is OUR lives. No one should have to hold our hand and baby us every step of the way in our lives. Those are the choices that WE have the freedom to make.

When you have a bigger perspective of life, you will inevitably understand other people. If you are one to alienate yourself from other people, dislike the alienation and ultimately rationalize it in a way that preserves your current identity while diminishing their's, you have some growing up to do. What this means is that if you are always finding faults in most people, and finding reasons why you dislike them, you are not seeing everyone for who they truly are. If you did see people for who they truly are, you'd know that you are not the only one who experiences this sort of reality. You'd be aware that the same insecurities and emotional experiences are common in almost everyone no matter how much it may seem otherwise.

Ultimately, we might alienate ourselves because of our discomforts with certain or all social settings. But what I really want to address is this- your post indicates to me that socially, you have a negative perception and reality of the people in the world around you. This, in my personal experience, was caused by a lack of an identity bigger than my own room. Now, I'm not sure if this applies to you, but it sure as hell did to me at one time. Sitting on a computer for hours on end does nothing to cultivate an honest understanding of the emotional experiences that everyone goes through. Watching TV or movies or whatever else is absolutely not a replacement for interacting with people face-to-face in a genuinely positive manner. If you want a true perspective of what people go through, talk to them and learn to understand them. This means meeting people (guys AND girls), having fun, sharing serious discussions, etc.

Once you are at a level of comfort with just this, maybe your world will change for the better because of that clearer perception. It took me several years of this "hell" to finally realize that I created it myself. I built up all of my old mindsets, beliefs and my own personal hell from things I heard or read online or saw on TV without even trying to make an honest effort to experience life for myself. Fortunately, I realized this while still in college, so I could make the best of those years in my life. With a clearer perception, that ugliness you perceive of the world may turn to beauty. And as cheesy as it may sound, that pit will turn to love. When you see that most people are friends going through life WITH you as opposed to enemies going through life AGAINST you, you will inevitably develop a loving and compassionate understanding of people. This can only come with that clearer perception of the world around you. You won't ignore the universe. You'll just be aware of much more of it.

I hope you can take something useful from this

Originally Posted by ♥Mark

The order was reversed for me, personally.

That's absurd.

Originally Posted by poopman

Greeting friends of the interwebs. i am very fucking uneasy tonight. i am sick of this pit that grows in me every once in a while that hurts and grows bigger with sadness and a sense of nothingness. what are we doing here? i am to the point that i just dont know what the hell i am doing, i mean what is the fucking point to this existence. everyone is so full of shit in my life, family and friends and the faces on the tube and the voices on the radio are all just full of shit. i am sick of people acting so damn happy when they are all addicted to pills or having affairs or whatever. i dont judge them for what they do but i do get discouraged by the blatant hypocrisy i encounter everyday. people are avoiding the pit of darkness by distracting themselves with whatever works for them, drugs or sex or church or whatever horseshit. i dont want to bring anyone down (nor do i think i have the power to) but i have always felt i am alone in these feelings and thought it would a good idea to bring this to a forum of semi intelligent folks that are more conscious than the general public. i know i rambled a bit here but i think my feeling has carried through.

Congratulations man. You have now met reality face-to-face. Everything you've said is true. Life is suffering....most suffer, but don't realize they are suffering and tend to cover it up with drugs, sex, television, etc. to fill the void like you said.

I don't know know the purpose to life. Maybe the purpose to life is to find your own purpose. Only thing you can really do is relax in your suffering.

Realize that your suffering and just kind of accept it. Happiness is just another emotion like love, and sadness, anger. They come and go. You experienced them from a "detached" perceptive.

I definitely feel what your saying though man. Our people in America our getting so stupid, lazy, uninspired, selfish, stingy, hypocritical it hurts.

All you can do is stay in the present moment. It's the only thing you have and that can relieve you of suffering. You forget about everyone else.

Happiness in Austro-Athenian Perspective



APEE Panel on Happiness, Las Vegas, 3 April 2006


Roderick T. Long


I should begin with the caveat that the following remarks represent a broad-brush outline of a research program, rather than any sort of definitive argument. I describe the perspective of this research program as “Austro-Athenian” because it seeks to integrate – or, as I would argue, reintegrate – the insights of Greek philosophy with those of Austrian praxeology.

Plato, Aristotle, and other Greek philosophers used the term eudaimonia, traditionally translated as “happiness,” to refer to an ultimate unified end toward which each person strives in all her actions. Most Greek philosophers held, in addition, that this ultimate end was not a subjective feeling like pleasure but an objective state of flourishing as a rational being; that it included moral virtue as a necessary component: and that one person’s eudaimonia, properly understood, could never clash with another’s.

In the modern period the existence of such an ultimate end – with or without the further accompaniments mentioned – has often been denied. Hobbes, for example, offers in Leviathan I. 11 what today we would call a praxeological critique of the notion of an ultimate end. For Hobbes, the point of acting is to change the existing situation; hence all action is an expression of dissatisfaction with things as they are. But if there were an ultimate end, then once we had achieved it we would have no reason to alter it; and so those who experienced this ultimate fulfillment would cease all further activity. Moreover, since the cessation of activity would mean the cessation of life, the notion of a life of fulfillment is inherently impossible; such fulfillment is not to be found this side of the grave. Thus Hobbes concludes that “the felicity of this life consisteth not in the repose of a mind satisfied,” for a man cannot live “whose desires are at an end”; our appetites are “perpetual and restless,” driving us along on a “continual progress … from one object to another” that “ceaseth only in death.”

But Hobbes’ starting-point is mistaken. Action need not express dissatisfaction with existing conditions; all it must express is a preference for the way things will be if one acts over the way things will be if one does not act. This condition is present not only in actions that aim at changing an existing situation, but in actions that aim at maintaining one. Hobbes also errs in thinking of the means-end relation as purely instrumental; he forgets that a means can sometimes be part of an end rather than simply a strategy for bringing the end about.

Consider Orpheus strumming on his lyre. We need not assume that his playing expresses dissatisfaction; perhaps he would be dissatisfied if he were to stop playing his lyre, but so long as he’s playing it he may be quite content. His aim is to keep the activity going. And the particular notes that Orpheus plays are not strategies for bringing about some result; he does not play one note as a means to playing the next note. On the contrary, each individual note is played for the sake of the whole activity of which it is a part; the relation is not causal but constitutive.

By analogy, we need find no contradiction between Aristotle’s description of happiness as that which “all by itself makes life choiceworthy and lacking in nothing,” and his definition of happiness as a life of virtuous rational activity. For Aristotle, attaining a life that includes everything choiceworthy does not mean one thereupon collapses into a nirvana-like stupor with nothing more to do. The happy person lives her life as Orpheus plays his music: her ultimate end is an activity; she acts to keep the activity going and is satisfied so long as she does so; and she regards the individual activities she cares about as components of, not as instrumental means to, that overarching activity.

So the notion of an ultimate end is not open to objection on praxeological grounds. But does that mean we have any reason to favour it? We of course have good reason to think we have some final ends or other; any means gets its value from the end it serves, which in turn – if it is not a final end – gets its value from some further end; thus the entire sequence of ends would lack value unless it ultimately terminated in a final end, an end chosen simply for its own sake and not for the sake of any further end. Thus by acting at all we reveal our commitment to a final end or ends. But why should we suppose that in our actions we aim at a single overarching end, rather than at a disparate aggregate of particular ends? I maintain that praxeological considerations actually support the idea of a unitary ultimate end of all our actions.

Suppose there are two things I want, A and B, but it turns out I can’t have both. So I deliberate: that is, I think about which one to pick. This activity of deliberation is itself an action, and so must aim at an end; it is purposiveness, orientation to an end, that distinguishes actions from mere bodily movements. So what is the end of my deliberation? Deliberating between A and B is not a pure end in itself; it points to some end beyond itself. But what end?

The end can’t be A, because the upshot of the deliberation might be to reject A in favour of B, and in such a case we wouldn’t say that the deliberation had failed to achieve its end. The end can’t be B, for similar reasons. Nor can the end be the conjunction of A and B, because the whole process of deciding between A and B presupposes the unavailability of that option. Nor yet can the end be the disjunction of A and B, for if that were all I wanted, I could simply pick one at random rather than deliberating. Deliberating whether to choose A or B, then, necessarily involves some end distinct from the particular ends A and B. We might describe this end, roughly, as getting as much of what I want as possible – or, a bit more formally, as the maximum weighted satisfaction of my preferences.

This end – call it MaxPref for short – is one that must be attributed to any agent that engages in deliberation; deciding what to do just is deciding what best contributes to one’s MaxPref. Since any agent that never engaged in deliberation would not be recognisable as a rational agent, we may include MaxPref among the ends of all rational agents. But is MaxPref to be identified with happiness in the Greek philosophers’ sense?


To answer this question, we must first determine whether MaxPref is an agent’s overarching end, or merely one end among others. For in order for MaxPref to be identified as my ultimate end, it must be not only the end for the sake of which I deliberate among various options, but also the end for the sake of which I choose whichever option I end up choosing. And here one might suppose that when I pick A I do so simply for the sake of getting A, and not in addition for the sake of advancing my MaxPref.

But this objection draws too sharp a distinction between choosing A for its own sake and choosing A for the sake of my MaxPref. Choosing A expresses a preference for A over any available rival option, and thus expresses a judgment that A, under the circumstances, advances my MaxPref. This is not an empirical, psychological hypothesis about motivation; it is a purely conceptual point. As Israel Kirzner writes in The Economic Point of View, his exposition of Austrian-style praxeology:



The proposition that the notion of purpose implies a constraint that one select the most suitable means for the fulfilment of the purpose is not a proposition about that purpose. The proposition as such cannot, for example, be “explained” … by the postulation of a moral urge to fulfil one’s purposes. Rather, the proposition, on the praxeological view, sets forth the nature of purpose itself. (Ch. 6, n. 102)

In other words, any activity not chosen as the most suitable means to one’s end would not even count as purposive, and so would be a mere bodily movement rather than an action. It is therefore a conceptual truth that everything we choose – whether or not as a result of deliberation – is chosen as a means to our MaxPref. This is true even of what we choose “for its own sake”; in such cases we choose a thing as a constitutive rather than an instrumental means to our MaxPref. Thus an agent’s MaxPref is the ultimate end for the sake of which she does whatever she does.


Note, incidentally, that it makes no sense to identify MaxPref with pleasure, or indeed with any other subjective mental state or feeling on the part of the agent. For many objects of our choice cannot plausibly be construed as either instrumental or constitutive means to subjective mental states.
For example, suppose I buy life insurance, or write out a will. The end for the sake of which I do so is the well-being of my loved ones after I’m dead. But ex hypothesi I won’t be around to witness the well-being of my loved ones after I’m dead, so their well-being can’t be a means to any subjective mental state of mine. (This is what Aristotle means when he talks about our happiness being affected by posthumous events.)


It might be replied that my buying life insurance now is a means to my feeling satisfied now at the thought that my loved ones will be cared for after I’m dead. Well, my desire to experience this pleasant thought may indeed be one of my ends in buying life insurance. But is it solely the thought that they will be cared for – and not, in addition, their actually being cared for – that motivates my choice to buy life insurance? If so, then if offered the choice between a life insurance policy costing a hundred dollars and a magic pill costing fifty dollars, where swallowing the magic pill will induce the false belief that one has bought life insurance, anyone would choose the magic pill over the life insurance. But in fact few of us would so choose; and the moral is that we have preferences concerning actual states of the world, and not just preferences concerning our inner life. Thus MaxPref is not a subjective mental state; it may of course include such states as constituents, but it need not consist in them exclusively.

The similarity between MaxPref and eudaimonia should now be clear. But one might think there’s an obvious difference. Eudaimonia is supposed to be something that “all by itself makes life choiceworthy and lacking in nothing.”

But we’ve seen that the pursuit of MaxPref involves making trade-offs. I deliberate between A and B in order to promote my MaxPref; but since I want both, and can’t have both, getting my MaxPref doesn’t seem to make my life “lacking in nothing.” Does this mean that MaxPref falls short of eudaimonia?


Not necessarily. Most Greek philosophers don’t pretend that the eudaimonic life is a life without trade-offs; what eudaimonia includes is not everything worth wishing for but everything worth choosing. If I want both A and B but can only have one of them, and I prefer A, then B is not worth choosing. It is not part of my eudaimonia, just as it is not part of my MaxPref.

At this point, however, one might worry that eudaimonia will be too easily attainable. For it can easily seem that I’m always in a position to obtain everything worth choosing, since whatever is presently unattainable is presently not worth choosing. For example: suppose I’m trapped at the bottom of a well, being bitten by snakes that I am unable to fend off. Since neither escape from my captivity nor escape from excruciating pain is available under these circumstances, there could be no point in my choosing such escape; so on this line of reasoning my imprisonment and torture turn out, surprisingly, to be no obstacle to my happiness. For I am still getting as much of what I want as possible, where adverse circumstances play their part in delimiting what in fact is possible.


Some of the Greek philosophers – Socrates, the Stoics – do indeed appear to think about happiness this way. But others, like Aristotle and Theophrastus, quite clearly think that adverse circumstances can deprive us of happiness – so they, at least, cannot be thinking of choiceworthiness in the way described. And they are surely right not to do so; for in our actions we often strive for what is not yet attainable, so our ultimate end must be such that it could intelligibly serve as the object of these strivings.

Our task, then, is to find a conception of our ultimate end that avoids two pitfalls. One is the pitfall of utopianism, of including everything worth wishing for. Since the pervasive experience of choosing among rival options necessarily involves the recognition that not all objects worth wishing for are simultaneously attainable, such a utopian end is generally recognised to be impossible – and so cannot serve as our ultimate end, since we cannot aim at what we acknowledge to be impossible. The other pitfall is the opposite error of total accommodation to circumstances, of taking anything not immediately attainable under present circumstances as not worth wishing for and so not part of our ultimate end. This conception too must be mistaken, since it cannot account for the fact that we do in fact frequently aim at what we recognise to be unattainable at present.

The first distinction we need to make is between direct and indirect objects of choice. Suppose I am presently in Las Vegas and I would prefer to be in Paris – the real one, not the casino. Can I choose to be in Paris? Well, not directly; I can’t just teleport myself there without the use of any intermediate means. But I can select being in Paris as a long-range end, and set about pursuing means to that end. Being in Paris is presently unattainable, but is nonetheless an end at which it makes perfect sense for me to aim – albeit indirectly, by the use of intermediate means. The assumption that whatever is presently unattainable is not choiceworthy neglects the distinction between direct and indirect choice.


Now a Stoic might object that it is irrational for me to aim at being in Paris, on the grounds that no intermediate steps I take can guarantee my ending up in Paris; whatever I do in pursuit of my aim, circumstances beyond my control might prevent my getting to Paris. Hence, on the Stoic view, at most I should aim at doing all I can to get to Paris. And doing all I can to get to Paris is, of course, immediately attainable; at any given moment I can always be doing all I can. Still, even the Stoic must grant that we in fact, however foolishly in their judgment, do aim at ends like actually getting to Paris, and not just at ends like doing all we can to get to Paris. While we cannot aim at ends we recognise to be impossible – indeed, we arguably cannot even aim at ends we regard as overwhelmingly improbable – we certainly can and do aim at ends whose achievement we cannot guarantee. Doing all we can to get to Paris is chosen as a means to ultimately being in Paris; we do our part, and hope that circumstances will cooperate. Our ultimate end, then, neither includes everything worth wishing for, which would makes its attainment impossible, nor confines itself to everything directly choiceworthy, which would make its attainment all too easy. Rather, it includes everything worth striving for – everything worth choosing, directly or indirectly.

Suppose, though, that I have fallen to the bottom of that well and cannot get out. Unless someone comes along and rescues me – a situation which to the best of my knowledge I can do nothing to make more likely – I’m stuck there until I die. Now if my MaxPref contains not everything worth wishing for but only everything worth striving for, then it might seem that I’ve attained my MaxPref, trapped down there in the well with the snakes. For although escape from the well is worth wishing for, it doesn’t seem to be worth striving for; I know of no way to promote it either directly or indirectly. And if my MaxPref is to be identified with my happiness, then we’d have to conclude that I should be happy to be trapped in the well. Now Socrates and the Stoics might be willing to embrace such an inference, but is there any way for those with more Aristotelean sympathies to avoid this accommodationist conclusion?

I think so. For even at the bottom of the well, although at the moment there’s no positive action I can take, there is a sense in which I am always “on alert,” in a tense state of readiness to seize escape should it come my way; and maintaining that readiness counts as a kind of striving after escape. Hence I can coherently count escape from the well as part of my MaxPref.


But this escape from accommodationism might seem to land us in the opposite extreme of utopianism. For couldn’t someone claim that I should equally spend my life in a state of high-tension readiness about the possibility of teleportation or immortality or astral projection, thus transforming every legitimate object of wish into an object of striving?

Well, yes, one could do this. But here there is a benign tension between accommodationism and utopianism. We have some reason to be complete utopians: anything worth wishing for constitutes a prima facie case for including it within the ends of action. But we also have some reason for being complete accommodationists: any desire we can’t currently satisfy constitutes a prima facie reason for giving that desire up so as to avoid the frustration of striving in vain. If only one of these vectors applied to us, we would rationally have to follow it to its logical extreme; but since both apply, it’s rational for us to balance them off against each other, choosing an intermediate position between resignation and all-pervasive longing. The content of our happiness is not fixed; we construct the reasons we are to have out of the reasons we have now.

Yet suppose some wished-for end that I am, rationally, not striving for suddenly becomes available. Does it then become part of my MaxPref? I think so. For example, it doesn’t seem rational to me to spend my life in constant frustration and high-alert tension because I can’t live to be a thousand years old; but if some treatment made such lifespans the norm, I’m inclined to think that lacking access to such treatment would then be an impediment to my happiness. Our MaxPref is thus contextually conditioned, though not so drastically as Socrates supposed.

The spectre of Hobbes’ objection still lingers, however. For any realistically achievable life will contain a good deal of striving. No life can confine itself to activities pursued merely to keep themselves going; we will inevitably be pursuing activities aimed at bringing about some end not yet attained. It might then appear to follow that an ultimate end is unachievable, since so long as we live we can never attain all the objects of our striving.


On the other hand, though, our very desire to achieve our ultimate end gives us reason not to conceive of it, or not to construct it, as something unachievable; that’s the contribution of the accommodationist vector. At the same time, the utopian vector gives us reason not to renounce all striving; in combination, then, the two vectors give us reason to interpret our MaxPref as something that both contains everything worth striving for and is consistent with ongoing striving. The very meaning of striving, and likewise of achievement, is under constructive determination here.

Now part of the solution is that achieving our goals takes time. The fact that I haven’t yet achieved some particular goal I’m striving for needn’t mean I won’t achieve it eventually; and if I do achieve it, then my life does, in due course, contain that object of striving. But this can’t be the complete solution; for any life worth living will doubtless contain some strivings that never attain their end. For example, even though we shouldn’t spend our lives beating our heads against our lack of a thousand-year lifespan, there’s surely nothing wrong with a scientist’s deciding to devote her life to attempting to discover a way to extend our lifespan to a thousand years. Suppose she spends her life striving after this goal, but never reaches it. Should we judge her life to be a failure as far as happiness goes? (Or, cutting a bit closer to home, if I devote much of my life to the cause of anarchism, does that mean my life can’t be a happy one unless the cause of anarchism eventually triumphs?)

The Stoic solution is to attach value to strivings but not to the goals striven for; on the Stoic view the scientist can, and perhaps rationally should, care about the attempt to find a way to extend our lifespans, without caring about actually finding it. As long as she does all she can to achieve the goal, she is happy whether she ever achieves the goal or not. Now this Stoic solution, in my view, is praxeologically incoherent: having X as one’s end is part and parcel of aiming at X, so there is simply no such thing as caring about the aiming without caring about what’s aimed at. But the Stoic view, does, I think, point the way to a solution, by reminding us that the value of striving is not reducible to the value of the ends striven for.


We want to say that a life can be happy even if much of it is spent striving for goals never attained. Now ordinarily the fact that we want to say something does not make it true. But the content of happiness is not fixed independently of our reasons for believing and action; on the contrary, it is constructed out of such reasons. The way forward, I suggest, lies in thinking about degrees of happiness.

In one sense, “degrees of happiness” might refer to getting closer and closer to happiness. But the sense I have in mind is one in which one genuinely has happiness, but can have it in greater or smaller degree. Compare the way in which orange is “redder” than green is with the way in which one shade of red is “redder” than another shade; I’m interested in degrees of happiness in the second sense.


If we allow for degrees of happiness, then we can say that the scientist who never finds the secret to lifespan extension can be genuinely happy – not just close to happy, or nearly happy, but happy – and yet also that she would have been even happier if she had found the secret. This makes finding the secret a component of happiness, but not a necessary component. So in striving for the secret she is not striving for something outside of happiness, and yet she can be happy without finding what she strives for. Merely striving brings her some happiness, while success would bring her still more happiness.

Our definition of MaxPref will thus need to be somewhat more complicated; there will be a certain minimum threshold of things worth striving for, such that falling below that threshold counts as failing to achieve our MaxPref at all (and I continue to think that this threshold will be context-relative); and then above that there will be various levels of further ends, achieving which counts as an increase in our MaxPref (where achieving the end and striving to achieve it may both be components of our MaxPref, perhaps at different levels).


But if MaxPref is to be identified with the eudaimonia of the Greek philosophers, it must meet two further criteria: it must be identical with the agent’s self-interest, and it must include moral virtue as an essential component. And it might not be obvious that MaxPref will always satisfy these criteria. For MaxPref is supposed to be what we actually aim at in all our actions; and do we not often choose what we know to be immoral or imprudent or both?

There is a difference, though, between the way we are conceiving of our MaxPref at any given time and the way we are committed to constructing it. Moral and prudential terms are both normative terms; in applying such terms to a thing we thereby endorse the thing. Of course we are free to adopt a different use for our normative and prudential terms, applying them to things we do not endorse; but then they would be different terms (in Wittgensteinian jargon: the same signs, but different symbols).

We cannot apply these terms, meaning by them what is ordinarily meant by them, to anything without endorsing it as an object of pursuit. In using such concepts at all, we commit ourselves to integrating moral and prudential concerns into our MaxPref. The fact that at any given moment we may be flouting our moral commitments, or our prudential commitments, or both, does not show that they are not our commitments. As Socrates points out in Plato’s Gorgias, once we concede the existence of moral value, we cannot be satisfied with any life that does not include that sort of value.

But although we can’t use our moral or prudential concepts without committing ourselves to integrating them into our MaxPref, why can’t we escape this commitment simply by abandoning these concepts? After all, we often abandon the use of certain terms or concepts – racial epithets, for example – in order to avoid their normative commitments.


True enough; but I maintain that, unlike more superficial normative concepts, morality and self-interest are too fundamental and too deeply-rooted to be abandoned without abandoning our ability to think of ourselves as agents at all. Let’s start with self-interest. To begin with, we are not disembodied ghosts; each of us is identical with a particular living organism. Now we cannot conceive of a living organism except in terms of its having needs and interests. This isn’t an empirical discovery about living organisms; it’s part of the very concept of a living organism. And thus we must think of the organism’s needs and interests as being our needs and interests. Nor can we avoid this commitment by abandoning the concept of “living organism” and thus ceasing to conceive of ourselves as needy, interested beings. For we cannot choose and deliberate without thinking of ourselves as agents, and being an agent just is a way of being a living organism; the two concepts are logically connected.

This doesn’t mean, however, that the content of our self-interest will be determined by biological considerations alone. Some neo-Aristotelean thinkers, like Herbert Spencer and Ayn Rand, have tried to start from a purely biological conception of self-interest and work their way up to something fancier. But such attempts are neither promising nor necessary. The need to think of ourselves as biological organisms whose needs and interests are our own commits us to integrating those needs and interests into our conception of our MaxPref; but the determination will naturally be reciprocal rather than one-way. As we’ve seen, when two vectors meet in the space of reasons, the result is ordinarily a negotiated compromise between or creative synthesis of the two, not pure triumph on the one side and abject surrender on the other. Thus while our biological needs will play a role in specifying the content of our MaxPref, our other commitments will likewise play a role in specifying the content of our biological needs.


This was in fact the approach of the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers. Seneca, for example, writes that “a human being’s constitution is a rational one, and so a human being’s attachment is to himself not qua living being but qua rational being; for he is dear to himself in respect of what makes him human.” (Letter 121.) Likewise, Aristotle argues that since “it is our reasoned acts that are felt to be in the fullest sense our own acts,” it follows that “a man is or is chiefly the dominant part of himself,” i.e. his reason; and the virtuous man, who “values this part of himself most,” thus turns out to be “a lover of self in the fullest degree.” Thus the virtuous man does not conceptualise (or construct) his self-interest primarily in terms of biological survival:

For he will surrender wealth and power and all the goods that men struggle to win, if he can secure nobility for himself; since he would prefer an hour of rapture to a long period of mild enjoyment, a year of noble life to many years of ordinary existence, one great and glorious exploit to many small successes. And this is doubtless the case with those who give their lives for others; thus they choose great nobility for themselves. (Nicomachean Ethics IX. 8.)


And this brings us to the relation between happiness and morality. Let’s focus on concern for other people – which isn’t the whole of morality by any means, but it’s certainly an important part of it. Why should concern for other people enter into my MaxPref?


It’s sometimes thought that other-concern can be grounded simply in a requirement of logical consistency: if I regard my pursuit of my own happiness as legitimate for me, I must equally regard your pursuit of your happiness as legitimate for you. Well, that’s true enough, I think; but it doesn’t yield other-concern – for I could regard you much as a sports team regards its rival. If you’re on the opposite team from me, then of course I regard it as legitimate for you to try to win the game; but that doesn’t commit me to wanting to help you win it. On the contrary, I’ll do everything I can to stop you. Now in the case of a game there is a broader context of shared values that licenses this local conflict; but why must that always be the case? Might not life be as Hobbes pictures it – a vast arena of conflict, where “every man has a right to every thing, even to one another’s body”? A consistency requirement only gets us as far each pursuing his own good, but does not explain why your good should be of any concern to me or vice versa.

One way of putting the problem is this: happiness seems like an agent-relative value. My happiness is normative for me, your happiness is normative for you. But why should there be any shared or agent-neutral norms – as opposed to, at best, accidentally coinciding private norms? It’s true, of course, that our existing normative concepts do have an agent-neutral dimension built into them; calling something “good,” for example, functions both to express one’s own approval of it and to recommend it to others. But the question is whether our existing normative concepts are dispensable. Why couldn’t we abandon them in favour of purely agent-relative normative concepts?

Here’s a brief sketch of why I think we cannot coherently do this. Rational agency cannot exist without language; language is not just a means of communicating our thoughts, it’s the vehicle of thought. But the communicative dimension is nevertheless essential; language, for familiar Wittgensteinian reasons, cannot be a purely private matter. To speak a language is to acquiesce in essentially shared norms governing a body of linguistic practices. Thus any rational agent is committed to acting in accordance with shared norms

Now a number of thinkers, from Habermas to Hoppe, have tried to derive some fairly robust ethical norms out of the norms governing linguistic communication. But as I said about the project of deriving robust ethical norms out of the requirements of biological survival, I find such attempts neither promising nor necessary. The point is not that agent-neutral ethical norms can somehow be derived from agent-neutral linguistic norms; the point is rather that once such a thing as agent-neutral value is so much as recognised, it must forthwith be integrated into one’s MaxPref. Thus, although happiness is in some sense an agent-relative value, it turns out to include agent-neutral value as a necessary component. To recognise the existence of any given category of value – moral, prudential, aesthetic – is to include it among the normative lenses through which one views all one’s options. Henceforth any option that cannot be endorsed from the perspective of agent-neutral value cannot be integrated into one’s MaxPref. Hence there can be no fundamental conflict between one person’s eudaimonia and another’s.

This doesn’t mean that there cannot arise something like interpersonal conflicts of interest – but when they do arise they must be like the sports arena rather than the Hobbesian arena, a delimited context of conflict endorsed by a more fundamental framework of shared values.


The same is true of conflicts within a single individual’s value system. It’s sometimes said that a fully virtuous person would experience no inner conflicts and would perform all her duties cheerfully; but that seems dubious. Aristotle, to whom this view is often mistakenly attributed, points out that the courageous person ought to feel some fear when facing danger. Of course she shouldn’t be paralysed with fear; she should recognise that the requirements of courage are more important than bodily security. But she would fail to be giving bodily security its due as a genuinely important value if she faced danger without a qualm. But fear inherently involves a desire to avoid facing whatever it is one fears; so what Aristotle shows us is that the courageous person will quite properly have a desire to do something (run away) that she nevertheless should not do.

Here’s another example; I owe this one to Karen Stohr. Suppose that you are a fully virtuous person and the task falls to you of breaking some bad news to a friend. Now clearly you can’t perform that duty cheerfully; any decent person dislikes bearing bad news. So even the virtuous person – nay, especially the virtuous person – will desire not to perform this duty. Now it would obviously be a moral failing to give in to that desire, but it would also be a moral failing not to have it. Thus even within an individual there will be conflicts one ought to have, desires one should have but shouldn’t act on. But here too, this local conflict is licensed by a broader framework of unitary values.


Let me close as I started, by acknowledging that the position I’ve been defending has been painted in very broad strokes; its adequate elaboration will require far more detailed argument than I’ve given here. But please don’t reveal the secret that I haven’t yet fully worked all this out: what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

poopman is awesome. He should have his own subforum where all of his threads automatically go. That way, we don't have to waste any time looking at for them.

Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

poopman is awesome. He should have his own subforum where all of his threads automatically go. That way, we don't have to waste any time looking at for them.

Yes, the implication that we all have fake meanings to our lives because he can't seem to find his own meaning certainly is awesome.

Originally Posted by really

Some people live with the pit of darkness, others free of it. But you do have the power to let it go when you're willing to see it for what it is.

See what for what what is? I'm seeing this phrase a lot around here, "see it for what it is", and I'd like for simplicity's sake some clarification. You know, to make all this kind of philosophical talk a little less cryptic and pretentious. Maybe use this phrase in a daily life example.

Also, what are real life daily things you can do to be more whole and content, in plain English? Meditate, I guess?

Originally Posted by DeeryTheDeer

See what for what what is? I'm seeing this phrase a lot around here, "see it for what it is", and I'd like for simplicity's sake some clarification. You know, to make all this kind of philosophical talk a little less cryptic and pretentious. Maybe use this phrase in a daily life example.

See it in context. See it resolved. Understand what it means. See it for what it is. Because whenever you see something for what it is, you don't have any questions left, and so you cannot be stressed about it.

Also, what are real life daily things you can do to be more whole and content, in plain English? Meditate, I guess?

Meditation is very typical, but it is also a very broad term. Quite effective if done properly and consistently. Everybody needs to meditate if they want to be happy. What else?

Originally Posted by really

See it in context. See it resolved. Understand what it means. See it for what it is. Because whenever you see something for what it is, you don't have any questions left, and so you cannot be stressed about it.

Okay, but what about an example? Like, oh I don't know, understanding depression, or why you're stuck in a financial rut, or....you know, something specific. Any example will do.

Meditation is very typical, but it is also a very broad term. Quite effective if done properly and consistently. Everybody needs to meditate if they want to be happy. What else?

What do you mean by what else?

^^ Holy shit LaughingMan. I have 8 words of wisdom for you: The night is always darkest before the dawn.

Originally Posted by DeeryTheDeer

Okay, but what about an example? Like, oh I don't know, understanding depression, or why you're stuck in a financial rut, or....you know, something specific. Any example will do.

See OP: "what is the point of all this bullshit." Seeing it for what it is, you see it as a judgement that is being juiced. The judgement causes conflict in understanding the world, but at the same time it is being juiced because it creates a sense of egocentricity. To see it for what it is would mean to see that world-view as a perception/judgement that can be let go of with willingness, because if it was anything more than that we would all be feeling the same way to some degree, and that feeling could not be given up.

What do you mean by what else?

It is a question if you can think of anything else that would help you be truly happy. Everything that leads the way is essentially meditation in one way or another.

To add on to my previous post: If your current state of life is not how you want it, you have to go out and find it. Sometimes, we need to shake off the chains that hold us back, and venture into the unknown to find a true place we can call home. It seems difficult and scary at first, but very quickly new things begin popping up into your life that previously had passed you by. Trust me on this one. Personal experience FTW.

Originally Posted by really

See OP: "what is the point of all this bullshit." Seeing it for what it is, you see it as a judgement that is being juiced. The judgement causes conflict in understanding the world, but at the same time it is being juiced because it creates a sense of egocentricity. To see it for what it is would mean to see that world-view as a perception/judgement that can be let go of with willingness, because if it was anything more than that we would all be feeling the same way to some degree, and that feeling could not be given up.

Okay. You still haven't given me any specific, real world example, but I'm starting to understand what you're saying in purely a broad, theoretical sense. "All this bullshit" could mean anything, it's still unclear what he thinks is bullshit. Is it our culture? He at least described a few examples, like drugs, cheating and church. All I want are clear examples, not broad, vague statements, really.

I'll try using your words in a hypothetical example: "I judge my mom as being a bitch who tries to control me, but objectively, she's just a person who was raised and conditioned to act a certain way, so without judgment, I can't be emotionally affected by her"...

It is a question if you can think of anything else that would help you be truly happy. Everything that leads the way is essentially meditation in one way or another.

Things besides meditation I immediately think would bring happiness is taking action to make my life more of what I want it to be (like working towards a dream job or as simple as getting my favorite snack if I'm hungry). Meditation is described as doing nothing... taking no action... just accepting everything the way it is and tuning out all conscious judgment. I don't know if everything making you happy is essentially meditation...