Jesus Tap-Dancin' Christ

Sometimes a question is asked that you cannot answer. I'd likely say, after a LONG pause, "I'm sorry, but I tried my best to make life worthwhile for you. My failure as a father must weigh heavily upon you.

Ms. Siv

Actually the real reason most people do is because thats life for them. They grow up, get married, have children, rear them .....
We're conditioned to.

As survival machines for our genes, this is hardly surprising
And genes are selfish after all .

I dont think we can overcome instincts in such a short time frame. Given thousands and thousands of years maybe ... in a few hundred years - no way !

- Sivakami.

tronvillain

jess:
Well, every reason for having children will be selfish, in that all reasons are selfish. Beyond that, I said that having children under the conditions you specified would be considered quite selfish by most people.

If the decision is to be justified, then yes. However, as I have already pointed out, that would not be the case for me, and as as result I would not consider the case justified.

I would have a few responses:

1)It did not seem likely when I made the decision that they would hold that opinion.

2)I am not sure they actually hold that opinion.

3)They may not hold that opinion in the future.

[ January 30, 2002: Message edited by: tronvillain ]</p>

hedonologist

You want a reason which appeals to yourself, yet isn't selfish? I suppose the only alternatives would be to have children for their own sake, or for one's partner, or for society, etc.
I guess that would be for humanity's sake. If you have a child and raise them well, would you think they would most likely be more benevolent than harmful to humanity?

hedonologist

I suppose the reason you are looking for is for the child's sake, rather than humanity.
Why haven't you ended your life?

I find your attitude soothing, refreshing. I like a woman who can appreciate being cynical and realistic, when things suck for her. I like someone I can bitch at, who wouldn't act like I am "mistaken" or think they can talk me out of it with lies. What ever happened to self-pity, people? It makes for a nice passionate knot in the belly that helps digest the food.
Temporary pleasure. Compared to eternity it is nothing, but it is infinitely more compared to nothing. If you are a hedonist and by your assessment your pain outweighs your pleasure, all you have is the hope of pleasure (you asked for non-immediate). By "pleasure" I would include love, friendship, catharsis, peacefulness etc-- the word pleasure and these words, do not quite bring about the feeling/experience, so it is difficult to represent such experiences with words.
I say we acquire all the pleasure we can and then bitch about it. That would suck!
It would give them the choice of whether or not to live, so long there are high places one could leap from, or a gun one could obtain, or a Jack Kavorkian.
How would you know death were non-existence, let alone peaceful? I don't think peace is quite so pleasurable if one were not existing. Regardless, maybe we are aware when we are "unconscious" we just are not recording memory. Maybe we experience death as disintegration and it is hell before and after our lives and the best it gets is this little fraction of life. hehe

I think you are being much too optimistic. Punish yourself with exercise or read some Nietzsche or something. Sit someplace with bad posture for a while. Eat spicy foods before bed, so you will have nightmares. That will teach you.
The difference would be 81 years, to you. Whether that is 81 years worse or better is another question.
What suicidal person needs stress or annoyances from people telling them to just feel different? Well some of them may like the attention but only cause they are desperate and needy.

How would you know you were not depressed compared to others without feeling what they feel? Your arguments do seem as much to conclude that you would want to kill yourself.
You seem to think this is a philosophical problem. Maybe you are just a person with a biology making you depressed. You seem to be a hedonist, so the only reason which would possibly work for you, is that the child be happy, correct? Would it be impossible for an unhappy parent to have a happy child? I would think you may increase your likelihood if you made the child from genes of happier people. You said "no adoption" but you didn't rule out artificial insemination. Of course, your own genes may work fine when combined with someone else's and the wheels of chance.

Maybe Prozac, or St John's Wart could make you happy. Maybe the only solution to providing happiness is genetic engineering.

Are you claiming to have a rational reason to be unhappy?

E_muse

And what is the purpose of overcoming instinct? What would you predict to be the destiny of mankind should we overcome instinct?

How do we know that we are not acting by instinct in excercising our ability to think and rationalize the world? A desire for truth - or rather, better understanding, seems to have been pretty motivational in most societies and manifested in the context of religious and scientific endeavours.

Our faculties of reason and logic give us the ability to rationalize the world but do not appear to give us the reasons as to why we should employ them in doing so - which is interesting!

To quote Einstein:

As I've said, there may be no 'reason' to go on living and so to promote reason above instinct as though instinct is something to be 'overcome' seems a very dangerous thing to do, especially if reason and logic rely on it.

hedonologist

Yes. This is tricky though, because happiness may not be caused by a "reason", it may be a simple matter of chemistry, in one way. The question is, "What are a certain person's odds of having a happy child, and how could she/he increase the chances". IOW, the rational answer depends on whatever funkiness HAPPENS TO MAKE a person feel happy or sad. So we need to first consider what causes happiness, in order to answer this.

You seem to think happiness would be caused by knowing one will go to heaven. That is only true if one's anticipation of such a thing brings them pleasure. It may bring them a longing they really suffer from, but think is pleasure. Heaven offers the same sorts of pleasure the world offers, just more of it.

I could give other examples, but my point is that discovering what causes a pleasure is sort of a science or trial-and-error. It is unknown whether there be an intrinsically pleasurable "thing", that makes (or should make) every rational person happy/pleased. Pleasure is rather a subjective experience we feel for unknown reasons. There is no reason why the "reasons" you seem to say you feel bad about, would/should necessarily make a person feel bad. Maybe it is something else making you feel that way, or something else, which causes the "reasons" make you feel bad. If the "reasons" don’t make you feel bad, then they don't seem to be valid reasons, because they are claiming they would/should make every rational person feel bad.
Yeah that sorta reeks to me, except in the sense that if one has an experience this implies they have some hope of having a better experience. I would rather be born into a life with initial suffering, rather than to not exist, because then I would have the hope of changing that experience and finding pleasure.
What if the chance of that happening is just much less than the chance of it not happening? Would you rather be born in a world with no danger, or not be born? The fact that you choose to live, suggests the later.
But whether or not a reason is a valid reason, is going to depend on how *you* expect the child to feel. You seem to form your beliefs of how the child would feel based on how you feel. So that is why the answers you are getting are directed specifically to you, because these reasons are not necessarily going to mean anything to anyone who isn't caused to feel bad from the reasons you are giving for why a (rational) person would/should feel bad.
Thinking seems to be more for the future pleasure than the present, but it also seems to have some pleasure in it. Do you write these posts to suffer?

[ February 02, 2002: Message edited by: hedonologist ]</p>

E_muse

I would disagree with the the starting assumptions of your statement, however, this is a truth statement to which I simply ask 'why'? Why should we rationalize our actions?

Man's sense of the divine is an instinct which is argued to have no rational basis. So why should our instinct to reproduce have one?

What do you mean by 'a simple matter of chemistry'? The chemical processes at work in the brain?

You seem to be suggesting that if happiness is 'just' chemistry then 'reason' must be a combination of chemistry plus 'something else'.

What is that something else to which you seem to be eluding?

Pleasure is caused by the brain isn't it?

Couldn't we simply say that pleasure is subjective and idiosyncratic?

Secondly, must the cause be based around 'reason', couldn't it simply be based around 'instinct' - or something else?

An intrinsically pleasureable thing would suggest a form of rationally based hedonistic truth principle.

I think we would still struggle to argue that the 'thing' is pleasureable in and of itself. It would seem more accurate to say that (should such a 'thing' exist) that the subjective responses of individuals to this objective event are known to be similar.

Every experience is subjective.

I am also interested by the term 'unknown reasons'. This almost suggests that 'reasons' are entities which exist independently to the human mind and which the human mind has yet to discover and of course represent a statement of faith. They represent a hope for the 'not yet seen' or not yet perceived.

It also suggests that there must be a reason (even if undiscovered) for every human action.

We can seek to rationalize human behaviour but wouldn't it be fallacious to suggest that all human behaviour is based upon reason?

The moment a rationale is created for an action, if that rationale is then argued to be the only legitimate base for that action (which was formerly carried out not on the basis of this reason) couldn't it be argued that rationalists are guilty of plagiarism?

This argues for hedonism. The main purpose of life is to seek pleasure, or rather, to discover what gives you pleasure and pursue it.

[ February 02, 2002: Message edited by: E_muse ]</p>

hedonologist

I don't know what you mean. The alternative to happiness being caused by chemistry, would be that there are certain facts about the world which, when we know them, inevitably make anyone suffer if they are intelligent enough to "understand" them, etc.
I didn't say that, but seeing how certain stimuli causes a memory (eg pleasure) which seems to be the same as the last memory of that stimuli, suggests that brain states are the variable as far as what causes the pleasure, in those cases.
I'm not sure what you mean. Would that mean that knowing certain facts must make us unhappy?
The cause of the pleasure? If so, yes. Anything could be based on instinct, for that matter.
yes
You mean that all human behavior has a cause? I would have faith that it did, for the purpose of discovering a cause if one could be found. It doesn't matter to my point, AFAIK.
What would make a different base illegitimate, in the argument? I don't know what you mean by legitimate. You might give an example.
I don't speak for the "main purpose of life", nor do I know what this would mean. I was talking in terms of a preference for pleasure, Jess and I seemed to share.

E_muse

Greetings Hedonologist, thank you for your reply.

O.K, I shall try and elaborate a little. You originally said:

You've suggested that happiness may simply be the result of a chemical process and not caused by a 'reason'.

From your comment I would make the inference that 'reason' must be something more than a simple chemical process I would also have to ask whether any chemical process going on inside a person can be described as simple.

As all thoughts, ideas and experiences relate to the chemical processing of the brain, how can reason be something more than chemical?

1. Objective = existing independently of a mind.
2. subjective = dependent upon the existence of a mind.

Pleasure is something experienced by an individual and as with all experience must fall into category two and be purely subjective.

It seems common sense to me.

Put a brick in a fire and it will not suffer. Put a person in a fire and they will. What is the difference. The brain!

Anthing but! A definition of idiosyncratic:

I've already detailed the meaning of subjective.

You've already aruged that pleasure may be simply chemical.

What is reason then? Both pleasurable feelings and the ability to reason exist within human beings. If one is 'simply chemical', what is the other?

That human behaviour has a cause I have no doubt and I wouldn't consider it a matter of faith.

What I am saying is that the 'reason' for certain human behaviours might not themselves be based upon 'reason'. We must look beyond reason when seeking to explain human experience.

I'm thinking very generally at the moment.

I would suggest that secularism has the ideal that all human behaviour must be based upon our ability to reason.

Jess himself said:

Of course, rationalizing our actions might lead us to the conclusion that not all human actions are based on reason including the implementation of or faculties of logic and reason themselves.

Sivakami posted:

It would seem to me, from these two comments, that the secular humanist ideal is to be governed by reason rather than instinct or instead of instinct.

However, if certain commendable behaviours have been born out of something other than pure reason (religious instinct for example), then to make pure reason the only legitimate basis for this behaviour seems a form of plagiarism to me.

Pure reason hasn't been the basis for certain behaviours in the past and so why should it be made the basis for them in the future.

The same is true with regard to having children. Reason obviously hasn't dictated our ability to do this in the past, so why should we insist that it must now?

O.K, but pleasure seeking for its own sake is hedonsim.