Pyrrho

Basically, I asked you a question that you have not answered.

Furthermore, you seem to be confusing ethical theories with scientific ones. So far, no one has demonstrated an ethical imperative to be true in a purely scientific way. The most that has been established in anything approaching a scientific manner is that people have ethical theories, not that they are correct.



That would be true if we were speaking of "hedonism" as a scientific theory of human behavior (as some others have suggested in this thread, not me), and if I made the claims that you suggest (which I have not).

If he pulls his hand out, I would regard that as indicating that he was just not thinking it through, or that he regarded the pain as being too great no matter what happens in the future (there are cases where people have felt this way). (That is how I would view it from a hedonist perspective.)

Why leave his hand in the box? Well, of course, he does not want to die, and he will die if he does not leave his hand in the box. But, of course, for that to be a rational decision, there must be something good about continuing to live. If not, he may as well remove his hand from the box. The question, then, is what will he gain by continuing to live? A hedonist would say, if he expected to have enough pleasure in the future, then leaving his hand in the box would be the right choice, but if it was reasonable to suppose that he would not experience enough pleasure in the future, then he should remove his hand. How others (i.e., non-hedonists) would respond will depend upon their particular theories.

Rusting Car Bumper

Nonsense.

Unfalsifiability is simply the state where an idea cannot be, in principle, disproven. Unfalisfiability is not inherently limited to scientific ideas.

One can prospose a specific philosophy of science which claims a certian type of unfalsifiability is required for a scientific idea. That however should not be confused the the general idea of unfalsifiability as you have done here.

In any case I still stand by my comments that you've described hedonism in a meaningless way.

The use of unfalsifiability here simply demonstrates that your interpretation of hedonism leads to not be able to tell which actions are in accordance with hedonism and which are not. I would claim that such a position is then, by definition, meaningless.

DC

Pyrrho

The notion of "hedonism" that I have been talking about this:

One ought to maximize pleasure and minimize pain (the totality, including both now and in the future). This is the sole foundation of ethics.

Please notice this is a statement about ethics, not the physical sciences. It is a statement of value, not one of ordinary fact.

I have not said that most people believe this.

Since you seem to be having a problem with falsifiability, please tell me, how does one falsify any ethical statement? (Please note, this is not a question about hedonism, but about ethics generally.) How, for example, would one go about falsifying the claim: "One ought to kill as many people as possible"?



No, one can tell whether or not an action is in accordance with hedonism insofar as one can tell whether the action minimizes pain and maximizes pleasure. Sticking an ice pick into your leg for no reason would not be in accordance with hedonistic principles. However, if you would receive the wealth of Bill Gates for doing so, then it would be a different matter, because the consequences of one's action would likely result in considerable additional pleasure that may compensate for the pain of the ice pick. In other words, the version of hedonism that I have been discussing is a consequentialist ethical theory. It is no more nonsensical than utilitarianism or any of the other usual ethical theories.

Rusting Car Bumper

Again the example we were concentrating on was the "Gom Jabbar" example.

In fact, your definiton is precisely what I mean. You stated,

Well which is it? Now or in the future? If I remove my hand its now and if I don't remove it then its in the future. I cannot tell which is which. It's simply left up to the interpreter and almost any action regardless of consequences can be interpreted as hedonistic.

DC

Pyrrho

Why does including future consequences confuse you so much? In our everyday lives, we constantly estimate the consequences of our actions. You probably go to work because you want to get a paycheck in the future. That is, for most people, the good in working. Of course, the company could go bankrupt and not pay you, in which case you would be frustrated in your purpose.

In the example, as you have described it in this thread (regardless of whatever other details there may have been in the original), a hedonist like Epicurus would tell you to try to figure out whether or not you would have enough pleasure in the future to justify keeping your hand in the box. If so, then you should leave it in. If not, then you should pull it out.

The same idea applies to you going to work: If you are more likely to gain more pleasure than pain from it, then you should do it (unless, of course, there is some other option available to you that would give you an even better pleasure to pain ratio).

It is a recommendation, not an ordinary statement about a matter of fact, to say that one ought to maximize pleasure and minimize pain.

You have not answered my question:

Keith Russell

Living organisms are not, by nature, hedonistic. They are 'wired' for seek their own continued survival, and in a more limited fashion, the survival of their own kind, or group.

Living organisms are not wired to seek maximum pleasure.

I doubt that most people, even, would not describe an average life as 'pleasurable', and--if hedonism were the goal--choose a long, average life over a year of more heightened pleasure.

Now, if they believed that, over the course of a long life, they could work to bring about more than 'average' levels of pleasure, they might choose the long, 'average' life...

K

Graeme

I believe that most people fit the above description quite well.

You could even argue that Theism is promoting a sort of 'delayed hedonism' - the Theist 'suffers' through an average or less-than-average life to gain a much longer-term stay in the ol' pleasure dome.

excreationist

Like I said, it depends on how much self-control a person has... Some people have learnt better self-control than others - and think more in terms of future goals than near-sighted self-gratification. Self-control could be part genetic. If you have extreme amounts of self-control that are misguided, then (I think) you have OCD.
About the Dune story with the hand test:
There would be a number of considerations that the person would be aware of: (I'll just express these in hypothetical numbers)

Future possibility 1 - hand is removed.
expected -1000 pain/discomfort due to death and failure

Future possibility 2 - hand isn't removed.
expected continuation of -900 physical pain.

If the person didn't associate option 1 with greater pain (less desirable) than option 2 then they'd choose option 2. At the present moment, they'd be experiencing pain on their hand, and the pain due to the possibility of death would just be a hypothetical pain, if anything. It depends on how "strong" the person's imagination is - how real hypothetical things seem... if they don't have a very strong sense of the hypothetical, they'd stick with what they know - they'd try and get instant gratification by removing their hand... and as I said earlier, if their sense of the hypothetical was too strong (and misguided), they'd have OCD... so they might wash their hands a lot, due to the hypothetical sickness it could cause, despite all the effort involved.