2 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: /r/philosophy Open Discussion Thread | January 27, 2025
Is there a good argument to categorize everything in terms of pleasure in the first place? Just because you are precise does not mean you are hitting the target, which is the problem with attempting to define all of your concepts too rigidly.
To me pain is generally a signal that you are not paying enough attention to something important. I refuse to use pain killers because I know I need that feedback to function properly, and I know I need to be accustomed to pain to keep my sobriety in difficult situations. For example, when my mom was dying I was holding her hand, and I noticed my dad was just sitting off to the side while everyone else had their last moments with her. Instead of being crushed by despair I forced my dad to take my spot so he could hold her hand one last time. There was no reward for this. I was simply accustomed to pain, and that made me strong enough to do the right thing in that particular situation.
None of that means I think people should be tormented or be denied pleasure. What I care about is each thing serving its proper purpose. So I ask again: What sense is there in casting everything in terms of pleasure? Are you hitting the target?
Comment by Choice-Box1279 at 28/01/2025 at 00:23 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Empathy for humans or human-like things is a innate human trait, believed by many like Rousseau as a mechanism for repressing negative sensory experiences, this explains the pain relieving aspect of your example.
As for the pleasure part, you might think I have a too broad definition of it but for your example I think a lot of it can be explained as the reward being both the perception of the gesture as well as the gesture acting as a way to validate your value judgment in deciding to have taken a more painful path in the past.
All these rewards are of course in the form of mainly androgens, would you consider that hedonism? I apologize if this is offensive because of the example, I just wanted to know if you actually think there is no reward in seemingly self-sacrificial or altruistic behaviors.