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View submission: /r/philosophy Open Discussion Thread | January 27, 2025
I don't think phrasing it in terms of pain and pleasure is correct, but I don't disagree with the general idea.
There is some process in the human brain, a function, that decides whether we act or not. I would call it satisfaction. You can define it almost tautologically: if you're satisfied, you're not compelled to action, if you're not, you're compelled to do whatever you need to increase your satisfaction level. Keep in mind that this "satisfaction" can vary and even pain or sacrifice could be a part of it, depending on the person and their wiring.
You could rephrase it as "goal fulfillment", and that lays out a possible outline for morality (in a descriptive sense) not only of every single human, but also animal, computer program or any other agent capable of pursuing goals. Programmers like to call what I called satisfaction a "utility function".
There's nothing here!