The relationship between desire and pleasure

A friend of mine once argued that we do good(help others) to make us/ourselves feel better. I argued that doing good had that result, but it's not why we do it. He held strong to his position, until we were walking out of a dept store and witnessed a lady well into he senior years, quite feeble looking, with a shopping cart full of drinking water packaged in cases of twelve or twenty four or some such. She was at the rear of her car ready to unload the cart of water into the car. Without hesitation we both went over - without thinking about it - and asked her if we could help her put the cases in her car. She accepted, we did, and she thanked us afterwards.

Since we had just recently had the conversation about what motivated doing good, I asked him wearing my typical shit eatin' grin...

"So, did you do that so you would feel good about yourself?"

Reply to MonfortS26

Consciousness of pleasure and pain arise in our experiences of our own body. The reflective ability of our consciousness enables us to reasonably sort and to value such experiences by their intensity, to assign meanings to our experiences from the start. Meanings that we abstract from experiences, to encapsulate what we experience so we can retain the information. Pleasure as a positive value is sought, and pain as a negative value is avoided.

It is in the distinction between the direct experience of pleasure or pain, and our conception of these experiences that desire arises. The desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain becomes conceptualized. Without physical pain, I think, our conception of transcendence would be impossible, because it is only in pain that our desire to escape our immanent situation arises. Our desire to dissociate ourselves from pain, to transcend it, enables us to desire transcendence in itself without associating it with pain as kind of a negative pleasure.

What about the desire for death? Not common, but some people clearly desire death, and through suicide find it. Pleasure doesn't seem to figure into it. For instance, the pleasure of escaping suffering seems far fetched. We get relief, but not pleasure per se when suffering ends.

Quoting MonfortS26

t just seems that the evolution of altruism in any species would make more sense if it were backed up by at least a subconscious desire for pleasure,

I think people do derive pleasure from altruism. Some people say one must not receive pleasure from doing altruistic, charitable, good things. That strikes me as absurd and inhuman. We can, we do, and we should experience a kind of pleasure when we do good works: it's the pleasure of achieving congruence between what we think we ought to do, and what we are doing. This is a "higher pleasure". Like as not evolution has something to do with it, but it also takes a reflective mind to feel congruence.

My guess is that the widow in the Gospel story who had nothing but a "mite" to give to the Temple, experienced the satisfaction of doing what she thought she should do, even though she was already poor, and the donation made her poorer. Experiencing a pleasure from doing the difficult thing that is personally costly isn't like getting a huge ego boost from making a big pubic donation.

Quoting MonfortS26

Is there any reason to believe otherwise?

Well, we are made up of a very complex collection of traits, capabilities, tendencies, drives, ideas, fears, and so on. It's difficult to say "everything derives from this... (whatever "this" is). Like, "Everything people do is in the service of the sex drive."--a crude misstatement of Freud's theories. Yes, some of our behavior is very much in the service of sex--or libido--but it's difficult to figure how Einstein (or a few hundred thousand scientific researchers and theorists are all trying to serve their sex drives by thinking about relativity, the Standard Model, Quarks, String Theory, or whatever the hell they are thinking about.

Similarly, people get up and go to work everyday at the same, fucking shithole of a job -- because their families depend on their income, and they want to see their children eat well. They get pleasure from that, but again, it's not like the pleasure of Ben and Jerry's. It's much more complicated.

Quoting Bitter Crank

What about the desire for death? Not common, but some people clearly desire death, and through suicide find it. Pleasure doesn't seem to figure into it. For instance, the pleasure of escaping suffering seems far fetched. We get relief, but not pleasure per se when suffering ends.

I guess I wasn't as specific in my writing as I was in my thinking. I view pleasure and pain as being on a spectrum, so I would view suicide as being about pleasure in the sense that it is an escape from pain. Basically two sides of the same coin.

Quoting Bitter Crank

Like, "Everything people do is in the service of the sex drive."--a crude misstatement of Freud's theories. Yes, some of our behavior is very much in the service of sex--or libido--but it's difficult to figure how Einstein (or a few hundred thousand scientific researchers and theorists are all trying to serve their sex drives by thinking about relativity, the Standard Model, Quarks, String Theory, or whatever the hell they are thinking about.

Interesting that you brought up this part. Makes me think of the quote, "Everything in life is about sex, except sex. Sex is about Power." When it comes to how that relates to scientists, I think it is theoretically possible that their driving desire is curiosity. But then why do humans have curiosity?? Because it has been evolutionarily beneficial in the past to be curious. Whether in terms of personal safety or any other reason that curiosity might be beneficial to the individual. I think simply because that individual has adopted the genes/ social conditioning to be curious can be tied back to sex in some way, because I believe that every trait we are capable of having as humans is for the sake of securing the ability to reproduce. Even that quote, "Sex is about Power" They are obviously intimately related, but is sex about power? Power about sex? I think it's probably the latter, I think humans desire power because it is another thing that increases the probability that they will mate in the future

Quoting Bitter Crank

Similarly, people get up and go to work everyday at the same, fucking shithole of a job -- because their families depend on their income, and they want to see their children eat well. They get pleasure from that, but again, it's not like the pleasure of Ben and Jerry's. It's much more complicated.

I would agree with you here. It is incredibly complicated. I suppose it could be argued that the concept of their children not eating well provides them with pain. But I'm sure that there is a lot of beliefs/ conditioning that factor into it too. I'm just proposing that pleasure and pain are at the root of those beliefs. There would be other factors at play but I think that pain and pleasure would be the root of those factors as well.

I also think it is important to note that I view the desire for pleasure as an escape from pain. If a human were to do absolutely nothing, it would begin to feel pain. Probably thirst or hunger first. I think that would continue infinitely in any case where pain is possible. So I guess I have this backward. Maybe its the aversion to pain that is the foundation to human motivation

Reply to MonfortS26 When we speak of organisms like single celled organisms, nematodes, etc. I think it is fair to say that their behavior can be reduced to avoiding pain and reproducing. Now, the evolutionary process that produced nematodes also produced hornets, fish, salamanders, birds, dogs, and people. More complex animals have more complex behaviors that don't reduce down to avoiding pain and reproducing -- though humans do usually try to avoid pain and reproduce altogether too successfully.

The more complex the animal brain, the more that is on their minds. Dogs that get into trouble a lot generally are entirely too curious about the world, and too adept and manipulating physical objects, as well as humans. Humans go far, far above and beyond avoiding pain and seeking to reproduce. That's why we have all this complicated culture.

Quoting MonfortS26

Sex is about Power

Sex being all about power is a recent idea coming from people like French thinker like Michel Foucault, who died in 1984 (of AIDS). True enough, some people have mixed power and sex together -- especially people who like S & M games, where some people get tied to the wall and get whipped, then fucked. Some people like that--both the S and the M. Some people impose themselves on other people because they have power. But no, I don't think sex is about power. Personally, I like egalitarian sex.

Prior to the boom in French POMO philosophy, a lot of the current memes just weren't in circulation. Just between me and the fencepost, I don't think post-modernists have helped the species. Had they never been born, we would be as far ahead as were are with them. I am eternally grateful that I graduated with a degree in English before this tsunami of bullshit hit the campus beaches.