People's views on reality are equally difficult to change. Many people simply aren't going to engage in a full examination of evidence and argumentati...
That would still not be transcendental in the sense I mean then, because it's not an a posteriori claim about actual particulars of either reality or ...
Yeah, even though I'd never experienced existential dread until 2019, I had had plenty of peak experiences here and there throughout my life, all natu...
I didn’t read this thread before, but came here from your suggested David Pearce interview thread, and along with completely agreeing with that Hedoni...
I’d say that is as true of reality as it is of morality, precisely because of phenomenalism about reality, empirical realism, like Kant’s. All we can ...
But we're asking how we know that they are so unreliable. Your answer was "reason". I responded that reason alone can't get you much of anywhere, you ...
Right, which is why we need the descriptive, natural, physical sciences. But we're talking about prescriptive, moral, ethical matters here. If you say...
Hedonism (specifically ethical hedonism, the topic of the thread) is about appealing to experiences (of things feeling good or bad) as grounds to call...
It very explicitly does not. That's the point of replicating others' experiences: so we don't have to take their word for it. You never explained your...
My critique of Harris is really only a critique of his dismissal of other things. The things he actually advocates for rather than against all sound g...
"It's not that way" doesn't mean "it can't be that way". The entire point of moral theory is figuring out how to change things. If they can't be other...
Reasoning PLUS experience can, sure, but you were just doubting the reliability of experience, and when pressed for what grounds we have to doubt it, ...
Your own moral philosophy now sounds more like a form of ethical rationalism than ethical naturalism, since you're not appealing to empirical facts bu...
About what, how? So far as I can see, a priori reasoning can only tell us when things are logically impossible because they're contradictory incoheren...
I could have sworn there was something right in this thread to that effect, to the effect that we already know what the goods we're aiming to achieve ...
Experiences of what? Knowledge of what? That something felt good at first but later lead to greater suffering? That’s information from your senses aga...
That’s why I said, in the bit you cut out, that that’s the process said experts use, which makes the consensus of said experts trustworthy for the gen...
If what's good is fulfilling your purpose and your purpose is what good you can do, we're left with no idea what either "good" or "purpose" mean, othe...
Not at all what I'm talking about. Empirical, descriptive, physical sciences depend on first-person experiences, because that's what observations are,...
We COULD do for ethics something completely parallel to what we do for physical sciences: see what repeatably feels good rather than bad, take that as...
I didn't say that both were doomed by infinite regress, just that they were "just as subject to": a regress argument against one would work just as we...
Harris thinks that we should stop talking about moral philosophy, just take it as an unquestioned working definition that flourishing is good and suff...
Then how do we know that there is any reason to doubt them? That is all within the domain of what I mean. Hedonism can be far-sighted or short-sighted...
I wasn’t complaining of having to reference it, but of having to write anything at all. Linking to an encyclopedia article about the subject was just ...
?????? I actually object to Harris too, for the exact same reason I’m objecting to you: not maintaining the is-ought divide. Historically, normative e...
What is bad about being poisoned if not the suffering it causes? So like I concluded, the alternative is “because someone said so”. No worries, I’m ne...
To what end, if not to (set into motion or contribute to some movement to) get said power to behave differently, in such a way that said power hurts l...
A guide to what? That is, in trying "make things good", what is it that you're trying to do... if not ensure that nobody's suffering and everyone enjo...
I’m responding to that point you made. Being testable alone doesn’t get you out of infinite regress. What gets you into the infinite regress to begin ...
That's an unusual definition then, and not the one this thread is about, an article about which I linked to in the OP. That definition is, shortly put...
Utilitarianism is a kind of hedonism. It's a consequentialist altruistic hedonism. (This poll's two questions are about hedonism yes or no, and if yes...
“Being happy” or otherwise not suffering is not synonymous with “doing whatever you want”. Hedonism is not necessarily extreme liberalism; consequenti...
The second question asks “Is it everyone's pleasure or pain that's relevant, or only some people's / your own?”. It’s a followup to the first question...
Then I don’t know what you meant by Not at all. You could ask an infinite regress of “why is it that...” but at some point someone might stop and say ...
I would count the good or bad feelings one gets from those, and emotional states generally, as well within the domain of pleasure/pain/hedonic experie...
When talking about how the world should be, saying "but it's not that way" is non-sequitur. Objective as in universal, non-relative, yes. Objective as...
Yes, but not to agree with him, but to understand his deeper motives and find alternate ways of satisfying them that don't so deeply dissatisfy others...
I think perhaps there's just a misunderstanding. I'm not saying that those fields you're talking about aren't relevant at all in the end, but that the...
We established that no-one would disagree that you CAN learn what feels good or bad to other people by “walking a mile in their shoes” etc. The disagr...
The matter of substantial disagreement is on whether or not experience, everyone’s experiences, are relevant and important and matter, which was cover...
Nobody I know of denies that you can, but plenty of people, anyone opposed to altruism or hedonism, denies that it matters to: anti-altruists denying ...
I’m not sure that’s accurate, since AFAIK those fields are empirical investigations, that at most describe what people are like and how they react to ...
I have been called "pessimistic" by people who want to engage in what I call "narrow optimism", just for calling attention to the possibility of bad t...
There are productive and counter-productive versions of both optimism and pessimism. Pantagruel's answer above is correct given the counterproductive ...
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