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Post by Jake on May 4, 2010 16:40:41 GMT -5
So while discussing whether "Universal Happiness" was a suitable thing to be "Noble Cause", a few people mentioned how it would not be suitable due to the fact that they believed that without pain, you can't experience pleasure.
Sort of going by "you can't experience the highs without the lows".
So, what do you think? Is this true or not?
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Post by Johncoyne on May 4, 2010 17:28:00 GMT -5
I think it's very true. What's the sense of running around being happy if there is no sad? At the same time, there is no sad without happy. They're counterparts.
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Post by Joey on May 4, 2010 17:44:17 GMT -5
Posted from other thread:
Well it would be impossible to have happiness all the time, because we cant prevent sad things from happening. You grandpa dies, your dog gets run over. Those type of sad are good, because it means that you loved. I don't like being sad, but I love the joy of being able to love.
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Nakor
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Post by Nakor on May 4, 2010 18:42:02 GMT -5
It would be more accurate to say that without one you wouldn't fully understand or appreciate the other. You could be experiencing pleasure all your life up to a point, but you would never know it for what it was until you experience hardship with which to compare it against.
It's kind of like a scale, and the wider the range of experiences you have on that scale, the better you are able to appreciate it for better or for worse.
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Post by low on May 4, 2010 20:06:27 GMT -5
I think your poll question and your forum paragraph are very different. Your pain and pleasure are created by receptors in your brain. The absolute answer is a definite yes and anyone who answers "no" is adding philosophy to the question and doesn't understand the way the brain actually works. Pain and pleasure are both a series of chemicals. What we call "suffering," however, is something more relational having to do with higher (cortical) functions of the brain. Animals, by virtue of having a lesser developed cortex than we have, experience less suffering, although their pain is definitely on par with ours. So, for that reason, in the even a human is injured, it can be a miserable experience, where an animal seems to shrug it off.
So, you could word the question in a way that would get the answer which you already seem to want (something like "of course not, because life is deep and beautiful,") but I'm a staunch materialist in many regards and not too philosophical because I think we're in an age where we have the ability to find out so many definite answers that dwelling in questions we can't answer definitively can beget drivel.
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Post by krzych32 on May 4, 2010 20:16:45 GMT -5
it's funny...........beause Greeks and Romans were thinking the same way.....
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Post by swan on May 4, 2010 21:28:37 GMT -5
The absolute answer is a definite yes and anyone who answers "no" is adding philosophy to the question and doesn't understand the way the brain actually works. I would argue that Psychology and Philosophy are technically inseparable, mostly due to the subjective nature of what Psychology attempts to study. There may be a physiological answer as to what is responsible for these feelings but once you get past that answer it starts becoming more subjective. The weaknesses of Psychology are the strengths of Philosophy and vice versa. As it stands now Psychology is at least somewhat dependent on Philosophy, and assuming we do not develop into objective robots I imagine it will remain that way. I do of course agree that chemicals are responsible for these feelings, and I think Nakor hit the nail on the head about appreciation.
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Post by low on May 5, 2010 13:10:59 GMT -5
The absolute answer is a definite yes and anyone who answers "no" is adding philosophy to the question and doesn't understand the way the brain actually works. I would argue that Psychology and Philosophy are technically inseparable, mostly due to the subjective nature of what Psychology attempts to study. Psychology is broad in nature and includes things that are more philosophical (consider Victor Frankl's work) and things that are completely scientific (neuroscience). Psychology becomes more and more scientific over time. There is nothing scientific about modern philosophy. Neuroscience seeks answerable questions about causality that philosophy can not sufficiently answer. Even when philosophy answers a question, it tends to be incorrect. I should have said neuroscience. I have a very indignant view of philosophy, especially when it's grouped with science because it really it pseudoscience in that case. It's a humanities topic, not a science one.
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Post by stephen5000 on May 5, 2010 13:45:42 GMT -5
I think you can experience pleasure without pain (and pain without pleasure) for a very simple reason. Pleasure and pain are not opposites. I mean by this that pleasure (or pain) is meaningful as long as you also have the ability to be devoid of pleasure (pain), but that is not the same as feeling pain (pleasure).
Now this does bring up the notion of "what is pleasure?" Clearly, those who believe that pleasure is simply the lack of suffering and nothing more would not agree with my statement. But I say that there is neutral as well as positive and negative.
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Post by Jake on May 5, 2010 14:23:45 GMT -5
I personally don't think you need pain to experience pleasure. I mean, firstly, as people have pointed out, technically your brain isn't wired in a way so that you need pain to experience pleasure. But more importantly, I don't feel you need to have one to be able to properly understand the other. You don't need to have ever hated someone to love another, or need to have experienced peace to experience anger. I mean, I've been only sad like once in 2010, and I definitely wouldn't say I've lost what it's meant to experience "pleasure".
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Nakor
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Post by Nakor on May 5, 2010 15:29:53 GMT -5
Jake: If you consider it as a scale, rather than just one or the other, I think it becomes clearer. Your love for someone is on a different point on the scale than your (more neutral) every day life, and so you can recognize that love as more pleasurable (than every day life). If, for example, you spent your entire life at the exact same position of the pleasure/pain scale, you'd never know you were there. But the second it changes (and it changes a LOT in reality) you have comparing points to compare against. So I would clarify my stance by saying you don't need pain or hardship to appreciate pleasure, but you do need to have experienced different levels thereof. Hardship <----------------------------------------|----------------------------------------> Pleasure Let's say all your experiences are in the red section. Even though you only have experiences on the right side of the scale, because you have them at multiple points you are at least aware that such a scale exists, and become capable of measuring things on it (even possibly beyond what you have experienced -- much like a person who only heard three notes could probably imagine a fourth). The wider your range of experiences, the more appreciation you can have for that scale.
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Post by stephen5000 on May 5, 2010 23:17:50 GMT -5
Jake: If you consider it as a scale, rather than just one or the other, I think it becomes clearer. Your love for someone is on a different point on the scale than your (more neutral) every day life, and so you can recognize that love as more pleasurable (than every day life). If, for example, you spent your entire life at the exact same position of the pleasure/pain scale, you'd never know you were there. But the second it changes (and it changes a LOT in reality) you have comparing points to compare against. So I would clarify my stance by saying you don't need pain or hardship to appreciate pleasure, but you do need to have experienced different levels thereof. Hardship <----------------------------------------|----------------------------------------> Pleasure Let's say all your experiences are in the red section. Even though you only have experiences on the right side of the scale, because you have them at multiple points you are at least aware that such a scale exists, and become capable of measuring things on it (even possibly beyond what you have experienced -- much like a person who only heard three notes could probably imagine a fourth). The wider your range of experiences, the more appreciation you can have for that scale. I totally agree with that.
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Post by brumagem on May 7, 2010 21:51:30 GMT -5
I really like Hank Green's 'Anglerfish' philosophy on this. "The deep sea anglerfish has no reason to be happy but it has no freaking idea what else to be" Pleasure can't really be called pleasure if there is no pain, because when you suddenly have no pleasure , pain takes the place of what was most people would feel as plain.
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Post by brumagem on May 7, 2010 21:54:49 GMT -5
Jake: If you consider it as a scale, rather than just one or the other, I think it becomes clearer. Your love for someone is on a different point on the scale than your (more neutral) every day life, and so you can recognize that love as more pleasurable (than every day life). If, for example, you spent your entire life at the exact same position of the pleasure/pain scale, you'd never know you were there. But the second it changes (and it changes a LOT in reality) you have comparing points to compare against. So I would clarify my stance by saying you don't need pain or hardship to appreciate pleasure, but you do need to have experienced different levels thereof. Hardship <----------------------------------------|----------------------------------------> Pleasure Let's say all your experiences are in the red section. Even though you only have experiences on the right side of the scale, because you have them at multiple points you are at least aware that such a scale exists, and become capable of measuring things on it (even possibly beyond what you have experienced -- much like a person who only heard three notes could probably imagine a fourth). The wider your range of experiences, the more appreciation you can have for that scale. This explanation assumes that pain and pleasure are finite and objective, which they are not. These feelings are relative to one another. Whatever you are acclimated to becomes the 'neutral' zone on you're graph, and changes thereof become either 'hardship' or 'pleasure.'
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