Schopenhauer, Sushi and Choice

Permit for now the metaphysical absurdities contained below but I think it will suffice as an entertaining in-road to today's topic.

Consider the following:
1. I am Cut-Throat and Clueless.
2. Cut-Throat and Clueless has the property of loving sushi.

3. If Cut-Throat and Clueless lived in 1920's England would Cut-Throat and Clueless like sushi?

Again, to those of you who deal primarily in modal realism and temporally located identity problems I beg of you to stay your hands from the comments section. This doesn't need to end the way that you think it should!

Of course I do like sushi but part of the reason I enjoy sushi is that I tried it in the year of 2010 and discovered that I loved it. Up until that fateful day when my train home was delayed and I decided to pop into a "Yo! Sushi" Restaurant, I had no real opinion on it other than it was some sort of japanese food using fish and rice.

One way to approach the question of whether I would like Sushi while living in 1920's England is to take a hard nominalist approach and just say that I cannot be the same person as someone existing in 1920's England; I possess no abstract identity that can be properly carried across parallel universes and therefore the question is pointless.

Now I am sure that if I were better educated on the topic and more motivated to write about meta-physics then all sorts of interesting things could be said here; however that is not the case so I will drop this line of thought here and leave with a take away:

"I would not like Sushi if I lived in 1920's England because I would have no idea what Sushi is. Even if I knew what sushi was I wouldn't be able to form a desire for it as no one will offer it to me."

Let's elucidate further....

Schopenhauer in his essay "On the Freedom of the Will" explores the idea that while humans can be free to pursue what they want, they cannot choose what they want in the first place. The question then becomes "What then is it that decides what I want in the first place?".

Now, there are a whole host of different answers to this question, with varying levels of saliency. Biology, for example, would be one factor to consider but what I want to discuss is more rooted in our environment. 

By environment I'm not necessarily talking about nurture but about the broader possibilities and experiences that are offered to us as a result of our material conditions. That is to say that while you may want a whole host of things you can only demonstrate a desire, in the measurable economic sense, for what is materially possible for you to consume or attain.

It's a combination of factors that decide whether or not a product, in the concrete sense, is desired by consumers. 

We all want jet-packs, presumably also ones that are safe, but since they are neither available, or at least not to everyone, we don't go around actively desiring jet-packs. We have an abstract want for them but no real measurable desire that can be observed in our consumer behaviours. If you just looked at what people bought you would have no idea as to whether or not designing recreational jet-packs was worthwhile or something that people would like to see happen. Hell, you might not be able to tell even once you started asking people considering all the potentially unforeseen consequences of a jet-pack based society.

In the context of parentalism in the market place I think this influence that the market has on shaping our choices is very important to acknowledge. Putting aside the unfortunate "parental" connotations of parentalism there is a huge potential for re-imagining human freedom by recognising the way in which an environment shapes our choices.

Another example:

While studying in Sweden I ate McDonalds almost every day. In a crude fashion one might come to the conclusion that that means I was perfectly happy eating McDonalds*. In truth the reason I managed to sample almost every meal offered by Mr Ronald McDonald was not out of loyalty to the brand but because I often worked late into the night and the only place serving food at 4am was the 24/7 McDonalds that I passed everynight on my walk home. 

In many ways if I could click my fingers and swap the McDonalds with a 24/7 Salad bar I would; I knew that McDonalds was killing me and at one point it even put me in hospital after sending my stomach acidity sky-rocketing (another story for another day). 

Even if I wouldn't click my fingers at 4 in the morning while craving calories I might acknowledge that although 4am me will want McDonalds, I shouldn't be allowed to have it and indeed both future hopstial-bed-ridden me and current me want to stop him from having McDonalds.

The choices we make in life are not just the product of our innate desires. They are also shaped and directed by what products are on offer and our flawed perceptions of them**.

A big part of launching a new brand of "whatever" isn't just proving that it satisfies a want but in convincing prospective buyers that they want it in the first place. This is more often than not done by controlling the consumers exposure to it in such a way that its presence becomes ubiquitus and then desirable.

  

Parentalism often gets a bad rap as the tool of the nanny state. It's hallmark seems to be removing our right to choose as a part of interventions dreamed up by faceless bureaucracies. I would suggest alternatively that this notion of acknowledging the effects of accessibility and marketing on who we are and what we choose presents a whole new radical way of thinking about choice. 

Advocating for some form of parentalism, though maybe not one that is exercised through the authority of the state, could offer a whole new host of freedoms including "the freedom to choose what you want to choose".

* Incidently ,there is nothing more morbidly entertaining than catching yourself chewing over the evils of global capitalism with a Big-Mac between your jaws.

** I swear there is no better counter-argument to the assertion that markets naturally weed out bad products than pointing to the existence of homeopathy.

Defending Dionysus: The Hedonic Treadmill. Part II of II.

I have started so I will finish but first I will give a short recap so that people don't have to skip over to part one of this little literary duet for context.

The driving point of "Defending Dionysus" is that hedonism is not necessarily something which we should shy away from and the idea that it degrades our humanity is largely a claim made from a position of hysteria. Someone skilfully pursuing hedonism has very little incentive to avoid winding up in hospital having their stomach pumped, as per the worries of the epicureans, and every incentive to practise "higher" arts as per the worries of... well... snobs.

So I knew when I wrote part one that I would have some more thoughts on this topic, and what do you know? I did.

There is one issue regarding hedonism that has been tumbling around in my brain or at least jogging around; I am referring to, of course, the hedonic treadmill.

The hedonic treadmill describes a psychological process in which a person adapts to changes in their overall wellbeing establishing a general baseline of happiness that all other experiences are measured by. If you have heard of the hedonic treadmill then you will have no doubt heard of the study conducted by Brickman et al on Lottery winners. The study found that after winning the lottery, in the long run, happiness did not increase; there was a brief spike after which the winners acclimatised and were no longer perceivably any more happy than people who had never won the lottery.

This would seem to raise the question:

If lottery winners have money and the ability to satisfy their desires better, why aren't they happier? What does this mean for hedonism?

It means that simply being capable of satisfying desires is not necessarily the goal of a skilful hedonist. It may be that a skilful hedonist is a hedonist that is aware of the hedonic treadmill and in turn looks to pursue eudemonia not by pursuing a constant maximisation of pleasure but by pursuing the right pleasures in the right doses.

In fact the idea of "maximising pleasure" may be misleading. After all, humans long for a number of qualitatively different pleasures. These pleasures cannot be easily compared or tallied up using a single over-arching metric and so being a good hedonist may indeed involve taking advantage of different kinds of pleasure to offset the treadmill.

Variety is the spice of life and by changing between pleasures it may, and of course this is all speculation at this point until the evidence is in,  be possible to seek out and switch between pleasures that our minds have not become accustomed to and thereby escape the monotony of a "baseline level of happiness".

So, why discuss hedonism anyway?

 Is it because I believe hedonism, on its own, can function as a moral system? No.

Do I think practising a skilful form of hedonism may actually lead to a good life? Maybe.

The more germane reason for writing these pieces has its roots in my more existential and physicalist streaks. If we are going to construct a theory that can provide a comprehensive explanation of what it is that humans live for in a godless, spiritless universe then it is going to have to be suitably secular in its groundings. If we do find a sober and suitably atheist account of purpose it is going to have to be rooted in our most basic biological motives which are to seek pleasure and avoid pain.*

*For those of you about to claim that reproduction is our prime motivator I refer you to this little piece on sex. ->   http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/insight-therapy/201204/why-do-we-have-sex

While reproduction is the "goal" of all biological entities, for humans at least, pleasure takes precedent when it comes to our actual motives (even when pleasure is weighed against reproductive goals). That being said the attached article distinguishes between sexual pleasure and comfort/attachment which I don't think can count as a criticism of my position as long as we aknowledge that comfort is a form of pleasure.

The Non-Aggression Principle: A Philosophical Barnhum Statement.

Honestly, when I started this blog I knew it would inevitably include political philosophy but I never anticipated such a quick descent into the bickering over fringe political movements. It seems I have an uncanny ability to both surprise and disappoint myself and so with my trusty machete of bitter resignation I shall cut to the chase.

The Non-Aggression Principle or "NAP", is an ethical claim that runs a little something to the tune of:

"Moral agents should not engage in the initiation of aggressive force against other sovereign beings."  

Notably, it is a moral claim that has almost absolutely no traction in academia. Even more puzzling is that this moral code exists almost exclusively in Anarcho-capitalist* circles; this leads me to wonder, why?

A somewhat cynical response might be that it is just not a very good moral principle and so it's only fitting that it belongs to a rather un-convincing ideology. However I like to think more highly of my readers and so I will presume that this answer does not quite quench your thirst.

My own particular theory is that the reason NAP has only been adopted by anarcho-capitalists is to do with both its language and original political intent. 

The aim of NAP is to present the moral outlook of the anarcho-capitalist as one that is perfectly sane and commonsensical; and like any commonsensical maxim the language that articulates it is incredibly vague. 

Specifically the non-aggression principle makes use of a number of terms that, functionally speaking, are quite empty until the speaker/listener provides them with a particular meaning.

The prime offender here is "the initiation of aggressive force".

To illustrate further, consider someone  pocketing an apple from a supermarket and walking out without paying. The security guards catch the apple thief and they in turn wrestle him to the ground to prevent him from leaving and take the apple of him. 

The questions raised here is, who in the above scenario initiated the use of aggressive force? The security guard protecting his employers property or the person who picked up an apple and walked out?

Generally the teleological function of NAP is to prove capitalism to be an inherently just system based around free-association and so the instincts of the NAP advocate tell them to defend the security guard. 

As a result of this move, "the initiation of aggressive force" comes to mean "physical aggression against a person and also against things that they "own"". Of course this spawns a whole new set of problems to do with differing accounts of property.

If we accept the initiation of aggressive force to include the taking of someone else's property we are faced with both the abstract and concrete questions of what do people, as a genus and as individuals, legitimately own. Without an explanation as to what can be considered "property" the non-aggression principles fails to provide us with any reliable method of distinguishing between bad acts of aggressive force and good/neutral acts of "defensive force".

It is entirely possible, for instance, for a follower of Murray Rothbard to wake up one day and find that an acolyte of Peter Vallentyne has sequester an unused portion of what was previously the Rothbardian's farm.

The two moral agents, as a result of their different political leanings, have different ideas of what constitutes a legitimate property claim and so no matter which side you take one of them will always feel as though they have been cheated. The Vallentyne follower will feel that they have been unjustly thrown off land which was legitimately theirs and the Rothbardian will claim that the Vallentyne agent has stolen their land.

In this sense NAP is a philosophical Barnhum statement. While it's wording makes it sound carefully refined and officious the non-aggression principle is actually remarkably devoid of content.

Whether or not you include, for instance, "systemic violence" in your interpretation of  "the initiation of aggressive force", or make exceptions for defence of property will have huge impacts on what the non-aggression principle calls for. In short, until you import a whole host of other political norms NAP can mean almost anything to anyone provided they can provide some alternative account of property or individual sovereignty. 

When you think about the non-aggression principle in these terms it makes sense that it's primarily championed by anarcho-capitalists. It's actually quite a sophisticated method of employing rhetoric to cover for potentially less acceptable ideological commitments.

Rather than say "I believe that property claims are absolute to the point that almost nothing can over-ride them and that society can only conceived of as individuals holding said property claims" one can rely on the philosophical vagueness that lies latent in the notion of "initiation of force" to sneak this bold claim into common discourse.

The non-aggression principle should not be ridiculed and rejected because it is wrong; rather it should be scorned for being nothing short of empty political sophistry.

* I hope, dear reader, that you were observant enough to note my restraint in not calling anarcho-capitalists "Ayn-Craps" or indeed disparaging them for being "not anarchists". In saying that I also hope you are smart enough to recognize that I have used this annotation here to do exactly that.

Defending Dionysus: Skillful Hedonism. Part I

The opening phrase "Since the dawn of time, philosophers have wondered..." is an academic faux pas, so I will begin with something roughly analogous.


An ever present fear of pleasure runs through western thought. It starts in various schools of ancient philosophy, such as Stoicism and Epicureanism, but it periodically resurfaces in post-hellenic thought. For instance, John Stuart Mill attempted to steer utilitarianism away from its hedonistic origins for fear of it turning us all into insensate pigs. In modern literature the anxiety about pleasure incarnates in Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" where it takes a distinctly political turn. It seems that writers and philosophers just can't leave us pleasure-lovers alone.


Of course when I talk about a fear of pleasure what I am really talking about is a fear of hedonism. We enjoy pleasure and what is agreeable is generally what we pursue for most of our lives, but we wouldn't dare to admit that this is our "ethic". This rejection of pleasure as ethic generally manifests as one of two distinct arguments. 


The first argument is that, as long as it requires the kind of tribulations that hedonism refuses to endure, endorsing hedonism will require us to sacrifice that which elevates humans above mere machines. Love, Art, Philosophy and Science, so the argument goes, cannot exist in a world where all we care about is rave music and cake. The second argument is that the pursuit of pure pleasure is disastrous to one's health and inevitably leads to misery.


Discounting the second argument, let's just pretend that part of being a skilful hedonist is in avoiding such nocuous pitfalls, we see the first argument points to a potential tension between pleasure and human achievement. Why might we suspect such a tension? Perhaps it is because the higher forms of human activity that typify our human idiosyncrasies require discipline.


To truly love philosophy necessitates a willingness to read at length and wade through periods where you don't fully comprehend what is being written. Science has a similarity in that it requires a methodical rigour and carefulness that a mortal Dionysus stereotypically would not possess. Even something as frequently frivolous as art often requires careful attention to historical context and an appreciation of artistic technique.


A confusion between the hedonistic and the bestial is at play here. There is an un-warranted assumption in the argument that pleasure seeking people will not think any further forward than the present moment. The hedonist is, according to this prejudice, a philistine incapable of delaying gratification.


However the moronic, orgasm obsessed glutton discussed above is no hedonist worth emulating.
Someone incapable of self-discipline or higher cognitive engagement could never possibly binge on fine cuts of salmon, guzzle wine or even organise a moderately successful orgy unless others did the leg work for him. A skilful hedonist, who succeeds through their own virtue rather than that of others, must have the ability to delay gratification. You can't enjoy an excellent meal unless you are willing to put the effort into creating one. Consequently a skilful hedonist should be capable of appreciating the vast swathe of cerebral pleasures offered by philosophy, science and art. They may even be able to appreciate the pleasures of religion: as oxymoronic as that may sound.


To strive for hedonistic perfection is not simply to chase others who can satisfy your cravings; it is also to practise the inventing, acquiring and delivering of pleasure to others. People acting as parasites should be tossed to the curb, they make life harder for everyone; but in these times, who can say no to a bit of artisan pleasure procurement?