I don’t think they’d find that very insightful.
It’s plain hedonism.
Comment on oh man
dragonfucker@lemmy.nz 1 week agoHe should read some Kant and Hume.
Human reason, in one sphere of its cognition, is called upon to consider questions, which it cannot decline, as they are presented by its own nature, but which it cannot answer, as they transcend every faculty of the mind.
Reason is and ought only to be a slave to the passions
Comment105@lemm.ee 1 week ago
dragonfucker@lemmy.nz 1 week ago
Hedonism is obviously the best ethical theory. Bentham had the right idea
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Bentham developed hedonistic calculus. The foundation is a multivariate ethical vector space. He rationalized hedonism to the extreme. The passions are explicitly tempered for a calculated greater good.
dragonfucker@lemmy.nz 1 week ago
That’s what reasons existing to serve the passions means.
yetiftw@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I mean it’s the only one that explains why we actually do anything at all
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 week ago
He may have - apparently he’s very well read. My guess is he would disagree with that second one, but I don’t know the guy.
dragonfucker@lemmy.nz 1 week ago
Well Hume was right. Reason can’t derive axioms. It can’t create purpose from nothing. It can’t solve the is-ought problem. Passion can. Passion can say “the world should be like this. Why? Because I want it to be”. Reason can’t do that. And thus, reason should exist only to serve passion.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 week ago
OTOH reason has kept a roof over my head when my passion would have had it doing Arduino projects or D&D campaigns instead of working.
fsxylo@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
You were probably more passionate about keeping a roof over your head.
dragonfucker@lemmy.nz 1 week ago
Why should you have a roof over your head? If emotions are irrelevant, what’s the difference between that and being homeless?
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 6 days ago
IMO it should be cyclical. Passion provides ideals and goals, reason can help work towards those but also evaluate them and refine them.
Like once upon a time, I wanted a high end sports car. But over time, through reason, I realized that owning one would be more of a net negative than a positive in many ways and now I wouldn’t likely get one even if it would be trivial to afford. I’d like to not even need a car at all, but reason has me recognizing that that also wouldn’t be a positive given that I live in an area where mass transit infrastructure is poor.
This boils down to having conflicting passions/goals and using reason to resolve them (like wanting a sports car while also wanting to afford other things and to reduce my environmental impact and not driving a sports car is a very easy way, trivial even, to have less impact than driving one).
xthexder@l.sw0.com 6 days ago
I feel like I’m learning a decent amount from this thread. I definitely consider myself a (overly) rational person. I haven’t really thought about it before, but obviously I’ve still got some passions driving things.
If I was to put it into words, I’d probably say I’m passionate about learning how things work and finding elegant simple solutions to problems. Which is generally tied to my selfish goal of having more free time to just experience the world without responsibilities.
Thanks for inspiring me to think about this, maybe I should go read some more philosophy…
xthexder@l.sw0.com 6 days ago
Something I’ve come to realize recently is that everyone has selfish motivations, some people are just a lot more careful about how those motivations effect others. Personally I worry quite a bit about how I might be inconveniencing others with my actions, and tend to stay rather isolated as a result.