williams@kirk.DEC (John Williams 223-3402) (08/27/85)
And now, the definition of " GOOD ". GOOD enhances life. Moralities are based on perspective, that is, a person's past experiences and what he thinks about them. He has hopefully learned from his successes and failures, and can extract underlying principles behind these. Certain things will make him happy, others not. I should note here that one of the biggest causes for different moralities is the intrinsic inability to accurately distinguish between pain and punishment. A psychologist might talk about this for hours, but I won't. He next considers the present and the future, and extrapolates his principles to evaluate whether his morality will continue to improve his probability of being happy. He will not likely change unless he is experiencing some kind of pain. So, he derives a set of principles that reasonably assure his continued pleasure optimization. ( NOT meant Hedonistically ) ( Hedonistic behaviour and goal oriented behaviour are opposite extremes ) These principles are then present in the manner that he expresses himself. Unavoidably the principles surface in his communications. Any conflicts in principle that he has with others may also be a source of pain and modification, until he is able to reach agreement on the significant ones, or able to justify his difference. So, " GOOD " is whatever makes you happy. It is only when you are happy that you wish to continue to live. Ah, but there's a fly in the ointment. We live much too short a life to completely explain our moralities in this way. There is a part of us that also learns to accept death, and to look at it in a way that also makes us happy. It is no trivial excercise to define the difference between " GOOD " and " BAD ", except to say that it's not always what other people tell us. John. Logic amplifies thought.
rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (08/29/85)
> He next considers the present and the future, and > extrapolates his principles to evaluate whether his morality will > continue to improve his probability of being happy. He will not > likely change unless he is experiencing some kind of pain. So, he > derives a set of principles that reasonably assure his continued > pleasure optimization. ( NOT meant Hedonistically ) ( Hedonistic > behaviour and goal oriented behaviour are opposite extremes ) That's bullshit, John. Unless you are defining hedonist to mean someone who seeks pleasure only in the short term. Is a person who saves his/her money to eventually splurge on some definitive goal NOT a hedonist? -- Life is complex. It has real and imaginary parts. Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr