Quotes

When some principle requires us to act in some way, this principle’s acceptability cannot depend on whether such acts are often possible. We cannot defend some principle by claiming that, in the world as it is, there is no danger that too many people will act in the way that this principle requires.

Derek Parfit, Justifiability to each person, Ratio, vol. 16, no. 4, 2003, pp. 368–390, p. 387

Some psychological and social states have the property that they can only come about as the by-product of actions undertaken for other ends. They can never, that is, be brought about intelligently and intentionally, because they attempt to do so precludes the very state one is trying to bring about. I call these “states that are essentially by-products”. There are many states that may arise as by-products of individual or aggregate action, but this is the subset of states than can only come about in this way. Some of these states are very useful or desirable, and so it is very tempting to try to bring them about. We may refer to such attempts as “excess of will”, a form of hubris that pervades our lives, perhaps increasingly so.

Jon Elster, States that are essentially by-products, Social Science Information, vol. 20, no. 3, 2016, pp. 431–473, p. 431

Meditation does produce lovely blissful feelings sometimes. But they are not the purpose, and they don’t always occur. Furthermore, if you do meditation with that purpose in mind, they are less likely to occur than if you just meditate for the actual purpose of meditation, which is increased awareness. Bliss results from relaxation, and relaxation results from release of tension. Seeking bliss from meditation introduces tension into the process, which blows the whole chain of events. It is a Catch-22: you can only experience bliss if you don’t chase after it. Euphoria is not the purpose of meditation. It will often arise, but should be regarded as a byproduct.

Henepola Gunaratana, Mindfulness in plain English, Boston, 1991, p. 26

It is in their purely physical aspect, as complex processes of corporeal change, that [physical processes] are means to the maintenance of life: but so long as we confine our attention to their corporeal aspect,—regarding them merely as complex movements of certain particles of organised matter—it seems impossible to attribute to these movements, considered in themselves, either goodness or badness. I cannot conceive it to be an ultimate end of rational action to secure that these complex movements should be of one kind rather than another, or that they should be continued for a longer rather than a shorter period. In short, if a certain quality of human Life is that which is ultimately desirable, it must belong to human Life regarded on its psychical side, or, briefly, Consciousness.

Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, London, 1907, p. 14

Plato’s reason for claiming that the life of the Philosopher has more pleasure than that of the Sensualist is palpably inadequate. The philosopher, he argues, has tried both kinds of pleasure, sensual as well as intellectual, and prefers the delights of philosophic life; the sensualist ought therefore to trust his decision and follow his example. But who can tell that the philosopher’s constitution is not such as to render the enjoyments of the senses, in his case, comparatively feeble?

Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, London, 1907, p. 3

(i) Any society in which each member was prepared to make sacrifices for the benefit of the group as a whole and of certain smaller groups within it would be more likely to flourish and persist than one whose members were not prepared to make such sacrifices. Now egoistic and anti-social motives are extremely strong in everyone. Suppose, then, that there had been a society in which, no matter how, there had arisen a strong additional motive (no matter how absurd or superstitious) in support of self-sacrifice, on appropriate occasions, by a member of the group for the sake of the group as a whole or for that of certain smaller groups within it. Suppose that this motive was thereafter conveyed from one generation to another by example and by precept, and that it was supported by the sanctions of social praise and blame. Such a society would be likely to flourish, and to overcome other societies in which no such additional motive for limited self-sacrifice had arisen and been propagated. So its ways of thinking in these matters, and its sentiments of approval and disapproval concerning them, would tend to spread. They would spread directly through conquest, and indirectly by the prestige which the success of this society would give to it in the eyes of others.

(ii) Suppose, next, that there had been a society in which, not matter how, a strong additional motive for unlimited self-sacrifice had arisen and had been propagated from one generation to another. A society in which each member was as ready to sacrifice himself for other societies and their members as for his own society and its members, would be most unlikely to persist and flourish. Therefore such a society would be very likely to succumb in conflict with one of the former kind.

(iii) Now suppose a long period of conflict between societies of the various types which I have imagined. It seems likely that the societies which would still be existing and would be predominant at the latter part of such a period would be those in which there had somehow arisen in the remote past a strong pro-emotion towards self-sacrifice confined within the society and a strong anti-emotion towards extending it beyond those limits. Now these are exactly the kinds of society which we find existing and flourishing in historical times.

The Neutralist might therefore argue as follows. Even if Neutralism be true, and even if it be self-evident to a philosopher who contemplates it in a cool hour in his study, there are powerful historical causes which would tend to make certain forms of restricted Altruism or qualified Egoism seem to be true to most unreflective persons at all times and even to many reflective ones at most times. Therefore the fact that common-sense rejects Neutralism, and tends to accept this other type of doctrine, is not a conclusive objection to the truth, or even to the necessary truth, of Neutralism.

C. D. Broad, Self and others, Self and others, pp. 262–282, pp. 281-282

J’allais voir Diderot, alors prisonnier à Vincennes ; j’avais dans ma poche un Mercure de France que je me mis à feuilleter le long du chemin. Je tombe sur la question de l’Académie de Dijon qui a donné lieu à mon premier écrit. Si jamais quelque chose a ressemblé à une inspiration subite, c’est le mouvement qui se fit en moi à cette lecture ; tout à coup je me sens l’esprit ébloui de mille lumières ; des foules d’idées vives s’y présentèrent à la fois avec une force et une confusion qui me jeta dans un trouble inexprimable ; je sens ma tête prise par un étourdissement semblable à l’ivresse. Une violente palpitation m’oppresse, soulève ma poitrine ; ne pouvant plus respirer en marchant, je me laisse tomber sous un des arbres de l’avenue, et j’y passe une demi-heure dans une telle agitation qu’en me relevant j’aperçois tout le devant de ma veste mouillé de mes larmes sans avoir senti que j’en répandais. Oh ! Monsieur, si j’avais jamais pu écrire le quart de ce que j’ai vu et senti sous cet arbre, avec quelle clarté j’aurais fait voir toutes les contradictions du système social, avec quelle force j’aurais exposé tous les abus de nos institutions, avec quelle simplicité j’aurais démontré que l’homme est bon naturellement et que c’est par ces institutions seules que les hommes deviennent méchants !

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, , 1762

Cloning technologies even offer a possible solution for world hunger: creating meat and other protein sources in a factory without animals by cloning animal muscle tissue. Benefits would include extremely low cost, avoidance of pesticides and hormones that occur in natural meat, greatly reduced environmental impact (compared to factory farming), improved nutritional profile, and no animal suffering. As with therapeutic cloning, we would not be creating the entire animal but rather directly producing the desired animal parts or flesh. Essentially, all of the meat—billions of pounds of it—would be derived from a single animal.

There are other benefits to this process besides ending hunger. By creating meat in this way, it becomes subject to the law of accelerating returns—the exponential improvements in price-performance of information-based technologies over time—and will thus become extremely inexpensive. Even though hunger in the world today is certainly exacerbated by political issues and conflicts, meat could become so inexpensive that it would have a profound effect on the affordability of food.

The advent of animal-less meat will also eliminate animal suffering. The economics of factory farming place a very low priority on the comfort of animals, which are treated as cogs in a machine. The meat produced in this manner, although normal in all other respects, would not be part of an animal with a nervous system, which is generally regarded as a necessary element for suffering to occur, at least in a biological animal. We could use the same approach to produce such animal by-products as leather and fur. Other major advantages would be to eliminate the enormous ecological and environmental damage created by factory farming as well as the risk of prion-based diseases, such as mad-cow disease and its human counterpart, vCJD.

Ray Kurzweil, The singularity is near: when humans transcend biology, New York, NY, 2005, p. 224

Every human being has a right to freedom from pain to the extent that our knowledge permits health professionals to achieve this goal. […] Pain […] is more than an intriguing puzzle. It is a terrible problem that faces all humanity and urgently demands a solution.

Ronald Melzack and Patrick D. Wall, The challenge of pain: a modern medical classic, London, 1988, pp. x

It is hard to see just what has gone wrong. But even if we cannot diagnose the flaw, it is more credible that the argument has a flaw we cannot diagnose than that its most extreme conclusion is true.

David Lewis, Papers in ethics and social philosophy, Cambridge, 2000, p. 155

E. E. Cummings, may i feel said she

The strong historical association between shame, guilt and pleasure might help to explain a number of paradoxical human behaviours, as well as the historical preference for formulating scientific research questions in terms of behaviour rather than pleasure and other hedonic feelings.

Irene Tracey, A Common Neurobiology for Pain and Pleasure, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, vol. 9, no. 4, 2008, pp. 315, p. 315

On the African Savannah […] our rational male forebears wanted young and beautiful partners while our rational ancestors down the maternal line would have preferred high-status males. Have these preferences, like attitudes to sex, survived to the present day? Folk wisdom would certainly say so. In the song ‘Summertime’ from Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess, there’s a reason why Bess soothes the baby with the line ‘Your daddy’s rich and your momma’s good looking’ rather than the other way round. And how often do you hear of a twenty-six-year-old Chippendale marrying an eighty-nine-year-old heiress?

Tim Harford, The logic of life: the rational economics of an irrational world, New York, 2008, pp. 78-79

The moms in my set are convinced—they’re certain; they know for a /fact/—that all over the city, in the very best schools, in the nicest families, in the leafiest neighborhoods, twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls are performing oral sex on as many boys as they can. They’re ducking into janitors’ closets between classes to do it; they’re doing it on school buses, and in bathrooms, libraries, and stairwells. They’re making bar mitzvah presents of the act, and performing it at “train parties”: boys lined up on one side of the room, girls working their way down the row. The circle jerk of old—shivering Boy Scouts huddled together in the forest primeval, desperately trying to spank out the first few drops of their own manhood—has apparently moved indoors, and now (death knell of the Eagle Scout?) there’s a bevy of willing girls to do the work.

The Atlantic, 2006

No imaginen que yo estuviera ansioso por conducir a Perla a uno de esos antros costosísimos, pero el caballero se reconoce en que apechuga de tarde en tarde. Por lo demás yo especulaba con las relevantes ventajas que en la ocasión proporcionan tales comercios: la infalible mecánica del alcohol, de la oscuridad y del baile, a la par de las oportunidades de pellizcar, al amparo de la oscuridad mencionada, mis bocaditos de aceitunas, queso y maní.

Adolfo Bioy Casares, Ad porcos, Historias de amor, Madrid, 2002, p. 191

Most people like to imagine that normal life is happy and that other states are abnormalities that need explanation. This is a pre-Darwinian view of psychology. We were not designed for happiness. Neither were we designed for unhappiness. Happiness is not a goal left unaccomplished by some bungling designer, it is an aspect of a behavioural regulation mechanism shaped by natural selection. The utter mindlessness of natural selection is terribly hard to grasp and even harder to accept. Natural selection gradually sifts variations in DNA sequences. Sequences that create phenotypes with a less-than-average reproductive success are displaced in the gene pool by those that give increased success. This process results in organisms that tend to want to stay alive, get resources, have sex, and take care of children. But these are not the goals of natural selection. Natural selection has no goals: it just mindlessly shapes mechanisms, including our capacities for happiness and unhappiness, that tend to lead to behavior that maximizes fitness. Happiness and unhappiness are not ends; they are means. They are aspects of mechanisms that influence us to act in the interests of our genes.

Felicia A. Huppert, N. Baylis, and B. Keverne (eds.), The science of well-being, Oxford ; New York, 2005, p. 10

What can be added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience? To one in this situation, all accessions of fortune may properly be said to be superfluous; and if he is much elevated upon account of them, it must be the effect of the most frivolous levity. This situation, however, may very well be called the natural and ordinary state of mankind. Notwithstanding the present misery and depravity of the world, so justly lamented, this really is the state of the greater part of men. The greater part of men, therefore, cannot find any great difficulty in elevating themselves to all the joy which any accession to this situation can well excite in their companion.

But though little can be added to this state, much may be taken from it. Though between this condition and the highest pitch of human prosperity, the interval is but a trifle; between it and the lowest depth of misery the distance is immense and prodigious. Adversity, on this account, necessarily depresses the mind of the sufferer much more below its natural state, than prosperity can elevate him above it.

Adam Smith, The theory of moral sentiments, Indianapolis, 1982, p. 3

It seems easy enough to “prove” the impossibility of self-deception, but self-deception is nonetheless a pervasive psychological phenomenon, and therefore there must be something wrong with the proof.

John R. Searle, The rediscovery of the mind, Cambridge, Mass, 1992, p. 147

Imaginaba el abandono como una muerte. No se me ocurrió que la vida suele tener más imaginación que uno, que siempre queda espacio para otros dolores.

Vlady Kociancich, La octava maravilla, Madrid, 1982, p. 101

The pleasure of pursuit will not be enjoyed unless we start with at least some faint desire for the pursued end. But the intensity of the pleasure of pursuit may be out of all proportion to the initial intensity of the desire for the end. As the pursuit goes on the desire to attain the end grows in intensity, and so, if we attain it, we may have enjoyed not only the pleasure of pursuit but also the pleasure of fulfilling a desire which has become very strong. All these facts are illustrated by the playing of games, and it is often prudent to try to create a desire for an end in order to enjoy the pleasures of pursuit. As Sidgwick points out, too great a concentration on the thought of the pleasure to be gained by pursuing an end will diminish the desire for the end and thus diminish the pleasure of pursuit. If you want to get most pleasure from pursuing X you will do best to try to forget that this is your object and to concentrate directly on aiming at X. This fact he calls “the Paradox of Hedonism.”

It seems to me that the facts which we have been describing have a most important bearing on the question of Optimism and Pessimism. If this question be discussed, as it generally is, simply with regard to the prospects of human happiness or misery in this life, and account to be taken only of passive pleasures and pains and the pleasures and pains of fulfilled or frustrated desire, it is difficult to justify anything but a most gloomy answer to it. But it is possible to take a much more cheerful view if we include, as we ought to do, the pleasures of pursuit. From a hedonistic standpoint, it seems to me that in human affairs the means generally have to justify the end; that ends are inferior carrots dangled before our noses to make us exercise those activities from which we gain most of our pleasures; and that the secret of a tolerably happy life may be summed up in a parody of Hegel’s famous epigram about the infinite End, viz., “the attainment of the infinite End just consists in preserving the illusion that there is an End to be attained.”

C. D. Broad, Five types of ethical theory, London, 1930, pp. 191-192