> (1) All conscious existence has negative value. What we call "pleasure" can make it less negative, and sufficient quantities of "love, good food, and general joy" can help the value of a life asymptotically approach the zero level, but they can't make existence better than nonexistence.
This seems like an extreme formulation to me, but …
> (1) All conscious existence has negative value. What we call "pleasure" can make it less negative, and sufficient quantities of "love, good food, and general joy" can help the value of a life asymptotically approach the zero level, but they can't make existence better than nonexistence.
This seems like an extreme formulation to me, but I admit that something a little like it has at last some intuitive appeal to me; I often feel that I'm attracted to a sort of "palliative" version of utilitarianism: an ethics that tries to offer comfort and ease of suffering. Whereas more "positive" formulations of utilitarianism leave me cold; they often leave me feeling like we are doing a "make line go up" for the sake of the *Universe* rather than for the sake of the people living within it--it feels much more right to me to say, "while we're here, we have a duty to make the world more pleasant and livable" than to say "we have a duty to remain here, and make the universe a certain way, even if no one wants it that way"...but I think what this discussion makes me realize is that it might be very hard or even impossible to formulate a logically consistent version of my view without resort to an extreme position like the position (1) that you articulate above.
>"very hard or even impossible to formulate a logically consistent version without resort to an extreme position like the position (1)"
For what it's worth, my own view is that trying to develop a logically consistent ethical system is a fundamentally misguided project, and that the ever-present temptation to borrow metaphors from mathematics (even basic ones like "good ~ positive" and "bad ~ negative") is especially likely to lead astray.
> (1) All conscious existence has negative value. What we call "pleasure" can make it less negative, and sufficient quantities of "love, good food, and general joy" can help the value of a life asymptotically approach the zero level, but they can't make existence better than nonexistence.
This seems like an extreme formulation to me, but I admit that something a little like it has at last some intuitive appeal to me; I often feel that I'm attracted to a sort of "palliative" version of utilitarianism: an ethics that tries to offer comfort and ease of suffering. Whereas more "positive" formulations of utilitarianism leave me cold; they often leave me feeling like we are doing a "make line go up" for the sake of the *Universe* rather than for the sake of the people living within it--it feels much more right to me to say, "while we're here, we have a duty to make the world more pleasant and livable" than to say "we have a duty to remain here, and make the universe a certain way, even if no one wants it that way"...but I think what this discussion makes me realize is that it might be very hard or even impossible to formulate a logically consistent version of my view without resort to an extreme position like the position (1) that you articulate above.
>"very hard or even impossible to formulate a logically consistent version without resort to an extreme position like the position (1)"
For what it's worth, my own view is that trying to develop a logically consistent ethical system is a fundamentally misguided project, and that the ever-present temptation to borrow metaphors from mathematics (even basic ones like "good ~ positive" and "bad ~ negative") is especially likely to lead astray.