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This is an outline of sorts, originally intended to be slides, or overhead projector transparencies, for a lecture. Hence they may not "flow" very well from thought to thought, since the connecting ideas were intended to be spoken during the lecture.
Part 1:
Definition of paradise
Part 2:
Getting there using reason
PARADISE:
By "paradise", I mean the social condition where everyone's highest ranking desires are gratified.
This is a DESIRE-BASED concept of paradise, notable in distinction to three contrasting conceptions of paradise:
1. Cannot be defined in terms of other phenomena.
2. Is not identical with happiness (even when gratified), nor pleasure.
3. Is (plausibly) the only non-cognitive phenomena with affirming or rejecting intentions.
4. Is (plausibly) the root of other experiences such as:
POSITIVE
Want
Curiosity
Like
Love
Passion
Interest
Approve
Care
NEGATIVE
Hate
Lothe
Repulse
Dislike
Distain
Ill Will
1. The Tool Principle:
Reason as means but not necessarily an end.
2. The Complexity Compensator Principle:
Reason increases our chances of success as complexity of goal
increases.
(Except in odd cases where the lack of reason partly constitutes the project's goal.)
SOME DESIRES MUST CHANGE
1. Conflicts among desires, and between desires and reality's limits, are irreconcilable.2.Universal gratification requires perfect harmony among desires and between desires and reality's limits.
3. The current prevalance of desire conflicts means some desires MUST change if we are to achieve paradise.
THIS IS A GIVEN
The only REAL question is HOW?
1. Harmony does not mean similarity.
2. Types of harmony:
A. Constitutive harmony.
(Harmony that must apply to paradise itself)
1. Existential harmony:
Between our desires and what is possible in reality
2. Personal harmony:
Between one's own desires
3. Social harmony:
Between the desires of all people
B. Methodological harmony.
(Harmony that partly applies to our methods for getting to
paradise)
1. Pre-paradisial social harmony:
Between the desires of those who have the power to achieve
paradise cooperatively
2. "Feedback harmony"
Harmony between the imagined desires in paradise and the desires of those who have the power to select what desires will be in paradise.
The people who have the power to create paradise must approve of the paradise they make, including the desires of those they imagine in paradise.
I call it "FEEDBACK HARMONY" because the two sets of desires in this harmony relation may change one another over time as we approach paradise.
As we approach paradise, the changes we experience may change our desires such that the type of paradise we want actually changes. The two sets of desires affect one another in a loop of feedback.
1. Per Feedback Harmony, they must be approved by those who have the power to set things in motion.
2. Per the complexity of the project, they must be designed and selected by reason as most likely to work.
(How do we answer this question?)
Step two:
Analize and evaluate them.
Step three:
Select the most likely to work.
(Let's try it.)
Each method usually corresponds to a theory of human psychology, and as a package, can be refered to by either the name of the method or the name of the psych-theory.
1. Physiological method / theory
2. "Conscial" methods / theories
1. Physiological method / theory
PROHIBITIVE PROBLEMS:
1. Desirous beings tend not to want to change their desires so
deliberately.
(They'd rather get what they want than change their wanting
itself.)
2. Therefore, this method likely fails the Feedback Harmony
requirements at this time.
(Check back later, who knows...)
Places the realm of desire control / adjustment in a relation to objects of consciousness.
Hence, control these objects, and we in turn control our desires.
I call these "CONSCIAL" theories.
From here on, I will consider only conscial theories.
Conscial theories come in four basic types, as shown in the chart below.
| PERVERSIONISM | CONSTRUCTIVISM | |||||
| SOCIAL |
|
|||||
| ENVIRONMENTAL | ||||||
Let's analize the social versus
environmental methods first.
What do these
methods mean?
Social theories place the realm of desire control / adjustment fundamentally among social objects - in our interaction with social objects of consciousness (PEOPLE).
SOCIAL means:
the interaction of two or more conscious subjects caused by their
awareness of one another's consciousness.
Environmental methods place the realm of control / adjustment of desires fundamentally in the non-social - in our interaction with inanimate, environmental objects of consciousness.
In this selection, reason favors the environmental methods.
1. Desire is an intentional phenomena; it is
always refering to something else.
Desires are always for other objects.
2. Intentional phenomena, while able to refer to other instances of itself, must ultimately refer to some non-intentional phenomena. (Otherwise infinite regress)
3. Social theories claim desires arrise and take specific shape only among other intentional phenomena (other desires or just consciousness), ultimately refering only to one another. (This is infinite regress)
4. Therefore, social theories claim the logically impossible.
PERVERSIONIST
and
CONSTRUCTIVIST.
PERVERSIONISM
Claims there are
AUTHENTIC desires
and
UNAUTHENTIC (perverted) desires
Unauthentic desires are stress created perversions of "repressed" authentic desires
Includes such notions as:
denial
brainwashing
addiction
repression
neurosis
schizophrenia
paranoia
The hope is that removing the stress agent will liberate repressed authentic desires.
The even BIGGER hope for our project is that these authentic desires are harmonious, and will satisfy the requirements of paradise.
CONSTRUCTIVISM
Rejects the dichotomy between authentic and unauthentic desires, claiming all desires are equally authentic.
Claims all desires are equally caused by a CONSTRUCTION of responses to objects of consciousness.
One version is COGNITIVISM:
Emotions (like desire) come from what we know, or fail to
know.
THE DENIAL CONCEPT
DENIAL is the cognitive component of perversionism, the effect of the stress agent on knowledge. The stress makes us "lie" to ourselves and others about our desires, but without the full realization that we have so lied.
No one can be certain their own desires are authentic or not because of the denial concept.
Perversionism creates a "climate of general doubt"
Stop right here...
We're now facing a different caliber of problem.
The selection process DOES NOT consist of simply comparing theories and picking the most likely to work.
Because the DENIAL concept is present in one of our plausible theories, two pertinate facts follow:
1. All competing theories could be the product of denial, but may not be, but we cannot tell which. Hence reasoned selection is not possible.
2. We cannot select a harmonizing method according to one of these theories in isolation, but must design a method in response to this very fact.
We need a "BLIND METHOD"
A "blind method" is one which works according to two or more competing theories, such that the one according to which it actually works remains unknown. We are "blind" to which theory it works by.
In this case, our blind method must account for the plausibility of our being in denial.
(A series of "if - then" conditions)
1. If a perversionist theory applies in reality, then our blind method must remove all stress agents (and we hope the liberated desires are harmonious).
If a constructivist theory applies in reality, then our blind method must adjust the origins of desires to construct harmonious desires.
Answer:
Definite maybe.
The most likely candidate:
INDIVIDUALIZED
SUPER-TECHNOLOGY
It means each individual possesses the technological power to shape the environment to his/her liking, limited by the bounds of the possible.
1. If a perversionist theory applies, then it empowers the individual to experiment with different environmental arrangements toward removing the fundamental stress agents and liberating authentic desires. Because it is individualized, no competing authorities can interfere, possibly perverting the individual's desires unintentionally.
As desires become increasingly authentic, the remaining harmonization can follow the constructivist method / theory.
2, If a constructivist theory applies, then it likewise empowers the individual to experiment with different environmental arrangements to produce harmonious desires compatible with paradise.
1. It assumes conscial theories apply and are sufficient to achieve desire harmonization.
2. Because it is a blind method, we cannot know when it has finished working; we cannot measure it's success. At any point after implementation, any desire may still be suspected (but not proven) as unauthentic.
1. If conscial theories do not fully apply, we may at some
point find physiological methods acceptable.
(Although, physiological methods may also be unmeasurable)
2. Though we cannot measure its success, we may say that if it can work, it may be working.
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