Imagine a guy who was completely euphoric all the time.
Not in the sense of like being high and annoying.
Just in the sense of feeling perfectly content and happy,
regardless of the changes around him or in his sensations or context.
Is such a thought experiment even intelligible, or
does it cause a priori conflict in the very definitions
we use?
How would a guy like this make even the simplest decision?
What if he became like this mid life?
Would his memory and habits override his lack of pain/pleasure
and force him to still abide to laws and values, even though they
now stand completely outside any kind of pleasure/pain currancy
that would matter to his brain?
Are you talking about neuro/psychological conditions in particular or do your questions include the spiritual ascetics who claim to be in a state of permanent happiness?
They say I used to walk around with my head in the clouds, 30 years ago as a young teen. They thought I was high with a smile on my face as I walked down the road ~ I mean, when I wasn’t hi. Everything that happened was like water off a ducks back.
Not the same exactly as what you mean, but I thought i’d point out that I was at my most intuitive then, even if I didn’t know certain things i’d kinda get what was being said and surprise people with my ‘depth’ in reply. On a similar note, when I first got into NFL football 4 years ago, I guessed the last 8 teams correctly, now I know the game a bit more, I can’t do that.
Would an extreme version of that be even more intuitive? I mean, unless the brain is damaged there’s 90 bil neurons making calculations, so if it is not doing one thing it will be doing something else, maybe seeing what we cannot see because we focus upon the details?