Ok… Maybe im onto something… Just Maybe, keep it coming guys and thanks for sticking with it,
“the role that pleasure takes within the larger apparatuses of meaning, and how those apparatuses actually form our viewing of the world.”
The way I have understood this statements is exactly the way I view pleasure. I maybe understanding it wrong though… So let me ask a question to illustrate my point. I always go about asking why? Im always searching for a reason. Someone tells me they did action A to be a “good person,” and I ask them, and want to know the reason WHY being a “good person” is a goal worthy of acomplishment. The answer I eventually expect to hear is that they want to be a good person, which illustrates my point that its their desire that drives them to act. But then, here is the cunundrum, WHY act on your desires? Why try to obtain pleasure? The problem is, pleasure and pain, just like our 5 senses, are the tools used to evaluate the world. Pleasure and Pain DEFINE OUR DEFENITIONS. Or at least play a significant role in that process. Just like you said above. Pleasure and pain actually form our viewing of the world. I wholly agree! Which makes defining them extremely difficult if at all possible. Because they are our… uh… DEFINERS, so to say. Its like trying to define our definer, its like trying to logicly justify logic, its like trying to invent a hammer but requiring a hammer to build it. It is Godel’s incompleteness theorem at work in some ways. Is this maybe the gist of it?
But:
“To say that pleasure is the reason why human’s act is simply not to see the role that pleasure takes within the larger apparatuses of meaning”
I dont understand why you say this. If I understood the point that pleasure plays a part in forming our meaning correctly, I do not see how saying that pleasure is the reason we act somehow indicates that I dont see that point. When looking at pleasure in a purely biological sense, and looking at humans as complex machines, and looking at conciousness and the human experience as just a complex mechanism that facilitates survival, than I believe it can be said that it is pleasure and pain, as chemicals and the role they play in the mechanism of conciousness, that are the reason humans act. Just like the reason a Chess AI program chooses one move over another is the programing within it, so is our reason for choosing one action over another the evolutionarily placed programing within us. The question is, for the AI computer program, is there an awareness within its operations. This phenomena we call conciousness that some (maybe all) living organisms have, is that same phenomena present in the working of the AI program? IF IT WERE, Than I could imagine that the computer actually “FEELS GOOD” about eating the Queen, and “FEELS BAD” when its Queen is eaten. The Computer program that determines the value distinction between moves and acts on the highest valued move, I believe, is analogous to the mechanism that causes us to act. And so, as much as the programmed value of specific moves is the reason the AI chooses that move, so is pleasure the reason that we choose to act.
"Sex, for example. In some social contexts, pleasure gets a negative label.
Contact sports, for example. In some social contexts, pain gets a positive label (sign of courage and bravery and what-not).
So, in other words, due to conflict-management (or whatever you particularly have in mind…) in social settings, pleasure does not always equal happiness, and pain does not always equal unhappiness."
And this is a demonstration of the diffirence between the AI machine and us. We learn. We change. Through another mechanism, though I have no analogy for this one, for this may be the most complicated mechanism of them all. Through some process, that no doubt involves association, we can apply the pleasures initially borne in us to anything we can imagine. So by promoting some innately pleasurable circumstances, we can condition people to obtain pleasure or pain in what we want them to obtain pleasure or pain from. What do you think discipline is? My dad would hit me and say: “Dont Do That!” whatever that was… Is some cases, whatever “that” was, I now have an automatic negative response to “that.” This is behavioral conditioning, any psychologist will attest to the existence of this process. In this same way, people can be conditioned to actually obtain pain from having sex… If you beat a person everytime they have sex… I could imagine that person would after awhile automaticly respond negatively to the idea of sex. In the same way, if you give rewards to people when they endure some pain, and keep telling them that pain endurance is the mark of bravery and courage, and as you said, those things are assigned a positive label, than through association, enduring pain can actually become pleasurable. As a matter of fact this happens alot, including with my dad. He called me a girl and a pussy whenever I couldnt take a smacking, and he would always tell me that a real man can take pain, though not exactly in those words. And to this day I still feel proud (GOOD) whenever im in pain and I handle it well. And for this very reason, people play bloody knuckles. It all makes perfect sense if understood in terms of the mechanisms I suggest. At least so far…
If the question is WHY do these situations arrise, why would anyone teach that pleasure is painfull, and pain is pleasurable in some situations, than the answers are numerous and long-winded. Or at least the answers I could give. There could be plenty of theoretical reasons that would make perfect sense, which one is actually the case, I wouldnt know. Maybe someone would, but thats irrelivent. The fact is they CAN be explained by my theories on pleasure/pain and their involvement in our lives.
Any one confused?
