Philosophical Conversations #1

I moved to a new place in Brooklyn about a week ago and now live with a philosophy professor. We've had lots of interesting conversations thus far, as I assumed we would have. Today I had a conversation with another philosophy scholar over the internet. We talked about the basis of values and the difference between motivation and the pursuit of pleasure. I stated that I saw no difference between motivation and the pursuit of pleasure? But I then talked to my roommate about the matter and he brought up Freud, Freud's essay "Beyond the Pleasure Principle," and the concept of the life and death drives. All of this drove at the question of whether any human act can lie outside the pleasure principle.

For a long time I've been a psychological egoist, believing the tautology that everything we do is in pursuit of our own pleasure, however "altruistic" it may seem. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, for what is wrong with helping a friend because we gain pleasure from that act? I would love for people to gain pleasure from helping me! But do we ever act for reasons outside of gaining pleasure or avoiding pain? I suppose we have reflexes; and more generally there all of those things our bodies to without us consciously willing it: digesting, circulating blood, sweating, dreaming, desiring. But this last one seems the most interesting to me right now. It's true, we don't will to desire something, we just desire it. This seems clear enough. But then what of the nature of desiring? Why do we desire what we desire? What does it mean to desire? Are our desires simply determined mechanistically through the interplay of our biological selves with the environment? Is a desire an urge, or can it be more than that?

My roommate was explaining to me that Freud talked about people with post traumatic stress and the fact that they keep on revisiting those traumatic memories even though the experience is continuously displeasurable. Freud theorized that the life drive is what forces the mind to return to the trauma for the purpose of bringing the traumatic event together with the rest of the person's life. Yet, the death drive seeks to reduce the tension created by the life drive and so fights back against it. Well at least it's something like this. It's a complicated theory and I've just been introduced to it.

What really gets me, however, is consciousness and free will and the determination of what we think and do. Why do I desire what I desire? Why do I value what I value? It doesn't seem that my consciousness determines this; my consciousness only becomes aware of those desires after they have already appeared. These are daunting issues to deal with, I know. And I certainly don't currently have the answers. Hopefully I'll get closer to them with time. Or not... but what would the implications of that be? Well that's an issue for another post. Goodnight.

What's the Point?

I spend a lot of time dealing with academic issues. Reading this person or that person's thoughts on this or that, writing about this or that, discussing this or that. Most of what is done within academia seems to be a waste of time however. The academics do not seem to me to justify their salaries. We really have to think hard about what their purpose in society is. What do we gain from academics? Which types are useful, which not, and how do we know? I believe that academics must justify their activities through their connection to the improvement of human life (or I suppose life in general, since the lives of non-human creatures should also matter). So really the question to ask is "what is your contribution to society?" If it is not very significant then the research or whatnot is not justified.

Scholarship should be reserved for those most devoted to the improvement of society (or rather to increasing net per capita happiness). Those who are most devoted to this will put their energies into the most productive activities, while those who are not very devoted to this purpose will simply follow their fancy or pursue what will bring them tenure.

One last point. In the end we must remember to ask: "Who is paying for this?