# Why are we alive?

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-we-alive/504200
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [July 25, 2009, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-we-alive/504200 "2009-07-25T04:36:02Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 119

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### Author: ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2009, 10:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-we-alive/504200/119 "2009-08-08T10:25:27Z")

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> [@begbert2](#):
>
> A person who loathes themselves may feel that justice and good is served by punishing or hurting that which is loathsome. They are distressed (made more miserable) by the sense of the loathsome going unpunished. To alleviate that distress, to reduce their misery, to increase their (meagar) happiness, they self-harm with the goal of satisfying their inner need to attack that which they loathe and thereby hope to reduce their misery/improve their happiness.

[Quote=begbert2, on the neurology of emotions]

Prove that the electrical signals transmitted between our neurons have nothing to do with our emotions. At any level. Because that’s what you’re saying by attributing it all to the neurochemicals.  
[/quote]

I think we’re done here. Your increasingly long posts are more and more accusations of foul play on my part, even as you dodge and shift your position with every post.

Case in point:

- 

**Mijin:** “I _don’t_ already know the answer to this question”  
**begbert2:** “You are stating that you understand my position - that is, that you know that, by my argument, Premise -\> Answer, and you know the path it uses to get there.  
…despite you already knowing the answer…”  
\*

If I were having a discussion with a Flat Earther, and I asked him “How do you explain the photos of a (roughly) spherical earth”, how retarded a response would “You know my position, therefore you know my answer to the question” be?

Again, I _ **don’t** _ know the answer to the question. I want to know the answer.

> [@](#):
>
> GODDAMMIT MAN, how many times to I have to remind you I started out with the happiness/misery continuum, not the hedonistic pleasure/pain continuum. Do you get some illicit thrill out of misrepresenting my position, or are you really incapabable of internalizing that I’m not and never have been making the simplistic hedonistic argument?

Yeah. Our actions being motivated by “happiness / reducing misery” (or, as you’ve also put it, good feeling / reducing bad feeling) is obviously totally different to the philosophy that our actions are motivated by pleasure / reducing pain. :rolleyes:

I have tried to get you to clarify your position many times in this thread. I have done this because I have had debates with people with similar views before and it is inevitable that they eventually claim their view is simply “we do whatever we think is best”, which is something I think everyone would trivially agree with.

That was _not_ your original position. You made it quite clear you were talking about a person being motivated by optimising their own happiness state, always.

For example you said:

> [@](#):
>
> …the thing that comparisons always boil down to is current good feelings or bad feelings. That is, will I feel bad/guilty/stupid/evil, right now, if I do that? Or will I feel pleased/releived/smart/good, right now, if I do that?

And let’s not forget your quote about the self-harmers, which I start all my posts with.

Your theory is about being motivated by our own mental state, this is very much the position of Hedonism.

btw, I like how you brushed away another cite. If you’d read it, you’d have seen that some of your arguments are explicitly mentioned. As are several of my counter-arguments.

* * *

**To any Philosophical Egoists reading this thread**  
Well, with all the firefighting I had to do with **begbert2** , the central points got lost.  
Egoism is a philosophy that is unpopular among philosophers but can “win” in debates with the man on the street. There’s the episode of _Friends_ for example, where Pheobe fails to find an example of a selfless act.

There are two important things to realise:

1. The _benefits_ of an action are not the same thing as the _reason(s)_ for doing it. You can think of a benefit to just about any course of action, if you think hard enough. That doesn’t necessarily mean that that was the reason for doing it.  
Your reason for doing something can be whatever conscious reasoning you had at the time, nothing more nothing less.

2. Getting our own way tends to make us happy. But that is _never_ the reason for doing something.  
If you were losing a war, you wouldn’t think “OK, I’m going to make _losing_ be my objective so I can experience the happiness of getting my way!”.

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