X-Message-Number: 2777
From: 
Date: Tue, 24 May 94 00:53:50 EDT
Subject: CRYONICS still more values

I agree with almost everything Mr. Wetterau says--and I certainly didn't mean
to imply that HIS opinions are frivolous. Goes to show --yet again--how easy
it is to express oneself in ways that can be misinterpreted.

Tangentially, I  do suggest he was hasty in saying "I don't believe opinions
are dangerous." Surely he can't mean that! Don't opinions sometimes lead to
actions? Isn't history full of opinions leading to cataclysms and atrocities
as well as mere blunders?  Aren't wars fought over opinions? Well, maybe he
was talking about strictly scientific opinions or hypotheses--but those can
be dangerous too.

But the main point of our recent exchanges is that Mr. Wetterau is telling me
things I already know and have tried to take into account. In other
words--yet again--I have failed to make myself clear. 

I did warn that brief notes like these have built-in hazards, and only a
book-length exposition, very carefully crafted and with much redundancy and
multiple examples, has any chance at all of being understood. Even so, I find
these exchanges potentially useful to help me sharpen and tighten my
exposition.

Of course--as Mr. Wetterau says, and as I thought I had frequently said or
implied--value systems are not simple, and the usually dominating values are
not the primitive ones of hunger, lust etc. I KNOW I recently said that most
of us, most of the time, have many things we would rather do than (for
example) eat or copulate. 

One of the reasons most of us are not likely to become lotus eaters or
electronic opium smokers (at least in the near future) is that one of our
important values is having a sense of control (power?) and direction.  We
want to be alert  and aware (at least much of the time), both to avoid danger
and to seize opportunities for growth and development. What Maslow called
"self-actualization" (the realization and utilization of all our potential
for self-expression and self-improvement) is very close to what Mr. Wetterau
appears to mean by his "higher level" values.

Where we seem to part company--and only, I think, because I have not made
myself clear--is on the questions of whether values are analyzable and
whether universal criteria can be applied. I say yes (probably).

Mr. Wetterau says our values are self-generated, and of course this is
largely true in some sense. The question is whether our choices are VALID. He
seems to think differing choices (and their results) are just idiosyncratic
and judgment-proof; I disagree. He says we "each decide," and of course we do
(in those areas amenable to conscious choice); but do we decide CORRECTLY?
Are there valid criteria allowing us to know what we OUGHT to do? I think
there probably are--and in any case the premise is sure to lead to useful
information. 

My starting point is that the self circuit has the capacity for pleasure/pain
or satisfaction/dissatisfaction. But is there only one basic kind, or
several? When we learn to take pleasure (or find that we do take pleasure) in
things we have never experienced before, is that because the self circuit
undergoes a basic modification, or because the same violin can play many
tunes? 

We also know that intensity of feeling is not the only criterion of value;
many of us, much of the time, would rather feel the "mild" satisfactions of
work accomplished than the often more intense ones of play. Are such
preferences accidental, delusory, or are they related to
yet-to-be-characterized qualities of the self circuit? (The simple answer, in
this case, is that probably we have to consider a meta-satisfaction--a
time-binding satisfaction--related to cycles and rhythms in life. This is
much in line with what Mr. Wetterau has said, but it doesn't change my
thesis; I never said we would find SIMPLE answers.)

We MUST learn to distinguish between valid values on the one hand, and
accidental or pathological ones on the other.  Some values are obviously
false and pathological, such as some of those inculcated by brainwashing. But
many others--almost equally false and pathological--are NOT obvious, and are
accepted as part of a cultural heritage. A bona fide philosophy must teach us
the difference. Part of the required work is to determine whether
pathological values have actually infiltrated the self circuit, or whether
they are merely malign habits superposed and running in parallel. Certainly
we know the organism can obey many different directives from many different
sources--some of which it OUGHT NOT.

Mr. Wetterau's gedanken experiment was to find an invulnerable hidey-hole and
arrange a permanent state of bliss. There are several possible answers to
this.  One is that (if the premise could be realized) that would indeed be
the "right" thing to do--however distasteful it may seem to most of us now.
Nobody guarantees we will (from our present viewpoints, or perhaps from any
viewpoints) like the way the world is made, or the way we are made, or the
limitations (if any) on what we can become. 

Another answer is that TIME is of the essence; no STATIC condition can
constitute experience, and once we agree that CHANGE is necessary for
experience or feeling to occur, the whole picture changes and the concept of
"pure bliss" must be reexamined.  

I do insist that values do NOT exist separately from feel-good (unless they
are accidental or spurious, as with certain habits).  If it doesn't feel good
in some sense, it isn't a value; and if it isn't a value in some sense, it
doesn't feel good. This might be seen as just insisting on my own
definitions, but I think not. It's a little like talking about energy; when
heat was first  recognized as a form of energy, that wasn't an arbitrary
decision or a new definition; it was a recognition of a fit into a pattern.

It isn't a question of my opinions being "more authoritative" than Mr.
Wetterau's or someone else's. It is a question of my viewpoint (to the extent
that it is different) being more productive and useful. This remains to be
seen, but obviously I think it has promise.

I hope I'm not wasting everybody's time, and my wife wants me to go to bed.
But still another remark or two to other contributors:

Mr. Riskin is right, of course, in saying that under modern conditions (and
sometimes even under previous conditions) the "instinct" for
self-preservation often fails to manifest itself. We have to try to juice it
up. But "free will" is a non-issue; we have it on the conscious level, and
that is all we ought to need. As for individuals feeling good in different
ways--again, our goal is to PROVE which of those ways are valid.

Mr. Greenstein speaks of the "basic" drives of survival and procreation. But
I am talking about individuals, not "nature" or the "purposes" of evolution,
to which we certainly don't want to sumit ourselves.  

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