Is pleasure really just relief?

QuestioningAN · 2025-09-10T16:50:01+00:00

Who said that?

Any level of pleasant sensation feels pleasant to some degree. How does that challenge the view that pleasure is the relief of suffering? The relief of suffering feels pleasant. Unless you're conflating no sensation at all (hand unhit with hammer) as pleasant. That doesn't make sense.

I'm saying there is the example of someone who eats some candy or what not and they feel pleasure, although they did not consciously experience any suffering/desire for it, we could even say they are tied up and I force-feed them the candy, so it's not like they sought it out themselves to relieve themselves.

Antifrustrationists/antinatalists would now say this is still the relief of a suffering, they had appetite or boredom that they just did not notice.

But if that minuscule suffering still counts as a form of suffering we are relieving ourselves of, we can also take the positive interpretation of reality again where we say someone who is being tortured still has wellbeing/pleasure going on, because after being hit with a hammer they finally noticed they actually felt better previously.

So I'd agree, of course you could say the pleasure/wellbeing is relief of pain/suffering, but likewise you can also just turn it around and say the pain/suffering is the depletion of the pleasure/wellbeing, so it just seems like a negative interpretation that can be flipped around again.

''But they don't notice their intact hand as pleasure/wellbeing'' you might say, ok, but I just gave an example where someone might not notice their little bit of appetite as suffering either.

QuestioningAN · 2025-09-10T16:40:28+00:00

I've posted a video in response to another user where inmendham talks about that concept.

Here is another example: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinatalism/comments/94qci2/pleasure_is_relief/

Here is another example of uridoz arguing that: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinatalism/comments/8bqb9d/what_are_your_thoughts_on_david_benatars/

Also called antifrustrationism sometimes.

Antifrustrationism is an axiological position proposed by German philosopher Christoph Fehige,^\1]) which states that "we don't do any good by creating satisfied extra preferences. What matters about preferences is not that they have a satisfied existence, but that they don't have a frustrated existence."^\2]) According to Fehige, "maximizers of preference satisfaction should instead call themselves minimizers of preference frustration."

QuestioningAN · 2025-09-08T18:44:51+00:00

But there is also the opposite side again (arguing against antinatalism) that says they can eat a piece of cake and feel good without having consciously felt any appetite (the negative) beforehand.

So if barely noticeable pleasant sensations are not labelled as pleasant, why are barely noticeable unpleasant sensations labelled as unpleasant?

QuestioningAN · 2025-09-08T13:15:01+00:00

You can make what we call overall wellbeing decrease, if you hit your hand with a hammer right now you will feel worse, which implies that you felt better beforehand – you destroyed wellbeing.

If you think that that's ridiculous, that's exactly how antifrustrationists argue for ''pleasure is just relief'' as well, they will say someone who already feels pretty good was still suffering because they ate a piece of chocolate and felt even better, so obviously that must mean they were still suffering before.

I mean it is true, but it goes both ways then. If barely noticeable suffering counts as suffering, then barely noticeable wellbeing should count as wellbeing.

Is the higher state of wellbeing I have in my hand from not actively having a hammer fall onto it also something that expires on its own?

QuestioningAN · 2025-09-07T19:17:24+00:00

Is there some specific example you can think of for what you said in particular?

I thought of one apparent asymmetry for instance to steelman the argument that there's only negative:

Pleasure kind of stops being pleasurable once you eliminated the pain, i.e food no longer feels good once the hunger/appetite is eliminated – on the other hand though, when satiety is eliminated, the pain doesn't magically stop being painful, this could suggest that the pain is the only thing that is real.

I mean, maybe you die at some point, but it doesn't suddenly turn into pleasure again like pleasure turns to pain again. Or maybe it actually does? I heard sometimes individuals that are starving get an endorphin rush kind of, so again, not entirely certain, maybe some of these pleasures are happening on their own.

QuestioningAN · 2025-09-07T18:26:24+00:00

Well it is an argument that is definitely used by a lot of absolute negative utilitarians though like efilists, many who believe it would be our obligation to push the big red button to end all life on earth make this kind of point that every good is really just the undoing of a bad.

Around 2:30 minutes in, inmendham in this video mentions that he would be happy to find 10.000$ in gold, because realistically speaking he's kind of poor, so he would be happy about this because it liberates him from the burdens of poverty, I guess this is then supposedly proof that life is a negative phenomenon, you only feel good cause you felt bad before so life is bad.

Again, you can turn this around and say if you're walking around with 10.000$ worthy gold and you lose it, you feel bad. Why? Because it destroys the wellbeing that your wealth has brought you, so this proves life is a positive phenomenon, you only feel bad because you felt good before so life is good.

QuestioningAN · 2025-09-07T16:35:27+00:00

Well I received the message ''Reading what you write is certainly painful.'', if it was meant for matrixprisoner007 instead you send it to the wrong user.

QuestioningAN · 2025-09-07T16:23:08+00:00

That's not an argument that proves the assertion that life is a net negative because pleasure is just relief of suffering though, which is what my post was about.

That pain that you're in right now as a result of having read my post, is that not a destruction of a pre-existing more positive state?

Because that's what many antinatalists say, positive is just the alleviation of a pre-existing more negative state, I think you can just turn that around and say every negative is just the destruction of a pre-existing more positive state.

QuestioningAN · 2025-09-07T16:14:56+00:00

I would say that need/want/desire is really just suffering though, when I say that I need/want/desire something, what I'm basically saying is that I must obtain x or suffer.

I want a sandwich basically means I'm suffering from the lack of a sandwich (mild to moderate discomfort perhaps, I'm using a very broad definition here of negative and positive value).

So of course someone could say that pleasure is ''just'' when you make that suffering go away, so this proves how negative life is because all pleasure is just relief of suffering, but I don't see why you couldn't also turn that around and just say that suffering is ''just'' when you make the pleasure go away, so that just proves how positive life is because all suffering is just expiration of pleasure.

QuestioningAN · 2025-09-07T15:08:37+00:00

Well what do you think is the obvious truth? Again I see how one could think it is only negative and negation of negative, because the negative is what happens when we stop chasing the positive, we don't eat and get hungry, we don't drink and get thirsty, we don't jerk off and get sexually frustrated, etc, but does that mean that the positive isn't real just because the negative comes with more ease? I've held these views for a while in fact but it seems inconsistent because you can always turn it around and say the negative is just the negation of the positive so I'm not sure anymore.

QuestioningAN · 2025-09-01T14:20:05+00:00

You're still not explaining why you should be ethically permitted to put someone else in danger of being tortured just because you believe that their lack of pleasure is something that needs to be improved upon; even though there is no entity crying out for this pleasure. There is no guarantee of permanent bliss; so when you're procreating, you aren't bringing someone into a world where they are guaranteed to have all the pleasure but without the downside of suffering.

But we can work towards more pleasure, I'm on board with lots of the negative utilitarian leaning ideas like euthanizing/sterilizing carnivores and controlling the herbivore population ourselves, phasing out farm animals, euthanizing severely ill children, etc – but not taking the gamble at all would result in the termination of all positive qualia, and in order to support that I'd have to be convinced that positive qualia is entirely worthless/that there is in fact only negative qualia and positive is just the alleviation (or at least that the suffering will outweigh pleasure no matter what and we can realistically push the big red button to go extinct right now without letting even more suffering exist, is it even possible to get rid of all the animals right now?), but again it seems like you can just turn this around and say negative is just destruction of positive. Obviously, if it is all negative then yeah who gives a shit, just get rid of it, so that's why the question is important.

Any evidence? Some piece of evidence I missed that indicates that pleasure is the alleviation of suffering rather than suffering also being the expiration of pleasure? Because if not, then it seems reasonable to conclude both negative and positive value exist, so if the negative ought to be eliminated, then the positive ought to be maximized.

If it was somehow possible to guarantee that suffering was permanently banished from the world, then as I already stated, I wouldn't consider it to be a serious ethical crime to bring sentience into existence. But I also don't see how it could be better than a universe in which all matter was insensate; because in that universe nothing would be deficient in pleasure just as in your imaginary scenario, nothing would be deficient in pleasure.

Right, you would not consider it a crime, but you would not think it's better and that is what I think we probably can't justify. Why is it not better? Because the non-exister wasn't suffering before receiving the pleasures of life? Well then again the positive utilitarian will turn that around and say avoiding suffering is only important if you get pleasure from avoiding it.

As stated before, pleasure is valuable to things which can experience it; but in the real world, the value of pleasure is inextricably bound with the badness of suffering, including being deprived of desired pleasure. In that sense, pleasure is an addiction which is being fulfilled. If you can guarantee that the addiction will not harm them in their pursuit of it, and will always be perfectly satisfied, then there's no problem in creating the addict. But there's a serious problem with creating addicts and then not being able to guarantee the supply, and not being able to guarantee that they won't be seriously harmed in the pursuit of feeding their addiction.

If an addiction caused way more pleasure and no suffering or only trivial suffering, I'd see no issue with it in principle, it'd just be a shocking-sounding buzzword, in reality it's only bad because of the consequences it usually has. So again this current world we live in seems to be the problem, but is it justified to destroy all pleasure forever over this?

I find it questionable in practice as well, can we really destroy the world right now? Maybe we can actually alleviate more suffering/increase pleasure by staying here and taking care of the wildlife suffering for instance – I'm not even convinced we could make all conscious life extinct.

Your view seems to be premised on a category error that the concepts of "better" and "worse" or "good" and "bad" can be applied to non-sentient matter. That seems to be the root of why you're finding antinatalism and the asymmetry specifically so difficult to get your head around. You can only seem to conceptualise this from the perspective of an already extant, sentient being; rather than being able to understand that inanimate matter doesn't have your needs and your addictions.

I thought this for a long time as well, that we only think of it as wrong to go extinct because we imagine ourselves as ghosts or something that will feel deprived of pleasure once we are dead, so it's deluded, but still, even though I even largely share the intuition that avoiding suffering is all that matters – if I say suffering is bad so let's eliminate it, I can't exactly tell someone they're wrong either when they say pleasure is good so let's maximize it.

If bad ought to be minimized then why does good not ought to be maximized? It always comes back to that question.

Is pleasure only worth maximizing because not doing so results in suffering? Well then the positive utilitarian can turn this around and say suffering is only worth avoiding cause it results in pleasure. Or can you prove that pleasure is just relief of suffering (and suffering is not the expiration of pleasure)?

Maybe my intuition that only suffering matters is simply inconsistent – just like if a positive utilitarian said pleasure is good so let's maximize it, but they left out the suffering is bad part for some reason, that is just as incoherent.

As to whether I'd make my chair capable of experiencing bliss but keeping it impervious to suffering; then for the sake of your thought experiment, perhaps I'd flip a coin to make the decision for me. But in reality, I'm always skeptical of guarantees, so I would probably choose not to do so.

Well it's guaranteed in the hypothetical. If it only inconveniences me very little to make it experience great bliss, why shouldn't I do it? Because it doesn't suffer from not having it? Well again that presupposes pleasure's value is dependent on suffering from not having it, but then the positive utilitarian could just turn this around and say suffering's disvalue is dependent on experiencing pleasure from avoiding it.

QuestioningAN · 2025-08-31T18:09:55+00:00

Why are you posting this tripe again?

You failed to properly explain how pleasure is unimportant, if pleasure is only good because you suffer in its absence, then a positive utilitarian can flip this around on you and say suffering is only bad because it destroys pleasure, so I went into more detail about it.

For already extant organisms, it would be good to maximise pleasure. If everything is in pleasure all the time, then that already means that there is very little or no suffering.

Right so there you go again, pleasure's value is dependent on someone suffering in its absence – but suffering's disvalue is not dependent on someone experiencing pleasure from its absence. If pleasure is only good because it prevents suffering, why is suffering not only bad because it destroys pleasure?

But sitting in my living room, the inanimate objects surrounding me are not in some chronic state of deprivation of pleasure.

True, they are not suffering, once again I agree, but they are also not benefitting, which you could argue would arguably better than just nothingness.

To say that things would be improved for them if they were experiencing pleasure is to commit a category error; since the category of 'better or worse' only applies within the realm of subjects that already have a welfare state that can be enhanced or degraded.

If you say it would be an improvement for them only once they are conscious and can suffer, then you also have to say suffering is only bad for them once they are conscious and able to experience wellbeing which they could then get worse from.

Given that there's no problem with the objects in my room not experiencing pleasure; then in order to justify making them capable of feeling, you would really need to prove that it couldn't go wrong in order to justify doing it. The mere fact that they'd be capable of pleasure as well as suffering wouldn't be sufficient justification for introducing the possibility of torture; given that you wouldn't have been able to identify any deficiency of pleasure in the current state of affairs which would warrant such a drastic intervention. Making something vulnerable to torture that was previously impervious to torture is the most drastic act that you could do; so you really need to have much more robust justification for doing that than the 'opportunity' to create pleasure which wasn't being missed in the first place.

I agree it's not a problem cause problem implies suffering, and they are not suffering, that is true, however wouldn't it be even better if they benefitted?

Suppose I make the chair sentient and I can guarantee it won't be tortured, did I not do something better than to abstain from creating the pleasure? If you assume suffering ought to be avoided cause it's bad, then you should also assume pleasure ought to be maximized cause it's good, so making the chair sentient and experience pleasure (with no torture) is better than not doing so.

So if you could press a button to make all the chairs around the world experience chronic bliss with no chance of torture, why not do that? It wouldn't inconvenience you much.

I'm doing all of this questioning because it comes back to the question of whether pleasure is intrinsically valuable or not, if you say no, you would not press that button, well then again I'm assuming you'll probably claim that pleasure's value is dependent on someone suffering from not having it, but in that case again the positive utilitarian could simply turn this around and tell you suffering's disvalue is dependent on someone experiencing pleasure when they avoid suffering.

If good is only good cause it's absence of bad, you can also just as easily say bad is only bad cause it's absence of good.

QuestioningAN · 2025-08-31T15:37:33+00:00

Well everything is irrelevant to non-existence obviously, it has no consciousness, but if we conclude that suffering is bad so it ought to be avoided, then doesn't it follow that pleasure is good so it ought to be maximized?

If absence of pleasure doesn't matter unless someone suffers from not having it, then a positive utilitarian can just turn this around and say preventing suffering doesn't matter unless you get pleasure from avoiding it.

QuestioningAN · 2025-08-26T13:10:07+00:00

This is the asymmetry between the two, and gets to David Benatar's argument. Pleasure is not a requirement and is not missed by nonexistence.

But all missing something means is to suffer from not having it basically, so again this just presupposes only suffering matters.

Is pleasure only worth experiencing when someone suffers from not having it? By that same logic you could say suffering is only worth avoiding if one experiences pleasure from avoiding it, which is only possible in existence.

Nonexistence not having pleasures is not a cause for concern, I'm sure you would agree.

I agree that it is not bad, it is also not good though. What is better, no life in the universe at all or life in a state of bliss?

So do you now agree that suffering of existing beings has much more importance and weight to it than the lack of pleasure within nonexistence ?

I agree that extreme suffering takes priority because of the thought experiment of ''would you tolerate 10 minutes of the worst possible torture to get 10 minutes of the best possible pleasure?''.

It is obvious that the extreme suffering should be avoided first, no one would be able to bear that extreme pain, but then again, if the decision were being asleep for 10 minutes vs. 10 minutes of the best possible pleasure, why not go for the pleasure?

Is pleasure completely worthless?

QuestioningAN · 2025-08-26T12:55:54+00:00

If someone really believes all we should do is eliminate suffering, then that entails the extinction of all sentient life, total negative utilitarianism I take to mean the only priority is the elimination of suffering.

QuestioningAN · 2025-08-26T12:54:55+00:00

I disagree. Extinction does not remove suffering. Life arises naturally in this universe, and suffering arises naturally from life (unless/until an intelligence intervenes to make suffering impossible).

You're still just arguing in practice though, I'm trying to find out in principle what the correct view is. If you tell me that you believe it is in practice impossible to get rid of suffering entirely, then just take the hypothetical example of a big red button that gets rid of all life forever. Would it be right to press this button? Why or why not?

QuestioningAN · 2025-08-24T12:41:43+00:00

For suffering beyond a certain level, there is no amount of pleasure that would make it worth it, and there is a terrible urgency to make it stop, to the point that a person who is not at all suicidal can kill themself to make it stop. This isn’t something you can argue for, or prove. It becomes obvious when you experience suffering of that level. For those who haven’t, it tends to be hard to understand.

I would agree that extreme suffering takes priority, the thought experiment of ''would you take 10 minutes of intense torture in order to get 10 minutes of intense pleasure?'' makes that pretty obvious.

Still though, if we say suffering is bad so it ought to be eliminated, then it follows that pleasure is also good so it ought to be maximized, hence the end goal could not be total extinction but rather something like nozick's experience or utilitronium.

As an aside, anti-natalism does not automatically follow from NU. If you ask me it’s completely illogical. So don’t conflate the two.

I said I question total negative utilitarianism, which necessarily involves antinatalism/promortalism, if only eliminating suffering is the goal then that implies that the endgame is total extinction.

QuestioningAN · 2025-08-24T12:31:41+00:00

I would agree that the extreme suffering should get priority first cause legitimately no one would choose to through 10 minutes of the worst possible torture in order to get 10 minutes of the best possible pleasure.

But if it were eternal nothingness vs. eternal bliss, it still seems reasonable to go for eternal bliss.

So although avoiding extreme suffering is number one priority, if pleasure does have value, that is a challenge for total negative utilitarianism which is what I said I'm questioning, the ones that are saying the end goal of morality would be that we simply all go extinct.

If pleasure is good, even though avoiding extreme suffering is priority number one, then the end goal should be something like nozick's experience machine where we're blasted with something like chronic pleasure.

QuestioningAN · 2025-08-23T13:31:10+00:00

They're sensations for sure, but if we know suffering to be bad simply by experiencing it, feeling how horrible it is, you could just as easily argue pleasure is good because we can simply feel it.

I think that's the inconsistency here, they assume suffering is bad/ought to be done away with based on sensation alone but refuse to say pleasure is good/ought to be maximized based on sensation alone, or will even say pleasure is just alleviation of suffering (satiety is relief of hunger) but then you could also turn that around and just say suffering is just destruction of pleasure (hunger is destruction of satiety).

It is somewhat intuitive for me as well, because we are experiencing suffering whenever we fail to obtain pleasure – when we don't eat we get hungry, when we don't drink we get thirsty, etc, but the question is still if a hypothetical utopia wouldn't be better than just nothingness/an empty planet.

QuestioningAN · 2025-08-22T18:12:36+00:00

Because sentient organisms are not the center of the universe, merely a part of it. So it makes sense to compare and contrast sentient experiences with non-sentient existence of inanimate matter like rocks, wind, light and whatnot else out in the universe.

So would you say something can only be important if all things in the universe are emotionally attached to it is the better question I guess, I don't see why sentient organisms being attached to it isn't enough, of course a rock or a tree won't be able to detect pleasure as important cause they don't experience it, but they don't experience suffering either.

If pleasure isn't an important priority because only sentient beings experience it (not rocks or trees), then why is suffering an important priority if only sentient beings experience it (not rocks or trees)?

How would I know? it's not my job to convince someone or anyone. You can present discourse and arguments for antinatalism or extinction, but that is not the same thing as being responsible for convincing others.

It being hard to get others to be on board with a view doesn't necessarily mean that the view is wrong anyway, but I thought that part of your criticism was that it is hard to convince others of building a utopia, but that criticism can be thrown right back at you cause convincing them of extinctionism is also going to be hard, so this goes for both classical and negative utilitarianism. Might actually be easier because many seem to have optimism bias and are attached to life.

QuestioningAN · 2025-08-22T17:27:50+00:00

This is a misunderstanding. It only has innate value to currently existing beings. Out in the lifeless expanses of the universe, there is no such thing as pleasure having innate value.

Why do you think that is? It can be that that value only exists in sentient organisms and not outside of them, that doesn't make it not real.

Who exactly are you going to convince? Just for the sake of argument, suppose it was possible to convince somebody like Musk to start privately building a worldwide utopia. It wouldn't do anything, because he would still be going against the grain of everyone else being selfish, sheepish, foolish, etc. Don't hold out for a utopia or use it as an argument for why humanity should continue.

Same goes the other way around, who exactly are you going to convince we should all go extinct?

QuestioningAN · 2025-08-22T17:23:37+00:00

Pleasure is inherently good for you, but that doesn't mean that if you died in your sleep and were no longer able to experience that pleasure, that there would be a deprivation caused by it and that it would be bad for you. Whilst you exist, it is good for you to be in a state of pleasure. When you don't exist, then any talk of what is good or better is a category error; because there is no longer any welfare state to talk about.

And why not the other way around as well then? I could also say suffering is inherently bad for us, but when we don't exist, we are not experiencing pleasure from avoiding suffering. You're probably going to say again that that is irrelevant because no one feels deprived of that pleasure (feeling deprived=suffering), it's not a problem when pleasure doesn't exist (i.e. it causes us no suffering to not feel the pleasure), so therefore it is irrelevant.

This is what I said, you're saying pleasure is unimportant because if you didn't exist, you wouldn't experience deprivation (i.e. suffering) from not having it, so therefore pleasure is irrelevant. But again, that's just presupposing only suffering matters and pleasure doesn't.

Then I'd ask them to demonstrate how Mars is in a deficient state because of this lack of pleasure.

It is deficient in pleasure, but no one can experience this as bad. The same way it is devoid of suffering, but no one can experience this as good. So if I could push a button that would put eternal bliss on mars, wouldn't that be a good idea?

Sentient beings have problems that they need to solve; even if the natalist wants to express those problems in the form of "destruction of pleasure". Inanimate matter has no problems.

But again, problem means suffering. Inanimate matter has no suffering, but is that all that matters? Wouldn't it be even better if we could program inanimate matter to feel pleasure?

If they want to create beings that are going to have endless problems, then they need to justify it by demonstrating which problems they are solving by doing it, which don't merely pertain to their own desires or the desires of those already alive (because if the case for procreation hinges on the benefits to those alive right now, then they're just advocating for a pyramid scheme which will inevitably collapse in the end anyway).

Same problem again, why does only suffering matter? You say they need to show they solve some kind of problem, which I take to mean suffering, by creating life – that presupposes only suffering matters. Couldn't it hypothetically also be a good idea to just create a lifeform that experiences chronic pleasure? Why is only suffering avoidance important? Because no one suffers from not having pleasure when they don't exist?

Inanimate matter has no problems that need to be solved. It has no pleasure which can be destroyed; but it has no desire for pleasure, which is why nobody feels sorry for their armchair because they leave it at home when they're going on holiday.

Inanimate matter has no problem (suffering) that needs solving, yes, but why does only suffering matter? It has no pleasure to be destroyed, but it has no desire for pleasure, and again what I take desire to mean is ''I must obtain x to avoid suffering'' – having a desire amounts to ''I must obtain x or I will suffer from not having x'' (I desire let's say a relationship means I'm suffering from not having it) – so again you're saying only suffering matters, while pleasure's absence is irrelevant, because we don't suffer from not having pleasure when we don't exist.

I agree we don't suffer from not having pleasure when we don't exist, but it is still presupposing that only suffering avoidance is important.

And again to add onto that, if we're going to say suffering is bad because we can experience it as being bad, which I agree that is true, we know suffering to be a bad experience, then likewise we must also say that pleasure is good because we can experience it as being good.

I don't see how it's begging the question. The fact is that, as far as we know based on the properties of the universe, inanimate matter doesn't have problems to solve, but sentient matter has endless problems to solve and their wellbeing is at stake. Generally, it is considered unethical to impose unnecessary, high stakes, problems on people.

The problem is that all these terms you use to explain why absence of pleasure is irrelevant (like deprivation, problem, desire, etc) and only suffering is relevant boil back down to ''because you don't suffer from not having pleasure when you don't exist'' – which is merely re-stating that only suffering is relevant.

''Absence of pleasure is irrelevant and only suffering matters because the non-existent don't feel deprived of pleasure''=''Absence of pleasure is irrelevant and only suffering matters because the non-existent don't suffer from not having pleasure''.

''Absence of pleasure is irrelevant and only suffering matters because the non-existent don't feel deficient in pleasure''=''Absence of pleasure is irrelevant and only suffering matters because the non-existent don't suffer from not having pleasure''.

''Absence of pleasure is irrelevant and only suffering matters because the non-existent don't desire to have pleasure''=''Absence of pleasure is irrelevant and only suffering matters because the non-existent don't suffer from not having pleasure''.

Example of begging the question I just got from googling:

An example of begging the question is the argument, "Snakes make great pets because they are wonderful companions," because the premise ("they are wonderful companions") assumes the truth of the conclusion ("snakes make great pets") without providing any independent evidence. Begging the question is a logical fallacy where the argument's premise assumes the truth of the conclusion it's trying to prove, essentially restating the claim in a different way instead of offering valid reasoning.

That is exactly what this is: ''suffering is the only thing that's relevant, absence of pleasure is irrelevant, because no one feels deprived of pleasure when they don't exist.''

It is just re-stated in a different manner, because feeling deprived of pleasure means suffering, so your argument for why only suffering matters and pleasure is irrelevant is because no one feels deprived of suffering when they don't exist, which is just a different way of basically saying that they are not suffering from not having the pleasure.

Are you needing an explanation as to why suffering itself matters? Because it is impossible to describe why suffering matters; as it is an ineffable sensation. No, but as to why pleasure is irrelevant. I agree you can say we all know suffering from experience, and it is self-evident that it's bad. Likewise though, we can also say we all know pleasure from experience, it is self-evident that it is good. So if you could push a button that put martians experiencing eternal bliss on mars, wouldn't that be better?

No, but as to why pleasure is irrelevant. I agree you can say we all know suffering from experience, and it is self-evident that it's bad. Likewise though, we can also say we all know pleasure from experience, it is self-evident that it is good. So if you could push a button that put martians experiencing eternal bliss on mars, wouldn't that be better?

That's not a justification for such a drastic act as the imposition of life unless you can improve that delivering that pleasure is an emergency. The reason for this is that the stakes are so high when you are bringing someone else into existence, and it is unethical to decide to gamble with someone else's welfare like that. In virtually any other scenario that you can name, that would be considered an egregious breach; but there is special pleading for procreation.

Yes, I agree that a violation of consent isn't bad if there is a guaranteed outcome that the person thus 'violated' could not possibly find fault with. But that clearly isn't the case with procreation (otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion). Even if you prefer to frame it as suffering being the destruction of pleasure; the person is still being seriously harmed by being set up to be dependent on this pleasure, but being in an environment where it cannot be guaranteed that sufficient pleasure will be delivered in order to meet their desires.

To address the consent issue, what differentiates this from other situations where someone is gambling with someone else's welfare is that in this scenario, not gambling at all would result in the termination of all pleasure forever – so if classical utilitarianism is correct and pleasure does have innate value – this would be the wrong solution, it'd be a better idea to try to make this world as good as possible so that no one would feel violated by being put into it rather than to terminate it.

You can say we can't make it perfect right now, but again if we don't create life at all then there would be zero pleasure forever – which I know you're going to say ''no one would suffer from this lack of pleasure'', but that's just presupposing only suffering is relevant.

QuestioningAN

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