My girlfriend/SO's grandfather died last night, running on a treadmill when his heart gave out.
He wasn't signed up for cryonics, of course. She tried to convince him, and I tried myself a little the one time I met her grandparents.
"This didn't have to happen. Fucking religion."
That's what my girlfriend said.
I asked her if I could share that with you, and she said yes.
Just so that we're clear that all the wonderful emotional benefits of self-delusion come with a price, and the price isn't just to you.
I think we are close. Do you think enjoyment and pain can be reduced to or defined in terms of preference? We have an explanation of preference in evolutionary psychology, but to my mind, a justification of its significance is necessary also. Clearly, we have evolved certain intuitive goals, but our consciousness requires us to take responsibility for them and modulate them through moral reasoning to accept realities beyond what our evolutionary sense of purpose is equipped for.
To me, preference is significant because it usually underlies the start of desirable cognitions or the end of undesirable ones, in me and other conscious things. The desirable cognitions should be maximized in the aggregate and the undesirable ones minimized. That is the whole hand-off from evolution to "objective" morality, from there, the faculties of rational discipline and the minimal framework of society take over. Is it too much?
Certainly close enough to hope to agree on a set of rules, if not completely on personal values/preferences.
I don't really recognize a distinction here. The explanation explains why preferences are their own justification in my view.
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