For a bit of context: In the article, I distinguish between “reflection-based motivation” and “need-based motivation.” The former is something like “reflectively endorsed preferences / things the rational, planning part of your brain wants to do.” The latter is something like “impulsive, system-1, unreflected motivation / things you can’t help but be tempted to do.” (In the article, I also use the term “cravings” for “need-based motivation,” and I argue that need-based motivation is “suffering” in the morally relevant sense.)
Suppose it is three o’clock in the morning, we lie cozily in bed, half-asleep in a room neither too cold nor too hot, not thirsty and not feeling obligated to get up anytime soon. Suppose we now learn that there is an opportunity nearby for us to experience the most intense pleasure we have ever experienced. The catch is that in order to get there, we first have to leave the comfortable blankets and walk through the cold for a minute. Furthermore, after two hours of this pleasure, we will go back to sleep and, upon waking up again, are stipulated to have no memories left of the nightly adventure. Do we take the deal? It is possible for us to pursue this opportunity out of reflection-based motivation, if we feel as though we have a self-imposed duty to go for it, or if it simply is part of our goal to experience a lot of pleasure over our lifetime. It is also possible for us to pursue this opportunity out of need-based motivation, if we start to imagine what it might be like and develop cravings for it. Finally, it also – and here is where tranquilism seems fundamentally different from hedonism – seems not just possible, but perfectly fine and acceptable, to remain in bed content with the situation as it is. If staying in bed is a perfectly comfortable experience, the default for us will be to stay. This only changes in the case that we hold a preference for experiencing pleasure, remember or activate it and thus form a reflection-based desire, or if staying in bed starts to become less comfortable as a result of any cravings for pleasure we develop.
I don’t think there’s an objective morality so I don’t see tranquilism as true in some prescriptive sense. Still, maybe I’d say something like “not considering suffering disvaluable is indefensible, whereas it seems defensible to not consider pleasure valuable – the tranquilism article aims to gesture at why there is this asymmetry.”
Also relevant:
Cravings are famously near-sighted. Rather than being about maximizing long-term well-being in a sophisticated manner, cravings are about immediate gratification and choosing the path of least resistance. We want to reach states of pleasure because as long as we are feeling well, nothing needs to change. However, our need-based motivational system is rigged to make us feel like things need to change and get better even when, in an absolute sense, things may be going reasonably well. We quickly adapt to the stimuli that produce pleasure. As Thomas Metzinger puts it, “Suffering is a new causal force, because it motivates organisms and continuously drives them forward.”18 It is not pleasure that moves us; deep down and insofar as the need-based reasons for actions are concerned, it is always suffering. The way tranquilism looks at it, part of our brain is a short-sighted “moment egoist” with the desire to move from states with a lot of suffering to closely adjacent states with less suffering.
(It’s important to note that what I call “suffering” here isn’t the same as “pain.” “Pain” seems more analogous to pleasure here and, for the same reasons, isn’t what our brain cares about moment-by-moment. [See also the phenomenon of pain asymbolia, which I also discuss in the post.] Instead, based on credit-assignment updating on inputs from reward (pleasure and pain), our brain forms this new motivational currency (“suffering/cravings”) which is what drives us moment-by-moment.)
I feel like this post has some themes similar to my article on tranquilism.
For a bit of context: In the article, I distinguish between “reflection-based motivation” and “need-based motivation.” The former is something like “reflectively endorsed preferences / things the rational, planning part of your brain wants to do.” The latter is something like “impulsive, system-1, unreflected motivation / things you can’t help but be tempted to do.” (In the article, I also use the term “cravings” for “need-based motivation,” and I argue that need-based motivation is “suffering” in the morally relevant sense.)
I don’t think there’s an objective morality so I don’t see tranquilism as true in some prescriptive sense. Still, maybe I’d say something like “not considering suffering disvaluable is indefensible, whereas it seems defensible to not consider pleasure valuable – the tranquilism article aims to gesture at why there is this asymmetry.”
Also relevant:
(It’s important to note that what I call “suffering” here isn’t the same as “pain.” “Pain” seems more analogous to pleasure here and, for the same reasons, isn’t what our brain cares about moment-by-moment. [See also the phenomenon of pain asymbolia, which I also discuss in the post.] Instead, based on credit-assignment updating on inputs from reward (pleasure and pain), our brain forms this new motivational currency (“suffering/cravings”) which is what drives us moment-by-moment.)