If you are a consequentialist, it’s the exact same calculation you would use if happiness were your goal. Just with different criteria to determine what constitute “good” and “bad” world states.
I’m asking something more like “What if mental states are mostly a means of achieving worthwhile consequences, rather than being mostly the consequences that should be cared about in and for themselves?”
It is “consequences” either way.
But what might be called intrinsic hedonism would then be a consequentialism that puts the causal and moral stop sign at “how an action makes people feel” (mostly ignoring the results of the feelings (except to the degree that the feelings might cause other feelings via some series of second order side effects)).
An approach like this suggests that if people in general could reliably achieve an utterly passive and side effect free sort of bliss, that would be the end game… it would be an ideal stable outcome for people to collectively shoot for, and once it was attained the lack of side effects would keep it from being disrupted.
By contrast, hedonic instrumentalism (that I’m mostly advocating) would be a component of some larger consequentialism that is very concerned with what arises because of feelings (like what actions, with what results) and defers the core axiological question about the final value of various world states to a separate (likely independent) theory.
The position of hedonic instrumentalism is basically that happiness that causes behavior with bad results for the world is bad happiness. Happiness that causes behavior with good results in the world is good happiness. And happiness is arguably pointless if it is “sterile”… having no behavioral or world affecting consequences (though this depends on how much control we have over our actions and health via intermediaries other than by wireheading our affective subsystems). What does “good” mean here? That’s a separate question.
Basically, the way I’m using the terms here: intrinsic hedonism is “an axiology”, but hedonic instrumentalism treats affective states mostly as causal intermediates that lead to large scale adjustments to the world (though behavior) that can then be judged by some external axiology that pays attention to the whole world and the causal processes that deserve credit for bringing about the good world states.
You might break this down further, where perhaps “strong hedonic instrumentalism” is a claim that in actual practice, humans can (and already have, to some degree) come up with ways to make plans, follow the plans with action, and thereby produce huge amounts of good in the world, all without the need for very much “passion” as a neural/cognitive intermediate.
Then “weak hedonic instrumentalism” would be a claim that maybe such practices exist somewhere, or could exist if we searched for them really hard, and probably we should do that.
Then perhaps “skeptical hedonic instrumentalism” would be a claim that even if such practices don’t exist and might not even be worth discovering, still it is the case that intrinsic hedonism is pretty weaksauce as far as axiologies go.
I would not currently say that I’m a strong hedonic instrumentalist, because I am not certain that the relevant mental practices exist as a factual matter… But also I’m just not very impressed by a moral theory that points to a little bit of tissue inside one or more skulls and says that the whole world can go to hell, so long as that neural tissue is in a “happy state”.
If you are a consequentialist, it’s the exact same calculation you would use if happiness were your goal. Just with different criteria to determine what constitute “good” and “bad” world states.
I think you’re missing the thrust of my question.
I’m asking something more like “What if mental states are mostly a means of achieving worthwhile consequences, rather than being mostly the consequences that should be cared about in and for themselves?”
It is “consequences” either way.
But what might be called intrinsic hedonism would then be a consequentialism that puts the causal and moral stop sign at “how an action makes people feel” (mostly ignoring the results of the feelings (except to the degree that the feelings might cause other feelings via some series of second order side effects)).
An approach like this suggests that if people in general could reliably achieve an utterly passive and side effect free sort of bliss, that would be the end game… it would be an ideal stable outcome for people to collectively shoot for, and once it was attained the lack of side effects would keep it from being disrupted.
By contrast, hedonic instrumentalism (that I’m mostly advocating) would be a component of some larger consequentialism that is very concerned with what arises because of feelings (like what actions, with what results) and defers the core axiological question about the final value of various world states to a separate (likely independent) theory.
The position of hedonic instrumentalism is basically that happiness that causes behavior with bad results for the world is bad happiness. Happiness that causes behavior with good results in the world is good happiness. And happiness is arguably pointless if it is “sterile”… having no behavioral or world affecting consequences (though this depends on how much control we have over our actions and health via intermediaries other than by wireheading our affective subsystems). What does “good” mean here? That’s a separate question.
Basically, the way I’m using the terms here: intrinsic hedonism is “an axiology”, but hedonic instrumentalism treats affective states mostly as causal intermediates that lead to large scale adjustments to the world (though behavior) that can then be judged by some external axiology that pays attention to the whole world and the causal processes that deserve credit for bringing about the good world states.
You might break this down further, where perhaps “strong hedonic instrumentalism” is a claim that in actual practice, humans can (and already have, to some degree) come up with ways to make plans, follow the plans with action, and thereby produce huge amounts of good in the world, all without the need for very much “passion” as a neural/cognitive intermediate.
Then “weak hedonic instrumentalism” would be a claim that maybe such practices exist somewhere, or could exist if we searched for them really hard, and probably we should do that.
Then perhaps “skeptical hedonic instrumentalism” would be a claim that even if such practices don’t exist and might not even be worth discovering, still it is the case that intrinsic hedonism is pretty weaksauce as far as axiologies go.
I would not currently say that I’m a strong hedonic instrumentalist, because I am not certain that the relevant mental practices exist as a factual matter… But also I’m just not very impressed by a moral theory that points to a little bit of tissue inside one or more skulls and says that the whole world can go to hell, so long as that neural tissue is in a “happy state”.