"The Pleasure Machine" - A Thought Experiment and Some Personal Thoughts on the Foundations of Morality

By Stephen Alexander Beach 

(1365 Words) 

With the 20th century move toward Naturalism (explaining everything only in terms of physical reality) there is a certain domain of life yet to be "Naturalized". This is the domain of human morality, and has proved somewhat elusive for Naturalist thinkers to dominate. How is it possible to explain human morality in terms of the scientific method? Some have proposed a certain type of data collection by having people report on their feelings, or sense of happiness, in connection with certain ways of acting or experiencing, thus trying to form moral laws through an inductive method. In a certain sense, when it comes to bodily health, this process could actually work in laying out a pathway towards having a healthy body, as the health of the body is a physical thing. 

Where it doesn't seem to work, though, is when it attempts to speak about realities which go beyond the mere health of the body and enter into the complexities of human beings in their totality as a person in relation to other people. This is because the project is predicated on the notion that man is simply equivalent to his body. Since Naturalist science defines itself by physical testability, it can only define the reality happiness in physical terms, i.e. terms, again, connected with the biological body/brain. And so there is a categorical reduction of happiness to physical phenomena located in the brain's pleasure centers. (Indeed, even to attempt to locate good actions by their response in the brain is to hold a philosophical assumption that pleasure is always good and pain is always bad.) Thus, the results would, by definition, be viewed with a reductionist lens. 

When all that can be done is to report what one "feels" to be good there are no clear pathway in determining what is really good for any complex matter. How often do we have to deny physical health or immediate gratification to achieve a reality which is more fully human? Often what is biologically good in immediate gratification is bad for us in the long run. Just take any type of military training or sport. How does one deduce from the brain that it is actually good to be sleep deprived for five days and to wear the body down until it's at its breaking point, as in Navy SEAL Hell Week? 

Likewise, trying to figure out the morality of a political system where human beings live and interact together involves a type of reasoning which can never be deduced from brain science. The Materialist criteria can’t bring about the ought from the is when it comes to human beings. Why should all humans have equal value under the law? There is no scientific answer to that question. 

The Triadic

Here, a distinction made by the American Pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce will be helpful (though it is by no means a new distinction in philosophy). The distinction is between what he calls "dyadic" relations and "triadic" relations. Science functions in terms of dyadic relation (a dyad of two) in that it correlates a physical phenomenon (which is always singular) with another physical phenomenon or with a human's experience (Again individual in nature). X happened because of Y. Pierce holds that human beings are triadic in nature, though, meaning that there is the individual self, the physical world/phenomena, but also a third term ... a universal form present which stands in relation to the two and expresses a higher plane in which human beings exist. To put it in Platonic terms, the triadic is the universal form and the rational soul which sees and engages with it through the physical world. We relate all physical phenomena to an archetype or pattern. 

For example, the soccer ball hit me in the head. There is the dyadic way of analyzing the event of two objects colliding. But there is always the fully human triadic means of analyzing the event, of me trying to score a goal in the made up game of soccer. It is in relation to this abstract notion of winning a game that really explains why the ball and my head collided. And so Pierce takes this to show that human beings are only understood in terms of the triadic, in terms of the universal meanings/form through which they are interacting with the world. 

And this, most fully human aspect of reality, is exactly what science categorically cannot speak about. For example, take the most fundamental question of political philosophy, what is the purpose for which human beings interact? What is the common good which is at the center of the social contract between people? This is not a scientific question. Science might say that it is for bodily survival, but can say no more. How much of the common good is left unspoken then in this scientific morality? 

The Pleasure Machine

To make this point more clear, let's follow a thought experiment I call "the pleasure machine". A new highly advanced machine has been invented which attaches to someone's brain and pumps their brain with the most potent pleasure chemicals. The machine can also rotate the different pleasure chemicals so that you get new ones each day and don't get bored of the experience of being high. It would surpass the feeling of being high of any normal life experience one would have. The caveat is that once you connect your brain to the machine, you can never go back to real life, you are stuck to the machine as long as you are still alive. You also cannot interact with anyone again, as you have to be housed in a special container where others cannot go. The machine, though, would provide a simulation of your old life and family/friends who you could interact with though. Would you take the opportunity to be hooked into the machine? 

I believe that most people would say no, they would not do this because they could never see their families again. Now with the machine you would feel so much more pleasure and could even simulate experiences with your loved ones ... but the point is that what human beings want out of life is not biological pleasure, but uniquely human realities like love, family, suffering, redemption, challenge, struggle, success, hope, God, spirituality, charity, etc. Even the simulated versions of these things will never fulfill because we intellectually know they are not real. These good realities are not good just because we feel good in doing them, they are good because we know objectively that something meaningful was done in the world, even if we don't feel it. 

What is Most Real?

And so this begs the question as to what is most real about the human experience. It seems that human beings lives for realities which are not dyadic or physical in nature. And so if we live as though these intangible realities, the triadic forms, are most real, what does it mean about what we should consider to be real? We tend to think of material things as most real because they are most easily understood by us. But rather, should we not consider most real that for which we would sacrifice every other thing in order to obtain? Should we not consider that most real which we place as the ultimate end for which we do everything else? 

And so when people say, "live as though God exists" or this story is a useful lie because it guides us how to act even though it is made up and has no metaphysical grounding in reality, they are implicitly taking a stance of Materialism and only considering real that which is physical. Why do they work unless they correspond to reality? Why not consider all of reality that is experienced as real, not just the physical. To quote Jordan Peterson, "Is it matter, or what matters which is most real"? And so, in conclusion, there can be no scientific morality as it has not the capabilities to speak of the moral and triadic realms. It can only speak of the physical world of objects, not of people.