![Cultish delusions [1213x1351 - 182KB]](https://pic8.co/sh/qHDfBL.jpg){kind=link}
I wanted to say something similar.
The pleasure derived from the apple seems to strike some kind of balance which is not only commensurate with the good of the apple (therefore not a tremendous ecstatic experience), but it also TIES the pleasure to something which increases the overall good of the consumer, i.e. it keeps the body flourishing. The pleasure is not the sole end.
The good of opium can only be construed in two ways:
- Escape from existing pain.
It is either the case that this is pain which opium is being used to medicate, as in the case of treatment. Or, a person is numbing a non-disabling pain as a means of psychological escape.
- Pursuit of super-physiological levels of pleasure.
In the first case, there is only one clearly good use of opium.
In the second, the pleasure is pursued as its own end and, by way of minimizing and desensitizing the pleasure experience of all other goods, it will decrease the overall good of the consumer across time.
In the second, the pleasure is pursued as its own end and, by way of minimizing and desensitizing the pleasure experience of all other goods, it will decrease the overall good of the consumer across time.
This, I think, must be a posteriori.
Maybe. Maybe not. Let's say we know something about the relationship of the brain to mood, or temperament, or the 'resting pleasure' of conscious states.
Call the homeostatic level of opium receptor activation, and therefore the 'resting pleasure state', X.
We know from the description of exogenous opium that it creates a super-physiological pleasure state, Y, which would always and necessarily be higher than X (if not, there'd be no recreational value).
Given that pleasure has the quality of being relative, by definition, then we can say that since Y > X, the relative value of X will be diminished as a result of Y.
We could reason from this alone that the desensitization to the level of X would reduce the normal satisfaction with sober conscious states, causing an individual to escalate the frequency of their use of opium to 'chase the dragon' of achieving Y.
Just a bit of knowledge about the pharmacology and brain states would be enough to reason ourselves toward the conclusion: the addictive cycle.
To some extent, there is no a priori knowledge about opium. You have to start any reasoning process about opium from the existing knowledge of what it is and how it effects us.
And should robots have a different cognitive system than ours, then opium would be moral for them?
To some extent, there is no a priori knowledge about opium. You have to start any reasoning process about opium from the existing knowledge of what it is and how it effects us.
Just like all knowledge, as Aquinas and Aristotle assert, begins with sense data. This does not mean there is not a priori reasoning whatsoever; it just means that, by the fact that human nature is both spiritual and corporeal, we must interact with the world through our senses in order to have objects for our reasoning.
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