Thread: You could be Phineas Gage, minus the massive brain injury

Originally Posted by gwahir

Who wouldn't be happier without that shame-foisting guilt-mongerer's unseemly mitts all over their anterior prefrontal cortex? But if you said no, why did you say no?

I don't think this is a clear-cut good or happy dilemma:

- Choosing to have a conscience doesn't mean choosing to be good.
- One may push the button merely to be rid of certain feelings, not to be more happy.
- One may feel compelled to abide by ethical guidelines even after pushing the button, for purely theoretical reasons.
- Pushing the button doesn't make you automatically crave power or wish to harm people. It's not like we feel so restricted in our every day lives that we can't do certain bad things, or that the only thing stopping us is our conscience.

- You'd miss out on all the happiness that arises from having a conscience, both from doing good things and from the contrasting effect that the suffering you receive from guilt/shame/etc makes your happiness seem that much more amplified.
- Getting everything you want is commonly thought to not be the way to increase happiness (I imagine there are many plays with this moral), though maybe this is true only for people with a conscience.

Originally Posted by gwahir

I don't find it strong enough, because the moment I press that button I don't care about any guarantees of not hurting friends and family.

Right, but it's a reason not to push the button in the first place. When you are standing there debating whether to push it, you obviously can't view the decision in the way you'd view it after pushing the button. Because you haven't yet. You necessarily have to view it as the person you are before pushing the button. While the post-button person may not care about hurting friends and family, the pre-button person does (at least pre-button Syme does) and THAT is the person who has to make the call. So the button doesn't get pushed. I'm not saying you should join me in refraining from pushing that button, but it doesn't make any sense to say that you--pre-button Gwahir--would be willing to push the button because of the attitude that you would only attain after pushing the button. That almost seems to be skirting Catch-22 territory.