Entry 529 — Old Man Philosophizing, No. 1
I often kick around the question as to whether life is worth living or not–or What Makes Life Worth Living (Assuming It Is Worth Living)? Actually, my question much more usually is, what makes my life worth living? It’s not a practical question for me–my inborn wiring makes it impossible–or close to impossible–for me to kill myself. My inborn ability to reason does allow me to overcome some moronic instincts I’ve also been born with, but not that one. I seem also to have an inborn endocrinological mechanism that lights up whenever I’m really low, and overcomes my reason with an injection of optimism–I never am, but will be blest.
To be fullestly accurate, I would have to say that my main question along these lines is “what would have made my life worth living?” for I’ve been convinced for a long time that it hasn’t been, and won’t be. There’s probably no answer. I could say, genetic immunity to early-onset male pattern baldness, but I’m afraid that such immunity would also have cost me 20% of what I consider to be my superior mentality. Perhaps I would have considered my life worth living then, my lower intelligence being more easily satisfied than my present intelligence. Certainly I would have had much greater worldly success than I’ve had (the mediocrities in charge of that being much more likely to smile on my efforts), and I’m not silly enough to claim I would not have enjoyed worldly success, just that my own belief in the value of what I do, and am, is more important than the world’s. I don’t think it could have brought me the pleasure my present level of intelligence has. I would never have come up with my psychological theory which, valid or not, has seemed wonderfully brilliant to me at times. Nor achieved what I consider to have been my success (in my own mind) as a literary critic. I couldn’t have composed the poems and plays I did, either, although I suspect I didn’t need all of it for those. It’s even possible that it was a bit of a hindrance for me as a poet, and that I needed a different kind of intelligence for playwriting, which is the one area of serious endeavor that I feel I did poorly in, and probably should have stayed out of.
Perhaps my life would have been, or at least seemed, worth living to me had I been less aesthetically critical of my bald-headed appearance been more forgiving–but I wouldn’t like to have lived without that or the self-honesty applying it to myself requires. Lack of them, too, would have lowered my intelligence considerably.
Bynow, I guess I’ve fairly clearly implied what would have made my own life worth living: vocational success. To feel that I’d made a major contribution to the culture of my time would almost have been enough to have satisfied me with my life. Alas, I would also have needed the corroboration of others, at least of those reasonably conversant with the fields I’ve worked in. That I’ve gotten to some degree in poetry and literary criticism, but only from fringers, like myself, so not quite enough. I would need the recognitionof the certified, as well. However near-worthless it is in the short run, in the long run, it is the only valid recognition. The academy is always incredibly slow to accept the best, but it invariably eventually does so.
So, vocational success and recognition were essential for me. Anything else? Yes, I would like to have had a successful marriage, and kids. I think. That might have cut badly into my vocational efforts–it may well be that I didn’t have, even could not have had, the energy required to have had the kind of marriage and family I would have liked and done all I wanted to as an artist/verosopher. In fact, my belief that such would be the case was a main reason I never got married, I’m sure. Vocational success, both personal and public, and a family, would have been wonderful, but I would not want to hate looking at myself in a mirror. Yes, being bald-headed alone is sufficient for me to rate my life not having been worth living. (It is not a subjective view but an objective absolute, by the way, that a desert is aesthetically inferior to a forest.) It may even be that had I not had a bald head, I would not have needed the recognition of the certified to feel my life had been worth living.
That does it for my personal specific answer to my question. It’s time for me to return to its initial formulation: what makes life worth living for anyone. That’s easy enough to answer: it’s whatever provides a person with a maximal pleasure-to-pain-ratio for his life. As I’ve stated here and elsewhere a number of times. I would add that the ratio should probably be multiplied by the number of years–or days, or hours–the person has lived; that way, a person who has lived 70 years whose p-to-p ratio is 4-to-1 will get twice the rating as one with the same p-to-p ratio who had only 30 years of life, which seems reasonable. No, better would be a multiplication by 1.2, I think. Or multiplication by something.
Dimwits will find many things wrong with my universal answer, but I can find only one large problem with it (which I’ve also previously discussed): which is better, a life the pleasure of which has been twice its pain but never extreme, or a life the pleasure of which has been only 1.2. times as great as its pain, or even less than its pain, but was once or more times maximal? I claim that this is a (or maybe even the) centrally-important question of ethics–and absolutely unanswerable.
There are many small problems with my universal answer. How to count the hours one is asleep, for instance. I may get into them at some later time; I don’t consider them significant enough to bother with for now.
I tend to believe that one’s intelligence is equal to one’s final rating. If you’ve had a relatively unhappy life, you’ve been stupid. Which means I’ve been stupid, yes. Probably. It’s terribly difficult to pin down how happy/unhappy one has been. I know I can be happy most of a day, then ecstatic for a few minutes because of some vilely sarcastic insult I’ve dealt the Poetry Establishment at New-Poetry, then annoyed at having misplaced yet another book I wanted to look up something in, and decide I’d had a lousy day. One thing I’ve noticed about myself–or think is true about myself–is that I tend to dwell on the unhappinesses I’ve experienced more than the happinesses. This is a ridiculous flaw, but I don’t know how I got it or how I can get rid of it. Oddly, I don’t think about the times I’ve looked bad, but the times I’ve mistreated someone else. Whiteboy guilt, I suppose. Fortunately, I do get continuing pleasure from many of my compositions, when I happen to see one after not having seen it for a while. “Happen to see them” is accurate: I rarely seek them out simply to enjoy them. My greatest happinesses have been daydreams concerning the wonderful things that might happen as the result of my current literary or theoretical psychology work. (Yeah, Pope, again.)
Due to reasons already given, I consider my p-to-p ratio too low, although it may be higher than that of people who are quite content with their lives. Is that possible? Surely if I am not satisfied with how much more pleasure I’ve had than pain, that’s pain that should bring my ratio down below that of the contented. Except that maybe I’m only dissatisified with it when I think about it . . . (As opposed, I suppose I need to add, to most of my life, which consists of thoughts about subjects other than my happiness/unhappiness, or thoughtlessness.) No matter: the reasoning part of my brain will be the one to choose between repeating my life and escaping into eternal non-existence, and it will choose the latter.
I seem to have finished. Why do I feel like I haven’t?
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endwar 
Glad you are here, Bob. Good luck on your VENTURE to SC. I hope it’s good. I love science, but not quite so much as I love your work. There you have it. Infinitely verifiable
[…] Entry 121 — Definition of Scientific Account 2 days […]
You may be interested in the following URL: http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_scientific_method.shtml which explains the steps involved in the scientific method. My point being that a scientific account of something is only arrived at through proper use of the scientific method, as out lined in the link. (That link is simpler than the Wikipedia explanation or the Caltech intro to Scientific method:
http://web.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/jarrett/talks/LiU/scien_method/AppendixE.html.
Connie, without really thinking about it (I’m kinda tired right now) I would say that probably following the standard scientific method would result in a scientific account of something, but I claim (violently!) that one can come up with a scientific account of something without an experiment–or, at least without performing an experiment. That is, one can use one’s empirical knowledge to construct a scientific account of something, with one’s empirical knowledge including knowledge of various experiments already performed, informally as well as formally. For instance, I can theorize that men get excited at football games without hooking up ten thousand football fans in a football stadium to blood pressure machines. I think that the obsession with experimentation in science has held it back, and that experimentation rarely leads to anything very significant. Einstein, I think, did few or no experiments.
But thanks for the interest!
–Bob (late with this because only today finding out this blog was getting comments and how to deal with them)
The (violently!) remark suggests you won’t change your mind. Einsitein actully perfomed “thought experiments.” Mathematical proofs and theoretical physics are different, but in the fields of biological and physical science, the only way to confirm a theory is through experimentation. And the development of pennicillin, vaccines and cancer chemotherapy, to name a few, are indeed significant. Regarding your football example, you actually followed the scientific method by hypothesizing that men get excited, testing that hypothesis by reviewing previous data and using observable criteria (instead of BP) to measure excitement (eg., any memory of a game where men stood up and cheered).
Hi, Connie.
> The (violently!) remark suggests you won’t change your mind.
It does, but the suggestion is wrong. That I tend to violently defend certain of my views doesn’t mean I won’t change my mind about them.
> Einstein actually perfomd “thought experiments.”
Sure, but I was referring to physical experiments.
> Mathematical proofs and theoretical physics are different, but in the fields of biological and physical science, the only way to confirm a theory is through experimentation.
That would depend on your definition of experiment. I claim that formal experiments are often unneeded, and by “experiment,” I mean formal physical experiment. Not that such experiments are not often extremely useful, and in some cases necessary. But, just as one can construct a scientific account of something without experiments by basing it on one’s experience of the past, and one’s thoughts about that, one can confirm a hypothesis (which is different from a scientific account) by checking it against the past and thinking about it. Also by further investigation, which is similar to experimentation but not really experimentation, for me. For instance, I hypothesize certain brain mechanisms. One needn’t set up an experiment to find out if they exist, one need only keep investigating the brain physically, or even research old investigations. I admit that this is hair-splitting. Obviously, if your scientific account is of something not available to normal sensory experience, you need to experiment or do something close to it to validate it.
In many fields, particularly what you might call macroscopic psychology, the experiments have been done in the real world. We don’t have to do a formal experiment to find out if children will go to a man handing out free ice cream cones on a hot day or to a man handing out religious pamphlets.
> And the development of penicillin, vaccines and cancer chemotherapy, to name a few, are indeed significant. Regarding your football example, you actually followed the scientific method by hypothesizing that men get excited, testing that hypothesis by reviewing previous data and using observable criteria (instead of BP) to measure excitement (eg., any memory of a game where men stood up and cheered).
Right. No formal experimentation necessary. Empirical knowledge necessary.
thanks for your response, Bob