Dan Geinster wrote to me with his essay, "The Amoral Logic of Anti-Hurt (Modified Negative Utilitarianism)." It discusses largely the ethical foundations of the philosophy (though as Dan claims, anti-hurt "operate[s] independently of any value or value system"). Being an emotivist myself, the discussion sometimes goes over my head. But I'd be glad to hear the reactions of others. Feel free to reply here to share your thoughts, but in case you'd like to message Dan personally, you can write to dan.geinster@hotmail.com.

Here's one comment that Dan made on the piece:

Antihurt is a very simple logic that has a certain mystical elegance that you either get or you don't. For me, it just just suddenly dawned on me, perhaps much in the same way that numbers and mathematics must have first appeared to early people in caves, or the concept of oneness appears to mystics! And yet I have never heard of anyone describing the same experience, which is why I found it a bit of a challenge to put into words without being misunderstood.

The basic idea is like negative utilitarianism or the Buddhist principle of no harm, but I'm not sure if he is saying that we *should* perceive non-hurt as absolute bliss or if we empirically do experience non-hurt as bliss. He says "Curiously enough, no amount of pleasure could ever exceed the bliss of zero hurt," but I say that each individual experiences life differently. The author might be like me and feel content when things are simple and without "hurt," but others simply cannot function without constant stimulation (TV, radio, talking to somebody, smoking, drinking, etc.). Perhaps some of the people who are not content with the state of "no-hurt" would benefit from leaning how to be content in the moment (this is what Buddhism teaches), but I'm not sure if all of those people have the capacity to sit still and be content (which requires a certain type of brain activity and self-regulation that some people simply do not have).

Hi Rehoot (and hi all),
Thanks for your reply and the food for thought, as I appreciate the feedback.
To clear up confusion, it’s not that “we SHOULD perceive non-hurt as bliss”, but rather that we literally, objectively, empirically do so, for absolute bliss is simply not possible with any amount of hurt being present, given that by its very nature, bliss is literally the absence of hurt. Secondly, to state that “some people are not content with the state of non-hurt” is literally a contradiction in terms as “not-content” is only possible because of the hurt that defines it. Thus discontentedness actually IS hurt rather than non-hurt, not a result of it. Similarly, constant stimulation literally IS non-hurt for some people, and also a way to avoid the tediousness (ie. hurt) associated and ironically confused with the concept of non-hurt. Finally, the Buddhist principle of “no harm “ is misleading because harm (as opposed to hurt) doesn’t in fact hurt anybody and thus is merely a quality of hurt that properly belongs to the realm of bliss (non-hurt).
I hope this clears things up somewhat. And please do keep the comments coming…
Dan Geinster

Dan Geinster wrote:H
...
Secondly, to state that “some people are not content with the state of non-hurt” is literally a contradiction in terms as “not-content” is only possible because of the hurt that defines it. Thus discontentedness actually IS hurt rather than non-hurt, not a result of it.

OK, so I was thinking about the absence of "hurt" that originates from something outside the mind (e.g., somebody punching you, yelling at you; or lack of food, a broken finger, or a rainy day), but your definition includes "hurt" that originates internally. Certainly there are people addicted to crack cocaine who would prefer to stop the withdrawal systems. This is consistent with some definitions of utility such that each person can identify what is pleasure or pain.

So where does this lead for the person who is addicted to cocaine or is discontent with ordinary life and atttracted to/driven to cocaine? Are there any recommendations or implications for people with "internal hurt" (vaguely defined but you get the idea).

Yes, you’re on the right track. My particular definition of hurt is that phenomenon which literally “bothers” anyone or anything, and whether that be internal or externally caused, mental or physical, pain or suffering, etc, etc, as these are merely qualities that correspond to hurt rather than the hurt itself.
Explaining the principle of antihurt and why we should reduce hurt hopefully serves to provide an impetus to actually reduce that hurt, but it doesn’t necessarily provide answers of HOW to actually reduce that hurt in practice. Nonetheless, the discontented (including those afflicted by drug addiction or tempted by it), would do well to weigh up their overall level of hurt, eg. both with crack and without, and decide the best course of action based on this. For instance, would they hurt more from withdrawal symptoms or from the misery of their ordinary lives without crack? The temporary ecstasy they get with a “high” may reduce the hurt for a little while (and is relevant only insofar as it does), but in the grand scheme of things, chances are the overall hurt will be higher with the drug.

Dan Geinster wrote:To clear up confusion, it’s not that “we SHOULD perceive non-hurt as bliss”, but rather that we literally, objectively, empirically do so, for absolute bliss is simply not possible with any amount of hurt being present, given that by its very nature, bliss is literally the absence of hurt.

I don't understand this. To say that (a implies ~b) is not to say that (~b implies a). I am happy with the claim that if we believe in the idea of absolute bliss, it implies the absence of suffering, but not that the absence of suffering implies bliss. But also, I don't see any reason to suppose the idea of absolute bliss. It seems like we could always have slightly more, or a lot more and a little bit more suffering, and still be in a better state.

Quote from the main article linked at the top (anithurt):

>However, this is clearly not the case, as its obvious that intensity makes up a far greater component of HIRT than does duration, especially as that intensity increases.

The graphs didn't appear in my web browser, but I don't think that matters. When you argue from the position that a graph reveals objective attributes that cannot (or have not) been observed directly, you risk several errors. First, you risk that the assumptions behind the graph are wrong, which means that detailed inferences from the graph are unwarranted. Perhaps more abstractly, this type of argumentation either is or becomes exceedingly close to synthetic a priori reasoning in the absence of empirical fact. Kant argued for this approach and Ludwig von Mises appealed to this type of reasoning to defend Austrian economics (and libertarianism), but analytic philosophers reject it due to its potential to lead to bad conclusions.

The question about how intensity compares to duration might be answered by psychological research in which people are tested in various ways to see how they respond to pain. I recently encountered two sources that commented on this. One was a study by Redelmeier, Katz, and Kahneman (http://tinyurl.com/3mj8ulo) found that making colonoscopy exams longer by adding a low-pain procedure at the end led people to have more favorable memories of the experience and slightly increased their rate of getting another exam. Another was a TED talk by a guy (from MIT) who had severe burns and suffered for years before getting is PhD in psychology and studying pain by subjecting people to pain (http://blog.ted.com/2010/05/31/dan_ariely_asks/). His conclusion was that it was better to "rip the bandages off quickly."

The two answers to the pain problem seem to contradict, but insight into the specific situation might reveal more precise answers. Note that it is tricky to even ask the right question: immediate ratings of pain probably differ from "remembered" ratings of pain at some point in the future, and choosing between quick and prolonged pain might depend on the differential consequence of the immediate versus recalled pain.

Arepo,
Please read the section of my essay entitled “the supposed asymmetry of hurt and bliss”. In it, I explain, among other things, that if one enjoys hurt, then it is not really hurt at all, but bliss. Also, that one is equally “content” with both absolute bliss (zero hurt) and any amount of pleasure, which cannot exceed the bliss of zero hurt, especially if it has even a slight degree of hurt involved. If we still believe zero-hurt is not as “blissful” as extreme pleasure that’s because we have never experienced true zero hurt.

Rehoot,
Admittedly, I may have not have given due scrutiny to the empirical nature of intensity, purely on the assumption that it “stands to reason”. However, I think it’s pretty clear that ten hurts for one minute would be a far greater intensity than one hurt for ten minutes. Of course, there are converse examples where the scales are altered and duration may outweigh intensity, such as having an aching tooth for eternity as opposed to having it suddenly yanked out. Indeed, your example of “ripping off the bandages quickly” makes sense because doing so is slightly less painful than dragging it out for a considerably longer period (sometimes an in-between speed is appropriate). I guess there would be some equation where the level of intensity and duration somehow “meet” at a given tipping point, if this makes sense, but this would need to be examined further.
Your colonoscopy example is problematic because finishing the procedure with a “happy ending” essentially “dupes” the subject into thinking that in retrospect, there was less pain than there actually was, and the reliability of memories is not exactly empirical in this regard. It would be like a crack addict that had their “high” after the withdrawal symptoms rather than before, and would thereby think, “ah, that wasn’t so bad”, rather than being forced to “re-score” through the unbearable pain of withdrawal.

Dan Geinster wrote:Also, that one is equally “content” with both absolute bliss (zero hurt) and any amount of pleasure, which cannot exceed the bliss of zero hurt, especially if it has even a slight degree of hurt involved. If we still believe zero-hurt is not as “blissful” as extreme pleasure that’s because we have never experienced true zero hurt.

Just curious: Does nonexistence count as a form of "true zero hurt"? I think non-existence is a pretty darn good state to be in -- much underrated.

How much does Anti-Hurt align with, say, the first three of the Four Noble Truths?

Hi again Alan,
Yes, non-existence would count as a form of true zero-hurt, and it could be compared to the “negative bliss” that David Benatar mentions in his book, “Better never to have been”. I do agree that it is highly underated because people only judge it from the perspective of existence, with its corresponding hurt, although paradoxically, as I’ve pointed out in my essay, if one has non-existence for millions of years, only to suddenly reappear with hurt, existentially its as if that bliss never occured! For sleep itself may be bliss, but its that annoying time between sleeps which seems to cancel it out.

As for the noble truths, I forget offhand what they are. I think the first one is that existence is suffering and then it mentions a method for getting rid of it, but it never seems to mention exactly WHY we should be without it, which I assume would be an important question to ask before you do anything And I think antihurt provides that answer in a simple, elegant way.

holoresa wrote:What are some personality changes of drug/cocaine users? I suspect someone is doing cocaine or something .Very high and very low.Also withdrawing from close friends and being uncharacteristically mean.Are these symptoms of drug use?

When I mentioned the example of cocaine, I did so because it is a challenge for utilitarianism or the "antihurt" model. If "obtaining pleasure" is good, and if each individual determines what is good, then "the right thing to do" for a drug user might be to continue using drugs that destroy the mind. A different type of utilitarianism (like J.S. Mill's) identifies some pleasures as inherently better than others (an objectivist view) such that one person can or should tell another what is best.

There is another view of the cocaine example that pertains to the "antihurt" idea. Maybe the "antihurt" idea says that we should consider "withholding drugs" from a drug addict as "causing pain." In other words, maybe the antihurt idea says that J.S. Mill's idea of objective hierarchy of pleasures is wrong because we need to consider the pain of not getting drugs (There might also be an objectivist version of "antihurt" that is consistent with J.S. Mill's idea).

The potential effects of cocaine were studied no rats: rats will continue to press a lever to get cocaine until they die. Humans who cannot get their drugs can sometimes commit crimes, and continued use of some drugs (like crack cocaine) can inhibit self-regulation.

Rehoot, you're talking to a spambot (one I've just killed, so your post looks slightly odd now)

Arepo wrote:Rehoot, you're talking to a spambot (one I've just killed, so your post looks slightly odd now)

That's pretty funny. The original post did seem a bit incoherent, but I figured it might be a teenager who spoke English as a second language and had no background in philosophy. I'll waste an ocasional post for the potential to help a directionless teenager.

The giveaway (apart from experience) is the multiple links along the bottom to completely random-sounding websites.