Since I have noticed some masochistic tendencies in myself and observed them to greater extents in other people, I have become more critical of consequentialist positions that claim that raw pain qualia is inherently bad. I've been more inclined to claim that the secondary process by which we label an experience "good" or "bad" as the deciding factor. I think that the usual primary motivation for masochists to engage in this sort of behavior is positive associations that they have formed with the experience and the usual secondary motivation is the endorphin and other chemicals that are released after pain.
I've met a fair number of well adjusted (not below average happiness) masochists and I think that the claim they all are mistaken about some matter or doing something wrong to be implausible.
To be clearer of what we are talking about, I am mainly referring to masochists in the BDSM sense but I would count most athletes as masochists (I think the main reason that they are not usually referred to this way is because the word masochist has negative connotations). I also think there are many everyday activities that would count here.


If I'm not sure how to evaluate animal experience under this position, though since many animals might not possess this secondary system. And that's something that I would like some help thinking myself through.

I don’t think there’s any inconsistency in believing that pain qualia are bad and that masochists aren’t making a mistake. They might simply have found they experience higher net happiness by letting themselves experience a little bit of suffering, just as we might rationally force ourselves to forego cake today for greater rewards further down the line.

That said, you might also think that the kind of physical pain masochists enjoy feeling is just not what hedonists mean by negative utility, since it doesn’t necessarily entail mental disutility. Just as some people like anchovies and others hate them, you might think that physical pain is simply a set of signals which different minds convert into different output - some positive, some negative.

(see also pain asymbolia and discusses relating to it on Less Wrong - though they tend to lean away from hedonistic utility more than most of the posters here do)

What do you mean by "raw pain qualia"? If you mean the qualia of physical pain, of course it's not necessarily bad. You can like pain. If you mean the attribute of qualia that hedonists consider bad, masochism has nothing to do with it. Masochists find physical pain pleasurable.

CosmicPariah wrote:If I'm not sure how to evaluate animal experience under this position, though since many animals might not possess this secondary system. And that's something that I would like some help thinking myself through.

As in non-human masochistic animals?

Yeah I don't have much to add, I agree that pain and pleasure would not have positive or negative value without being 'labelled' as such by the brain. And I agree that masochists are not making 'a mistake'.

I agree with everyone's replies. See also the discussion, "What gives valence to qualia?"

CosmicPariah wrote:If I'm not sure how to evaluate animal experience under this position, though since many animals might not possess this secondary system.

It's true that some animals may experience nociception without conscious suffering (c.f., e.g., "A Question of Pain in Invertebrates" or Damasio's The Feeling of What Happens). Indeed, some nociceptive processes in humans are not conscious. However, if there's no conscious suffering, then I don't care about the pain. If an animal doesn't have the secondary system, then I don't think it counts ethically (for the same reason that we don't count anything but the secondary system for masochists). That said, I think most higher animals do have this secondary system, and insects might as well. (Forgive the word "pain" in the title of that last hyperlinked piece. I really meant "suffering" but was bowing to colloquial language.)

I would expect (hedonistic) utilitarian sentiments to be incompatible with sadism/masochism, pain can be instrumentally good, though.

Ubuntu wrote:I would expect (hedonistic) utilitarian sentiments to be incompatible with sadism/masochism

Maybe it depends on the particular details. Is there really anyone who likes suffering and not just the chemicals associated with pain? I don't profess to be an expert on this topic.

Masochism seems like more of a problem for negative utilitarians. If you see it as 'transmuting signals that would normally provoke negative utility into positive utility' then it's not really (morally) relevant to anyone, but if you see it as 'receiving enough positive utility from certain forms of negative utility to more than counteract them' then it seems like (at list pinprick) negative utilitarians would be committed to saying masochists are making a mistake.

Good point, Arepo. Fortunately, I'm not a pinprick negative utilitarian.

Arepo wrote:Masochism seems like more of a problem for negative utilitarians. If you see it as 'transmuting signals that would normally provoke negative utility into positive utility' then it's not really (morally) relevant to anyone, but if you see it as 'receiving enough positive utility from certain forms of negative utility to more than counteract them' then it seems like (at list pinprick) negative utilitarians would be committed to saying masochists are making a mistake.

Here's a piece of nitpicking: They wouldn't be. It would logically follow from their philosophy, but since they are consequentialists, and saying socially unacceptable things reduces acceptance of your position, they might not go about telling masochists that they are making a mistake - or generally happy people that an empty universe would be better than a universe with them in it, all else equal.

It is annoyingly easy to annoy people, and I think utilitarians have their hands full to even advertise reductions in suffering that most people rationalize away, e.g. factory farming. In this context, it doesn't make much strategic sense to alienate people with technicalities. It's a fine heuristic to trust most people's selfishness to prevent their own suffering, if they can. So focus on those who can't opt out.

(That doesn't mean you can't say generally unpopular things on a utilitarian board, such as: Reductions in existential risk are probably a mistake, i.e. expected disutility increasing)

I'm not really suggesting they'd actulally go around correcting masochists, I'm saying it would lead them to a very counter-intuitive conclusion, that some might even consider a reductio of negative util.

It's odd how arguments both for and against decreasing existential risk seem to upset the public at large...

I sometimes wonder if masochists are actually making a mistake. I think negative utilitarians should consider this thought experiment:

Imagine Omega tells you solipsism is true, and you exist in a world where only you are not a p-zombie. You are generally happy on average, and very much like to live, but you know you inevitably feel some pain now and then. Omega offers you a perfect painless and instantaneous suicide option. What do you do?

One way to look at it is to say, the self is an illusion, and those time-slices that only contain pain should be protected from their disutility, which does not overlap with the utility of the happiness-moments. But would that be enough for the negative utilitarian to actually choose death? If not, and if they value consistency, they would be logically obliged to drop NU.

Yeah, I wouldn't assert that it's a hard reductio (I probably don't believe in such things), but it might be counterintuitive enough to put people off.

Note that with masochism, pain and pleasure don't necessarily alternate - more likely is you feel both at the same time. I don't think any utils would argue that if you could get equivalent positive qualia without the negative ones (assuming there are negative ones), that would be better, but that doesn't mean masochists are making a mistake...

Incidentally, I'm sceptical of Omega whenever he pops up. If this guy wants to go around making extraordinary claims, he should provide extraordinary evidence like a normal person. Instead he seems to want us to take his abilities on faith, in all the thought experiments he pops up in.

Brian Tomasik wrote:

Ubuntu wrote:I would expect (hedonistic) utilitarian sentiments to be incompatible with sadism/masochism

Maybe it depends on the particular details. Is there really anyone who likes suffering and not just the chemicals associated with pain? I don't profess to be an expert on this topic.

I think you're right, I was thinking about someone who enjoys the idea of suffering itself and not sensations (ie. physical injury) we associate with suffering. By definition, I don't think a person can like (their own) suffering although maybe they can want it.

Wow, these spambots are getting good...

This seems like the appropriate place to bring up the fact that I am a sexual sadist. I guess having a moral system focusing on the happiness of others and a sexuality focusing on the suffering of others is one of those fun little things that comes with being a human. I am fortunate in that I am living together with a wonderful woman who is as much a masochist as I am a sadist.

I think sadists (at least my kind) pose a somewhat worse problem to utilitarians than masochists do. Masochists like pain, that is, they experience (some) pain as something positive. Sadists want suffering. The fact that my fiancée appreciates the pain I give her is actually a slight negative to me. Luckily, I have a moral system that makes sure that even if I could actually truly harm someone (and get away with it), I wouldn't. Put in a more Abrahamic fashion, I guess you could say I am an evil person who has chosen to be good.

I'm not sure if I would get rid of my sexuality, if I could. Part of me feels that it's a distraction which makes me think of many horrible and generally negative things, while part of me thinks it would be dumb to get rid of something which gives both me and the person I love a great deal of pleasure.

I don't understand; since when are "evil" and "good" tied to the Abrahamic faiths specifically?

I am also greatly confused by what is meant by "utility". Usefulness? For what purpose? Serving one's values? Why not call it "goodness", then? "Marginal utility" and "expected utlity" are also expressions that confuse me. I can't seem to grasp them intuitively.

There's also something that's bothering me; the value of diminishing suffering and insatisfaction. I find that when I'm painless and satisfied, I grow complacent and passive, and yet, given that taking action will mean pain and effort, I find myself in an utterly loathesome stable equilibrium. On the other hand, I find that, if I'm in an already painful, dissatisfying situation, I don't mind supplementary pain and effort, so long as I percieve that I am making progress towards feeling less pain and more satisfaction. To me, apparently, happiness is stillness and death (in fact, I find myself amazingly indifferent to morality in that situation), while dissatisfaction, anger, want, desire, need, pain, and fear are sources of activity, achievement, growth, and increased strength. I find that I value the latter state more than the former. I also find that the very existence of the second state depends on the hope of achieving the first state.

As a gaming metaphor, you could compare it to the gamer who has achieved 100% completion, which was the end-goal from the start, but which leaves them in a state of extreme unhappiness and boredom. That gamer couldn't purposefully let go of part of their loot, but they find it very easy to start a new game from scratch, and go through the same process all over again. So is that completion the goal, or is the process of reaching it the goal? Since calling them the fake goal and the real goal sounds amazingly obtuse and confusing, what would be correct names to name those?

I'm having trouble wrapping my head around this absurdity. I suspect it's a quirk of biology, rather than something that can be morally justifiable. But then again, isn't morality, in the end, a more strategic approach to obeying our biology?

"I am also greatly confused by what is meant by 'utility'."

Utility means whatever it is you're trying to maximize. Good means pretty much the same thing, except that it doesn't presuppose that you're a utilitarian. I'm trying to maximize happiness. A utilitarian could also try to maximize preference fulfillment, or beauty, or paperclips, or some crazy complicated thing.

"'Marginal utility' and 'expected utlity' are also expressions that confuse me."

Marginal utility is the difference of utility for a small change. For example, suppose it costs a million dollars to set up an organization that saves lives, and a thousand dollars per life saved. Suppose the organization gets two million dollars. It saved a thousand lives for two million dollars, so that's two thousand dollars per life on average. But if you're deciding whether or not to donate to it, it's not the average that matters. They already payed to start up, and it will only cost one thousand dollars to save another life. Thus, the marginal utility is one thousand dollars per life. This is what you should be concerned with.

Expected utility is what you'd expect on average. For example, if there's a 50% chance that donating a thousand dollars to a charity will save a life, and a 50% chance that it's just a con artist taking your money, the expected utility is saving half a life for a thousand dollars, or two thousand dollars per life.

"Since calling them the fake goal and the real goal sounds amazingly obtuse and confusing, what would be correct names to name those?"

There is no correct name. I don't think everyone is like that, so you're going to have to explain it no matter what you call it. I kind of like "fake goal" and "real goal". You could go with "game goal" and "life goal", or "game goal" and "real goal", to show that it's like the goal of a game, where it exists so that you can play, rather than being something you intrinsically want to accomplish.

Why don't you just play videogames when you're doing well?

"But then again, isn't morality, in the end, a more strategic approach to obeying our biology?"

No. Our biology isn't something that tells us what we need to do and we obey. We are our biology.

Fine, carrying out our biology, if you prefer, executing it. For example, when having sex. That's a perfect example of something that is not the conscious part of the mind taking over and doing things on its own, without the subtlety of being a drive or an appetite.

So much of what we do depends on appetites, passions, moods, physiology... and I for one find that rationality is very useful epistemiologically, but, when it comes to taking instrumental decisions, in all the cases where there's a significant, immediate difference in emotional load between alternatives, it all boils down to subconscious impulses.

Rationality and calculation is good at fending off emotional manipulation, but it's terrible at actually making you overcome akrasia and go out and do stuff.