It seems to me plausible that anyone who uses the word agony in the standard sense is committing her/âhimself to agony being undesirable. This is not an argument for irreducible normativity, but it may give you a feeling that there is some intrinsic connection underlying the set of self-evident cases.
Could you please clarify this? As someone who is mainly convinced of irreducible normativity by the self-evident badness of agonyâin particular, considering the intuition that someone in agony has reason to end it even if they donât consciously âdesireâ that endâI donât think this can be dissolved as a linguistic confusion.
Itâs true that for all practical purposes humans seem not to desire their own pain/âsuffering. But in my discussions with some antirealists they have argued that if a paperclip maximizer, for example, doesnât want not to suffer (by hypothesis all it wants is to maximize paperclips), then such a being doesnât have a reason to avoid suffering. That to me seems patently unbelievable. Apologies if Iâve misunderstood your point!
Could you please clarify this? As someone who is mainly convinced of irreducible normativity by the self-evident badness of agonyâin particular, considering the intuition that someone in agony has reason to end it even if they donât consciously âdesireâ that endâI donât think this can be dissolved as a linguistic confusion.
Itâs true that for all practical purposes humans seem not to desire their own pain/âsuffering. But in my discussions with some antirealists they have argued that if a paperclip maximizer, for example, doesnât want not to suffer (by hypothesis all it wants is to maximize paperclips), then such a being doesnât have a reason to avoid suffering. That to me seems patently unbelievable. Apologies if Iâve misunderstood your point!