The Hedonistic Imperative
Table Of Contents

0. Introduction

• 0.1 The Naturalisation of Heaven
• 0.2 Saving Vehicles With Bad Drivers
• 0.3 Humans Are Not Rats
• 0.4 Life In Dopaminergic Overdrive

1. How?

• 1.0 Sabotage At The Mill
• 1.1 The Biological Program
• 1.2 Pumping Up The Volume
• 1.3 The Civilising Neurotransmitter
• 1.4 The Cardinal Importance Of Delayed Gratification
• 1.5 The Molecular Genetics Of Paradise
• 1.6 The Re-encephalisation Of Emotion
• 1.7 How Could Anything Be So Good?
• 1.8 All We Need Is Love?
• 1.9 The Taste Of Depravity
• 1.10 The Misguided Romanticisation Of Feline Psychopaths
• 1.11 The Last Twisted Molecule On Earth?
• 1.12 The Persistence Of Hard-Core Porn
• 1.13 The Growing Pleasures Of Homunculi
• 1.14 Post-Perceptual Consciousness

2. Why?

• 2.0 The Psychology Of Armchair Hedonism
• 2.1 How To Contemplate An Introspective Void
• 2.2 The Importance Of Banality
• 2.3 Vacuous Desires
• 2.4 A Dirty Window On The Soul
• 2.5 Let's Get Rational
• 2.6 The Morality Of Happiness
• 2.7 Why Be Negative?
• 2.8 The Moral Panacea
• 2.9 The Significance Of An Empirical Correlation
• 2.10 A Tough-Minded Scientist Replies
• 2.11 The Selection Of Mysterious Reds
• 2.12 The Formal Successes Of Scientific Triumphalism
• 2.13 The Naturalisation Of Value
• 2.14 Four Deadly Objections?
• 2.15 Alone Amongst The Zombies
• 2.16 The Perils Of Idle Scepticism
• 2.17 The Price Of Inner Demons
• 2.18 Can We All Be Really Good?
• 2.19 Equivocal Values
• 2.20 Good Vibrations: The Value Of String

3. When?

• 3.0 Our Emotional Future
• 3.1 Hedonism After The War
• 3.2 On Why We Need Bigger Drug Pushers
• 3.3 Good Code Gets Better
• 3.4 The Death-Spasms Of Peripheralism
• 3.5 And Yet It Still Grinds
• 3.6 The Technology Of Shop-Soiled Utopias
• 3.7 Living In The Real World

4. Objections

• 4.0 ...impossible because happiness depends on contrast with sadness...
• 4.1 ...brain too complex...negative feedback mechanisms...
• 4.2 ...we'd just die out...gruesome fate of intra-cranially self-stimulating rats..
• 4.3 ...paper flawed by reductionist approach to the human soul...
• 4.4 ...unanticipated side-effects...thalidomide...
• 4.5 ...would need widespread animal-testing...inconsistent with paper's animal welfarism...
• 4.6 ...unnatural...
• 4.7 ...perpetual happiness is boring...need for variety...
• 4.8 ...happiness should be rationally justifiable...
• 4.9 ...to be forced into chemically-driven happiness is wrong...false...freedom to be unhappy is important...
• 4.10 ...would turn us into junkies...
• 4.11 ...one can sometimes like being sad...too precious to lose...
• 4.12 ...would eliminate personal development...lead to stasis...
• 4.13 ......why not just get high...?
• 4.14 ...no more Newtons, Picassos, Beethovens...end of mankind's intellectual progress...
• 4.15 ...makes mockery of current values and life-projects...too absurd to warrant serious debate..
• 4.16 ...would leave us helpless... manipulable by ruling elites...
• 4.17 ...sheer escapism...the importance of staying in touch with reality...
• 4.18 ...wouldn't be me...one is defined by one's sorrows as much as joys...
• 4.19 ...selfish distraction from what matters...helping the poor in the Third World comes first...
• 4.20 ...affront to human dignity...
• 4.21 ...track-record of utopianism is disastrous...terrible crimes committed on assumption end justifies the means...
• 4.22 ...would undermine the basis of all human relationships...
• 4.23 ...might lead to (post-)humanity getting irreversibly stuck...
• 4.24 ... emphasis on mood-lifting drugs is disproportionate...too easy to misinterpret...
• 4.25 ...abolitionist project presupposes utilitarian ethic...collapses if utilitarianism is rejected...
• 4.26 ...will never be a Post-Darwinian Transition... there will always be selection pressure...
• 4.27 ...paradise-engineering is impossible...not evolutionarily stable...
• 4.28 ...contradiction...abolitionism can't be reconciled with an absence of compulsion...
• 4.29 ...why invoke nanotechnology ...isn't genetic engineering enough...?
• 4.30 ..."pushy" parents will choose genotypes for children who are smart, driven and successful rather than happy...
• 4.31 ...persistence of "natural" reproducers with Darwinian genotypes means that suffering won't be abolished...
• 4.32 ...cosmic HI? Some pitfalls...
• 4.33 ...why stress gradients of well-being? Wouldn't permanent maximum bliss be ethically better...?
• 4.34 ...why the headlong rush? Let's wait until we have the wisdom to understand the implications of what we're doing...
• 4.35 ...the Simulation Argument suggests suffering can never be abolished...

5. Conclusion.

• 5.0 Puppet-Masters Without Strings
• 5.1 Could Life Really Have A Happy Ending?