> After all, if sitting in your own filth doesn't make you unhappy, because you have a wire in your brain which ensures sublime delight no matter your circumstances, why bother to do anything about it? -- and, as we see from one of the cases described in the page I linked, indeed you will not.
Right, but... why is sitting in your own filth objectively "bad" if you're happy? There could be negative externalities (e.g. maybe your unsanitary conditions are facilitating the spread of disease to others) but I don't think it's clear what about the filth itself is objectively bad.
Simply sitting in your own filth while being unconditionally happy will kill you from dehydration or infection unless someone else (who is not 'happily sitting') helps you.
The 'negative' emotions are very important for the functioning of any animal or mind - they are the drivers that motivate us to do stuff instead of happily dying.
I could write a long essay on how pain, fear, frustration, boredom and burnout are totally neccessary to implement even for a simple non-human artificial autonomous agent, in order to prevent it to be stuck on 'broken' loops forever - TL;DR is pain is needed to ensure that the 'mind' avoids damage; fear is needed to ensure that the 'mind' avoids serious risk of damage; frustration is needed to ensure that the brain doesn't try the same thing over and over again if it doesn't achieve the goal; boredom is needed to ensure that the brain isn't stuck in repetitive loops unless they bring great rewards; and burnout is needed to ensure that the brain at least tries takes a chance at escaping poor conditions, instead of happily suffering through them to death.
Put a brain in unconditional happiness - and it will be so useless and vulnerable, that you'll soon find out why evolution (or designer, if you so fancy) implemented the conditions on happiness.
Society deems it "unproductive", in the sense that society is a team-sport at a high level. Not being productive implies being a net-sense of entropy (neutral is not really an option, as society views you as under its umbrella of resource expenditure).[edit: put forth only as devil's advocate position]
The other and perhaps different explanation, is that Philosophically, man is happy only when exercising his facilities. This has been said as either his 'reason' or his 'power' depending on your taste in philosophers. But in either case the notion of perfecting some craft-work. In particular, this should further some functional inter-relationship with the outside world (not to mention family/informla political skills). The idea one could be both 'vegetative' and 'happy' simultaneously tends to imply 'ok, but that's not a human life...that is a vegetable one', or something similar.
These are good arguments, in many ways. Enough so that the burden of proof should be on those putting for completely contrary ideas, eg: "why is sitting in your own filth objectively "bad" if you're happy."
IMHO, Its not the filth, or the sitting, but the lack of anything evidently positive. Sitting in filth might be, after all, a corralary to "getting shit done" with limited resources. For instance, sitting is rest from other work; and 'filth' is just debris that has yet to be cleared away or moved away from (the latter being imminent).
No, by "sitting in one's own filth", I meant "sitting in one's own filth", i.e., neglecting hygiene in a particularly revolting fashion, but not bothering to do anything about it because one's ability to experience revulsion has been artificially suppressed. Such inaction also, of course, will if protracted enough certainly lead to various skin conditions, verminous infestations, &c. -- but our notional lotus eater won't be bothered by those, either, any more than by the conditions which produce them.
> Philosophically, man is happy only when exercising his facilities
> But in either case the notion of perfecting some craft-work. In particular, this should further some functional inter-relationship with the outside world
> These are good arguments, in many ways. Enough so that the burden of proof should be on those putting for completely contrary ideas
I respectfully disagree. My instinct is to question your premise that "man is happy only when exercising his facilities." I'm assuming that this has roots in ancient Greek philosophy, and I'm not well versed enough in that area to refute the reasoning that leads to that premise, but I will say that I'm hesitant to accept it at face value. Even if scientific studies indicated that man is happy only when exercising his facilities, it would only indicate that exercising your facilities has instrumental value in providing us with satisfaction, not intrinsic value.
To me, this idea that productivity is an objective Good seems like a statement of personal values rather than anything fundamental to the Universe. Of course, personal values matter; I'm just trying to draw a line here between productivity as a means to an end vs. productivity as intrinsically necessary. If someone is able to achieve happiness without "exercising his facilities," I don't think we can assume that their happiness must be impoverished compared to those pursuing more mainstream paths, even if our gut instinct tells us otherwise.
And to reiterate: this is ignoring, for the sake of argument, the topic of negative externalities. Obviously, if unproductive behavior has a detrimental effect on others, the issue becomes far more complicated.
Yeah, you can argue these as points in the sense that they may lead to a decreased life span, which means less time enjoying your state of bliss. There's a possible utilitarian angle here.
Right, but... why is sitting in your own filth objectively "bad" if you're happy? There could be negative externalities (e.g. maybe your unsanitary conditions are facilitating the spread of disease to others) but I don't think it's clear what about the filth itself is objectively bad.