In this article, I seek to lay out a theory of the actions I believe humankind should be devoting its efforts and resources towards, justified from what I see as fundamental principles.
We can start off by seeing that there might be some goal or goals that we would want ourselves or humanity at large to strive towards. However, right off the bat we can see that there is an obstacle to having any objective measure of what this goal should be. This obstacle is David Hume’s is-ought gap. Hume asserts that it is impossible to derive a moral ought from a mere analysis of what is. This would seem to make any statement on what goal humanity should strive towards be arbitrary. So, to arrive at some goal that has an objective basis in saying it “should” be strived towards, it seems as if we will have to bridge the is-ought gap. I believe doing so is possible via the definition of what “ought” means in the first place.
“Ought” can be taken to be defined as “that which would be good if it were attained.” So, we have moved from a need to construct an “ought” from an “is,” to a need to construct or discover an objective good which can be derived immediately from what is. I believe there is one good that is able to directly justify itself from our very experience of it, and that is positive emotional valence. We are able to immediately experience positive emotions as good just from our state of apprehending them. I believe no other putative goal possesses this property of subjectively and immediately justifying itself as good. It would further seem as if positive emotions are the ultimate motivation for any goal we set for ourselves. While we may think we value some goal in itself rather than for the positive emotions derived from it, we can question this by considering a thought experiment. Suppose someone values mountain climbing and seeks to climb a mountain. Would they still desire that goal if the positive emotions derived from accomplishing it were removed? We can see that they likely wouldn’t, and indeed in cases of depression it is the lack of positive emotional reward that leads to a lack of action and striving. Even the ascetic derives a certain self-satisfied pleasure from their asceticism that motivates it.
So, if pleasurable emotion can be taken as a good that stands on its own merit, then we can see from our reorientation of the is-ought gap that positive emotion is the good that justifies itself as an ought. Pleasurable emotion is good, therefore pleasurable emotion ought to be sought and manifested. From this we can return to our original question and see that what ourselves and humanity at large should be striving towards is the maximization of the experience of pleasure. But how is this to be carried out?
One possibility is increasing the pleasure experienced by minds that already exist. Certainly this is a noble goal that would increase the experience of pleasure upon being actualized. But we can see that there is a greater possibility given by the asymmetry between conscious and unconscious matter in existence, and if we assume it is even theoretically possible to convert unconscious matter into a state of consciousness. There is vastly more unconscious than conscious matter in the cosmos. So, if this unconscious matter were to be converted into conscious matter, unimaginably greater conscious experiencing of pleasure would be able to be actualized. If we consider that pre-existing minds have no privileging to the state of pleasure, as it is pleasure no matter who or what it is experienced by that is the good to be maximized, then we can see that creating new minds in a state of pleasure would have vastly greater moral impact than merely increasing pleasure among minds already in existence.
Now I will get more specific. I believe that because pleasure is a good unto itself, and because there is so much unconscious matter simply waiting to be utilized, that the goal humankind should strive towards is converting as much of the unconscious matter in the universe as possible into minds experiencing perpetual pleasure. Because these minds would be constructed specifically for the purpose of experiencing pleasure, they could be engineered so that they experience no hedonic treadmill and never tire or bore of the pleasure that defines their existence. Every moment would be as potently blissful as the first. If you have ever felt such joy that you have thought “I wish that this moment could last forever,” it would be such a thing actualized. It is only by the conversion of the dumb matter of the universe into countless pleasure-minds that the good of positive emotion can truly be maximized.
So, this in short defines the goal I believe humankind should strive towards and the basis on which I believe this goal is rightly founded. We seek some good able to bridge the is-ought gap, we find this good in pleasure, and from an imperative of maximizing pleasure we find that the best way to do so is to convert as much of the universe as possible into minds designed to feel as much pleasure as possible for as long as possible. I hope that the case I make for this has been convincing, and while the actual creation of such pleasure-minds may be temporally and technologically distant, that at least some of the people who read this will be inspired to work on this project as a long-term goal for humanity.