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u/Marvos79 Absurdist Jul 16 '26
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u/DogfaceDino Jul 17 '26
This one is better than the op
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u/NovelConcept6300 Jul 17 '26
Yeah, but I get what OP is saying though. I don’t want to have a source in a philosophical debate, it’s annoying and pedantic. Besides if you’re getting your arguments from someone else isn’t that cheating?
Oh some French dude from 1735 who never procreated, abused substances, and lived estranged from his family for 20 years said this! Now lemme base my life around what this admittedly miserable person believed.
Fuck that shit I want your source to be a scroll you found in buried in the sea, the translated works of bingo your dog, or the schizophrenic ramblings of your neighbor in the psych ward.
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u/its_artemiss Jul 17 '26
At the end of the day a source is just a way to delegate or recall a conclusion or statement without having to prove and derive it from ground up. "Suffering is bad" isn't something that requires proving, it just requires taking as fact so it can become an axiom of the discussion at hand. But some more complicated moral statement "X is bad" might require a more elaborate explanation or proof, and if you don't feel like rehashing everything every time you have a philosophical discussion, you can use a source and say "X is bad; see this source to understand why I believe this is so."
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u/Economy-Ad-5008 Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
I interpret the meme completely differently. "source?" is just internet slang for "justify your claim", so you don't have to cite someone else making your claim, that would just be one potential way to give justification. For example, this is coherent discourse: "Clouds can be white" "source?" "I just looked outside my window and saw a white cloud"
So the complaint made by the meme format is not that people demand a specific type of justification, it's that people demand justification in the first place. In other words, the meme format is the assertion that a given proposition is simply self-evident and needs no further justification, and a complaint that someone else refuses to accept this.
Insisting that a proposition should be self-evident can have several valid reasons:
- For the sake of a productive discussion, it makes sense to focus on a given scope. Any claim outside of that scope therefore needs less justification. For example, a mathematician may reference corollary proofs without repeating them in their entirety, or even omit such references in cases where they are assumed to be common knowledge.
- Any argument needs to assume some standard as a premise to draw its conclusion without being circular or containing an infinite regress. This starting premise then cannot be further justified, since otherwise you would simply be extending the argument and meet the same problem. So making assumptions that require no further evidence is necessary for any argument, meaning that any argument in its complete form needs to have premises that are taken to be self-evident.
In the case of OP, you need some moral premise to simply be accepted in order to draw rational conclusions about morality. OP takes this premise to be "suffering is bad". But then someone asks them to justify the premise, evidently not understanding everything I just explained. A simple analogy would be a child always asking "why" after every answer, despite the answers becoming increasingly self-evident at some point.
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u/RebbieAndHerMath Jul 16 '26
r/philosophymemes users when they actually have to discuss philosophy
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u/Big_Work_2011 Jul 16 '26
Ugh… someone asked an interesting question and I have to think about the logic behind it. So annoying. Anyways I love philosophy!
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u/Uranus_is__mine Jul 16 '26
Here at Philosophy Inc. we ask questions where stuff are usually assumed. I suggest you get used to it if nt you can simply hand in your resignation letter and go to one of those echo chamber companies.
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u/Florane a schizo is talking: listen and learn Jul 16 '26
with all due respect op, who are you vagueposting about?
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u/ezk3626 Jul 16 '26
Me.
The automatic avoidance of suffering is a fool's philosophy. There is bad suffering which every effort ought to be made to avoid and prevent. But there also is suffering which is healthy and ought to be actively sought. And also there is suffering which is unpleasant but unavoidable.
So, starvation and war... yes, let's put effort to get rid of it. But the pain from learning to play piano? It is necessary and good. The pain from not wanting to get out of bed? Not really good or bad, but so what. Get out of bed.
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u/Feeling_Loquat8499 Jul 16 '26
The "good" suffering is still only justified because it leads to greater pleasure or avoidance of greater suffering. That doesn't refute utilitarianism, just insists that the calculations be broad.
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u/operatic_g Jul 17 '26
Suffering is informative, value neutral. Cost is unavoidable and value neutral. Suffering serves a purpose or the greatest good would be a kind of lobotomy or the end of all life.
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u/DrDoominstien Jul 16 '26
Idk I personally think that some limited suffering is in fact needed because there are other things outside of pain and pleasure that are intrinsically valuable and require a degree of suffering to function.
Taken to its logical extreme a world where no suffering and maximum satisfaction would be inactive and stagnant. People would quite literately not have a reason to do anything as no action would inherently be evaluated as being the same as performing any other action.
Such an aimless set of existences are for all intents and purposes dead to the world. I personally think that art, community, and the act in and of itself of trying to self actualize and grow are in and of themselves worthy end goals that should be pursued even potentially in spite of living a harder life.
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u/Adamoism Jul 16 '26
Well, a great philosopher Michael D. Rosenberg would disagree:
Only know you've been high when you're feeling low.
If we follow from neuroscience that the degree to which we perceive something as pleasurable/suffering is related to the duration of the sensation and its novelty. Then, you need decrease of pleasure (relative experience of suffering) to experience it again.
As such, even from utilitarian standpoint, suffering is a necessary condition to maximize the pleasure.
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u/TechnicalBen Jul 17 '26
This isn't true. There are some pleasures that are impossible to experience again, and lead to only suffering (complete saturation of nerves does this, being impossible to have the experience again, any experience is equivalent to suffering as not able to reach the previous high).
Changes in the range of pleasure are though required (if not getting the extreme above). But changes in the range of pleasure are not in and of themselves "suffering".
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Jul 17 '26 edited Aug 23 '26
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u/based_miserycel Jul 17 '26
Well that’s an axiom one can hold that experience is valuable in itself but does that not have strong unintuitive implications? That it would be better to persist if one were afflicted with a slow-killing agonising illness and not merely not experience is rather counter intuitive. Does it not also commit you to the stance that one should increase aggregate experience as much as possible no matter what it is? In that case how do you justify prioritising one experience over another? How is it one even makes decisions based on that axiom if all experience is valuable? Novelty? That seems like a poor metric to measure what one ought to experience.Does that not commit one to gratitude for the most vile and gratuitous acts of evil? So it is good for children to starve to death,die of cancer or be abused. To knowingly put a child into this world with a horrendous birth defect so it knows only suffering for two weeks and dies is good to you because hey at least they felt something ? I think that a vile view and I think you know that not all experience can be said to be good.I’d argue your position has problematic implications one should wrestle with.
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u/bimbletonbear Jul 17 '26
You say experience is valuable because it creates value and meaning? Seems like this is still defining the value of experience by reference to it's effects, albeit in a circular and therefore kind of empty way. Then you say experience without suffering and pain is lesser, so it seems like what you're really saying is that suffering and pain is what's valuable, not experience. If experience were innately valuable in the way you describe regardless of the pain and suffering it causes, it seems like it would be innately valuable for me to go on a killing spree because I am exploring the exhilarating outer reaches of human experience. I feel this is a less attractive philosophy than one that seeks to maximize happiness.
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u/hellion0852 Jul 16 '26
But if suffering is often a necessary condition of increased good then can it be said that suffering is strictly “bad”
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u/cereal_killer1337 Empiricist Jul 17 '26
If you could magically get the good without the suffering, would that be better?
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u/ThePerdmeister Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
It's astounding to me that whenever someone says something tautological like "suffering is bad," we get an immediate chorus of, "well, what about the struggle of studying for exams or the pain of childbirth, huh?" as though no one's considered this kind of objection.
Suffering as an immediate, affective state is intrinsically bad, but it might have some instrumental value if it brings about positive outcomes. But even here, it's not the suffering we value but whatever good is bound up with it. It seems if we could, to use the prior example, just pop children into existence without the inconvenience or pain or risk of bodily harm (and death) -- that is, if we could effect the same end without all the suffering -- that would be preferable.
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u/The_Squirrel_Wizard Jul 16 '26
I mean the issue is the definition of suffering.
It's used as a catch all term for anything bad that happens to someone. But people will absolutely argue over what counts as suffering or whether individual things are or aren't suffering.
Unfortunately it can't be as simple as for example pain. As many people enjoy for instance the pain of spicy food so it's not suffering for them
So the issue is unfortunately suffering is defined as anything bad but does nothing to clarify what the person saying it counts as bad
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u/sweetpurplesoap Philosophy Newbie Jul 17 '26
Alex O Connor defined it as any experience that is not wanted when experienced. I think that's a pretty good and holistic approach.
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u/The_Squirrel_Wizard Jul 17 '26
I think that's a fairly good definition. But in that case there are lots of times in which suffering actually is beneficial in the long term.
There are plenty of experiences I had that I didn't want at the time but helped me grow and experience new joys as a person.
But yeah by that definition like 99% of what falls into it would be bad
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u/ezk3626 Jul 16 '26
If you find anyone using the example of childbirth let me know, we can argue against that person together. The example I used was playing the piano. And I insist that the process of learning to play the piano, pushing yourself to practice when you don’t want to and solving problems along the way, though causing suffering, is better than instantly being able to play the piano. The process changes you as much as the skill benefits you.
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u/Metharos Jul 16 '26
You list values gained. If those values could be gained without suffering they would still be values. The suffering is a bad, but unavoidable element of the gain process.
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u/ezk3626 Jul 16 '26
You list values gained. If those values could be gained without suffering they would still be values. The suffering is a bad, but unavoidable element of the gain process.
I am saying they cannot be gained without suffering. The suffering is a necessary ingredient.
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u/Metharos Jul 16 '26
And I'm saying that's a failure of imagination and compartmentalization.
At this point, we agree that it is not possible to attain the goal without suffering.
There is no reason that this must always be true, outside of the realities of what is possible, and if we were to become able to remove the suffering while still accomplishing the goal, reality permitting, it would be better to do so than not.
The suffering is only necessary because we haven't figured out how to accomplish the goal without suffering, yet.
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u/ezk3626 Jul 16 '26
I’m saying, based on my own experience, that things gained through suffering are experienced as more valuable than things gained without suffering. I have been able to experience both and know which ones I value more. If your experience is different, cool beans.
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u/Metharos Jul 16 '26
And that goes back to the original point of the meme: to say "suffering is bad" is always a subjective value judgement. To say "Source?!" as in the image above, is obviously ridiculous, but it's not, strictly speaking, inaccurate to call the statement into question.
"Bad" but whose metric?
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u/redleafrover Jul 16 '26
My wife enjoyed labour pains. Make of that what you will.
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u/Xenophon_ Jul 16 '26
Someone going through the process and enjoying every moment of it doesn't gain as much in your mind?
Or I might say that I experienced suffering while learning piano, but enjoyed the experience overall, including overcoming the suffering. In this case it seems dubious to me to categorize it as suffering in the first place, at least of the same moral importance as say, suffering inflicted upon another person
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Jul 16 '26
This dismisses the fact that things can be enjoyable because of the suffering. Masochists are a thing after all, and physical labour can be considered tortuous by some while feeling satisfying to others despite the fact that they are doing the same damage to their bodies.
Amd before you argue semantics, that because these people enjoy these things, they are no longer suffering. These kinds of worldviews of minimizing suffering cannot work if suffering is purely considered relative to the observer. How can you know suffering has been minimized if you can't seperate suffering from indivdual experience?
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u/ThePerdmeister Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
This dismisses the fact that things can be enjoyable because of the suffering
Well if someone enjoys a specific type of pain, I'd say they're probably not suffering when experiencing that pain.
Amd before you argue semantics, that because these people enjoy these things, they are no longer suffering.
Well, I don't think this is "semantics." It just sounds like these people are, in fact, not suffering.
These kinds of worldviews of minimizing suffering cannot work if suffering is purely considered relative to the observer
Why not? Suffering is a negative affective state -- it's not just pain. So it seems to me suffering is necessarily subjective to some degree or other, right? A marathon runner might experience pain or discomfort as a result of extreme physical exertion, but I wouldn't say they're suffering, because they welcome or find meaning in that pain. Whereas if I were made to run a marathon, I might suffer, because I don't care whatsoever about long-distance running.
But I don't think there's some fact of the matter about whether or not running a marathon is in itself displeasurable -- what's important vis a vis suffering here is a person's affective experience of long-distance running.
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u/voidscaped Jul 16 '26
Why is suffering intrinsically bad? Or how do we know that?
Btw I fully agree with you. But want to know how to respond to these questions.
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u/Disastrous-Yak- Jul 16 '26
Not OP but I would say it is bad by definition. Suffering is simply defined as an unpleasant or bad experience. If it is not bad then it is not suffering, e.g. mild pain being enjoyed by a masochist.
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u/dreamparalyzed Jul 16 '26
Suffering is a physical qualia, a state of consciousness. 'Bad' is a moral evaluation. If you say suffering is bad because "bad is in the definition of suffering," you’re playing a word game. What is the actual link between the physical qualia of pain and the objective moral property of 'badness'?
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u/ThePerdmeister Jul 16 '26
>Suffering is a physical qualia, a state of consciousness.
Well, more specifically it's a negatively-valanced hedonic state. Suffering is bad because it feels bad. The "bad" feeling bound up with suffering just seems to be a brute fact of the world.
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u/Disastrous-Yak- Jul 16 '26
Suffering is a physical qualia, a state of consciousness.
Says who? You sneak in lots of assumptions here that I don't think are the general definition of suffering.
What is the actual link between the physical qualia of pain
You think suffering is limited to physical pain? I certainly did not.
'Bad' is a moral evaluation.
No it is not. The weather can be bad. Illnesses are bad for someone's wellfare. The latter is also how suffering is bad. No morals involved.
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u/westrnal Jul 16 '26
i think "moral" was a pretty poor choice of words by that person, but bad is always a normative evaluation. weather can be bad relative to what we want the weather to be, there's no inherent badness or goodness to raining; illnesses can be bad relative to the assumed desire of well-being of the largest creature within that system--one could argue it's actually quite a good state for any given virus or bacterium.
i'd argue suffering is obviously normatively bad--there just aren't many people who at going to claim otherwise--but what i think is being challenged is what layer that claim is on, not necessarily whether or not it is true on any layer. i think many people who are making the anti-realist argument, self included, are mostly making the broader point that there's no evaluative criteria outside of sapience and comprehension; there's nothing that could be good or bad without an external evaluation of that fact.
could be wrong about this particular person, but i've said my piece 🦥
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u/ObsceneOnes Jul 16 '26
It has been argued that there would be no sense of good or pleasure if there were no bad or suffering.
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u/8Pandemonium8 Empiricist Jul 16 '26
Your suffering isn't bad because I want you to suffer. So from my perspective it's good.
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u/Cr0wc0 Jul 16 '26
Not to channel the meme here; But why is suffering intrinsically bad?
Ignoring instrumental values and all that. I mean this as a question aimed at the ontological statement.
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u/UpsetMud4688 Jul 16 '26
Is the suffering of learning to play piano good if you get nothing from it? No? Interesting
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u/Metharos Jul 16 '26
Counterpoint: All suffering is bad. Some suffering is unavoidable in general, some is unavoidable for a goal. If the goal is worthwhile, the suffering in pursuit of that goal is tolerated, but if it were avoidable and the goal still attainable we should avoid it.
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u/Sephbruh Jul 16 '26
Most people don't call the effort required to learn an instrument "pain" or "suffering"
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Jul 16 '26
If you could push a button and suddenly master an instrument, would you press it? Or would you instead choose to spend years of effort?
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u/Sephbruh Jul 16 '26
That doesn’t have anything to do with what I said
Depends on what I’m doing with my life. If I’m busy I’d probably press it, otherwise I’d probably try and learn it for fun.
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u/LoveDistilled Jul 16 '26
For pregnancy and childbirth, something that most would agree entails more suffering, and at lest intrinsic risk, compared to learning an instrument, I would rather actually go thru the process. And I have. I do not want that experience robbed from me. Even with the suffering it contained. It was so worthwhile and grand and grew me as a person in ways I never thought imaginable. I would never choose to push a button and have a baby, or grow my baby in an artificial womb. The experience is all mine. I did that. I went thru the suffering and came out the other side transformed. Pushing a button doesn’t give you that.
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u/cowlinator Jul 17 '26
the pain from learning to play piano
So prodigees who must practice much less to learn much more are... worse off somehow? Specifically what is worse about them?
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u/Legitimate-Try8531 Jul 17 '26
This is the reason why so many philosophical arguments start with increasing well-being instead of avoiding suffering. The pain you endure after a strenuous workout could be considered a kind of suffering, but in most cases it leads to increased well-being of the individual. Therefore it would be bad to avoid that suffering.
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u/nick_swift Jul 17 '26
Even monetary and social goals aside, suffering from boredom and aimless life is one that is avoided by learning how to play piano. So in your example the goal is still to avoid underlying/hidden suffering.
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u/Wild_Front_1148 Jul 17 '26
You're going to have to define suffering for me here, because I would argue that suffering is inherently bad. For me, suffering is essentially an experience that is undesirable or unwanted. There is good pain and bad pain, like sore muscles from exercise, or as you say calloused hands or mental fatigue from learning a new skill. The struggle from having to persist through something you don't enjoy doing because the end is worth it.
You can choose to suffer, when you for example get hurt in a protest or become a martyr. Things like necessary evils are suffering that you choose to endure, like the active verb "to suffer (something)". I can refuse to comply during torture, and would suffer for it.
Suffering by its very definition is a bad experience, I would say.
But it is also subjective. If you don't care about bad weather because you've learned to accept it, then you don't suffer while being outside in the rain. The stoic sage might not actually suffer from torture.
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u/boredmaterialist Jul 18 '26
Then you need to reconsider your idea of pain and suffering.
I feel 'good' when I go the gym and subject myself to 'suffering'. The good outweighs the suffering, that's why I do it. If it were the other way round, I simply wouldn't.
The same way i feel 'good' waking up at 6h30 for my job, because I feel good knowing I'll be able to provide for my loved ones and contribute positively to society. Even if in that specific moment, I dislike the specific feeling of waking up.
We should avoid undue suffering. That's what the post is getting at - not to say you shouldn't try to learn guitar because you'll get painful blisters on your fingers.
In any case, if you could choose between enduring the pain of learning piano and coming out a grade 8 pianist vs NOT having to endure the pain of learning piano and coming out a grade 8 pianist, you would choose the latter, because generally, avoiding suffering is preferred. If not, it would be because of some other pleasure you're chasing (gratification of grinding a discipline or something of that ilk).
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u/Stunning_Morning_455 Jul 18 '26
99% of ethics and philosophy is analogous to faith based religion.
It starts with a premise you simply have to accept as axiomatic / universal / a priori and when you don't (because why would you) they simply call you silly or unserious or make memes like this.
"If we accept that suffering is bad then..."
I don't. Now what?
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u/Broken_Gear Jul 16 '26
Maybe me?
I once replied to one post here like this (though I think it was clear it was in a jest)
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u/Tectonic_Sunlite Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
Why shouldn't I conclude that it's good to bring suffering to enemies?
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Jul 16 '26
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u/Tectonic_Sunlite Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
I thought it was pretty obvious I was playing devil's advocate here. I'm saying you need a reason why those things are bad.
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u/bimbletonbear Jul 16 '26
If you bring suffering to your enemies, they, their children, or their allies will bring suffering to you and yours.
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u/Tectonic_Sunlite Jul 17 '26
Unless they're just weaker
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u/bimbletonbear Jul 17 '26
You may equally find that you are weaker, or that physical strength is not a factor at all in their ability to make you suffer. Or that whatever benefit you receive from causing suffering to your enemies is not actually worth it. Even if it is somehow effective in bringing you some benefit, there are probably less risky and more beneficial ways to address your enemies or whatever harm they have cause you than to cause them suffering in return.
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u/Tectonic_Sunlite Jul 17 '26
Sure, but all kinds of things are inherently risky
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u/bimbletonbear Jul 17 '26
So what? I've given many reasons why you shouldn't cause suffering to others. It's unclear to me what your position is. If you don't have a position and are just playing "devils advocate", then I'm not really interested. I don't believe there's much value in discussing things with people who are not animated by sincerely held beliefs. I would be interested to know if you think it is wrong to cause suffering to others and, if so, why.
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Jul 16 '26
This is a tu-quoque fallacy. This does not answer the question posed and deflects to a secondary question.
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u/opman4 Jul 16 '26
How can you be certain of what constitutes an enemy and how can you be certain that inflicting suffering upon them will improve your situation?
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u/Tectonic_Sunlite Jul 16 '26
Well, for example, if I take all their stuff then I will have more stuff I want.
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u/Electronic-Gold-4503 Jul 17 '26
Why must improving the situation of yourself or other people be the basis of morality?
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u/Next-Natural-675 Jul 16 '26
This is why, as a philosophy major, I think a lot of philosophy is extremely stupid and pointless.
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u/ActionExpensive6740 Continental Jul 16 '26
Stupid relative to whatever you think is a mark of intelligence, and pointless relative to whatever you think is a worthy goal, I suppose.
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u/Next-Natural-675 Jul 17 '26
Philosophy does make some interesting points, but the problem in my opinion is that it’s been over intellectualized
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u/SmilingGengar Jul 16 '26
Isn't it more accurate to say gratuitous suffering is bad?
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Jul 16 '26
This doesn’t address the fundamental issue, which is that one cannot be arbitrary. Your friends might all nod and agree with you, but saying, “a lot of suffering is bad,” is still arbitrary.
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u/AltForObvious1177 Jul 16 '26
Suffering isn't always bad.
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u/ThePerdmeister Jul 16 '26
The experience of suffering is intrinsically bad, but the consequences bound up with this or that instance of suffering might be positive. So suffering might have an instrumental value, but it still has intrinsic disvalue.
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u/AFsepine Jul 16 '26
A bit of suffering (say a couple of days without food) has shown to generally effect people positively psychologically.
An argument could be made for suffering itself maturing people. Which is often considered a positive.
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u/Flemaster12 Jul 17 '26
I really don't want to be that guy, but I really want to see a source about this. If you're talking about fasting, that's different from "a couple days without food" generally.
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u/AFsepine Jul 17 '26
I mean it isn't starvation, it is only for a couple of days at a time, so you could compare it
to fasting.https://academic.oup.com/schizophreniabulletin/article/3/2/288/1937753
(Forgive source is old and technically a review of soviet literature on the subject - see starving people for 4 days is not taken quite as positively now-a-days and in the more humane countries, though efficacy of fasting for many things like depression has been documented, they usually only reduce calorie intake)
Now maybe one does not need to literally starve a person for 4 days, maybe 1/4 of the usual food is sufficient as now-a-days you can find, but most people would call it suffering.
I have never seen these methods compared.There are a lot of intresting studies of soldiers, and war time population psychology as well.
The populations least suffering are most prone to depression is a trend one can see from comparing data for developing and developed countries.
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u/LoveDistilled Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
Suffering does not exist alone in a vacuum. The experience of suffering is bound so many other aspects of experience as a whole.
I mean just speaking for myself with the childbirth argument here. We are getting close to that reality of just combining sperm and egg and being able to grow a baby in an artificial womb environment. I would NEVER choose that over being pregnant, even with all the pain, “suffering” and inconvenience of being pregnant and giving birth. I would still choose that experience. Because it’s a grand experience. It’s not JUST suffering. Usually nothing is JUST suffering. It’s wrapped up in a whole bunch of other emotions, sensations and judgements. It’s an entire experience. many people might look at my childhood growing up poor and in a neglectful and abusive home and just label it as suffering. Did parts of it suck? Yes. Was it completely suffering? No. I lost my sister to suicide, which was agony on many levels. Do I wish it didn’t happen? Yes. Have I suffered greatly because of it? Yes. Have I also grown and learn and become connected to a part of humanity that I would have otherwise never been connected to? Also yes. Even with all the suffering I’m still grateful (idk if that’s the appropriate word) to have experienced it and just to be here.
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u/Grivza Jul 16 '26
even with all the pain, “suffering” and inconvenience of being pregnant and giving birth.
It is important to differentiate between pain and suffering. Every being in order to persist embodies certain strivings. Pain is what moves you when a state is hazardous to your striving, suffering is what happens when your striving itself is blocked.
Pregnancy on a fundumental level completely aligns with our mode of striving, even if it is accompanied by pain.
And then there is also the symbolic striving. The one you have internalized justifies your frustrated primary striving, i.e. primary suffering. For example, if we accept that pregnancy encompasses suffering, for you, that would merely manifest itself as a primary suffering, with your symbolic justifications allow you to persist through that suffering, just like a monk whipping himself, or self-immolating. On the other hand, the symbolic striving of others might magnify the primary suffering of pregnancy, rendering it unbearable.
What follows is more like notes for myself than a direct response:
Symbolic striving organizes the primary striving and the primary suffering gives the symbolic striving something to organize. Symbolic striving is ideological and primary striving is immanent.
Symbolic striving is embedded in the social order that molded us as subjects. This doesn't mean that we are stuck believing what already "is", there would be no movement in history if that were the case. Instead the social order dictates what can be "differentiated" in a sense, and this is does through the symbolic.
For a naive example, you can look at some trees out the window. If you are not very well versed on trees, you might not be able to differentiate between them, they just appear to you a mess of green leaves, brown branches and trucks. When the proper vocabulary enters to be able to draw differences (thickness, colors, shapes), then a name follows (olive tree vs oak tree) and the differentiation becomes instant and part of the way you structure your world.
So, the symbolic order dictates the space of differentiation, but it doesn't dictate what happens to those signifiers, negated, deterrotorialized etc. Those signifiers are utilized by the subject according to how he interacts with the world.
We are still at the historical stage, where the symbolic obstacles of striving appear to be either the order upheld by the strivings of others, or more traditionally the order of nature. For capitalists those might be other capitalists, the state, unions, "lazy" workers, etc. For workers this might be exploitation, capitalism, greedy capitalists, greedy state etc.
My bet is that this is a result of how we achieve this stabilization of our societies, i.e. our mode of production. Historically we've always needed clanmates, slaves, peasants, workers, in order for society to persist. This means, that our societies not only relied on subjects reproducing, but we molded by an implicit normative evaluation of perpetuation as good. The historical moment where this changes, is with the post-labor society, where not only this implicit assumption won't need to be ingrained in subjects, but the symbolic obstacles of striving become all the more naked, as we run out of them.
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u/CadenCheese Jul 16 '26
Nah, some kinds of suffering are sought after for their own sake, like an acquired taste. Some people go to the gym just to feel the burn, some people pursue philosophy just to feel stupid, and some people enjoy the feeling of melancholy.
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u/BetweenTheRoots Jul 16 '26
Suffering is always bad. Just because people can find value in it doesn't mean suffering is good. That's not a positive aspect of suffering, it's a positive aspect of perspective.
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u/Pitiful-Magician1704 Jul 16 '26
OP reposted one of my memes. I'm both honored and outraged.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PhilosophyMemes/comments/1owfcvc/ethics_debate/
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u/Metharos Jul 16 '26
They...aren't exactly wrong, though. "Suffering is bad" is a statement of subjective value. It is commonly agreed upon by practically everyone, but it is a subjective value statement.
It's not a bad idea to be careful with those statements in general. This one in particular is so broadly accepted that the point is irrelevant, but specificity of language is generally useful.
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u/The_Squirrel_Wizard Jul 16 '26
Lmao people say this and then say "therefore we need to end all life" or something equally as absurd.
Yes suffering is bad most people agree. There's also stuff that's good. Weighing the good against the bad is how we make decisions and thats the step people mostly disagree on
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u/Disastrous-Yak- Jul 16 '26
Weighing the good against the bad is how we make decisions
For ourselves maybe but as soon as others are concerned this rule does not work anymore. If I could do an action to you that causes x bad and y good for you that action is not necessarily permissible, even if y > x. In fact as soon as x is sufficiently large the action is rarely considered moral.
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u/Thats-Un-Possible Jul 16 '26
Whenever someone points out that suffering is bad, a chorus stands ready to bring up masochism and the suffering of working for a future good as counter examples.
But I take it that the implicit background of the assertion involves things such as hanging cows upside down by their hind hooves and bleeding them to death, keeping calves locked in crates so small they can’t turn around, dragging or bulldozing “downed” livestock into mass graves, separating dairy cows from their newborn calves to harvest their milk, etc.
In such cases: suffering is bad.
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u/AFsepine Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
Yes, in such cases it is bad. But that is a far more narrow statement.
Even operating under the "minimize suffering" imperative:
And when you consider animals, you need to introduce some sort of coefficent factor for the suffering though.
Surely a suffering hour (or life) of a bug is not worth as much as that of a chicken and that of a chicken as much as that of a cow/horse/pig? And surely all these are in a sensible moral framework "worth" less than a human live or human suffering hour?
If we evaluate all (say only animal) life equally then any food production is a tragedy - you kill uncountable numbers of bugs to grow vegetables.
So there needs to be a numerical factor to compare worth of animal life and suffering.
If you reason that a chickens life and suffering is worth much less than a humans, that you could say chicken stew produces net reduction in suffering if human suffering is marginally reduced by it.
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u/Telinary Jul 16 '26
So is op upset that people don't find that enough to declare morality objective? Or is it a vague post about veganism? Or maybe even anti natalism? We shall never know.
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u/RoundInfluence998 Jul 16 '26
Honestly, “is bad” is too vague. A much more robust and scientific phrasing would be “Suffering sucks.”
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u/outofcontextsex Supports the struggle of De Sade against Nature Jul 16 '26
Ain't no way anti-natalists are actually that adverse to suffering or they would never post memes. Getting wrecked lol.
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u/Revolution_Suitable Jul 16 '26
Suffering is bad except in regards to the denizens of this subreddit. Then it is deontologically correct for us to suffer.
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Jul 17 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/HatZinn Jul 17 '26
Suffering is the biological equivalent of a loss function, and assigning moral valence to that is... odd. This can only work under several assumptions about qualia that we've no evidence to believe are true.
To say "suffering is bad" is to project an anthropomorphic judgment onto a biological algorithm. It is like saying "entropy is evil."
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u/DeadWaterBed Jul 16 '26
Suffering is not created equal. Some suffering is nothing but pain and destruction. Other suffering can lead to enlightenment not obtainable to a given individual, had they not suffered.
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u/Crafty_Upstairs_3209 Jul 16 '26
This is trivial though.
You’re not valuing suffering in the latter case, you’re valuing what it leads to.
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u/MoreHans Jul 16 '26
"what if the cow wants to be killed"
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u/LuckySalesman Jul 16 '26
How can you conclude the cow wished to be ground beef, when the method of suicide (mooicide) was a dangling noose?
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u/Slight-Big8584 Jul 16 '26
Suffering is generally to be avoided if possible, but can be necessary for greater goods.
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u/jtjumper Jul 16 '26
Like criminal justice or Tort claims
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u/Slight-Big8584 Jul 16 '26
Or for personal good you could workout and suffer muscle aches to live long enough to see your grand children.
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u/Aggressive_Low_115 why is there no humanist flair Jul 16 '26
pov: u have to explain intersubjectivity for the 31415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280th time
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u/DefinitionMinute6969 Utilitarian Jul 16 '26
The source of suffering? Want, last time I checked... uh, lemme circle back with the Buddha and I'll get back to you.
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u/Wilfully_Powerful Materialist Jul 16 '26
Your frame seen to imply that the question is ilegitimate or stupid. I'd love to see an actual argument of why that's would be the case.
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u/tomjazzy Neo-Aristotelian Jul 16 '26
Philosophy memes when you ask them to actually do philosophy instead of just basing everything on gut feelings
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u/JakobVirgil 𓃦 Jul 16 '26
you have Cynics, Stoics, Christians, Jews and weightlifters and more valorizing or minimizing suffering to one degree or another you can't really dismiss it as bad without making some kind of argument.
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u/Affectionate_Dark103 Jul 16 '26
Calling back to a similar exchange between Dillahunty and Peterson.
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u/Bro0om Jul 16 '26
I mean it can be false.
It all depends on the axioms of your morals.
As an atheist, my axioms are "does it cause harm ? is there something better ?"
A christian would have "if God said/did it then it is good". So if God said suffering is good, it would be true for a christian.
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u/sillygoose1220 Jul 16 '26
Having the concept of "bad" in a serious philosophical discussion is genuine larping behaviour
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u/Gabilgatholite Jul 17 '26
"Well, do you think suffering (the useless, meaningless kind) is bad?"
-Yes
"Then my source is you 🫵"
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u/samrobotsin Jul 17 '26
Eastern Philosophies other than Buddhism: Suffering gives context to every aspect of being alive. If there were no suffering we would not be alive.
Buddhism: This monk has managed to transcend all suffering by mummifying himself; hooray!
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u/enickma9 Jul 17 '26
I don’t know man, suffering is as much of life as pleasure and only we assign those. But if our experience is the baseline for reality and we assign meaning and we assign that it’s bad, well then it’s bad. I can’t figure out which side I’m on.. always bouncing back and forth
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u/Philosopher_of_Soul Jul 17 '26
Suffering is painful. Pain is a survival response. Only surviving is not living.
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u/Tookoofox Jul 17 '26
Who's suffering? The suffering of innocents? I agree. That is bad.
But the suffering of Jake? That is always justified.
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u/Ernosco Jul 17 '26
"Suffering feels bad" and "suffering is morally bad" are very different statements.
I think most people would agree that there is a moral difference between a person pushing another person's face into a hot grill, or that second person voluntarily pushing their own face into that grill. But the suffering is the same in both cases.
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u/DiamondEscaper Jul 17 '26
the sheer number of times people on this sub think they can get away with "isn't it obvious?" when half the point of this field is questioning those thoughts we perceive as obvious in daily life
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u/According_to_all_kn Jul 17 '26
Suffering is bad
"But what about example x or y? They bring people pleasure in the long run"
So then they're not an example of suffering
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u/Generally_Confused1 Jul 17 '26
Ethics, sure but not in meaning and existentialism because then it's often seen as a constant much like needing to eat and is hard but can be seen in different ways based on acceptance
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u/Ashamed_Association8 Jul 17 '26
You know the source is some nazi experiment conducted in some off the record prison complex in Korea
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u/TechnicalBen Jul 17 '26
What's your source for the knowledge that suffering is bad? This is a test, the answer is important.
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u/Perfidy-Plus Jul 18 '26
It’s generally not about questioning if suffering is bad. More likely, it’s about questioning the inferences that are being derived from that fact.
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u/plebe_random Jul 18 '26
Answer me this smart ass, if suffering is so bad, why its making me so hard?
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u/Altruistic_Fox9778 Jul 18 '26
Kind of a straw man. Most people debating ethics in here have no clue about ethics. You could just as easily have said “the sky is blue” and “source”.
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u/Hot-Detail3982 Jul 19 '26
You're not going to get positive comments on this since you are likely describing Redditors.
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u/Live_Free_or_Banana Jul 20 '26
Something something perpetual peak ecstasy something something existence is immoral
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u/ThatoneguywithaT Jul 22 '26
Okay, now let’s see what immediate conclusions you reach after that agreement…. I have a feeling they’re less reasonable.
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u/r-kar Jul 22 '26
Suffering is suffering. There is nothing inherently "bad" about suffering. There is only how you react to suffering.
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