Quote:But Ray, why talking only about alcohol and sex? If you are very, very thirsty and you drink a glass of water, you feel pleasure, not happiness.
If you are very thirsty and you drink a glass of water, you feel "delight" or "relief" for a slight instant and then your state of mind goes to back to the original state of moderation. Thirst is a need for water, and your body insures that you get to drink that water by making you feel pleasure at the instant you drink the water. The satisfaction afterwards could very well be the absence of that pleasure and of the pain.
Quote:I don't see how someone can be happy without pleasure.
All one has to do to "feel" happy without pleasure is to like the state of being one is in. You don't have to feel the chemical induced pleasure derived from a certain thing. Aristotle's Eudaimonia is a state of flourishing not a feeling, and I do agree with him to an extent.
Quote:If I follow you correctly, you are talking about abstaining from pleasure as much as possible in hopes of obtaining the highest level of virtue. However, I think pleasure and happiness, or "contentment" are really one in the same.
Would not following through with your idea of abstaining from pleasure eventually give you pleasure for your actions? Do you not take pleasure in your elevated virtue?
Actually, that's not quite what I'm saying.
Feel pleasure where pleasure "should" be felt and feel pain where pain "should" be felt. I think of pleasure as something chemically induced that motivates someone to a certain thing. I don't see it as something that we should base our decisions on.
My elevated virtue would give me pleasure, and rightly so, but it is not the "reason" I choose the certain path.
Perhaps my definition of pleasure conflicts with yours. Let me explain my stance thoroughly:
Pleasure and pain are "feelings" that are chemically induced to motivate someone to something or to avoid something. These feelings do not last. Our normal state of satisfaction is absence of the feeling pleasure and pain; one can associate this state as the "highest pleasure" but it is technically not a "feeling" of pleasure but that of contentment.
Now, what I am suggesting is that we guide our feelings of pleasure and pain to the appropriate things so as to live rightly.
I really don't think that we live for pleasure. Sometimes I feel oddly more in touch with reality when I am depressed.
Quote:So the real question, Ray - is how do you know that you are happy - without feeling happy?
If you are satisfied with yourself then you "feel" happy.
Hope I clarified...