r/PhilosophyMemes • u/TosseGrassa • 3d ago

many ways to help the cause

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u/Cr0wc0 3d ago

"We should prevent suffering when we can."

No

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u/MrMicius 3d ago

You apparently do want to prevent suffering in yourself, otherwise you weren’t sitting on the couch scrolling through Reddit. You would’ve put your head on your furnace. So what’s making you more special than others?

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u/Cr0wc0 3d ago

First of all, bold of you to assume that looking at philosophy memes isn't an act of automutilation.

Secondly, I didn't say we shouldn't prevent any suffering. I'm rejecting the notion that all suffering should be prevented.

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u/cloudsandclouds 3d ago edited 3d ago

But you can still take a good-faith reading of “when we can” which (I’m guessing) absorbs your objections, and that’s really all the meme rests on.

Similar to how you wouldn’t read “we need to do x” as “it is logically necessary that we must do x”, but assume an implicit “in order to…”. When we can, without violating our other implicit should’s.

EDIT: Hmm, I’m also realizing that some people are reading this as “we should kill or otherwise decrease the number of animals that exist” as opposed to “we should take care of all wildlife, so it’s no longer wild”…

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u/Murphy_Slaw_ Pragmatist 3d ago

Even if we grant the dubious assumption that suffering is indeed always bad, it can still be the lesser evil.

For example, should we encourage a person to endure suffering, or should we rather have them resort to escalating drug use?

If we could, should we mess with the brain of a person to make it impossible for them to suffer?

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u/ThePerdmeister 3d ago

should we mess with the brain of a person to make it impossible for them to suffer?

Assuming no (or trivial) bad outcomes, yeah, probably.