Saturday, August 15, 2009

"Beautiful Liar!" Is an Okay Beyonce-Shakira song

But I'm not so sure about the "guilty pleasure" saying that some of my friends say.

I had a lot of time the other day to think about it, and I think there are various stances and reasons for why I am against it.

First, this seems like a cognitive-consonance managing statement. I'm concerned with the "just one" mentality because of the fact that large-scale problems can often be rooted in small scale, repeated negative habits. From anecdotal experience, people accept this, what we call a slippery slope, camel's nose argument, or a wedge argument.

The argument generally reads that if you accept one instance of the problem, you might accept more instances of the problem later on.

It's called a slippery slope argument because of the comparison of a person on top of a hill who takes a step on something slippery will slide down that hill. This reveals something, however, that if we "nip it in the bud" while it is small, we can do it while it is still in control. Those familiar with the Petite Prince will know the baobab reference: that the prince had to take care of the baobabs when they were small seeds, or they would ruin his home by becoming big trees.
My point here is to explain slippery slope, but also point out that there is a lack of volition; or an increase in the resignation against a problem because it seems insurmountable.

It's called a wedge argument when we phrase the problem as increasing incrementally over time, as if going from something smaller and smaller toward something larger and larger. Lastly, the camel's nose is a phrase that says if you let the camel have a smell of the tent, there will be nothing to stop the whole camel from coming in.

The point is that guilty pleasures are just the type of thing to be wedge argued, so to speak. Because they are being denoted by being scoffed at, read: dismissed as a guilty pleasure, they are small things that could lead to big trouble.

A survey of guilty pleasures leads us to a similar conclusion: cigarettes, fatty foods, drug use, and so on. These are good as small amounts, but terrible in large amounts. I disagree that moderation is the key, here. Saying that moderation is the key is an oversimplification of the problem. One time when we were talking about a local drunkard, I told my friend Joe that some people just need to hit rock bottom. Joe said, "Yeah Jake, and for some people, rock bottom is dying." Of course too much alcohol will kill you; but that's because it is too much. We have misplaced our focus from the problem if we have to assume the scenario of dying.

Likewise, from an ethical standpoint: some things can be good, bad, or neutral. A certain song may be pleasant to the music-lover, unpleasant to the music-hater, and neutral to the deaf person.

The next point is that the term "guilty pleasure" is a mismatch in the first place. Gilbert Ryle, in his Concept of Mind argued that pleasure is not the opposite of pain. They are on different scales, and should be taken that way. Somewhere along the way this leads us to the conclusion that guilty is an ethical standpoint, whereas pleasure is perhaps above or separate from ethics. Certain actions that are ethically neutral, have little ethical significance, or just do not factor into contemporary ethics (so far as we know) in the same way that other issues do are called supererogatory.

Guilt is an ethical standard. Pleasure is a supererogatory standard. For for illustrative examples, murder is ethically wrong, pleasure is something we get from eating chocolates.

In our language, guilt also has a connotative meaning that it is an imperative (and here I must say I am speaking from my collected experience, I can't cite a source). Imperatives are the should part of our language. In explaining them to us in French class, we were taught that they are the part of the language that says "Study!" or "Etudier!"

When I say that guilt has connotation of an imperative, you might know what I mean from your own experience. Whenever someone is guilty, they are supposed to repay the crime. This is from both Utilitarian and Retributivist standpoints.

Pleasure implies something else.

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