Why Do We Want What We Want Pt. 2- A Solution Found in Semantics

On further consideration, I do believe I've solved the problem I posed in my former post- that is, why intelligent people who believe a lesser intelligence brings greater happiness choose to retain their higher intelligence. It comes, I think, from a closer inspection of the concept of "welfare," and acknowledging a more precise definition.



Before I go on, I should mention that my "intriguing possibility" of "multiple endpoints" in human priorities- where information for information's sake may be valued distinctly from personal welfare- is almost certainly nonsense. The very concept of preferring something independent of emotion is entirely unthinkable- it is to prefer something independent of one's preference. There is in fact, as has been theorized for many centuries, only the one endpoint that the individual is bound to pursue- his welfare.

What led me, and perhaps others, astray was failing to distinguish "welfare" and "happiness" as non-synonymous concepts, aligning frequently but not always. Welfare, as I've defined it (and no other source I've found provides something more suitable) is the value of the state of emotion in oneself as defined by his subjective preference. To give a better visual of that idea, we can imagine welfare as a line from left to right, where the most rightward point is that state of emotion most-preferred by the subject in question at a given time, and the most leftward point the least-preferred. An increase in welfare, then, would be to move from emotion A to emotion B where B is more rightward than A, and a decrease, obviously, the opposite- but we must remember that the various emotions plotted on the line are only set in place for a given time. At time x, emotion A may be more valuable than emotion B, but at time y the two could be reversed. For example, when I choose to watch a horror movie on my own accord, it's likely because I desire to feel the emotion "fearful"-- that is, at that given time, "fearful" is ranked highly on my scale of preference, and moving from "non-fearful" to "fearful" increases my welfare (which is why I choose, rationally, to bring that about). However later that night, when I'm trying to sleep, that same fearful emotion I once desired, when it lingers, is no longer desirable. I now prefer a calm and non-fearful state of emotion so as to satisfy my need for rest.

People who consider less-intelligent people to be more happy than more-intelligent people would, I think, posit the less-intelligent as "blissfully ignorant"- and consistently so. When they imagine a life where one is always in this state of emotion, they consider that they often prefer different sorts of emotions- such as ataraxia, complex fear, fascination, and the like. They choose to maintain greater intelligence because they want to retain the capacity to feel a variety of emotions they see the less-intelligent as incapable of pursuing, even if it comes at the expense of experiencing more frequently those emotions which are almost never fancied.