Everyday Systems

Hi all,
My first post here, though I've been lurking (and no-s-ing) for about two months. It's going well, by the way- I'm a 5'11" man, down 16 pounds from 263 to 247. I've been lifting weights fairly seriously during that time, so that weight loss may include a few pounds of added muscle.

I'm an academic librarian and former bookseller (hence my screen name), and came across the following discussion of "satisficing." Satisficing, according to Wikipedia, is a concept used in economics and choice theory, meaning "a decision-making strategy that attempts to meet criteria for adequacy, rather than to identify an optimal solution." In other words, sometimes "good enough" is fine. The following excerpt is long, and I'm not sure I buy his argument, but given his use of snacking as an example, I thought it might be of interest to some.

From: Beyond optimizing By Michael A. Slote (Harvard University Press, 1989, pg. 10-11).

Imagine that it is midafternoon; you had a good lunch, and you are not now hungry; neither, on the other hand, are you sated. You would enjoy a candy bar or Coca-Cola, if you had one, and there is in fact, right next to your desk, a refrigerator stocked with such snacks and provided gratis by the company for which you work. Realizing this, do you, then, necessarily take and consume a snack? If you do not, is that necessarily because you are afraid to spoil your dinner, because you are on a diet, or because you are too busy? I think not. You may simply not feel the need for any such snack. You turn down a good thing, a sure enjoyment, because you are perfectly satisfied as you are. Most of us are often in situations of this sort, and many of us would often do the same thing. We are not boundless optimizers or maximizers, but are sometimes (more) modest in our desires or needs. But such modesty, such moderation, is arguably neither irrational nor unreasonable on our part.

Of course, moderation has been exalted as a prime virtue in many religious and philosophical traditions. But when, for example, the Epicurians emphasized the rationality of moderation in the pursuit of pleasure, they recommended modesty in one’s desires only as a means to an overall more pleasurable, or less unpleasant, life, and in the example mentioned above, moderation is not functioning as a means to greater overall satisfaction or pleasures. One is not worried about ruining one’s figure or spoiling one’s dinner, and the moderation exemplified is thus quite different from the instrumental virtue recommended by the Epicurians. The sort of moderation I am talking about then, is not for the sake of anything else.

But then isn’t the moderate individual who is content with less a kind of ascetic? Not necessarily. An ascetic is someone who, with certain limits, minimizes his enjoyments or satisfactions; he deliberately leaves himself with less, unsatisfied. The moderate individual, on the other hand, is someone content with (what he considers) a reasonable amount of enjoyment; he wants to be satisfied and up to a certain point he wants more enjoyments rather than fewer, to be better off, rather than worse off; but there is a point beyond which he has no desire, and even refuses, to go. There is a space between asceticism and the attempt to maximize pleasure or enjoyment- do the best one can for oneself- a space occupied by the habit of moderation. And because such moderation is not a form of asceticism, it is difficult to see why it must count as irrational from the standpoint of egoistic or extra-moral individual rationality.

Welcome, Bookman!

I trained as a librarian myself and hoped to be an academic (or reference) librarian, but somehow would up in technical services and then computer programming. But I could easily see going back to my original calling some day (I may have to! These new kids we're hiring can code circles around me ).

I think I have to digest your excerpt a little more for it to fully sink in, but the last line in particular struck me:

The sort of moderation I am talking about then, is not for the sake of anything else.

While I'm sure most of us here were initially drawn to no-s "for the sake of something else," I at least have been surprised at how much of a joy "in itself" my practice of moderation has been. And I don't think I would have believed it if I hadn't experienced it, I would have dismissed it as airy philosophical nonsense. Though I guess an Epicurian might counter that what I'm enjoying isn't the moderation itself, but the greater joy in eating, etc. that it makes possible. I certainly enjoy the IDEA that I'm behaving moderately. It's difficult to tease it all apart.

So I'll hedge my position and say I now practice moderation both for the sake of something else and because I view it as an intrinsic good in itself, which I guess, according to Plato (I've just started reading the Republic with some friends) puts it in the "highest class" of good (the No S Diet endorsed by Plato!!!):

From:

http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.3.ii.html

Let me ask you now: --How would you arrange goods --are there not some which we welcome for their own sakes, and independently of their consequences, as, for example, harmless pleasures and enjoyments, which delight us at the time, although nothing follows from them?

I agree in thinking that there is such a class, I replied.
Is there not also a second class of goods, such as knowledge, sight, health, which are desirable not only in themselves, but also for their results?

Certainly, I said.
And would you not recognize a third class, such as gymnastic, and the care of the sick, and the physician's art; also the various ways of money-making --these do us good but we regard them as disagreeable; and no one would choose them for their own sakes, but only for the sake of some reward or result which flows from them?

There is, I said, this third class also. But why do you ask?
Because I want to know in which of the three classes you would place justice?

In the highest class, I replied, --among those goods which he who would be happy desires both for their own sake and for the sake of their results.

Gotta disagree with Plato about exercise being merely in the first class of good -- he obviously never tried shovelglove

Reinhard

No S- the Ideal Platonic Diet (TM)! That's great. I'm no expert, but it seems to me that enjoying a good, such as moderation, for its own sake, is a common philosophical idea, Epicurians aside. Aristotle, for instance, apparently insists on this quality to define the highest good. Slote seems to be defending this idea from economists, who insist that we are rational actors who will always seek to maximize our pleasure, directly or indirectly. Off the top of my head, I have two problems with Slote's (and Aristotle's) argument.

One- the pleasure or reward sought when behaving moderately might be the satisfaction of confirming or maintaining your identity. A psychologist might say that you derive satisfaction from building a stable ego: "I'm a moderate kind of person." A sociologist like Erving Goffman might emphasize that you also present this self to the world. As you say," I certainly enjoy the IDEA that I'm behaving moderately." Through habit, moderation may operate subconsciously much of the time, but it would still be instrumental in identity maintenance.

Two- moderation is not an absolute; it is always relative to biological needs and social norms. For instance, I might attempt to become a raw foods fruitarian. I actually met one once- he enjoyed a lunch of six or eight apples. From a human point of view, this is an extreme diet. For a horse, or a chimpanzee, it would be normal and moderate. If this seems like a silly comparison, consider the following true story from Gary Taube's Good Calories, Bad Calories (Anchor Books, 2008, pg. 320-24).

"...Harvard anthropologist-turned-Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson.... [s]pent a decade eating nothing but meat among the Inuit....[who] considered vegetables and fruit "not proper human food."....In the winter of 1928, Stefansson and Anderson became the subjects in a yearlong experiment that was intended to settle the meat diet controversy....supervised by a committee of a dozen respected nutritionists, anthropologists and physicians....[T]hey [ate]only meat...for one year...."Both men were in good physical condition at the end of the observation....There was no subjective or objective loss of physical or mental vigor."

My point here is not to debate the merits of an all-meat diet. It is that a socially normal, moderate diet among the Inuit was (and would still be) considered so extreme and bizarre to an American audience, that it would provoke a study to prove that it would not kill you. One man's moderation is another man's death wish.

Anyway, it seems I've switched from silent lurker to long-winded bore, so I'll stop for now. Thanks, Reinhard.

I agree that moderation is relative. The Buddha believed that his approach walked a middle path between unrestrained indulgence on one hand and the equally extreme ascetic practices of the day. His idea of moderate eating? One meal a day, eaten before noon. Makes No S look decadent!