>>14367533>What do you believe happens in your brain when you actively choose some ascetic option?Outside the realm of my (and probably all of science's) knowledge.
>You feel pleasure that you are choosing an option that you believe has better 'pleasure payoff' in the long run.Lol. Tell that to the millions of soldiers who gave their lives and health for some external cause. Surely running into enemy machine gun fire means lots of pleasure!
I think you are confusing two very important concepts and emotions here, one is raw pleasure, e.g. eating very bad food, making awful choices about how you spend your time, etc. And higher pleasure, eudamonia, which really is just equivalent to virtuous living and as such *can not be acquired for it's own sake*. If you make that distinction, which very clearly exists, your whole moral theory crumbles.
What I *really* dislike about hedonists like you is how disingenuous and self fulfilling your entire theory is, apriori all motivation is pleasure and you will ascribe the exact same motivation to two entirely opposite actions, even under the same circumstances. It is just true by definition and reduces pleasure to a totally meaningless term while telling us nothing about anything.
>Stoicism and Asceticism are compatible in this system by denying short-term pleasures as they are harmful in the long run.NO. This, again, assumes that all motivation is entirely egoistic, something both philosophies reject entirely.
