Reducing biological traits to "just biology" is wrong

15 Aug, 2025

I was reading Ikigai by Sebastian Marshall. The section where Marshall explains why he doesn't consider happiness to be one of his life goals rubbed me the wrong way, but I didn't know why. Then I realized it was during the many times he says,

"...who gives a shit about having more serotonin and dopamine in your brain?"

We are meat. Any individual person's experience is experienced within their meat suit. That doesn't trivialize the individual's experience, it makes it so that sensation, neurons firing, and chemicals interacting actually is the entirety of individual experience.

I think it's because the Boltzmann brain thought experiment was very striking to me.
All of my perceived existence is due to my flesh.¹ Or maybe I'm more sensual, or attuned with my feelings, or something like that, so I emphasize physicality and sensation more.

Or maybe it's because I think that physicality of the flesh is a philosophical triviality, like any theory that we're living in a simulation. It shouldn't really exist in your argument about what ideals are best. Who cares if we don't really exist? The ideals you choose are not inherent with meaning. We live for a smörgåsbord of satisfaction, virtuosity, and, yes, happiness, and then we die.