Vicarism: Glossary
- Artificial Enjoyment (AE)
- The study of whether artifacts can experience pleasure or be a source of vicarious pleasure. A fundamental question in AE is whether vicarious enjoyment is evidence that the object of vicarious enjoyment is sentient. See also Touring Machine.
- bogart
- verb transitive. To enjoy such a large quantity of a limited resource that others are deprived of the direct enjoyment of that resource—thereby possibly reducing the overall vicarious enjoyment of the resource. Whether bogarting is proper behavior is an issue that divides the fundamentalist Vicarists from the utilovicarists. See also Vicaromarxist.
- Epiphanatic
- A Vicarist neophyte who has just awakened (enthusiastically) to the essential truth of Vicarism.
- Freudeschadist
- One for whom others' enjoyment or good fortune causes sadness. Freudeschadists are often envious or jealous.
- Freudeschmertz
- Experiencing pain as the result of enjoyment, one's own or other's. Freudeschadists often have freudeschmertz.
- Invicarator
- One who derives enjoyment from supporting Vicarists, enabling Vicarists to perform vicaristic acts. Invicarators do things like crewing for 100-mile mountain runs.
- Ipsovicarist
- One who enjoys his or her own enjoyment, but only at a distance.
- Positivicarism
- A form of verificationist Vicarism that holds that an act is "vicaristically meaningful" only if there is a finite procedure for conclusively determining whether it is pleasurable. This is related to the notion of the Touring Machine.
- Protovicarist
- One who is in fact doing things for others' vicarious enjoyment, without realizing it.
- Protractor
- One who maximizes others' vicarious enjoyment by maximizing the duration of his own enjoyment.
- Schadenfreudean
- One who enjoys others' unhappiness or misfortune. Sadists are often Schadenfreudeans.
- Schizofreudean
- One who is removed from his or her own enjoyment, and thus does not enjoy it. One can be a Vicarist and a Schizofreudean, but it limits the effectiveness of the practice: vicarious enjoyment requires enjoyment.
- Spaβtic
- One who believes that all enjoyment is fun—a deep philosophical error.
- Strict Utilovicarist
- One who believes that one should act to provide the greatest enjoyment for the greatest number, rather than merely the greatest opportunity for enjoyment for the greatest number. C.f. utilovicarist.
- Sui generous
- A doubly effective vicarist practice consisting of (i) being generous to oneself, whereby others may experience generosity vicariously, and thereby (ii) experiencing gratitude for one's own generosity, whereby others may experience gratitude vicariously: double-double enjoyment. Sui generosity is a subtle and powerful observance.
- Touring Machine
- A mathematical idealization of a device that can follow a finite set of simple instructions to cruise around looking for enjoyment. A fundamental question in artificial enjoyment (AE) is whether a sufficiently sophisticated program for a Touring Machine could be indistinguishable from a human for the purpose of giving others vicarious enjoyment. Another issue is whether a Touring Machine could experience vicarious enjoyment. Some Positivicarists believe that there is a finite program that can determine whether any particular act is enjoyable. It is a theorem that in any system sufficiently complex as to include any three of the five senses, some enjoyable acts cannot be proved to be enjoyable in any finite number of steps, providing a theoretical demonstration that Positivicarists are missing out.
- Transvicarist
- One who enjoys his or her own enjoyment, but only indirectly, through vicarious enjoyment of others' vicarious enjoyment of his or her enjoyment. Transvicarists are a subgroup of ipsovicarists.
- Utilovicarist
- A Vicarist who believes that one should act to provide the greatest opportunity for vicarious enjoyment for the greatest number. A utilo-Vicarist justification for bogarting might be, "I appreciate chantrelles more than anybody else at the table: If I eat them all, there is greater opportunity for vicarious enjoyment in the world than if I share. Therefore, I should eat all the chantrelles." C.f. strict Utilovicarist, Vicaromarxist.
- Vicarist
- One who practices Vicarism: One who selflessly dedicates his or her life to maximizing others' vicarious enjoyment
- Vicaromarxist
- One who believes that society should follow the maxim, From each according to his ability to each according to his ability to enjoy.
Last modified 4 October 2010. statistics.berkeley.edu/~stark/vicarismGloss.htm