Hedonic pluralism is the thesis that 'pleasure' cannot be given a single, all-embracing definition. In this paper I criticize the reasoning people use to support this thesis and suggest some plausible all-encompassing analyses that easily avoid the kinds of objections people raise to all-encompassing analyses.

In this essay I support, develop and apply a theory of hedonic value. These tasks are interwoven, but principally, I support the theory in chapters 1-4, develop it in chapters 5 and 6, and apply it to a challenging cluster of problems in chapter 7. ;Sentient experience, I suggest in chapter 1, provides key evidence for founding ethics: a severely painful experience gives its subject evidence that it's bad in some way. Moreover, similar considerations, as well as analogies, support (...) thinking that all unpleasures are bad in some way and all pleasures are good in some way. But what type of value and disvalue do they have ? ;Experiences that are pleasant or unpleasant are intrinsically so . so, their normative import doesn't derive from extrinsic motivational or affective conditions that their pleasantness or unpleasantless might be thought to consist in. In chapter 3 I extend my argument in chapter 1 to the conclusion that pleasures and unpleasures have agent-neutral moral significance. Hence, I have just as much basic reason to promote your hedonic well-being as mine. And even the pleasure of potential persons matters, I argue in chapter 4; the fact that a person would feel pleasure is a reason to create her. ;In chapter 5 I argue that being hedonically better than is not a transitive relation. With this result in hand, I offer several snippets of advice and a host of principles in chapter 6 for assessing the hedonic value of states of affairs. Along the way I argue against a higher/lower distinction for pleasures and for the thesis that pleasures have value when undeserved or taken in bad objects. Finally. in chapter 7 I show that the theory of hedonic value I've developed entails a viable set of solutions to the problems Derek Parfit poses for moral theory in Reasons and Persons. ;Pleasures, I conclude, are intrinsically good and unpleasures are intrinsically bad. (shrink)

We live in times where it is possible to control our emotions using biomedical means – for example by taking pills that make us feel better. This chapter discusses one worry about the biomedical enhancement of mood. It is a worry that seems to play an important role in more familiar objections to biomedical enhancement of mood, such as the objection that it would lead to inauthenticity. The worry is that the use of positive mood enhancers will corrupt emotional lives. (...) Ethical questions about the biomedical enhancement of mood are often really questions about our affective reasons. Negative emotions typically feel bad, positive ones typically feel good. Here our hedonic reasons come into direct competition with affective reasons. Those who entirely dismiss affective reasons, or at least think that negative affective reasons are extremely weak, are likely to see little problem with positive mood enhancers. (shrink)

Do any nonhuman animals have hedonically valenced experiences not directly caused by stimuli in their current environment? Do they, like us humans, experience anticipated or previously experienced pains and pleasures as respectively painful and pleasurable? We review evidence from comparative neuroscience about hippocampus-dependent simulation in relation to this question. Hippocampal sharp-wave ripples and theta oscillations have been found to instantiate previous and anticipated experiences. These hippocampal activations coordinate with neural reward and fear centers as well as sensory and cortical areas (...) in ways that are associated with conscious episodic mental imagery in humans. Moreover, such hippocampal “re- and preplay” has been found to contribute to instrumental decision making, the learning of value representations, and the delay of rewards in rats. The functional and structural features of hippocampal simulation are highly conserved across mammals. This evidence makes it reasonable to assume that internally triggered experiences of hedonic valence (IHVs) are pervasive across (at least) all mammals. This conclusion has important welfare implications. Most prominently, IHVs act as a kind of “welfare multiplier” through which the welfare impacts of any given experience of pain or pleasure are increased through each future retrieval. However, IHVs also have practical implications for welfare assessment and cause prioritization. (shrink)

Nearly everyone prefers pain to be in the past rather than the future. This seems like a rationally permissible preference. But I argue that appearances are misleading, and that future-biased preferences are in fact irrational. My argument appeals to trade-offs between hedonic experiences and other goods. I argue that we are rationally required to adopt an exchange rate between a hedonic experience and another type of good that stays fixed, regardless of whether the hedonic experience is in (...) the past or future. (shrink)

This article reviews the development of hedonic value of life as a remedy in wrongful death and personal injury tort cases. Hedonic value estimates the worth of lost pleasures of living in an effort to compensate for intangible enjoyments, such as quality of education and environmental standards. This remedy goes well beyond the traditional approach which has compensated primarily for lost earnings and other expenses directly related to the tortious conduct. Most of the attention regarding hedonic value (...) as a relatively new tort remedy has focused on its application in non-business litigation. However, given the significant damage awards in recent cases, it is likely that this economic theory will arise in commercial litigation, especially products liability cases. The business community must be conversant with the ethical issues raised by this novel tort remedy in order to fashion a reasoned and socially acceptable contra-position. (shrink)

The paper begins with a well-known objection to the idea that reasons for action are provided by desires. The objection holds that since desires are based on reasons (first premise), which they transmit but to which they cannot add (second premise), they cannot themselves provide reasons for action. In the paper I investigate an attack that has recently been launched against the first premise of the argument by David Sobel. Sobel invokes a counterexample: hedonic desires, i.e. (...) the likings and dislikings of our present conscious states. The aim of the paper is to defend the premise by bringing the alleged counterexample under its scope. I first point out that reference to hedonic desires as a counterexample presupposes a particular understanding of pleasure, which we might call desire-based. In response, following Sobel, I draw up two alternative accounts, the phenomenological and the tracking views of pleasure. Although Sobel raises several objections to both accounts, I argue in detail that the phenomenological view is not as implausible as he claims it to be, whereas the tracking view, on its best version advocated by Thomas Scanlon, is an instance of the phenomenological view and is therefore also defensible. (shrink)

Our aim in this essay is to make some reflections on John Stuart Mill’s utilitarian ethics’ possible contributions about the discussion on reasons for action. We tried to do this mainly exposing the arguments from the chapters “What utilitarianism is” and “Of the ultimate sanction of the principle of Utility” from his “Utilitarianism”. Our efforts for this attempt are spent at three different ways: in the first two, we tried to reconstruct the argument put forward by the Victorian philosopher (...) and, from this basis, the third way in turn consists in postulate some thoughts about these issues that in according to our observations can be asked in order to comprehend the structuring of human agency. In summary we argue that for Stuart Mill rationality of action constitutes itself in that: if happiness is the greatest good, individuals act for their own happiness, and because of that they seek their own good; however, as this is not an agent-relative perspective but insofar a neutral-agent one, this reasoning must be extended to the general scope. Thus, understanding happiness in the sense that it is a design of every single human act, Stuart Mill consequentialism argues regarding the whole general amount of happiness and not only subjective self-realization of a particular human being. Actions, therefore, which in the personal domain do not aim at anything other than the happiness or good of the own individual him/herself, have a rational justification to be guided in order to what promotes the good or general happiness, thus characterizing the principle of hedonic utility as a moral rule and reason for action as humanity's pattern of action. (shrink)

Sidgwick argued that utilitarianism and egoism were in conflict, that neither theory was better justified than the other, and concluded that there was a and all that remained to him was. The dualism argument introduced by Sidgwick is an extremely powerful sceptical argument that no theory of ethics is rationally required: it cannot be shown that a moral sceptic or an egoist ought to accept the moral theory, otherwise she is unreasonable. I explain two ways in which the significance of (...) the dualism argument has been underestimated. First, I suggest that a hybrid theory such as utilitarianism with an egoist bias is not a solution to the dualism. Second, I argue that the dualism argument is not restricted to a conflict between hedonic egoism and utilitarianism, but applies to any attempt to show that a theory of ethics is rationally required. (shrink)

Reeve's new book will be hailed by scholars and prove welcome both to senior undergraduates in classics and to graduates in philosophy who also face a major examination on the Nicomachean Ethics. This masterpiece of Aristotle can at first overwhelm us with a great bundle of partly ordinary, partly technical uses of such terms as theos, phronësis, endoxa, nous, epistëmë, eudaimonia, phainomena, philia, aporiai, and hëdonë. Reeve tries generously to clarify all these and more, also to relate their meanings to (...) each other. Scholars with whom he most likes to interact include J. L. Ackrill, J. M. Cooper, T. H. Irwin, Martha C. Nussbaum, and Richard Kraut. Behind the exposition of the epistemological, metaphysical, and psychological ideas in the Nicomachean Ethics, Reeve challenges a traditional understanding of Aristotle's view as involving a radical chörismos between scientific knowledge and ethical knowledge. Reeve complains that in contemporary literatures the difference between these types of knowledge is exaggerated and their similarity is to a large extent ignored. Reeve argues that most of the sciences--notably physics, biology, psychology--do not offer entirely unconditional scientific knowledge. Rather, like ethical knowledge, they constitute knowledge with the status of cognizing hös epi to polu. (shrink)

As Kant claimed in the Groundwork, and as the idea has been developed by Korsgaard 1997, Bratman 1987, and Broome 2002. This formulation is agnostic on whether reasons for ends derive from our desiring those ends, or from the relation of those ends to things of independent value. However, desire-based theorists may deny, against Hubin 1999, that their theory is a combination of a principle of instrumental transmission and the principle that reasons for ends are provided by desires. (...) Instead, they may say, there is just one principle, a principle of, if you will, instrumental transmutation: if one desires the end, then one has reason to take the means. See the discussion of General Production, in section 8, for a doubt about this. (shrink)

The 'no-supervenience' theorem (Reason, 2019; Reason and Shah, 2021) is a proof that no fully self-aware system can entirely supervene on any objectively observable system. I here present a simple, non-technical summary of the proof and demonstrate its implications for four separate theories of consciousness: the 'property dualism' theory of David Chalmers; the 'reflexive monism' of Max Velmans; Galen Strawson's 'realistic monism'; and the 'illusionism' of Keith Frankish. It is shown that all are ruled out in their current form by (...) the no-supervenience theorem, except for Chalmers' theory, which I show requires humans to behave irrationally. (shrink)

We offer a model of moral reform and regeneration that involves a wrong-doer making two movements: on the one hand, he identifies with himself as the one who did the act, while he also intentionally moves away from that self (or set of desires and intentions) and moves toward a transformed identity. We see this model at work in the formal practice of contrition and reform in Christian and Buddhist rites. This paper is part of a broader project we are (...) undertaking on the philosophy of forgiveness. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Reincarnation/Rebirth Karma Causality Problem of Evil Determinism, Freedom, and Moral Responsibility Karma and Release Transfer of Merit Recent Developments Works cited.

Conscious macrostates are usually assumed to be emergent from the underlying physical microstates comprising the brain and nervous system of biological organisms. However, a major problem with this assumption is that consciousness is essentially nonmeasurable unlike all other proven emergent properties of physical systems. In an earlier paper, using a no-go theorem, it was shown that conscious states cannot be comprised of processes that are physical in nature (Reason, 2019). Combining this result with another unrelated work on causal emergence in (...) physical systems (Hoel, Albantakis and Tononi, 2013), we show in this paper that conscious macrostates are not emergent from physical systems and they also do not supervene on physical microstates. An important implication of our work is that there must be some form of violation of energy conservation in biological systems that are conscious. (shrink)