That all pleasure is good and all pain bad in itself is an eternally true ethical principle. The common claim that some pleasure is not good, or some pain not bad, is mistaken. Strict particularism (ethical decisions must be made case by case; there are no sound universal normative principles) and relativism (all good and bad are relative to society) are among the ethical theories we may refute through an appeal to pleasure and pain. (...) Daniel Dennett, Philippa Foot, R M Hare, Gilbert Harman, Immanuel Kant, J. L. Mackie, and Jean-Paul Sartre are among the many philosophers addressed. (shrink)

The prelims comprise: Pleasure as a Good Aristotle on Pleasure Limitations and Drawbacks The Coherence of Aristotle's Treatment of Pleasure and Pain Conclusions Notes Reference.

Traditional hedonists like Epicurus, Bentham and Sidgwick were quantitative hedonists who assumed that pleasures and pains differ, not just from each other, but also from other pleasures and pains only in such quantitatively measurable ways as intensity, duration, and nearness or remoteness in time. They also differ with respect to their sources or causes. John Stuart Mill introduced an interesting and important complication into the modern theory of hedonism by insisting that pleasures also differ qualitatively as well as quantitatively. This (...) article thoroughly and critically examines Mill’s attempt to explain what qualitative differences might mean, and it proposes, defends, and extends a plausible theory of qualitative differences. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Pleasure and Pain in LiteratureOliver ConollyWhy do we enjoy the depiction, in imaginative literature, of situations that typically arouse negative emotions such as pity, sadness, and horror? One view, which aims to dissolve rather than solve the problem, is that we do not enjoy them at all. According to this theory—the pure pain theory—the problem does not arise in the first place. But the theory must (...) explain why we chose to undergo such painful experiences. Are we simply aesthetic masochists? The pure pleasure theory, by contrast, denies that there are any painful aspects to our experience of such literature. This theory must explain how we can take pure delight in the literary depiction of suffering. Are we simply aesthetic sadists? Lying between both extremes is the hybrid theory, which asserts that there are both painful and pleasant aspects of such experiences. The hybrid theory must specify which aspects of the experience are painful and which pleasant. In this paper a version of the hybrid theory is advanced and defended.IThe pure pleasure theory denies that we feel painful emotional identification with fictional characters. Why take this view? One reason is that it is a way of resolving the paradox of fiction, as formulated by Colin Radford.1 The paradox asserts that there is an inconsistency between the propositions that: (1) we have emotions for fictional characters, (2) we know that they do not exist, (3) it is irrational to have emotions for non-existent objects. Each proposition seems plausible, yet one must be false. Whilst most of the participants in the debate have attacked the notion that feelings for fictions are irrational, some have [End Page 305] denied that we have such feelings in the first place. One intuition guiding this denial is that the depiction of a fictional horrible event is likely to be less painful than the depiction of an identical but real event. In other words, the mere fictionality of an event is liable, by itself, to diminish the pain we are liable to feel at its depiction in comparison with a real event: I label this the fictionality gap. If the fictionality gap exists, it applies across the board, to the sufferings of Pip in Great Expectations as well as those of King Lear. The characters in those works are fictional, and so the lessening of the pain we feel at their fates must, if the fictionality gap holds, hold merely in virtue of the fact that they are fictional.It has often been noted—rather than argued, but this is question of impression rather than logic—that one would feel more affected were the stories real rather than fictional. The kinds of events depicted in King Lear—ugly struggles for power, the manipulation of the naïve, the impotence of the good, inconsolable grief—are not in themselves other-worldly, and can be imagined taking place in reality. However it is much more difficult to imagine King Lear in its full particularity taking place in the real world, given the theatricality of its form and language. In order to imagine King Lear as real, one would have to rob it of Shakespeare's poetry, which is other-worldly in its eloquence. French proponents of the Three Unities thought that theatre should aim at, among other things, verisimilitude, but never overcame the problem that the fact that characters in French theatre speak in rhyming couplets might detract from that verisimilitude, which it clearly does. This worry about the transplantability of King Lear into the real world appears to be less of a problem in relation to realist novels, which, as their appellation suggests, are easier to imagine taking place in the real world. Not only is the language used in realist novels less exalted than that used in tragedies, the situations such novels depict tend to be more likely to occur. Clearly, the realist novel is capable of depicting horrible or unpleasant events. About such novels, say, Madame Bovary, it seems to make sense to ask ourselves how we would feel about them if we read them as true stories.I would like however to question the very intelligibility of the... (shrink)

Recent results from the neurosciences demonstrate that pleasure and pain are not two symmetrical poles of a single scale of experience but in fact two different types of experiences altogether, with dramatically different contributions to well-being. These differences between pleasure and pain and the general finding that “the bad is stronger than the good” have important implications for our treatment of nonhuman animals. In particular, whereas animal experimentation that causes suffering might be justified if it leads (...) to the prevention of more suffering, it can never by justified merely by leading to increased levels of happiness. (shrink)

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

"Contents "--"Introduction: Diving into the Wreck" -- "1. Trial of the Archangels" -- "2. Epicurus at the Scaffold" -- "3. Nasty, British, and Short" -- "4. The Monkey in the Panopticon" -- "5. In Which We Wonder Who Is Crazy" -- "6. Epicurus Unchained" -- "Afterword: The Restoration of the Monarchy" -- "Notes" -- "Bibliography.

Many ethicists writing about well-being have assumed that claims made about the relationship between pleasure and well-being carry similar implications for the relationship between pain and well-being. I argue that the current neuroscience of pleasure and pain does not support this assumption. In particular, I argue that the experiences of pleasure and pain are mediated by different cognitive systems, that they make different contributions to human behavior in general and to well-being in particular, and (...) that they bear fundamentally different relationships to our motivational systems and hence desires. I further argue that though there is ample evidence that pleasure can be dissociated from appetitive motivation, there is no compelling evidence suggesting that the unpleasantness of pain can be dissociated from the aversive motivational force of pains. I consider several objections to this claim, including Jennifer Corns’ recent arguments that the unpleasantness of pain experience can be dissociated from the motivational signal of pain, before briefly drawing some lessons for ethics. (shrink)

This is another addition to the already abundant literature concerning the meaning of pleasure and pain. Yet, this book manages to be highly original on material which has been debated many times. Further, Cowan has profited from the arguments preceding his. Cowan's book falls into two general parts. The first contains a serious attempt to answer questions concerning the meaning of the concepts of pleasure and pain. A certain dialectic is apparent in his argument in that (...) his solution consists in an attempt to reconcile two contradicting positions; the "received doctrine" in which the terms 'pleasure' and 'pain' name sensations or feelings which are conceived as "mental denizens" known only to the subject, and those theories in which pleasure and pain are identifiable with some sort of objective criteria, i.e., behavior or brain patterns. Cowan concedes that each view contains a part of the truth and tries to preserve both the private character of these concepts as well as their public aspect. Secondly, Cowan undertakes a defense of hedonism against two of the most disastrous objections to it. His defense in both cases rests on his contention that the classical hedonists understood the terms 'pleasure' and 'pain' in a highly technical sense quite different from our ordinary uses of these terms. Cowan argues the original thesis that these hedonists were not defining 'good' by 'pleasure' but were taking a meta-ethical position regarding the use of evaluative terms. Cowan further argues that the psychologist B. F. Skinner is a contemporary exponent of psychological hedonism and then considers the value of psychological hedonism in the form of Skinner's thesis of "operant conditioning" as an explanation of human behavior. These positions are controversial and the reader will have to decide for himself how sound the arguments for them are but Cowan has added fresh light to this perplexing material.--E. J. C. (shrink)

In this volume, G. Marian Kinget's classic work, On Being Human, can be read for the first time in light of a second, previously unpublished work, Pleasure And Pain. Taken together, these two works offer a new generation of readers a comprehensive picture of the insights, principles, and goals of humanistic psychology. On Being Human, Kinget's pioneering work, which arose from the original humanistic revolution in psychology, systematically describes the characteristics that make human beings different from all other (...) forms of life. In this work, Kinget explores man in his full nature not solely as a biological organism modified by experience and culture. She presents a person as a symbolic entity capable of pondering his existence, and lending it meaning and direction. Man is the only animal who knowingly exists in space and time, manifesting transcendental and metaphysical concern throughout history and culture. On Being Human presents the fundamentals of any valid approach to psychology as well as to other fields concerned with the individuality of the human being. It describes the specific human capacities for reflective thought and declarative language, and it discusses the unique ability of humans to devise culture and question origins. Pleasure and Pain considers the interdependence of human pleasure and pain. This idea, which leads to unnecessary fears and unwarranted expectations, goes unrecognized in a contemporary western society focused on the accumulation of pleasure without any awareness of the duality of the pleasure-pain experience. Kinget refutes the widespread fallacy that fun lies in the means, when it actually lies in the subject, and she discusses the human potential for autonomous "management" of the pleasure-pain dimension of human existence. (shrink)

This paper argues that pleasure and pains are not qualia and they are not to be analyzed in terms of supposedly antecedently intelligible mental states like bodily sensation or desire. Rather, pleasure and pain are char- acteristic of a distinctive kind of evaluation that is common to emotions, desires, and (some) bodily sensations. These are felt evaluations: pas- sive responses to attend to and be motivated by the import of something impressing itself on us, responses that are (...) nonetheless simultaneously con- stitutive of that import by virtue of the broader rational patterns of which they are a part and that they serve to de?ne. This account of felt eval- uations makes sense of the way in which pleasures and pains grab our attention and motivate us to act and of the peculiar dual objectivity and subjectivity of their implicit evaluations, while o?ering a phenomenology adequate to both emotional and bodily pleasures and pains. (shrink)

According to several prominent philosophers, pleasure and pain come in measurable quantities. This thesis is controversial, however, and many philosophers have presented or felt compelled to respond to arguments for the conclusion that it is false. One important class of these arguments concerns the problem of aggregation, which says that if pleasure and pain were measurable quantities, then, by definition, it would be possible to perform various mathematical and statistical operations on numbers representing amounts of them. (...) It is sometimes argued that such operations cannot be sensibly applied to pleasure and pain, and that sentences expressing such operations must be false or meaningless. The purpose of this paper is to present, explain, and rebut several versions of this argument. In the first section, I present a generic version of the argument. In the second section, I present a defense of its key premise based on a case involving comparisons of relief from pain, and explain why I think it fails. In the third section, I present and rebut another defense, based on a pair of analogies with temperature. In the final section, I present a third defense, based on an analogy with spatial distances. I then present my reasons for rejecting it. Along the way, I explain my reasons for thinking that pleasure and pain are amenable to interval measurement. (shrink)

Near the end of the Protagoras there is a famous argument in which Socrates appears to deny the possibility of weakness of will. The passage is part of a longer examination of whether virtue can be taught and of the unity of the virtues. Socrates and Protagoras discuss whether it makes sense to say, as people commonly do, that they sometimes choose to do things they know are not best for them because they are “overcome by pleasure.” Supposedly “the (...) many” hold that the good is pleasure, and that one chooses what is less good because it is most pleasant. Socrates takes Protagoras through a kind of elenctic examination that purports to show that the many’s claim to being overcome by pleasure in akrasia is absurd or ridiculous. They can’t really do what they claim to do, choose the less good for the more good; thus, and the claim that they do is a misdescription of what really happens. People act in these cases due to ignorance of what is truly the most good. In order to prevent people from choosing things that are not best for them, or to save them, Socrates says that what is needed is an art or science of measurement. In this paper I want to focus on the idea of such an art or science of measurement. (shrink)