The Role of Pleasure in Well-Being ! Ben Bramble University of Vienna b.e.bramble@gmail.com ! Forthcoming in Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Well-Being, edited by Guy Fletcher. !! 1. Introduction ! What is the role of pleasure in determining a person's lifetime well-being (i.e., how good his life was for him considered as a whole)? I will start by considering the nature of pleasure (i.e., what pleasure is) (Section 2). I will then consider what factors, if any, can affect how much a given pleasure adds to a person's lifetime well-being other than its degree of pleasurableness (i.e., how pleasurable it is) (Section 3). Finally, I will consider whether it is plausible that there is any other way to add to somebody's lifetime well-being than by giving him some pleasure or helping him to avoid some pain (Section 4). ! 2. The Nature of Pleasure ! Some philosophers distinguish between what they call sensory and attitudinal pleasure. Fred Feldman, for example, writes: ! Sensory pleasure is a feeling or sensation. You have it when you are experiencing "pleasurable sensations". Attitudinal pleasure is (as the name suggests) a propositional attitude. You have it when you are enjoying, or taking pleasure in, or delighting in, something (Feldman 2004: 2). ! But it sounds odd to me to call a state of being pleased about something a pleasure. Such a state may result in pleasure, or be accompanied by pleasure, but it does not seem itself to be a pleasure. In any case, in this essay, I will be considering the role only of what Feldman calls sensory pleasures, pleasures having some phenomenology or feel. There are two main approaches to the nature of pleasure: felt-quality theories and attitude-based theories. Felt-quality theories say that what makes a feeling or experience count as a pleasure is just its phenomenology (i.e., 'what it is like' to be having it, or how it feels). Attitude-based theories, by contrast, say that it is someone's having a certain kind of pro-attitude (say, one of liking or wanting) toward a bit of phenomenology that makes it count as a pleasure. The classic felt-quality theory is the distinctive feeling theory, on which there is such a thing as 'the feeling of pleasure itself', and a bit of phenomenology gets to count as a pleasure just in virtue of having some of this feeling suitably mixed in with it, or else by itself being an instance of this very feeling (Bramble 2013; Moore 1903). But there are other felt-quality theories. According to one, what we might call the many distinctive feelings theory, there isn't just one feeling of pleasure, but many such feelings, and it suffices for a bit of phenomenology to count as a pleasure that it have any one of these feelings mixed in with it. It is also open to felt-quality theorists to deny that there is any such thing as the feeling (or feelings) of pleasure itself (or themselves). Some have suggested, for example, that all pleasures are related to each other in the same way that all coloured experiences are related to each other. While there is nothing bluish about red, and nothing reddish about blue, there is something that all visual experiences have in common phenomenologically that no non-visual experience (say, an auditory experience) possesses-namely, they are coloured (Crisp 2006). Others have suggested that pleasurableness is a single 'dimension' along which experiences can vary, like volume when it comes to auditory experiences. What is it for an experience to be pleasurable? It is the same sort of thing as it is for an auditory experience to have a volume (Kagan 1992). Let us turn now to attitude-based theories. On the classic such theory, it is one's wanting an experience of one's to continue that makes it count as a pleasure (Brandt 1979: 38). But there are compelling counterexamples to this theory. As David Perry says, ! I might, on passing a garden by chance, enjoy the scent of flowers without sniffing, lingering, returning, or trying to do these things or having the least inclination to do these things (Perry 1967: 204–205). ! A better attitude-based theory says that experiences are made pleasurable by their subjects wanting, at the time of experience, that they be occurring. But this still won't do, for there are many reasons one might want a given experience of one's to be occurring that have no tendency to make it count as a pleasure-for example, that it is interesting. The most plausible attitude-based theory is Chris Heathwood's, on which a pleasure is an experience whose subject has an intrinsic desire at the time of experience that this particular experience be occurring (Heathwood 2007). Let us now consider which of these approaches is best. Here are some problems with attitude-based theories: ! A. No 'Base' Feeling ! Attitude-based theories entail that there is always some affectively neutral (i.e., neither pleasurable nor unpleasurable) bit of phenomenology that forms the 'base' of every pleasure-i.e., a bit of phenomenology that we take up our pro-attitude to in the first place. But this seems false. Consider, for example, a pleasurable experience of euphoria, or one of 'just plain feeling good', or the pleasures of orgasm, and so on. What is the affectively neutral base in these pleasurable experiences supposed to be? What part of their phenomenology could be had without its being a pleasure? I find it hard to imagine. These pleasures seem to be just pure pleasurableness. B. The Wrong Order of Explanation ! Attitude-based theories seem to get the order of explanation the wrong way around. Intuitively, when one is having an orgasm, it is not the fact that one is liking or wanting what one is feeling that makes it pleasurable. Rather, one likes or wants it because it is pleasurable. ! C. Reflective Blindness ! It seems that one can have pleasures one is entirely unaware of. Consider, for example, certain olfactory pleasures. A patient of Oliver Sacks' writes: ! Sense of smell? I never gave it a thought. You don't normally give it a thought. But when I lost it-it was like being struck blind. Life lost a good deal of its savour-one doesn't realise how much 'savour' is smell. You smell people, you smell books, you smell the city, you smell the spring-maybe not consciously, but as a rich unconscious background to everything else. My whole world was suddenly radically poorer (Rachels 2004: 225). ! If this is right, then it presents a major problem for attitude-based theories (or at least for an attitude-based theory like Heathwood's). This is because one must surely be aware of the existence of a particular feeling in order to want this very feeling to be occurring. It may be objected that the relevant sort of awareness, not to mention one's intrinsic desire that the experience in question be occurring, might take place unconsciously. While Sacks' patient, for example, was not consciously aware of his olfactory pleasures, he was aware of them at some level. But if we go down this path, we will have to attribute far more than is plausible to the unconscious mind, for it is not just olfactory pleasures that can fly beneath our cognitive radar. At any given time, there are likely hundreds or even thousands of respects in which our experiences are subtly pleasurable. We are getting pleasures from the visual perception of colours, light, depth, the size of things, the shape of things, symmetries and asymmetries in our environment, and so on and so forth. We are getting pleasures also from sounds-the tone of one's loved one's voice, the rattle of the trolley car, the rustle of leaves in a nearby tree, the background chatter of people in the bar, the ceasing of the hum of the air conditioner, and so on. Then there are pleasures of having a healthy body in all sorts of ways-of feeling invigorated without realising it, or having a clear head. There are pleasures of feeling a light breeze on one's cheek, or a patch of warmth from the sun on one's arm as the clouds briefly separate. There are pleasures associated with our unconscious beliefs about the good health of our loved ones, or our continuing success toward our goals, or the coming end to the semester. There are, in addition, many unconscious unpleasurable experiences-subtle aches and pains, vague annoyances, background anxieties, anger or melancholy arising from memories of childhood trauma long repressed or even from the awareness that we are all going to die someday. At any given time, all these pleasures and pains (and more!) may be going on in one unconsciously. Is it really plausible that unconsciously we have a crystal clear understanding of all these various feelings we are having-that every one of them is known to us in all its detail or complexity-and that we are holding court unconsciously on the lot of them, simultaneously rendering hundreds of individual judgments concerning whether we want these to be occurring? This just seems like a fantasy. It is highly implausible that we understand the jumble of ways we are feeling at any given time well enough on any level to have the sort of fine-grained awareness of it all that is necessary on a theory like Heathwood's to allow us the sort of attitudes that ground pleasurableness. It may be suggested that an attitude-based theorist could hold an idealized attitude-based view, on which the pleasurableness of one's current experiences is determined not by whether one actually wants them to be occurring, but by whether one would want them to be occurring if one were fully aware of them. But there are famous problems for accounts that idealize (Sobel 1994). For example, we may wonder whether it is possible for someone to be simultaneously aware of all his currently occurring pleasurable feelings-awareness of some may make impossible awareness of others. Perhaps the idea should be instead that we adjudicate the pleasures individually, one after the other. But even then it seems likely that there are some pleasures whose qualitative character depends on one's not being clearly or consciously aware of them-most obviously, the pleasures of flow (say, of being immersed in playing tennis, reading a good book, or having sex). !! D. No Such Desires ! It is doubtful whether anyone ever has any intrinsic desires for experiences of theirs to be occurring, even experiences they are fully aware of. There seems some plausibility to the thought that we have desires concerning how our life is going at the present moment (including how we are currently feeling) only because we conceive of our life as an extended whole, and are aware that how our life is going right now can make a very big difference (both causally and constitutively) to which whole life is likely to end up being ours. Even my desire to be feeling good right now may depend on my thinking that I am likely to have a certain kind of future, or a future at all. If I came to believe that the present moment was to be my last on this planet, I might easily cease to care what I am feeling during it. ! Consider, now, some objections to felt-quality theories: ! A. The Heterogeneity Worry ! Perhaps the most common objection to felt-quality theories-one considered decisive by many-is that they entail that all pleasurable experiences feel alike in some way, but all pleasurable experiences do not all feel alike in any way. Feldman, for example, writes: ! Consider the warm, dry, slightly drowsy feeling of pleasure that you get while sunbathing on a quiet beach. By way of contrast, consider the cool, wet, invigorating feeling of pleasure that you get when drinking some cold, refreshing beer on a hot day...They do not feel at all alike. After years of careful research on this question, I have come to the conclusion that they have just about nothing in common phenomenologically (Feldman 2004: 79). ! But as many philosophers have recently argued, we can be deeply mistaken about the nature of our own occurrent phenomenology, even after careful reflection. In a series of excellent papers, Eric Schwitzgebel, for example, argues that ! we make gross, enduring mistakes about even the most basic features of our currently ongoing conscious experience (or "phenomenology"), even in favorable circumstances of careful reflection, with distressing regularity...The introspection of current conscious experience, far from being secure, nearly infallible, is faulty, untrustworthy, and misleading--not just possibly mistaken, but massively and pervasively (Schwitzgebel 2008: 250). ! If these philosophers are right, it would be naive to assert with any great confidence that there is no feeling of pleasure itself, let alone that all pleasures do not feel alike in some way. Indeed, if there were a feeling of pleasure itself common to all pleasurable experiences, presumably it would not come tacked onto these experiences in any crude sort of way, but rather permeate them. Most instances of it would be, taken by themselves, virtually imperceptible. They would occur in extremely small quantities (or low intensities) and in very abstract or ethereal locations in one's experiential field, locations that are not at all easy to direct one's attention toward or focus upon. What would a pleasurable experience of sunbathing have in common phenomenologically with one of drinking a cool beer on a hot day? Just that it had a whole lot of these tiny, independently virtually imperceptible, feelings scattered throughout it. When you add to this the fact that these feelings may be distributed in quite different patterns, both at a time, and over time, it may be no wonder that Feldman cannot easily identify a felt likeness between these two pleasurable experiences. Indeed, this is roughly what we should expect if the distinctive feeling theory were true (Bramble 2013). ! B. The Motivation Worry ! Some have wondered how, if a felt-quality theory were true, we could explain our reliable attraction to pleasure. J. N. Findlay, for example, writes: ! Were pleasure and unpleasure peculiar qualities of experience, as loud and sweet are peculiar qualities of what comes before us in sense-experience, it would be a gross, empirical accident that we uniformly sought the one and avoided the other, as it is a gross, empirical accident in the case of the loud or the sweet, and this of all suppositions the most incredible and absurd. Plainly it is in some sense trivially necessary that we should want pleasure (or not want unpleasure) (Findlay 1961: 177). ! Such critics of felt-quality theories seem to think that if desire were involved in pleasure, then we could easily account for our reliable attraction to it. But there are two problems with this objection to felt-quality theories. First, it is not clear that the best attitude-based theories are better positioned than felt-quality theories to explain our reliable attraction to pleasure. Just as we might wonder why beings are disposed to seek out a particular kind or feature of phenomenology, we might wonder why beings are disposed to seek out experiences that they now believe they would later want to be having (or, alternatively, the later state of their having an experience that they would then want to be having). More needs to be said here by these attitude-theorists. Second, felt-quality theorists can explain our reliable attraction to pleasures. We are attracted to the relevant phenomenology, they can say, because we see that it is good (or, alternatively, good for us), and we are attracted to what we think good (or good for us). Irwin Goldstein, for example, writes: ! In the case of pleasure and pain it is the apprehension, or recognition, that pleasure is worth having and pain worth avoiding that leads to the seeking behaviour characteristic of pleasure and the avoidance behaviour characteristic of pain and unpleasantness...It strikes one immediately as absurd to say that our preference of pleasure to pain is an arbitrary one; the absurdity lies in the obvious fact that pain does not merit our desire and approval in the way that pleasure does (Goldstein 1980: 354). ! It is a conceptual truth, we might say, that creatures are attracted to, among other things, what they think good (or good for themselves). This seems eminently plausible. It may be objected that we cannot explain the reliable attraction to pleasure of babies and non-human animals by appeal to their having an awareness that pleasure is good. Such creatures, after all, do not have evaluative beliefs. However, it is plausible that we acquire evaluative concepts in the first place by coming into contact with good and bad things. If this is so, then it is tempting to think that we acquire these concepts by coming into contact specifically with pleasure and pain-after all, these are the things that are most obviously good and bad. If this, in turn, is true, then we might ask what reason there could possibly be for thinking that this concept acquisition must happen later, rather than earlier, on in our development. We cannot say "our appreciation of the goodness of pleasure and the badness of pain must wait until we have developed evaluative concepts" if we develop these concepts only by coming into contact with pleasure and its goodness or pain and its badness. A different objection is that if some felt-quality theory were true, then the relevant kinds or features of phenomenology would not be good (or good for us)- divorced from our attitudes, they would be in the same normative boat as all other kinds or features of phenomenology, like, for example, blue visual experiences, the sound of tinkling bells, or the smell of sulphur-and so it could not be our perceiving their goodness that explained our attraction to them. David Sobel, for example, finds it implausible that ! certain flavors of sensation are intrinsically more worthy of pursuit than others independently of one's reaction to those flavors...[Anyone] who has the... capacities [to feel such sensations], on such a view, would presumably have a reason to experience that flavor of sensation regardless of their response to that flavor. This move is analogous to the thought that everyone has more reason to taste chocolate rather than strawberry ice cream as the former is intrinsically more valuable flavor. This is something most of us say only when joking...Most likely pleasure seemed a uniquely plausible recommendation partially because the vast majority of actual people like it. But of course, in other possible worlds, most people do not like that sensation. What could then be said on behalf of the sensation of pleasure? (Sobel 2005: 446) ! Sobel's criticism is a version of the so-called 'resonance worry' more commonly leveled at objective list theories of well-being (on which certain things outside of one's own experiences-for example, friendship, achievement, or nature-fulfillment- can be intrinsically good for one whether one likes or wants them or not). The worry is that whatever is intrinsically good for someone must be liked, wanted, or approved of by him in some way (if not actually, then at least if he were suitably idealised)- otherwise, he is objectionably alienated from his own good (Railton 2003: 47). But why accept this idea? It is, of course, true that in general we do not benefit people by giving them things they do not (and would not) like or want. But a natural explanation for this is just that in such cases-cases where someone doesn't like, want, or approve of something (even after having full experience of it)-the odds are high that his getting it would fail to give him any pleasure. This is why, presumably, we do not benefit Freddy by giving him violin lessons when he wants only to learn the drums, or benefit Mary by organising a surprise birthday party for her when she loathes social occasions, or benefit Tom by handing him a chocolate ice cream when he likes only strawberry. If this is the correct explanation, then there seems no reason that a requirement of resonance should apply to pleasurable phenomenology itself. When I think of the most pleasurable experiences I have ever had-experiences of time spent with my lover, of gatherings with family and friends, of listening to Dark Side of the Moon, of reading Tolstoy and Eliot, of hiking through the Grand Canyon at dusk, of intellectual and social adventures during my college years, of understanding philosophical problems and thinking about possible solutions to them, etc.-these seem so tremendously good for me, I seem so lucky to have had them, not because they provided me with an opportunity to like more stuff, but because of what they were like. It's not all this liking that I've been so lucky to have, but all this phenomenology itself. Think of your own set of most pleasurable experiences. What are you fond of in recollecting them? Their phenomenology in all its richness, or the fact of your having liked it? Imagine a being who is constitutionally unable to have experiences of friendship, love, learning, art, etc., but has many blue experiences, the phenomenology of which he likes as much (if you can imagine that) as we like the former sort of experiences. Does this being seem to be made as well off by his many blue experiences? Or does he seem rather deeply unfortunate by comparison with us? Wouldn't he be better off if he were able to have experiences of friendship, love, learning, art, etc., and enjoy these? Return again to the pleasures of orgasm. Just as it does not seem that the feelings involved in these are pleasurable because I like or want them-their pleasurableness, rather, comes pre-packaged in them-it does not seem that their value for me is dependent on my reactions to them. Their value seems also pre-packaged in the relevant phenomenology. I do not feel lucky to have this phenomenology because I like it. I feel lucky to have it because it is good for me, because it is the sort of phenomenology that enhances lives, and that ought to be liked, wanted, and sought by any beings who are capable of having it. It is useful also to think about things from the other side. When I wish I could enjoy, say, the taste of cucumber or asparagus, or the music of a particular well-known artist that a lot of my friends like, because I think this would be good for me, that there is value for me in these pleasures, what I want is not simply to have attitudes of liking toward the same phenomenology that these things give me now-rather, I want to have different phenomenology. I want to have the phenomenology that my friends are getting. I seem to be missing out on the phenomenology that these things provide that is valuable. ! 3. Does Only Degree of Pleasurableness Count? ! Suppose all this is right, and our attitudes neither make our experiences pleasurable, nor our pleasures good for us. Pleasures are just experiences involving a certain kind or feature of phenomenology, and these experiences can be good for us whether we like or want them or not. Consider, now, a different question: What determines how much a given pleasure adds to a person's lifetime well-being? Is it just its degree of pleasurableness (i.e., how pleasurable it is)? Or are other factors at play? Many philosophers have felt that certain kinds of pleasures-for example, those of friendship, love, learning, and aesthetic appreciation-add more to a person's lifetime well-being than equally pleasurable pleasures of various other kinds-say, pleasures of sex, drugs, or lazing around. Is this idea coherent? Is it plausible? Feldman suggests that how much a given pleasure adds to a person's well-being depends on whether the object of one's pleasure deserves to have pleasure taken in it. Friendship, love, knowledge, and beauty, for example, may all be very worthy of having pleasure taken in them, while bodily sensations may be much less worthy of this. (Feldman 2004.) But this assumes that pleasures are propositional attitudes. As I've claimed above, it seems wrong to call a state of being pleased that something is the case a pleasure. Instead, Feldman's view is better thought of as a kind of attitude-based theory of well-being on which how much a given instance of desire-satisfaction adds to well-being is affected by the value of the thing desired. This is similar to various hybrid theories of well-being, on which well-being arises just where (i) we are subjectively attracted to things that are objectively attractive, and (ii) we can include some of these things in our lives (Raz 1986; Kraut 1994; Kagan 2009; Adams 1999). There is, however, a view like Feldman's that is available to a hedonist. This is to say that pleasures are just desired experiences, but that how much they contribute to lifetime well-being is determined by the objective value of these experiences. On this view, some experiences are more worthy of being intrinsically wanted than others. But not only does this view rely on an attitude-based theory of pleasure, it is hard to imagine how affectively neutral experiences might be more or less worthy of being intrinsically wanted. A different possibility is that pleasurable phenomenology is worth more toward lifetime well-being when it is caused by objectively valuable things than when it isn't. It may be the case, for instance, that my experience of listening to Abbey Road is as pleasurable as your experience of listening to Beyoncé's album Beyoncé, but that the former experience adds more to my lifetime well-being than the latter adds to yours because Abbey Road is a more valuable work. But while this view exists in logical space, it is hard to see its attraction. A final possibility is that certain kinds of pleasurable phenomenology simply add more to lifetime well-being than other equally pleasurable kinds of phenomenology. But while this is a coherent view, in the absence of an explanation of what it is about the phenomenology of the former that is so special, and why it adds more, it is pretty unsatisfying. There are other reasons to think that how much a given pleasure adds to lifetime well-being is not determined exclusively by how pleasurable it is. For example, it is tempting to think that adding more of a certain kind of pleasure to one's life that one has had many times before adds little or nothing to one's lifetime well-being (even if this pleasure remains equally pleasurable). Consider, for example, the pleasures of enjoying the same silly sitcom over and over again-one may giggle or guffaw as enthusiastically each time one re-watches an episode, but it seems like just a waste of time for one. Or consider Roger Crisp's oyster, whose life consists "only of mild sensual pleasure, rather like that experienced by humans when floating very drunk in a warm bath" (Crisp 2006: 630). Adding extra years of more of this same pleasure to the oyster's life seems not to add anything to its lifetime well-being. Perhaps the explanation for these things is just the obvious one: purely repeated pleasures-i.e., pleasures containing nothing qualitatively new in terms of pleasurableness-make little or no intrinsic contribution to a person's lifetime wellbeing. It may be only pleasures that introduce something qualitatively new in terms of pleasurableness into a person's life that can add anything in and of themselves to his lifetime well-being. If this is true, it may also help us to explain why the pleasures of friendship, love, learning, aesthetic appreciation, etc., seem to have a good deal more to offer one than bodily pleasures. The former, it seems plausible to think, involve far greater qualitative diversity. What it is like to come to know or love one human being is not just the same as what it is like to come to know or love another. Each person is unique, which makes the pleasures associated with friendships and relationships qualitatively unique for the people involved. Similarly, the pleasures of learning do not consist of just the same kind of pleasure (say, a warm glow or 'zing!') over and over again every time one learns a new fact. On the contrary, these pleasures have quite a different phenomenal character depending on what one has learned, the particular way in which one's mind has been opened up, and how one's new knowledge or understanding fits with what one already knows. Likewise, most great works of art, music, and literature, offer unique kinds of pleasures. Great novels and films typically transport one to places that no other work does, or involve characters that are so realistic that they are, like real people, unique, or offer insights or explore ideas in ways that no other work does. By contrast, most meals one consumes or beers one drinks, most silly sitcoms one watches, most encounters with different sexual partners, are just different means to what are qualitatively the same pleasures. ! 4. Are There Other Ways of Benefiting? ! Some philosophers, hedonists, believe that the only way of adding to somebody's lifetime well-being is to give him some pleasure, or prevent him from feeling some pain. But most philosophers are not hedonists-they think that there are other ways of benefiting. For example, many believe that the satisfaction of desires concerning aspects of one's own life lying outside of one's experiences (say, that one's projects get completed, that one's children grow up happy, that one's friends and loved ones really do love one in return and are not just acting) can also intrinsically benefit one. Others think that having friendships, achieving things, and being in contact with reality, can be good for one even if they are neither wanted by one nor pleasurable for one. There is a powerful reason, however, to accept the hedonist's view. This is what has come to be known as the experience requirement. The experience requirement says that for something to be good or bad for someone it must affect his experiences in some way-specifically, it must affect their phenomenology or 'what it is like' for him to be having them. If the experience requirement is true, then hedonism is almost certainly true as well-indeed, it would be the reason why the experience requirement is true. There is little plausibility, after all, to the idea that any non-hedonic phenomenology (i.e., phenomenology that is neither pleasurable nor painful) is intrinsically relevant to well-being. But why believe the experience requirement? Hedonists who appeal to it often have nothing or little to say in its defense. However, I want to offer two brief arguments for it. First, it is tempting to think that once a person is dead (i.e., will have no more experiences), his lifetime well-being is settled once and for all-nothing further that happens in this world can be good or bad for him. Now, if something (say, desire-satisfaction or achievement) could be good or bad for a person without affecting his experiences, then there seems no reason why it shouldn't be able to do so even after he is dead. The experience requirement, in other words, is the best explanation of why there can be no posthumous benefits or harms. The second reason to believe the experience requirement has to do with what a life is. It is this: ! 1. Death is the permanent cessation of a person's experiences. ! Therefore, ! 2. A person's life is the set of all his experiences. ! 3. Something can be good or bad for a person only if it affects his life in some way. ! Therefore, ! 4. Something can be good or bad for a person only if it affects his experiences in some way. ! (1) and (3) are relatively uncontroversial. (2) is the controversial premise. But (2) seems to follow straightforwardly from (1). These are strong grounds, I believe, for accepting the experience requirement. ! 5. Conclusion ! In this paper, I have examined the role of pleasure in determining lifetime well-being. In Section 2, I suggested that we should accept a felt-quality theory of pleasure, rather than an attitude-based one. 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