The Value of Pleasure

Utility- and pleasure-Friendship in the "nicomachean ethics" have commonly been held to be wholly self-Seeking relationships and of no great interest as forms of "friendship". Recently, John cooper has argued that these relationships essentially involve disinterested concern in a subtle blending of self- and other-Regarding purposes and causes. The article argues against cooper that disinterestedness has no part in these relationships but that they can nonetheless be seen as exhibiting trust, Sharing, Interdependence, And other virtues of interpersonal relationships.

[This is the penultimate version, please send me an email for the final version]. Some sensations are pleasant, some unpleasant, and some are neither. Furthermore, those that are pleasant or unpleasant are so to different degrees. In this essay, I want to explore what kind of a difference is the difference between these three kinds of sensations. I will develop a comprehensive three-level account of sensory pleasure that is simultaneously adverbialist, functionalist and is also a version of a satisfied experiential-desire (...) account. (shrink)

Compare your pain when immersing your hand in freezing water and your pleasure when you taste your favourite wine. The relationship seems obvious. Your pain experience is unpleasant, aversive, negative, and bad. Your experience of the wine is pleasant, attractive, positive, and good. Pain and pleasure are straightforwardly opposites. Or that, at any rate, can seem beyond doubt, and to leave little more to be said. But, in fact, it is not beyond doubt. And, true or false, it leaves a (...) good deal more to be said: about the nature of sensory affect; its relations to perception, motivation, and rationality; its value; and the mechanisms underlying it. Much is said about these matters in the contributions that follow. Here, in this introductory essay, we map the dialectical landscape and locate our contributors’ papers within it. (shrink)

The worst pains seem to be worse than the best pleasures are good. Anybody who doubts this should consider what choice they would make if they wereoffered the option of securing an hour of the most sublime pleasures possible in exchange for suffering an hour of the worst pain possible.

There is a simple but powerful argument against the human practice of raising and killing animals for food (RKF for short). It goes like this: 1. RKF is extremely bad for animals. 2. RKF is only trivially good for human beings Therefore, 3. RKF should be stopped. While many consider this argument decisive, not everyone is convinced. There have been four main lines of objection to it. In this paper, I provide new responses to these four objections.

What is the role of pleasure in determining a person’s well-being? I start by considering the nature of pleasure (i.e., what pleasure is). I 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). Finally, I 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. (shrink)

According to hedonism about well-being, lives can go well or poorly for us just in virtue of our ability to feel pleasure and pain. Hedonism has had many advocates historically, but has relatively few nowadays. This is mainly due to three highly influential objections to it: The Philosophy of Swine, The Experience Machine, and The Resonance Constraint. In this paper, I attempt to revive hedonism. I begin by giving a precise new definition of it. I then argue that the right (...) motivation for it is the ‘experience requirement’ (i.e., that something can benefit or harm a being only if it affects the phenomenology of her experiences in some way). Next, I argue that hedonists should accept a felt-quality theory of pleasure, rather than an attitude-based theory. Finally, I offer new responses to the three objections. Central to my responses are (i) a distinction between experiencing a pleasure (i.e., having some pleasurable phenomenology) and being aware of that pleasure, and (ii) an emphasis on diversity in one’s pleasures. (shrink)

In this paper, I set out and defend a new theory of value, whole-life welfarism. According to this theory, something is good only if it makes somebody better off in some way in his life considered as a whole. By focusing on lifetime, rather than momentary, well-being, a welfarist can solve two of the most vexing puzzles in value theory, The Badness of Death and The Problem of Additive Aggregation.

In this article, I attempt to resuscitate the perennially unfashionable distinctive feeling theory of pleasure (and pain), according to which for an experience to be pleasant (or unpleasant) is just for it to involve or contain a distinctive kind of feeling. I do this in two ways. First, by offering powerful new arguments against its two chief rivals: attitude theories, on the one hand, and the phenomenological theories of Roger Crisp, Shelly Kagan, and Aaron Smuts, on the other. Second, by (...) showing how it can answer two important objections that have been made to it. First, the famous worry that there is no felt similarity to all pleasant (or unpleasant) experiences (sometimes called ‘the heterogeneity objection’). Second, what I call ‘Findlay’s objection’, the claim that it cannot explain the nature of our attraction to pleasure and aversion to pain. (shrink)

Theories about value struggles with the problem how toaccount for the motivational force inherent to value judgments. Whereasthe exact role of motivation in evaluation is the subject of somecontroversy, it’s arguably a truism that value has something to do withmotivation. In this paper, I suggest that given that the role of motivationin ethical theory is left quite unspecific by the “truisms” or “platitudes”governing evaluative concepts, a scientific understanding of motivationcan provide a rich source of clues for how we might go (...) about developingan empirically responsible theory of value. More specifically, I argue that naturalist hedonists should be eager to join forces with motivational science: the role of pleasure in themotivational system is such that a sound case for hedonism can be builton it. (shrink)

The Appendix considers whether instrumental value of any sort depends upon intrinsic goodness. It is argued that most familiar sorts do not so depend, but one can be shown to do so by a kind of First Cause argument. ;Chapter IV begins with an attempt to give a clear and complete formulation of hedonism--the theory according to which only pleasure is intrinsically good. The formulation builds upon the efforts of Warren Quinn and Edward Oldfield. Then an argument against hedonism by (...) Brentano is critically assessed. C. D. Broad's objection to the effect that the pleasure of malice is not intrinsically good is then evaluated, as is G. E. Moore's objection to the effect that beauty is also intrinsically good. It is contended that hedonism does not succumb to any of these objections. ;In Chapter III the question is whether the concept of pleasure enters into an analysis of the concept of being intrinsically good. This topic is approached through writings by Franz Brentano. It is argued that no such analysis is possible. ;Chapter III is concerned with whether pleasure can help us to identify the bearers of intrinsic goodness. Again, some of Brentano's work is central to the topic, as is work by Charles Baylis. It is argued that pleasure is of no special help in discovering the intrinsic goods. ;The three major philosophical connections between concepts are analysis, epistemic mark, and general theoretical link. Each has been thought to relate pleasure to intrinsic goodness. The Introduction consists in a brief study of the nature of these connections. The body of the thesis examines whether pleasure and intrinsic goodness are so related. (shrink)

John Broome's ground-breaking Weighing Lives makes precise, and supplies arguments previously lacking for, several views which for centuries have been central to the utilitarian tradition. In gratitude for his enlightening arguments, I shall repay him in this paper by showing how he could make things easier for himself by denying neutrality and accepting hedonism.

This paper is a plea for hedonism to be taken more seriously. It begins by charting hedonism's decline, and suggests that this is a result of two major objections: the claim that hedonism is the 'philosophy of swine', reducing all value to a single common denominator, and Nozick's 'experience machine' objection. There follows some elucidation of the nature of hedonism, and of enjoyment in particular. Two types of theory of enjoyment are outlined-intemalism, according to which enjoyment has some special 'feeling (...) tone'. and externalism, according to which enjoyment is any kind of experience to which we take some special attitude, such as that of desire. lnternalism-the traditional view--is defended against current externalist orthodoxy. The paper ends with responses to the philosophy of swine and the experience machine objections. (shrink)

Roger Crisp asks whether hedonism is quite as bad as is often supposed.

Is artificial satisfaction of our need for pleasure something we should develop? Article considered some of the possibilities.

In this paper I defend the thesis that, considered simply as certain sorts of bodily sensations, pleasure is not the good nor is pain intrinsically evil. In fact, the opposite is largely the case: pursuit of pleasure is generally productive of ontic evil, and pain, when heeded, directs us toward the ontic good.

A best-seller in Europe following its original publication in 1993, this littel book takes on a big subject, offering enduring guidelines from the Greek philosopher Epicurus for achieving lasting happiness. In a letter to his friend Menoecceus, Epicurus gives sound advice on increasing life's pleasures, not through hedonistic pursuits, as commonly assumed, but through intelligence, morality, and decency. Based on a new translation of Epicurus to Menoecceus and complete with the original Greek text, Letter on Happiness expounds upon basic philosophical (...) inquiries concerning pleasure, longevity, death, and desire that are as relevant today as they were in ancient Greece, all in a compact, attractive package that makes a thoughtful gift for any occasion. (shrink)

Fred Feldman's fascinating new book sets out to defend hedonism as a theory about the Good Life. He tries to show that, when carefully and charitably interpreted, certain forms of hedonism yield plausible evaluations of human lives. Feldman begins by explaining the question about the Good Life. As he understands it, the question is not about the morally good life or about the beneficial life. Rather, the question concerns the general features of the life that is good in itself for (...) the one who lives it. Hedonism says (roughly) that the Good Life is the pleasant life. After showing that received formulations of hedonism are often confused or incoherent, Feldman presents a simple, clear, coherent form of sensory hedonism that provides a starting point for discussion. He then presents a catalogue of classic objections to hedonism, coming from sources as diverse as Plato, Aristotle, Brentano, Ross, Moore, Rawls, Kagan, Nozick, Brandt, and others. One of Feldman's central themes is that there is an important distinction between the forms of hedonism that emphasize sensory pleasure and those that emphasize attitudinal pleasure. Feldman formulates several kinds of hedonism based on the idea that attitudinal pleasure is the Good. He claims that attitudinal forms of hedonism - which have often been ignored in the literature -- are worthy of more careful attention. Another main theme of the book is the plasticity of hedonism. Hedonism comes in many forms. Attitudinal hedonism is especially receptive to variations and modifications. Feldman illustrates this plasticity by formulating several variants of attitudinal hedonism and showing how they evade some of the objections. He also shows how it is possible to develop forms of hedonism that are equivalent to the allegedly anti-hedonistic theory of G. E. Moore and the Aristotelian theory according to which the Good Life is the life of virtue, or flourishing. He also formulates hedonisms relevantly like the ones defended by Aristippus and Mill. Feldman argues that a carefully developed form of attitudinal hedonism is not refuted by objections concerning 'the shape of a life'. He also defends the claim that all of the alleged forms of hedonism discussed in the book genuinely deserve to be called 'hedonism'. Finally, after dealing with the last of the objections, he gives a sketch of his hedonistic vision of the Good Life. (shrink)

In this article, I first present the Sidgwickian conception of pleasure. I then present the resulting formulation of the hedonic thesis. Next I turn to arguments. I try to reveal the conceptual conflict at the heart of the thesis, so interpreted. In a final section, I sketch a more promising approach. I begin with some thoughts about the nature of pleasure.

In this paper, I present my solutions to two closely related questions about pleasure. One of these questions is fairly well known. The second question seems to me to be at least as interesting as the first, but it apparently hasn't interested quite so many philosophers.

In the Philebus, Socrates maintains two theses about the relationship between pleasure and the good life: the mixed life of pleasure and intelligence is better than the unmixed life of intelligence, and: the unmixed life of intelligence is the most divine. Taken together, these two claims lead to the paradoxical conclusion that the best human life is better than the life of a god. A popular strategy for avoiding this conclusion is to distinguish human from divine goods; on such a (...) reading, pleasure has merely instrumental value, and it benefits human beings only as a result of their imperfect nature. I argue that certain ‘pure’ pleasures are full-fledged, intrinsic goods in the Philebus, which are even worthy of the gods . This positive evaluation of pure pleasure results from a detailed examination of pleasure, which reveals that different types of pleasures have fundamentally different natures. (shrink)

The Saṃnyāsa Upaniṣads characterize the life of the saṃnyāsin as devoid of earthly pleasures. At the same time, these and other texts record confusion and suspicion toward those who would pursue such a life, and disbelief that such severe austerity could be required. To many, the saṃnyāsin seems to forsake the good life in forsaking earthly pleasures. I call this the ‘Precluded Pleasures Objection’ to the saṃnyāsin ideal. A number of replies to the Precluded Pleasures Objection might be drawn from (...) the Saṃnyāsa Upaniṣads themselves. The first points out that the saṃnyāsin ideal is typically reserved for members of the twice-born classes, and perhaps only brāhmaṇa men, who have reached relative... (shrink)

In the second chapter of Utilitarianism John Stuart Mill writes: It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognise the fact, that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others. It would be absurd that while, in estimating all other things, quality is considered as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasures should be supposed to depend on quantity alone.

While objective values need not be intrinsically motivating, need not actually motivate us, they would determine what we ought to pursue and protect. They would provide reasons for actions. Objective values would come in degrees, and more objective value would provide stronger reasons. It follows that, if objective value exists, we ought to maximize it in the world. But virtually no one acts with that goal in mind. Furthermore, objective value would exist independently of our subjective valuings. But we have (...) no way of measuring amounts of such values independently of the ways we value objects. While a subjectivist can account for mistaken values, a fully impersonal viewpoint, from which objective values would appear, seems instead to cause all values to disappear. Nor does the moral point of view, which requires more impartiality than agents usually exhibit, reveal fully objective values. The paper closes with an examination of the most widely endorsed candidates for states having positive and negative objective values: pleasures and pains. It concludes again that, once we adjust for worthiness of the object and desert of the subject for such states, there is no way to measure their supposed objective value. (shrink)

In this dissertation I analyse the concepts of pleasure and unpleasantness and outline an approach whereby the insights gained about pleasure and unpleasantness are applied to the analysis of a number of feeling and emotion concepts. In trying to understand what pleasure is and hew it is related to pain and unpleasantness, I tackle various basic questions about the role of pleasure, pain, and unpleasantness in motivation and about the intrinsic goodness of pleasure and the intrinsic badness of pain and (...) unpleasantness. In pleasure's nature of being good, wanted, and sought and pairfs nature of being bad, unwanted, and avoided we locate the way in which pleasure and pain are opposites and the central defining properties of the 'pleasant' and the 'unpleasant'. Within my analysis of pleasure and unpleasantness I reach the conclusion that pleasure and unpleasantness are 'special experiences' : I explain what is involved in this claim and defend it against the objections which Ludwig Wittgenstein raised in his Private Language Argument. The view of the emotions which I outline and defend is the view which Aristotle, Spinoza, and many other philosophers have held. According to this view, emotions or 'feelings' such as con¬ fidence or fear, delight or misery, and pride or shame, are 'modes' of pleasure or unpleasantness. Given my views on pleasure and unpleasantness, it would follow that a number of emotions are, in part, the 'special experiences' of pleasure and unpleasantness. (shrink)

Pleasure is one of the strongest candidates for an occurrence that might be good, in some respect, unconditionally. Malicious pleasure is one of the most often cited alleged counter-examples to pleasure’s being an unconditional good. Correctly evaluating malicious pleasure is more complex than people realize. I defend pleasure’s unconditionally good status from critics of malicious pleasure.

By what types of properties do we specify twinges, toothaches, and other kinds of mental states? Wittgenstein considers two methods. Procedure one, direct, private acquaintance: A person connects a word to the sensation it specifies through noticing what that sensation is like in his own experience. Procedure two, outward signs: A person pins his use of a word to outward, pre-verbal signs of the sensation. I identify and explain a third procedure and show we in fact specify many kinds of (...) mental states in this way. (shrink)

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)

Against Hume and Epicurus I argue that our selection of pleasure, pain and other objects as our ultimate ends is guided by reason. There are two parts to the explanation of our attraction to pleasure, our aversion to pain, and our consequent preference of pleasure to pain: 1. Pleasure presents us with reason to seek it, pain presents us reason to avoid it, and 2. Being intelligent, human beings (and to a degree, many animals) are disposed to be guided by (...) reason, and hence by what there is reason to choose, seek, and prefer, when they act. (shrink)

The view that the obligation to promote happiness is, as Popper puts it, "in any case much less urgent" than the obligation to eliminate unhappiness we might call the "Negative Doctrine". I know of no plausible form of the Negative Doctrine.

Hedonism is the view that what ultimately matters is just how much pleasure there is; pleasure is the ultimate good. I focus on metaethical and moral criticisms of this view. I propose and defend a new version of Hedonism that addresses familiar metaethical and moral worries about Hedonism. ;Hedonism as I understand it is a promissory note for a general theory of goodness whereby goodness descends in chains from the ultimate good. To be good is to bear some transitive relation (...) to pleasure. One such theory is the theory that to be good is to cause pleasure. I propose instead that to be good is to indicate pleasure. ;For background, I set out a general view of what it is for one thing to "represent" another--e.g. to manifest, symbolize, or speak for another. To represent something is to be its proxy, in respect of some activity, actually or potentially. For example, a sample represents a whole genus, for in testing the sample one tests the genus. ;An indicator is a proxy in respect of knowing. What something indicates is what one can know of in virtue of knowing of the thing. ;I argue that we have a hedonic sensibility, in which our present feelings about something are pictures of the pleasure it thereby seems to indicate. I argue that our feelings track the pleasure indicated by the options before us more reliably than can mere opinions about "pleasure." On this basis I argue that what indicates net pleasure is what is rational to want. ;I answer the specifically moral worries on epistemic grounds. How we think is part of our hedonic sensibility; our feelings depend on our train of thought and imagination in any given case. Some ways of thinking do better than others in yielding reliable, warranted hedonic appearances. For example, I argue for the overriding epistemic authority of a basic respect for individuals. On such grounds I argue that an option best indicates net pleasure only if it fits a way of living that stresses obligations and rights, integrity and commitments, and friendships with heart. (shrink)