Pleasure, pain, and emotion
View/ Open
Date
1979Author
Goldstein, Irwin
Metadata
Abstract
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.