Category Archives: Hedonism

Bentham's claim that pain and pleasure determine what we do makes him a psychological hedonist, and more specifically a hedonist about the determination of action. This section focuses instead on the more modest claim that only pleasure or displeasure motivates us. This form of psychological hedonism helpfully allows that some hedonic motivations of ours fail to determine our action, and that some of our hedonically determined actions fail actually to get us pleasure. Weakness of agency can see our motivation fail to generate our action (see weakness of will); and the related paradox of hedonism is the plausible claim that some of our hedonically motivated or determined action actually secures less pleasure than we would otherwise have got (e.g., Sidgwick: 48f).

Why believe even the relatively modest motivational form of psychological hedonism? One argument infers it from the motivational egoist claim that each of us is always motivated to maximize what we take to be our own good, plus the claim that we each accept that our good is our maximal or sufficient balance of pleasure over displeasure. But motivational egoism is at best controversial (see entry on egoism). Also controversial is the psychological thesis that each of us accepts hedonism about our own good. For one thing, it ungenerously implies that those who think they reject hedonism about their own good do not even know their own minds on this matter.

Another argument for motivational hedonism is this: sometimes we are motivated by pleasure, every case can be accounted for in this way, the more unified the account the better, and hedonism is the most unified account. But at most, this argument shows only that in the unification respect hedonism is the best account of our motivation. Even if that is so, unification is not the only feature that it is desirable for theories of motivation to have, and the argument is silent on how motivational hedonism scores on any other desirable feature. The argument consequently fails to establish the overall plausibility of motivational hedonism, let alone the thesis that it is the most plausible theory of motivation. In addition, parallel arguments arguably show that we are sometimes motivated to improve ourselves, to survive, to attend to our near-and-dear, to live with integrity, and so forth; that every case can be narrated in such terms; and thus that all these rival views are just as unified as is motivational hedonism.

A third argument for motivational hedonism claims that it is a truth of everyday meaning that the words is motivated just mean some such thing as aims for the greatest balance of pleasure over pain. The core trouble here is that motivational hedonism is not a truth of everyday meaning. Even if it were such a truth, the main issue of substance would remain. Rivals would simply re-state the ongoing central issue using neighbouring concepts; for example: however it might be with the narrower concept motive, the claim that we are always moved by pleasure is false. Nor would it help motivational hedonists to make a Humpty Dumpty move here (see Carroll: ch. 6): when I use the words is motivated, said Humpty Dumpty, they mean just what I choose them to mean, namely is aimed at pleasure. Such stipulation does not identify any good reason for anyone to join Humpty Dumpty in his eccentric word usage.

Even if all of the above arguments for motivational hedonism fail, other arguments for it could be made. Even if every argument for motivational hedonism fails, failure of a positive is not success of a negative. What then of the arguments against this relatively modest form of psychological hedonism?

Some challenges to motivational hedonism are demands for its thesis to be made more determinate. First, is it about every motivation; or is it only about the motives of ours that predominate, with exceptions when little pleasure or displeasure is at stake and/or when much else is at stake (c.f. Kavka: 6480 on predominant egoism)? The present entry takes motivational hedonism to be the first of these views. Second, is it about all motivational entities, including all desires, wants, preferences, inclinations, intentions, decisions, and choices; or is it instead a claim about only an incomplete subset of these? The present entry treats it as a claim just about desires (see the entries on desire and intention). Third and relatedly, is it a pair of claims, one about desires for pleasure and the other about aversions to displeasure; or is it instead a single claim about overall or net desires for a sufficient or maximal net pleasure-displeasure balance? The present entry generally treats it as the latter. Fourth, is it a claim about every desire whatever, or just a claim about every human desire? The present entry treats it as the latter, though it is a good question why human desirers might be thought to be specially pleasure-oriented. Fifth, is it the egoistic claim that one desires only one's own pleasure, or the egocentric claim that one desires only the pleasure of oneself and one's near-and-dear, or is it instead a non-egoistic claim? When it makes a difference, the present entry takes motivational hedonism to be the first of these claims. Sixth, is it the production-based claim that we are motivated to cause pleasure, or does it allow, for example, that being moved to laugh might be being motivated to express rather than to produce pleasure? The present entry considers production-based claims, plus the distinct idea that our desire only ever has pleasure as its object.

From critical demands for more determinacy, turn now to the following articulated incredulous stare (after Lewis: 86) challenge to motivational hedonism. We direct our richly various mental lives our beliefs, musings, intentions, enthusiasms, hopes, aspirations, and so on and on at massively plural and diverse items in ourselves, in others, in myriad aspects of the non-human world, and in the infinities of contingent future possibility. In keeping with this overall psychological picture, our motivations too have objects that are massively plural and diverse. In the light of such facts, motivational hedonism merits an incredulous stare: why would anyone believe even for a minute that all human motivation takes as its object just one sort of item? On this point, some go beyond incredulity to contempt. Thus Nietzsche: Man does not strive for pleasure; only the Englishman does (Nietzsche: Maxims and Arrows #12). Perhaps the most promising motivational hedonist response, about all humans including Englishmen, is to say that all our basic motives are directed at pleasure and all our non-basic motives are pleasure-centred too, but less directly so. This move is examined further below in discussion of Butler and Hume.

Some other criticisms of motivational hedonism can be quickly rebutted. One such criticism is that we are often motivated by things that in fact give us neither pleasure nor the best available pleasure-displeasure balance, such as when we step under a shower that we take to be suitably warm but find instead to be scalding hot. Another is that the idea of maximal pleasure, or of the best feasible pleasure-displeasure balance, assumes a common measure that cannot be had. A third criticism is that not every pleasure in prospect motivates us. Hedonists can reply: first, that one is always and only motivated by what one thinks to be one's maximal or sufficient pleasure or pleasure-displeasure balance; second, that this is possible even if the idea of pleasure maximization in such settings does not ultimately make sense; and third, that hedonism does not imply that one is motivated by every pleasure prospect.

Motivational hedonism would be seriously undermined by any case of an individual who is motivated otherwise than by pleasure or displeasure. Here are some standard candidates that seem true to experience: the parent who seeks to give his child good early years and a good start in life for that child's sake, the walker who kicks a small stone just for the hell of it, the soldier who opts for a painful death for himself to save his comrades, and the dying person who fights to keep a grip on life despite fully grasping that much pain and little or no pleasure now remains to her.

The standard style of hedonist response to attempted counterexamples is to offer rival motivational stories: the soldier was really motivated only by an underlying belief that her dying would secure her a joyful afterlife or at least a half-second's sweet pleasure of hero's self-sacrifice; the parent was actually motivated only by his own pleasurable intention to give the child a good start or by his expectation that his now having this intention will somehow cause him to have pleasure later; the dying non-believer in any afterlife in fact hangs on only because she really believes that in her life there is still pleasure for her; and so on.

The capability of hedonists to tell hedonic stories as to our motives does not in itself generate any reason to think such narratives true. To escape refutation by counterexample, motivational hedonists need to tell the tale of every relevant motive in hedonic terms that are not merely imaginative but are also in every case more plausible than the anti-hedonist lessons that our experience seems repeatedly to teach some of us about many of our motives.

As noted above, some statements of motivational hedonism are indeterminate. Consider now the more precise thesis that each of one's desires or passions or appetites has one's own pleasure and only this as its object, as that at which alone it is aimed or is directed or is about. This thesis was a target of Bishop Joseph Butler in his 1729 work Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel. Butler noted in his Preface that there are: such passions in mankind as desire of esteem, or of being beloved, or of knowledge. All of these have objects other than pleasure. Drawing on Butler's critique, David Hume added further examples: that people have bodily appetites such as hunger and thirst; that mental passions drive them to attain such things as fame, power, and vengeance; and that many of us also: feel a desire of another's happiness and good (Hume: Appendix 2, 1213). All these appetites have objects other than just one's own pleasure or displeasure. By appeal to such cases Butler and Hume arguably refuted the strong motivational hedonist thesis that one's every desire has one's own pleasure and that alone as its object.

In pulling things together downstream from the Butler-Hume critique, hedonist responses might first distinguish basic from non-basic desires. A desire is basic if one has it independently of any thought one has about what else this will or might cause or bring about. A desire is non-basic if one's having it does depend on one's having such further thought. Equipped with this distinction, motivational hedonists can claim that one's every basic desire has one's own pleasure as its object, and one's every non-basic desire depends on one's thinking this will or might bring one pleasure. Thus propelled, hedonists can swim back against the broader Butler-Hume stream by claiming, of everyone in every case, that has only non-basic desire for esteem or knowledge or to be beloved, and this only because one thinks it will or might give one pleasure; and likewise with one's appetite for food or drink, one's mental passion for fame or power or vengeance, and one's desire for the happiness or good of any other.

Despite the implicature of the clich, it is possible to sink even as one swims. Still, the foregoing does supply hedonists with some potential buoyancy aids. They can claim that one's every basic desire is directed at one's own pleasure, and one's every non-basic desire, directed at something other than pleasure, is had only because one thinks this will or might bring one pleasure. The wide range of ways in which one's desire for non-pleasure could bring one pleasure include: by this desire's itself being an instance of pleasure (e.g., by appeal to a desire-pleasure identity thesis; see Heathwood), by the desire's having the property of pleasurableness (e.g., deploying the thought that pleasure is a higher-order property of every desire), by the desire's causing one pleasure independently of whether its object obtains (e.g., a fan's desire to be a vampire or a hobbit might cause him pleasure even though this desire of his is never fulfilled); or by the desire's causing its object to obtain, where this object is an instance of one's pleasure, or has pleasure as one of its properties, or causes one pleasure. Well and good. But again, it is one thing to tell such motivational hedonist stories and it is another thing to identify any reason to think the stories true.

A wider issue about motivational hedonism is this: is it a contingent claim about an aspect of our psychology that could have been otherwise; or does it posit a law of our psychological nature; or is it a necessary truth about all metaphysically or conceptually or logically possible motivations? The answers to such questions also bear on the sorts of evidence and argument we need if we are fully to appraise motivational hedonism. If it is an empirical psychological thesis, as it seems to be, then it is reasonable to expect application of the methods and evidence of empirical psychology, social inquiry, and perhaps also biological science, to do the main work of appraising it. It is also reasonable to expect that most of this work is to be done by specialist scientists and social scientists through their systematic conduct of meta-analyses of large numbers of empirical studies. Philosophical work will continue to be needed too, to weed out incoherent ideas, to separate out the numerous distinct motivational hedonist theses; and to scrutinize whether, and if so with what significance, various empirical findings actually do bear on these various hedonist theses. For instance, even the feasibility of a research design that is capable of empirically separating out our basic from our non-basic motives would be a serious challenge. Philosophical work can also identify the various features that it is desirable for theories of motivation to have and to be appraised against. Unification, determinacy, and confirmation by cases are treated above as desirable. Other desirable features might include consistency and maximal scope. Philosophers and others can systematically appraise theories of motivation in such terms, including through pairwise comparative assessments of rival theories in terms of those desirable features.

This section has critically reviewed motivational hedonism and has found weaknesses in some central arguments for the view, together with some significant problems of determinacy and disconfirmation. It has also found that there are arguments against motivational hedonism that have some force. Ongoing inquiry is continuing to assess whether such troubles for motivational hedonism can be overcome, and whether any of its rivals fare any better overall than it does.

At its simplest, ethical hedonism is the claim that all and only pleasure has positive importance and all and only pain or displeasure has negative importance. This importance is to be understood non-instrumentally, that is, independently of the importance of anything that pleasure or displeasure might cause or prevent. From ethical hedonism, it follows that if our relationships, achievements, knowledge, character states, and so on, have any non-instrumental importance, this is just a matter of any pleasure or displeasure that is in their natures. Otherwise, they have only instrumental importance through the pleasure they cause or displeasure they diminish. At least from the simple forms of ethical hedonism, it also follows that pleasure is good whenever it is had, even in matters that are themselves worthless or worse. Some hedonists are willing to bite such bullets; others develop more complex forms of ethical hedonism that seek to soften the bullets or even to dissolve them.

Some things have both instrumental and non-instrumental importance, and in such cases their overall importance is a function of both. These two matters can also pull in opposite directions. Your pain of being once bitten has non-instrumental negative importance, for example, but it might also have instrumental positive importance through the further pain you avoid by its making you twice shy. Instrumental importance is a contingent matter and it varies widely from case to case. This is why the non-instrumental claims of pleasure and displeasure are the present focus.

Ethical hedonism can be universalist, me-and-my-near-and-dear egocentric, or egoistically focused just on one's own pleasure. It can also be a claim about value, morality, well-being, rationality, reasons or aesthetics. It can be a claim about grounds for action, belief, motivation or feeling; or a claim about ought, obligation, good and bad, or right and wrong. And these are not the only the possibilities. The discussion below aims for both determinacy of formulation and generality across the different forms of ethical hedonism, albeit that these two aims are in some tension with one another. For economy of expression, discussion proceeds below in terms of hedonism about value. At its simplest, this is the thesis that anything has non-instrumental value if and only if it is an instance of pleasure, and has non-instrumental disvalue if and only if it is an instance of pain or displeasure.

Aristotle (1095a1522) claimed that we all agree that the good is eudaimonia but there is disagreement among us about what eudaimonia is. Similarly, ethical hedonists agree with one another that the good is pleasure, but there is some disagreement among them, and among non-hedonists too, about what pleasure is. Accounts of pleasure are canvassed below, and issues with them are briefly reviewed, especially regarding the various ways in which they bear on the prospects for ethical hedonism.

Phenomenalism about pleasure is the thesis that pleasure is a mental state or property that is or that has a certain something that is what it is like for its subject; a certain feel, feeling, felt character, tone or phenomenology. On the face of it, the classic utilitarians Jeremy Bentham and J.S. Mill were phenomenalists about pleasure. With various complexities and qualifications, so too are some more recent writers (e.g., Moore: 64, Broad: 22933, Schlick: ch. 2, Sprigge: ch. 5, Tnnsj: 8484, Crisp 2006: 103109, Bradley, Labukt).

Intentionalism about pleasure is the thesis that pleasure is an intentional state or property and thus has directedness. Intentional or representational states or properties are many and diverse, but they share a subject-mode-content structure (Crane: ch. 1). You or I or the next person might be the subject, belief or intention or desire or perception or emotion or pleasure might be the intentional mode, and the content of this intentional state or property includes its object or that which it is about. If I delight in the day, for example, I am the subject of this mental state or property that has delight as its intentional mode and the day as its intentional object. My delight in the day is thus an instance of intentional pleasure. Intentionalism implies that pleasure is an intentional state or a property in the pleasure mode that has some object. Brentano (1874/1973) was an intentionalist about pleasure, and so too are some more recent philosophers (e.g., Chisholm, Crane, Feldman 2004).

Intentionalist accounts of pleasure are less well known than phenomenalist accounts, so they merit brief elaboration on several points. First, to say that pleasure is an intentional state or property is not to make any claim about deliberateness, choice or intention. Intentionalism is the thesis that pleasure has about-ness, it not a thesis about pleasure's relation to the will. Second, if pleasure is an intentional state or property then it has an object, but it does not follow that all pleasures are propositional attitudes, with states of affairs or propositions as their objects. On one standard account, any psychological verb that can be inserted into the place in the schema S s that p is an attitude (e.g., thinks, hopes, wishes, prefers, delights, enjoys) to a proposition p. Some accept the universal thesis that all intentional states are propositional attitudes. But this thesis is vulnerable to counterexample from object-directed emotions including personal love and hate, the objects of which seem not to be fully specifiable as states of affairs or as propositions. Relatedly, though some intentional pleasures are indeed propositional attitudes, it is a significant further question whether they all are. A third clarification is this. If there are intentional pleasures then they are such that their objects might or might not exist. I could delight in the concert performance of my favourite musician, for example, even if the actual performer is instead just a talented imposter, or even if the performer is in fact just an audio-visual effect of clever sound and light projection. Or, to update and to make concrete an older and more abstract example from Chisholm (2829), Gore might for a time have enjoyed his victory in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, even though he actually did not win it. These claims about intentional pleasures are instances of the wider and admittedly rather perplexing point that the objects of some intentional states and properties do not exist (see entry on Intentionality).

In various significant ways, issues concerning the phenomenal and intentional nature of pleasure bear on hedonism about value. Such matters are canvassed below.

Intentionalism about the mental is the thesis is that all mental matters are intentional, that they all have directedness or aboutness (e.g., Brentano 1874/1973, Crane). Pleasure is a mental matter, so intentionalism about pleasure implies that any pleasure is an intentional matter and thus has an object. Strong intentionalism implies that phenomenal character is purely a matter of intentional character, and this implies in turn that intentional character exhausts phenomenal character. All intentionalist accounts of pleasure are of course consistent with intentionalism about pleasure. But intentionalism about pleasure is inconsistent with any radical phenomenalist account that claims, of some or all pleasure, that it has no intentional character. Moderate phenomenalist accounts instead claim that all pleasure is both phenomenal and intentional; so they are consistent with intentionalism, and some are also consistent with strong intentionalism. Some phenomenalist accounts of pleasure are neither radical nor moderate; but are instead indeterminate on the matter of whether or not pleasure has any intentional character. Such indeterminacy then carries through to any form of hedonism that is built on them. Insofar as such indeterminacy is undesirable in any account of pleasure, and in any hedonist thesis, it is a count against these views.

Phenomenalism about pleasure is the thesis that all pleasure has phenomenal character. Radical intentionalist accounts (e.g., Feldman 2004: 56, Shafer-Landau: 20) claim, of some or all pleasure, that it has no phenomenal or felt character. Any such account is inconsistent with phenomenalism about pleasure. Though Feldman and Shafer-Landau do argue that intentional pleasure need not have any phenomenology or felt character, they also argue, respectively, that there is a distinct sensory or physical sort of pleasure that does have felt character. Moderate intentionalist accounts, by contrast, claim that all pleasure is both phenomenal and intentional, and this makes them consistent with phenomenalism about pleasure. Most intentionalists are mindful that all pleasure has a phenomenal reputation, and they attempt to account for this.

Moderate phenomenalism and moderate intentionalism can be re-framed as hybrid accounts that build on the idea that pleasure has both phenomenal and intentional character. A strong intentionalist hybrid view (e.g., Crane: chs. 1, 3) is that pleasure is a property or state the phenomenal character of which is fully captured in its intentional character. On one account of this sort, the phenomenal property or state of my delighting in the day just is my having a state or property in the intentional mode of delight, with content that includes directedness at the day. A different hybrid account is that pleasure is an intentional state or property that also has a phenomenal higher-order property. Along these lines, it might be held that delight in the day is a state or property in the delight mode that is directed at the day, and that in addition has a certain felt character. A third hybrid account is that pleasure is an intentional state or property that has a phenomenal object. Along these lines, my delighting in the day might be taken to be my intrinsically desiring a certain day-caused phenomenal delight-state or delight-property of mine. A fourth hybrid account is that pleasure is a phenomenal state or property that in addition meets an object-of-intentional-state condition. For example, one might regard: Pleasure as a feeling which is at least implicitly apprehended as desirable (Sidgwick: 127; see also Brandt, Sumner: 90). This fourth sort of hybrid view is rather demanding, because any subject who lacks the capacity implicitly to apprehend as desirable is incapable of such pleasure.

Ryle (1954) argued that all sensations have felt location. For example, one feels the pain of toe-stubbing to be located in one's toe. Ryle also argued that pleasure has no felt location, and he concluded that it cannot be a sensation. Phenomenalists about pleasure need not contest any of this. They need not think pleasure is a sensory or a sensation state or property, and if they allow that bodily phenomenal pain does have intentional character, they can account for the felt location of one's pain of toe-stubbing in terms of its being directed at one's toe. Much the same is true of intentionalists. They can claim that pleasure is an intentional state or property, without claiming that its intentional character involves its having any felt location. For example, my delight in the day is about the day, not about any bodily location of mine. Moderate phenomenalism and moderate intentionalism are thus consistent with Ryle on these points. Ryle's arguments do nevertheless present challenges for some pleasure-pain symmetry theses.

It is plausible that at least some pleasures have directedness. These pleasures present challenges for radical phenomenalists who deny that any pleasure has any intentional character. They need not trouble more modest forms of phenomenalism that do allow also for intentional character.

One option is to claim that some pleasures do not have any intentional character and are thus not directed at or about anything. For example, it might be claimed that there is objectless euphoria and ecstasy, or that undirected feelings of anxiety or suffering exist. Such cases would be no trouble for the sorts of phenomenalism that reject any form of intentionalism about pleasure. Intentionalists, by contrast, must insist that every pleasure and displeasure has an object. They might argue, for example, that allegedly objectless euphoria and ecstasy or anxiety in fact do have objects, even if these objects are not fully determinate; perhaps, for example, they are directed at things in general, or one's life in general. Intentionalists might add that the indeterminacy of these objects is part of the charm of objectless euphoria and ecstasy, and of the awfulness of objectless anxiety and depression. In support of the broader idea that intentional states can have vague or indeterminate objects, while ordinary or substantial objects cannot, Elizabeth Anscombe offered this pugilist's example: I can think of a man without thinking of a man of any particular height; I cannot hit a man without hitting a man of any particular height, because there is no such thing as a man of no particular height (Anscombe: 161). A different response to the claim that some pleasures and displeasures are objectless is to move to a fundamentally pluralist view, according to which some pleasure and displeasure is intentional, other pleasure and displeasure is phenomenal, and some of the latter has no intentional character at all.

Monism about pleasure is the thesis that there is just one basic kind of mental state or property that is pleasure. Phenomenal monism holds that there is just one basic kind pleasure feeling or tone, while intentional monism claims there is just one basic kind of pleasure intentional state or property. The disunity objection to monism is based on the claim that there is no unified or common element in all instances of pleasure (e.g., Sidgwick: 127, Alston: 344, Brandt: 3542, Parfit: 493, Griffin: 8, Sprigge: ch. 5). With few exceptions if any, such objections have to date targeted phenomenal monism. But both the objection and the possible replies to it are under-explored in the different context of intentional monism. The standard phenomenal monist reply is to insist that there is just one basic kind of pleasure and that this is a matter of there being a common element in pleasure's feeling, felt tone, or phenomenology, or in what it is like to have pleasure (e.g., Moore: 1213, Broad: 229, Sumner: 8791). Broad, for example, wrote that the common phenomenal character of pleasure is something we cannot define but are perfectly acquainted with (Broad: 229). Alternatively, if some definition is to be attempted, one thought is that the common phenomenal character of all pleasure is just its felt pleasantness. A different claim is that there is a common feel-good character or felt positivity in all pleasure. This claim is not clear, but can be spelt out in at least the following three different ways: that there is such a property as felt positivity and that all instances of pleasure have it; that all pleasure consists partly in feeling the existence of goodness or value; or that all pleasure has goodness or value as an intentional object, and this is so whether or not goodness or value exists.

Pluralism in the present setting is the thesis that there is more than one basic kind of state or property that is pleasure, that pleasure is multiply or variously or diversely realizable, or that there is a basic plurality of sufficient conditions for pleasure. The core idea is that there is a basic plurality of kinds of feel or of intentional state, each of which is a kind of pleasure (e.g., Rachels, Labukt, perhaps Rawls: 557). The unity objection to any such pluralism is that all instances of pleasure must meet some unitary sufficient condition, and that pluralism is inconsistent with this. The obvious pluralist reply is to reject this demand for unitariness. One rationale for this reply is that multiple or plural realization theses about many kinds of mental states are coherent, widely made and merit serious consideration, so the unity objector is not justified in thus seeking to rule them out at the outset of inquiry into the nature of pleasure.

Reflection on both the disunity objection to monism and the unity objection to pluralism about pleasure suggests a further option. This is the thesis that there is some feature that is phenomenal or intentional or both and that is common to all instances of pleasure, and that in addition, some pleasures differ from others in at least one other respect that has phenomenal or intentional character or both. One motivation for such views is to draw out and combine insights from both monism and pluralism about the nature of pleasure.

Which features of pleasure are most closely related to its value? Bentham claimed that there are at least six dimensions of value in a pleasure or a pain: intensity, duration, certainty or uncertainty, propinquity or remoteness, fecundity, and purity (Bentham: ch. 4). On one account, fecundity is a matter of being instrumental in other pleasure or pain, purity is a matter of separating pleasure out from non-pleasure, propinquity and remoteness concern temporal and/or spatial nearness or farness, and the essentials of certainty and uncertainty are plain enough. Recalling that non-instrumental value is the present point of focus, Bentham's account suggests the quantitative hedonist idea that the non-instrumental value of pleasure is a matter just of its quantitative features, and that these reduce just to its duration and its intensity.

Quantitative hedonism is consistent with monist phenomenalism about pleasure, with intensity here understood as felt intensity. It is also consistent with pluralist phenomenalism about pleasure, but only on the assumption that none of the plurality-making features of pleasure also adds non-instrumentally to its value. It is less straightforward to see how to combine quantitative hedonism with those forms of intentionalism that deny that pleasure need have any phenomenal character. Such accounts would need to explain the intensity or strength of pleasure in intentional terms and without making any appeal to felt intensity.

Responding especially to the charge that a Benthamite account is a doctrine worthy only of swine, J.S. Mill (ch. 2) developed an alternative approach according to which there is higher and lower pleasure, and its value is irreducibly a matter of its quality as well as its quantity. Mill argued that of two sorts of pleasures, if there is one that at least a majority of those who have experience of both prefer then it is the more desirable. The standard criticism of this qualitative hedonism is that pleasure's quality reduces either to its quantity, or to some anti-hedonist claim about value. The best sort of reply for qualitative hedonists is to present an account that does not suffer from either such reduction or such collapse. Pluralism about the nature of pleasure seems to be necessary for this, together with the claim that one or more of the plurality-constituting features of pleasure does also add non-instrumentally add to its value. Qualitative hedonists who are also phenomenalists about pleasure will seek to find the sources of such value differences in phenomenal differences. Qualitative hedonists who are also intentionalists about the nature of pleasure will seek to find the sources of such value differences in irreducibly non-quantitative differences amongst pleasures in the intentional mode, in the intentional content, or in both of these aspects of these mental states or properties. Feldman's Truth-Adjusted Intrinsic Attitudinal Hedonism is a view of this sort, due to its claim that the amount of intrinsic value of a life is a matter of the truth-adjusted amount of its intrinsic attitudinal pleasure (Feldman 2004: 112). The same is true of Feldman's Desert-Adjusted Intrinsic Attitudinal Hedonism, according to which the amount of intrinsic value of a life is a matter of the desert-adjusted amount of its intrinsic attitudinal pleasure (Feldman 2004: 121).

One significant objection to hedonism about value is based on claims about the nature and existence of pleasure. It assumes hedonism about value, conjoins this with the eliminativist thesis that there is no such thing as pleasure, infers the nihilist thesis that nothing actually has value, rebounds by rejecting this value nihilism, and then concludes by retaining eliminativism about pleasure while rejecting hedonism about value. The most radical forms of eliminativism about pleasure are across-the-board theses: there is no such thing as pleasure, or there is no such thing as pain (e.g., Dennett; criticized by Flanagan amongst others), or both. Objections of the above sort that are based on the most radical eliminativist thesis speak against all forms of hedonism. Objections based on eliminativism about only phenomenal pleasure, or about only intentional pleasure, or about only sensational pleasure (e.g., Ryle, perhaps Sidgwick: 127, perhaps Aristotle 1175a22f) speak against only the correspondingly narrower forms of hedonism.

Why believe eliminativism about phenomenal or intentional pleasure? One sort of argument for it moves from the premise that there is no phenomenally or intentionally distinctive character common to all instances of, for example, new romantic love, slaking a powerful thirst, sexual orgasm, solving a hard intellectual problem, and fireside reminiscence amongst friends, to the conclusion that there is no such thing as phenomenal or intentional pleasure. This sort of argument relies on monism about pleasure, and monism about pleasure is argued above to be questionable. Why believe eliminativism about sensational pleasure? One sort of argument for it is that any such pleasure must be a sensation, and any sensation must have felt location, but no pleasure has felt location, so no pleasure sensation exists. Perhaps the most promising sort of hedonist response is to argue against eliminativism about pleasure, or at least against eliminativism about pleasure on some particular favoured account of its nature.

This section has discussed the nature of pleasure as it bears on ethical hedonism. It has outlined phenomenalist accounts, intentionalist accounts and hybrid accounts of pleasure. It has examined various critical issues for hedonism that are related to the nature of pleasure, especially: quantitative versus qualitative hedonism, disunity objections to monistic hedonism and unity objections to pluralistic hedonism, and arguments from eliminativism about pleasure to the rejection of hedonism about value. One overall conclusion to draw from this sub-section is that there would be benefit in further philosophical examination of the multiple connections between ethical hedonism and the phenomenal and intentional character of pleasure and displeasure.

At its simplest, ethical hedonism is the thesis that all and only pleasure has positive non-instrumental importance and all and only pain or displeasure has negative non-instrumental importance. The focus below is on hedonism about value, and the discussion is intended to be generalizable also to other forms of ethical hedonism.

Consider the following unification argument for hedonism about value: the case for the value of pleasure is stronger than the case for the value of any non-pleasure; the more unified the theory of value the better it is; unification around the strongest case is better than unification around any other case; therefore: hedonism is the best theory of value. This argument has weaknesses. Its first premise is not obviously true and needs further argument. In addition, the further argument that it still needs is in effect a separate argument for hedonism over its rivals, so this unification argument is not self-standing. Its second premise is also ambiguous between the claim that a theory of value is in one respect better if it is more unified, and the claim that it is all-things-considered better if it is more unified. Plausibility requires the first interpretation, but the unification argument requires the second interpretation. In short, there are significant problems with this unification argument for ethical hedonism.

Here is a motivation argument for hedonism about value: one's basic motivation is always and only pleasure; all and only that which is one's basic motivation has value for one; therefore all and only what is valuable for one is pleasure. On one interpretation, this argument appeals to a form of the motivational hedonist thesis that the only object of our basic motives is pleasure. This form of motivational hedonism is questionable, as Section 1.2 discussed above. In addition, motivational hedonism is most plausible as a claim about the role of pleasure as an object of each of our motives, whether or not that object actually exists in each case; whereas hedonism about value is most plausible as a view just about real states or properties of pleasure. Furthermore, this motivation argument depends on a pro-attitude or motivation theory of value. It thus makes hedonism about value an implication of, and in that respect dependent on, this form of subjectivism about value. On an alternative interpretation of the motivation argument, its first premise is the pleasure-motive identity thesis that our motives just are our pleasures (see Heathwood). For the motivation argument to bear fruit on this second interpretation, its proponents need to show that this pleasure-motive identity thesis is plausible.

One scientific naturalist argument for hedonism is this: in the value domain we should be scientific naturalists in our methods of inquiry; hedonism is the best option in respect of scientific naturalism; therefore, we should be hedonists about value. Various issues arise. Both premises of the argument need support. First, what are scientific naturalist forms of inquiry into value, and why think they should be adopted them in the value domain? One broadly scientific rationale for adopting such methods is the claim that their empirical track record is superior to that of philosophical theorising about value. But the thesis that naturalistic methods have a superior empirical track record or prospect is not obviously true and needs argument. A case also needs to be made that hedonism does do better than its rivals in the scientific naturalist respect. Why think it has better naturalistic credentials, for example, than the numerous non-hedonic and extra-hedonic mental states and properties, and the various forms of agency and of personal relationship, that are amongst the promising rival or additional candidates for non-instrumental value status?

Consider now this doxastic or belief argument for hedonism about value: all or most of us believe hedonism about value, albeit that some of us suffer from self-deception about that; and this state of our beliefs supports hedonism itself. One response is that even if the premise is true it fails to support the conclusion. Consider structurally similar cases. First, even if we all believe we have free will and even if we cannot but believe this, it does not show that we actually have free will. Second, suppose instead that a strong general form of belief involuntarism is true, according to which we are not free to have any beliefs other than those we do in fact have. Again, this would not have any tendency to establish the truth of any of these beliefs of ours, however robustly it might permit our having them. Any convincing form of the doxastic or belief argument would need to overcome such difficulties.

Phenomenal arguments for hedonism move from some aspect of the felt character of pleasure or pain to a thesis about the value of pleasure or pain.Some argue that pain or pleasure or both have felt character or felt quality that generates reason to avoid or alleviate or minimize the former and seek the latter (e.g., Nagel 1986: 156162). It might be thought that such phenomenal considerations can be deployed also in an argument for some form of ethical hedonism. One overall point is that the most such phenomenal arguments can show is the sufficiency of pleasure for value, and/or of pain for disvalue. Even if the relevant phenomenal character is unique to pleasure and pain, this can establish at most that pleasure is necessary to phenomenal arguments for value, and that pain is necessary to phenomenal arguments for disvalue. It cannot show that pleasure and pain alone have non-instrumental value. Phenomenal arguments also need to avoid appeal to any equivocation on quality. From the mere fact that pain or pleasure has a certain felt quality in the sense of felt character, it does not immediately follow that it has any felt quality in the sense of value or disvalue.

Can phenomenal arguments be strengthened? First, one might conjoin the premise that pleasure has certain felt character with the premise that all or most of us believe this felt character to be good. But this is just a doxastic argument again, plus a phenomenal account of the nature of pleasure. Second, one might instead appeal to the epistemic thesis that the felt character of pain and pleasure gives us direct awareness, perception or apprehension of the badness of pain and the goodness of pleasure. One construal of this idea is that pleasure is an intentional feeling that has its own value or goodness as an object. Even if this thesis is granted, however, it is a general feature of intentional states that their objects might or might not exist. This being so, even if its own goodness is an intentional object of pleasure and its own badness is an intentional object of pain, it does not follow that pleasure is good or that pain is bad. A third way to interpret the phenomenal argument is as claiming that pleasure and pain are propositional feels that have feels-to-be-good and feels-to-be-bad intentional and phenomenal character, respectively. Again however, if such feels share the character of propositional attitudes in general, then feels-to-be-good does not entail is-good and feels-to-be-bad does not entail is-bad.

Causal arguments for hedonism about value move from premises about pleasure's causal relations to the conclusion that pleasure alone is valuable. One thing to note about the particular causal arguments for hedonism that are discussed below (c.f. Crisp 2006: 120122) is that they are in tension with doxastic arguments for hedonism (and with epistemic arguments, on which see below), because they counsel caution or even skepticism about the epistemic credentials of our hedonism-related beliefs.

One causal argument for hedonism is that autonomy, achievement, friendship, honesty, and so on, generally produce pleasure, and this makes us tend to think they have value of their own; in this way the valuable pleasure produced by these non-pleasures tends to confound our thinking about what has value. Even granting that achievement, friendship and the like tend to cause pleasure, however, why think this merely instrumental consideration also causes us to think these non-hedonic matters have their own non-instrumental value? Is there, for instance, any empirical evidence for this claim? And even granted both causal claims, why think these are the only causes of belief in non-hedonism? Even granted that these are the only causes of non-hedonist belief, why think these causes of belief justify it, and why think they are its only justifiers? Perhaps these questions all have good hedonism-friendly answers, but that needs to be shown. Alternatively, perhaps this causal argument is instead exactly as good as the parallel causal argument from the thesis that pleasure generally produces autonomy, achievement, and the like, to the opposite conclusion that hedonism is false.

Another causal argument for hedonism is that anti-hedonism about value is pleasure-maximizing; this tends to cause anti-hedonist belief; and it also justifies our having anti-hedonist belief without our needing to think such belief true. As it stands, this argument is weak. The issue is whether anti-hedonism is true, and this causal argument fails even to address that issue. Even if anti-hedonist belief has good or ideal consequences, and even if such consequences tend to produce such belief, this does not tend to establish either the truth or the falsehood of anti-hedonism.

Explanatory arguments for hedonism about value invite us to make a list of the things that we regard as good or valuable, to ask of each of them why is it good? or what explains its being good?, to agree that all of the goodness or value of all but one such listed item is best explained by its generation of pleasure, and also to agree that no satisfactorily explanatory answer can be given to such questions as why is pleasure good? or what explains pleasure's being good?. Proponents of the explanatory argument then conclude in favour of hedonism about value.

Those already sympathetic to hedonism about value should find explanatory arguments congenial. It is a good question, partly empirical in nature, how the explanatory argument will strike those not already inclined either for or against hedonism about value. Those already sympathetic to non-hedonist pluralism about value, however, can reasonably respond with some scepticism to explanatory arguments for hedonism. They can hold that the non-instrumental value of each of pleasure, knowledge, autonomy, friendship and achievement (or any other good proposed instead) is best explained by its own non-instrumental features. Subjectivists will add that these non-instrumental features are matters of each item's being some object of some actual or counterfactual pro-stance. Objectivists will instead claim that the non-instrumental features of pleasure, achievement, friendship, knowledge and autonomy that explain its value are independent of its being any object of any pro-stance. All parties can also agree that at least part of the instrumental goodness or value of pleasure, knowledge, autonomy, friendship and achievement is best explained by its generation of pleasure.

Epistemic arguments for hedonism about value claim that pleasure clearly or obviously has value (c.f. Crisp 2006: 124), and that nothing else clearly does; and they conclude that this justifies belief in hedonism about value. But the assertion that pleasure's value claims are clearer or more robust or more obvious than those of any other candidate for value status needs argument. Until this is supplied, perhaps by doxastic, phenomenal, explanatory, or causal arguments, epistemic arguments add little to the case for hedonism about value.

This sub-section has outlined and reviewed some of the main forms of argument for hedonism about value: unification, motivation, scientific naturalist, doxastic, phenomenal, explanatory, causal and epistemic arguments. Arguments of each of these sorts could also be made for other forms of ethical hedonism. Each argument is problematical, but perhaps one or more of them can be made robust. Perhaps other promising arguments for ethical hedonism might also be developed. Even if all such arguments fail, this would still not in itself be a convincing overall case against hedonism. The next sub-section examines arguments against ethical hedonism.

There are many and varied arguments against ethical hedonism. Those that appeal to claims about the nature of pleasure are canvassed in Section 2.1 above. Further arguments against ethical hedonism could be constructed that broadly parallel the unification, motivation, scientific naturalist, doxastic, phenomenal, explanatory, causal and epistemic arguments for ethical hedonism presented and examined in Section 2.2 above. That task is not pursued in this entry. The following sub-sections instead review other objections to ethical hedonism.

At its simplest, ethical hedonism is the thesis that all and only pleasure is good non-instrumentally, and all and only pain or displeasure is bad non-instrumentally. The non-necessity objection to this rejects its claim that only pleasure is good, or its claim that only displeasure is bad, or both of these claims. Its thesis is that pleasure is not necessary for positive importance, or that displeasure is not necessary for negative importance, or both. Its basic idea is that something other than pleasure has value, and/or that something other than displeasure has disvalue. Any cases that are hedonic equals but value unequals would deliver what the non-necessity objector seeks.

One expression of the non-necessity objection is the following articulated incredulous stare (after Lewis 1986). Why would anyone think, even for a minute, that hedonism is a plausible theory of value? Even if we focus very narrowly, just on those mental states of ours that arguably are instances of pleasure or have pleasure as a higher-order property contentment, delight, ecstasy, elation, enjoyment, euphoria, exhilaration, exultation, gladness, gratification, gratitude, joy, liking, love, relief, satisfaction, Schadenfreude, tranquility, and so on each of these mental states or events or properties also has one or more non-hedonic properties that contribute to its importance. Beyond pleasure, our mental lives are full of significant and diverse thoughts, perceptions, emotions, imaginings, wishes, and so on. These engage with massively plural and diverse items in ourselves, in others, in myriad aspects of the non-human world, and in the infinities of contingent future possibility. This is true also of our relationships with ourselves and with others, and with multiple aspects of the wider world. It is true also of our agency our deliberations, choices, plans, intentions, and so forth. In the light of such reflections, an incredulous stare might be thought an apt response to a profession of belief in ethical hedonism. This incredulous stare argument is far from decisive, but perhaps it should disrupt any complacent presumption in favour of hedonism.

Many well-known criticisms of hedonism can reasonably be interpreted as non-necessity objections. A short survey of some of the more significant of these follows.

Plato pointed out that if your life is just one of pleasure then it would not even include any recollection of pleasure; nor any distinct thought that you were pleased, even when you were pleased. His conclusion was that your life would be the life, not of a man, but of an oyster (Philebus 21a). Similarly, on J.S. Mill's account of him at least (Mill: ch. 2), Carlyle held that hedonism is a doctrine worthy only of swine.

Nozick (1971) and Nagel (1970) present schematic descriptions of lives that have all the appearance but none of the reality of self-understanding, achievement, loving relationships, self-directedness, and so on, alongside lives that have these appearances and also the corresponding realities. On the face of it, hedonism is committed to the hedonic equality and thus the equal value of these lives. Commenting on his more fantastical and more famous experience machine case, Nozick added further detail, claiming that it is also good in itself to do certain things, and not just have the experience [as if] of doing them, to be a certain way, to be a certain sort of person and not just to be an indeterminate blob floating in a tank, and to make a difference in the world rather than merely to appear to oneself to do so. He concluded: something matters to us in addition to experience (Nozick 1974: 4344).

Consider further the idea that actually having certain relationships with oneself (e.g., relations of self-understanding) and with others (e.g., mutual relations of interpersonal love) matters, in addition to the value of any experience one has that is just as if one has such relationships. The thought here is that the motto also connect expresses something important, even if novelist E.M. Forster's more ambitious only connect (Forster: ch. 33) was an exaggeration.

In a famous case description, Moore argued that a world with beauty but without its contemplation, and indeed without any mental states whatever, is better than a world that is simply one heap of filth (Moore: sec. 50; contrast Sidgwick: 114). If Moore is right about this beauty and the filth case, then pleasure is not necessary for value.

W.D. Ross (138) considered two worlds that are equals both hedonically and in character terms. In one world, the virtuous have the pleasure and the vicious have the pain, while in the other the vicious have the pleasure and the virtuous have the pain. To help secure across all plausible accounts of the nature of pleasure the equality of pleasure that is central to this case comparison, suppose that in each world the same pleasures are taken in the same objects. Pleasure is equal across these two worlds, but Ross argues that the well-matched world is better than the mis-matched world. If he is right, then this is a case of same pleasure, different value, and thereby also a case in which difference of pleasure is not necessary for difference of value.

Imagining oneself to have a hedonically perfect life, a non-necessity objector is apt to respond along the lines of the popular Paul Jabara / Jo Asher song: Something's missing in my life. One way to fill out the detail is with some variant of that song's second premise: Baby it's you. The objectors' claim is that there is something that is sufficient for value and that is missing from the life of perfect pleasure. If the objection stands then pleasure is not necessary for value.

There is a range of possible hedonist responses to non-necessity objections. One reply is that the allegedly non-hedonic item on which the objector focuses just is an instance of pleasure, so its being valuable is just what a hedonist would expect. A related reply is that the item to which the objector points is sufficient for value only insofar as it is an instance of pleasure, so the thesis that pleasure is necessary for value again remains unscathed. Responses of these sorts are relatively easy for hedonists to make; but it is less easy to show anyone who is not already a hedonist that these replies provide grounds for taking the hedonist side of the arguments. A third reply hedonists might make to non-necessity objections is to allow that the item in question is or includes non-pleasure that has value, but then to argue that this is merely instrumental value. A fourth and more concessive reply is that the item in question might be a non-pleasure and might be sufficient for non-instrumental value of some sort (e.g., moral value), but to add that there is also at least one sort of value (e.g., prudential value) for which pleasure is necessary. For example, it might be claimed that self-sacrifice that protects the non-sentient environment has non-hedonic moral value but lacks prudential value for the agent. An option that is yet more concessive is for hedonists is to agree that pleasure is not necessary for value or that displeasure is not necessary for disvalue or both of these things, but to continue to insist that pleasure is sufficient for value or that displeasure is sufficient for disvalue or both of these things.

As noted above, the simplest form of ethical hedonism is the claim that all and only pleasure is good non-instrumentally and all and only pain or displeasure is bad non-instrumentally. The insufficiency objection rejects the ethical hedonist claim that all pleasure is good, or that all displeasure is bad, or both claims. Its contrary thesis is that pleasure is insufficient for good, and/or that displeasure is insufficient for bad; some pleasure has no value, and/or some displeasure has no disvalue. Any pair of cases that are value equals but hedonic unequals would deliver what the insufficiency objector seeks.

Various insufficiency objections are outlined below. Each aims to show that some pleasure is worthless or worse and is thus insufficient for good or value. Some focus on the bad as cause of pleasure, others on the bad as object of pleasure. A third possible focus is on pleasure understood as a property of something bad such as a sadistic thought or act, rather than as an effect of something bad.

Aristotle (Book x, ch. 3) argued that some pleasure is disgraceful or base. Brentano (1889/1969: 90) argued that pleasure in the bad both lacks value and has disvalue. Moore (sec. 56) expressed similar thoughts in a bracingly concrete manner by imagining the pleasures of perpetual indulgence in bestiality and claiming them to be not good but bad. Self-destructive or masochistic pleasure, pleasure with a non-existent or false object, and contra-deserved pleasure are some other targets of insufficiency objections to hedonism about value.

Hedonists can respond in various ways to insufficiency objections. These are canvassed below.

One sort of hedonist response to an insufficiency objection is to accept that the objector's case is an instance of pleasure, but then to claim that it is sufficient for value. This response is underpinned by insistence on the wider thought that any pleasure is sufficient for value. Consistent with this, but rather concessively, it could also be claimed that pleasure is sufficient for only very little value, and that substantial or major value is present only if further conditions are met. Such further conditions might concern the extent to which the pleasure is higher rather than lower, whether its object exists, or whether its object merits pleasure. Feldman (2004) has formulated and sympathetically examined several views that have this sort of structure, including Altitude-Adjusted, Truth-Adjusted, and Desert-Adjusted forms of Intrinsic Attitudinal Hedonism.

A second hedonist response is to accept that the insufficiency objector has indeed found a case that is insufficient for value, but then to claim that it is not an instance of pleasure. This sort of response is underpinned by the hedonist's insistence on the wider thought that anything insufficient for value is not pleasure.

A third hedonist response is somewhat concessive. It distinguishes at least two basic kinds of value, and continues to insist that pleasure is sufficient for one of these, while also accepting the objector's thesis that there is at least one other sort of value for which pleasure is not sufficient. One instance of this response is the claim that sadistic pleasure adds prudential value for the sadist but also lacks moral value and indeed has moral disvalue. But such a move is more awkward in other cases, including those of pleasure that is self-destructive or masochistic.

A fourth hedonist response is concessive. It abandons altogether the thesis that pleasure is sufficient for value, while also continuing to insist that pleasure is necessary for value. Consistent with this response, one could claim that pleasure is conditionally valuable; that is, sufficient for value when and only when certain further conditions are met. These conditions could be specified either negatively (e.g., pleasure is valuable only when it does not arise from and is not directed at a bad deed or character state or state of affairs), or positively (e.g., pleasure is valuable only when its object exists, or only when its object is deserving of it). Modified forms of Altitude-Adjusted, Truth-Adjusted, and Desert-Adjusted Intrinsic Attitudinal Hedonism would have this structure (see Feldman 2004).

The critical discussion of Section 2 above has supplemented the Section 1 consideration of psychological hedonism, by examining arguments both for and against ethical hedonism. On one influential view that John Rawls attributes to Henry Sidgwick, justification in ethics ideally proceeds against standards of reasoned justification carefully formulated, and satisfactory justification of any particular moral conception must proceed from a full knowledge and systematic comparison of the more significant conceptions in the philosophical tradition (editor's Foreword to Sidgwick). This entry has not attempted any such systematic comparative examination of psychological hedonism or ethical hedonism against its main rivals.

Both psychological hedonism and ethical hedonism remain worthy of serious philosophical attention. Each also has broader philosophical significance, especially but not only in utilitarian and egoist traditions of ethical thought, and in empiricist and scientific naturalist philosophical traditions.

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Hedonism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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Couples Resorts, Negril, Jamaica | Hedonism II

The term "hedonism," from the Greek word (hdon) for pleasure, refers to several related theories about what is good for us, how we should behave, and what motivates us to behave in the way that we do. All hedonistic theories identify pleasure and pain as the only important elements of whatever phenomena they are designed to describe. If hedonistic theories identified pleasure and pain as merely two important elements, instead of the only important elements of what they are describing, then they would not be nearly as unpopular as they all are. However, the claim that pleasure and pain are the only things of ultimate importance is what makes hedonism distinctive and philosophically interesting.

Philosophical hedonists tend to focus on hedonistic theories of value, and especially of well-being (the good life for the one living it). As a theory of value, hedonism states that all and only pleasure is intrinsically valuable and all and only pain is intrinsically not valuable. Hedonists usually define pleasure and pain broadly, such that both physical and mental phenomena are included. Thus, a gentle massage and recalling a fond memory are both considered to cause pleasure and stubbing a toe and hearing about the death of a loved one are both considered to cause pain. With pleasure and pain so defined, hedonism as a theory about what is valuable for us is intuitively appealing. Indeed, its appeal is evidenced by the fact that nearly all historical and contemporary treatments of well-being allocate at least some space for discussion of hedonism. Unfortunately for hedonism, the discussions rarely endorse it and some even deplore its focus on pleasure.

This article begins by clarifying the different types of hedonistic theories and the labels they are often given. Then, hedonisms ancient origins and its subsequent development are reviewed. The majority of this article is concerned with describing the important theoretical divisions within Prudential Hedonism and discussing the major criticisms of these approaches.

When the term "hedonism" is used in modern literature, or by non-philosophers in their everyday talk, its meaning is quite different from the meaning it takes when used in the discussions of philosophers. Non-philosophers tend to think of a hedonist as a person who seeks out pleasure for themselves without any particular regard for their own future well-being or for the well-being of others. According to non-philosophers, then, a stereotypical hedonist is someone who never misses an opportunity to indulge of the pleasures of sex, drugs, and rock n roll, even if the indulgences are likely to lead to relationship problems, health problems, regrets, or sadness for themselves or others. Philosophers commonly refer to this everyday understanding of hedonism as "Folk Hedonism." Folk Hedonism is a rough combination of Motivational Hedonism, Hedonistic Egoism, and a reckless lack of foresight.

When philosophers discuss hedonism, they are most likely to be referring to hedonism about value, and especially the slightly more specific theory, hedonism about well-being. Hedonism as a theory about value (best referred to as Value Hedonism) holds that all and only pleasure is intrinsically valuable and all and only pain is intrinsically disvaluable. The term "intrinsically" is an important part of the definition and is best understood in contrast to the term "instrumentally." Something is intrinsically valuable if it is valuable for its own sake. Pleasure is thought to be intrinsically valuable because, even if it did not lead to any other benefit, it would still be good to experience. Money is an example of an instrumental good; its value for us comes from what we can do with it (what we can buy with it). The fact that a copious amount of money has no value if no one ever sells anything reveals that money lacks intrinsic value. Value Hedonism reduces everything of value to pleasure. For example, a Value Hedonist would explain the instrumental value of money by describing how the things we can buy with money, such as food, shelter, and status-signifying goods, bring us pleasure or help us to avoid pain.

Hedonism as a theory about well-being (best referred to as Prudential Hedonism) is more specific than Value Hedonism because it stipulates what the value is for. Prudential Hedonism holds that all and only pleasure intrinsically makes peoples lives go better for them and all and only pain intrinsically makes their lives go worse for them. Some philosophers replace "people" with "animals" or "sentient creatures," so as to apply Prudential Hedonism more widely. A good example of this comes from Peter Singers work on animals and ethics. Singer questions why some humans can see the intrinsic disvalue in human pain, but do not also accept that it is bad for sentient non-human animals to experience pain.

When Prudential Hedonists claim that happiness is what they value most, they intend happiness to be understood as a preponderance of pleasure over pain. An important distinction between Prudential Hedonism and Folk Hedonism is that Prudential Hedonists usually understand that pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain in the very short-term is not always the best strategy for achieving the best long-term balance of pleasure over pain.

Prudential Hedonism is an integral part of several derivative types of hedonistic theory, all of which have featured prominently in philosophical debates of the past. Since Prudential Hedonism plays this important role, the majority of this article is dedicated to Prudential Hedonism. First, however, the main derivative types of hedonism are briefly discussed.

Motivational Hedonism (more commonly referred to by the less descriptive label, "Psychological Hedonism") is the theory that the desires to encounter pleasure and to avoid pain guide all of our behavior. Most accounts of Motivational Hedonism include both conscious and unconscious desires for pleasure, but emphasize the latter. Epicurus, William James, Sigmund Freud, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and (on one interpretation) even Charles Darwin have all argued for varieties of Motivational Hedonism. Bentham used the idea to support his theory of Hedonistic Utilitarianism (discussed below). Weak versions of Motivational Hedonism hold that the desires to seek pleasure and avoid pain often or always have some influence on our behavior. Weak versions are generally considered to be uncontroversially true and not especially useful for philosophy.

Philosophers have been more interested in strong accounts of Motivational Hedonism, which hold that all behavior is governed by the desires to encounter pleasure and to avoid pain (and only those desires). Strong accounts of Motivational Hedonism have been used to support some of the normative types of hedonism and to argue against non-hedonistic normative theories. One of the most notable mentions of Motivational Hedonism is Platos Ring of Gyges example in The Republic. Platos Socrates is discussing with Glaucon how men would react if they were to possess a ring that gives its wearer immense powers, including invisibility. Glaucon believes that a strong version of Motivational Hedonism is true, but Socrates does not. Glaucon asserts that, emboldened with the power provided by the Ring of Gyges, everyone would succumb to the inherent and ubiquitous desire to pursue their own ends at the expense of others. Socrates disagrees, arguing that good people would be able to overcome this desire because of their strong love of justice, fostered through philosophising.

Strong accounts of Motivational Hedonism currently g
arner very little support for similar reasons. Many examples of seemingly-pain-seeking acts performed out of a sense of duty are well-known from the soldier who jumps on a grenade to save his comrades to that time you rescued a trapped dog only to be (predictably) bitten in the process. Introspective evidence also weighs against strong accounts of Motivational Hedonism; many of the decisions we make seem to be based on motives other than seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. Given these reasons, the burden of proof is considered to be squarely on the shoulders of anyone wishing to argue for a strong account of Motivational Hedonism.

Value Hedonism, occasionally with assistance from Motivational Hedonism, has been used to argue for specific theories of right action (theories that explain which actions are morally permissible or impermissible and why). The theory that happiness should be pursued (that pleasure should be pursued and pain should be avoided) is referred to as Normative Hedonism and sometimes Ethical Hedonism. There are two major types of Normative Hedonism, Hedonistic Egoism and Hedonistic Utilitarianism. Both types commonly use happiness (defined as pleasure minus pain) as the sole criterion for determining the moral rightness or wrongness of an action. Important variations within each of these two main types specify either the actual resulting happiness (after the act) or the predicted resulting happiness (before the act) as the moral criterion. Although both major types of Normative Hedonism have been accused of being repugnant, Hedonistic Egoism is considered the most offensive.

Hedonistic Egoism is a hedonistic version of egoism, the theory that we should, morally speaking, do whatever is most in our own interests. Hedonistic Egoism is the theory that we ought, morally speaking, to do whatever makes us happiest that is whatever provides us with the most net pleasure after pain is subtracted. The most repugnant feature of this theory is that one never has to ascribe any value whatsoever to the consequences for anyone other than oneself. For example, a Hedonistic Egoist who did not feel saddened by theft would be morally required to steal, even from needy orphans (if he thought he could get away with it). Would-be defenders of Hedonistic Egoism often point out that performing acts of theft, murder, treachery and the like would not make them happier overall because of the guilt, the fear of being caught, and the chance of being caught and punished. The would-be defenders tend to surrender, however, when it is pointed out that a Hedonistic Egoist is morally obliged by their own theory to pursue an unusual kind of practical education; a brief and possibly painful training period that reduces their moral emotions of sympathy and guilt. Such an education might be achieved by desensitising over-exposure to, and performance of, torture on innocents. If Hedonistic Egoists underwent such an education, their reduced capacity for sympathy and guilt would allow them to take advantage of any opportunities to perform pleasurable, but normally-guilt-inducing, actions, such as stealing from the poor.

Hedonistic Egoism is very unpopular amongst philosophers, not just for this reason, but also because it suffers from all of the objections that apply to Prudential Hedonism.

Hedonistic Utilitarianism is the theory that the right action is the one that produces (or is most likely to produce) the greatest net happiness for all concerned. Hedonistic Utilitarianism is often considered fairer than Hedonistic Egoism because the happiness of everyone involved (everyone who is affected or likely to be affected) is taken into account and given equal weight. Hedonistic Utilitarians, then, tend to advocate not stealing from needy orphans because to do so would usually leave the orphan far less happy and the (probably better-off) thief only slightly happier (assuming he felt no guilt). Despite treating all individuals equally, Hedonistic Utilitarianism is still seen as objectionable by some because it assigns no intrinsic moral value to justice, friendship, truth, or any of the many other goods that are thought by some to be irreducibly valuable. For example, a Hedonistic Utilitarian would be morally obliged to publicly execute an innocent friend of theirs if doing so was the only way to promote the greatest happiness overall. Although unlikely, such a situation might arise if a child was murdered in a small town and the lack of suspects was causing large-scale inter-ethnic violence. Some philosophers argue that executing an innocent friend is immoral precisely because it ignores the intrinsic values of justice, friendship, and possibly truth.

Hedonistic Utilitarianism is rarely endorsed by philosophers, but mainly because of its reliance on Prudential Hedonism as opposed to its utilitarian element. Non-hedonistic versions of utilitarianism are about as popular as the other leading theories of right action, especially when it is the actions of institutions that are being considered.

Perhaps the earliest written record of hedonism comes from the Crvka, an Indian philosophical tradition based on the Barhaspatya sutras. The Crvka persisted for two thousand years (from about 600 B.C.E.). Most notably, the Crvka advocated scepticism and Hedonistic Egoism that the right action is the one that brings the actor the most net pleasure. The Crvka acknowledged that some pain often accompanied, or was later caused by, sensual pleasure, but that pleasure was worth it.

The Cyrenaics, founded by Aristippus (c. 435-356 B.C.E.), were also sceptics and Hedonistic Egoists. Although the paucity of original texts makes it difficult to confidently state all of the justifications for the Cyrenaics positions, their overall stance is clear enough. The Cyrenaics believed pleasure was the ultimate good and everyone should pursue all immediate pleasures for themselves. They considered bodily pleasures better than mental pleasures, presumably because they were more vivid or trustworthy. The Cyrenaics also recommended pursuing immediate pleasures and avoiding immediate pains with scant or no regard for future consequences. Their reasoning for this is even less clear, but is most plausibly linked to their sceptical views perhaps that what we can be most sure of in this uncertain existence is our current bodily pleasures.

Epicurus (c. 341-271 B.C.E.), founder of Epicureanism, developed a Normative Hedonism in stark contrast to that of Aristippus. The Epicureanism of Epicurus is also quite the opposite to the common usage of Epicureanism; while we might like to go on a luxurious "Epicurean" holiday packed with fine dining and moderately excessive wining, Epicurus would warn us that we are only setting ourselves up for future pain. For Epicurus, happiness was the complete absence of bodily and especially mental pains, including fear of the Gods and desires for anything other than the bare necessities of life. Even with only the limited excesses of ancient Greece on offer, Epicurus advised his followers to avoid towns, and especially marketplaces, in order to limit the resulting desires for unnecessary things. Once we experience unnecessary pleasures, such as those from sex and rich food, we will then suffer from painful and hard to satisfy desires for more and better of the same. No matter how wealthy we might be, Epicurus would argue, our desires will eventually outstrip our means and interfere with our ability to live tranquil, happy lives. Epicureanism is generally egoistic, in that it encourages everyone to pursue happiness for themselves. However, Epicureans would be unlikely to commit any of the selfish acts we might expec
t from other egoists because Epicureans train themselves to desire only the very basics, which gives them very little reason to do anything to interfere with the affairs of others.

With the exception of a brief period discussed below, Hedonism has been generally unpopular ever since its ancient beginnings. Although criticisms of the ancient forms of hedonism were many and varied, one in particular was heavily cited. In Philebus, Platos Socrates and one of his many foils, Protarchus in this instance, are discussing the role of pleasure in the good life. Socrates asks Protarchus to imagine a life without much pleasure but full of the higher cognitive processes, such as knowledge, forethought and consciousness and to compare it with a life that is the opposite. Socrates describes this opposite life as having perfect pleasure but the mental life of an oyster, pointing out that the subject of such a life would not be able to appreciate any of the pleasure within it. The harrowing thought of living the pleasurable but unthinking life of an oyster causes Protarchus to abandon his hedonistic argument. The oyster example is now easily avoided by clarifying that pleasure is best understood as being a conscious experience, so any sensation that we are not consciously aware of cannot be pleasure.

Normative and Motivational Hedonism were both at their most popular during the heyday of Empiricism in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Indeed, this is the only period during which any kind of hedonism could be considered popular at all. During this period, two Hedonistic Utilitarians, Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and his protg John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), were particularly influential. Their theories are similar in many ways, but are notably distinct on the nature of pleasure.

Bentham argued for several types of hedonism, including those now referred to as Prudential Hedonism, Hedonistic Utilitarianism, and Motivational Hedonism (although his commitment to strong Motivational Hedonism eventually began to wane). Bentham argued that happiness was the ultimate good and that happiness was pleasure and the absence of pain. He acknowledged the egoistic and hedonistic nature of peoples motivation, but argued that the maximization of collective happiness was the correct criterion for moral behavior. Benthams greatest happiness principle states that actions are immoral if they are not the action that appears to maximise the happiness of all the people likely to be affected; only the action that appears to maximise the happiness of all the people likely to be affected is the morally right action.

Bentham devised the greatest happiness principle to justify the legal reforms he also argued for. He understood that he could not conclusively prove that the principle was the correct criterion for morally right action, but also thought that it should be accepted because it was fair and better than existing criteria for evaluating actions and legislation. Bentham thought that his Hedonic Calculus could be applied to situations to see what should, morally speaking, be done in a situation. The Hedonic Calculus is a method of counting the amount of pleasure and pain that would likely be caused by different actions. The Hedonic Calculus required a methodology for measuring pleasure, which in turn required an understanding of the nature of pleasure and specifically what aspects of pleasure were valuable for us.

Benthams Hedonic Calculus identifies several aspects of pleasure that contribute to its value, including certainty, propinquity, extent, intensity, and duration. The Hedonic Calculus also makes use of two future-pleasure-or-pain-related aspects of actions fecundity and purity. Certainty refers to the likelihood that the pleasure or pain will occur. Propinquity refers to how long away (in terms of time) the pleasure or pain is. Fecundity refers to the likelihood of the pleasure or pain leading to more of the same sensation. Purity refers to the likelihood of the pleasure or pain leading to some of the opposite sensation. Extent refers to the number of people the pleasure or pain is likely to affect. Intensity refers to the felt strength of the pleasure or pain. Duration refers to how long the pleasure or pain are felt for. It should be noted that only intensity and duration have intrinsic value for an individual. Certainty, propinquity, fecundity, and purity are all instrumentally valuable for an individual because they affect the likelihood of an individual feeling future pleasure and pain. Extent is not directly valuable for an individuals well-being because it refers to the likelihood of other people experiencing pleasure or pain.

Benthams inclusion of certainty, propinquity, fecundity, and purity in the Hedonic Calculus helps to differentiate his hedonism from Folk Hedonism. Folk Hedonists rarely consider how likely their actions are to lead to future pleasure or pain, focussing instead on the pursuit of immediate pleasure and the avoidance of immediate pain. So while Folk Hedonists would be unlikely to study for an exam, anyone using Benthams Hedonic Calculus would consider the future happiness benefits to themselves (and possibly others) of passing the exam and then promptly begin studying.

Most importantly for Benthams Hedonic Calculus, the pleasure from different sources is always measured against these criteria in the same way, that is to say that no additional value is afforded to pleasures from particularly moral, clean, or culturally-sophisticated sources. For example, Bentham held that pleasure from the parlor game push-pin was just as valuable for us as pleasure from music and poetry. Since Benthams theory of Prudential Hedonism focuses on the quantity of the pleasure, rather than the source-derived quality of it, it is best described as a type of Quantitative Hedonism.

Benthams indifferent stance on the source of pleasures led to others disparaging his hedonism as the philosophy of swine. Even his student, John Stuart Mill, questioned whether we should believe that a satisfied pig leads a better life than a dissatisfied human or that a satisfied fool leads a better life than a dissatisfied Socrates results that Benthams Quantitative Hedonism seems to endorse.

Like Bentham, Mill endorsed the varieties of hedonism now referred to as Prudential Hedonism, Hedonistic Utilitarianism, and Motivational Hedonism. Mill also thought happiness, defined as pleasure and the avoidance of pain, was the highest good. Where Mills hedonism differs from Benthams is in his understanding of the nature of pleasure. Mill argued that pleasures could vary in quality, being either higher or lower pleasures. Mill employed the distinction between higher and lower pleasures in an attempt to avoid the criticism that his hedonism was just another philosophy of swine. Lower pleasures are those associated with the body, which we share with other animals, such as pleasure from quenching thirst or having sex. Higher pleasures are those associated with the mind, which were thought to be unique to humans, such as pleasure from listening to opera, acting virtuously, and philosophising. Mill justified this distinction by arguing that those who have experienced both types of pleasure realise that higher pleasures are much more valuable. He dismissed challenges to this claim by asserting that those who disagreed lacked either the experience of higher pleasures or the capacity for such experiences. For Mill, higher pleasures were not different from lower pleasures by mere degree; they were different in kind. Since Mills theory of Prudential Hedonism focuses on the quality of the pleasure, rather than the amount of it, it is best describ
ed as a type of Qualitative Hedonism.

George Edward Moore (1873-1958) was instrumental in bringing hedonisms brief heyday to an end. Moores criticisms of hedonism in general, and Mills hedonism in particular, were frequently cited as good reasons to reject hedonism even decades after his death. Indeed, since G. E. Moore, hedonism has been viewed by most philosophers as being an initially intuitive and interesting family of theories, but also one that is flawed on closer inspection. Moore was a pluralist about value and argued persuasively against the Value Hedonists central claim that all and only pleasure is the bearer of intrinsic value. Moores most damaging objection against Hedonism was his heap of filth example. Moore himself thought the heap of filth example thoroughly refuted what he saw as the only potentially viable form of Prudential Hedonism that conscious pleasure is the only thing that positively contributes to well-being. Moore used the heap of filth example to argue that Prudential Hedonism is false because pleasure is not the only thing of value.

In the heap of filth example, Moore asks the reader to imagine two worlds, one of which is exceedingly beautiful and the other a disgusting heap of filth. Moore then instructs the reader to imagine that no one would ever experience either world and asks if it is better for the beautiful world to exist than the filthy one. As Moore expected, his contemporaries tended to agree that it would be better if the beautiful world existed. Relying on this agreement, Moore infers that the beautiful world is more valuable than the heap of filth and, therefore, that beauty must be valuable. Moore then concluded that all of the potentially viable theories of Prudential Hedonism (those that value only conscious pleasures) must be false because something, namely beauty, is valuable even when no conscious pleasure can be derived from it.

Moores heap of filth example has rarely been used to object to Prudential Hedonism since the 1970s because it is not directly relevant to Prudential Hedonism (it evaluates worlds and not lives). Moores other objections to Prudential Hedonism also went out of favor around the same time. The demise of these arguments was partly due to mounting objections against them, but mainly because arguments more suited to the task of refuting Prudential Hedonism were developed. These arguments are discussed after the contemporary varieties of hedonism are introduced below.

Several contemporary varieties of hedonism have been defended, although usually by just a handful of philosophers or less at any one time. Other varieties of hedonism are also theoretically available but have received little or no discussion. Contemporary varieties of Prudential Hedonism can be grouped based on how they define pleasure and pain, as is done below. In addition to providing different notions of what pleasure and pain are, contemporary varieties of Prudential Hedonism also disagree about what aspect or aspects of pleasure are valuable for well-being (and the opposite for pain).

The most well-known disagreement about what aspects of pleasure are valuable occurs between Quantitative and Qualitative Hedonists. Quantitative Hedonists argue that how valuable pleasure is for well-being depends on only the amount of pleasure, and so they are only concerned with dimensions of pleasure such as duration and intensity. Quantitative Hedonism is often accused of over-valuing animalistic, simple, and debauched pleasures.

Qualitative Hedonists argue that, in addition to the dimensions related to the amount of pleasure, one or more dimensions of quality can have an impact on how pleasure affects well-being. The quality dimensions might be based on how cognitive or bodily the pleasure is (as it was for Mill), the moral status of the source of the pleasure, or some other non-amount-related dimension. Qualitative Hedonism is criticised by some for smuggling values other than pleasure into well-being by misleadingly labelling them as dimensions of pleasure. How these qualities are chosen for inclusion is also criticised for being arbitrary or ad hoc by some because inclusion of these dimensions of pleasure is often in direct response to objections that Quantitative Hedonism cannot easily deal with. That is to say, the inclusion of these dimensions is often accused of being an exercise in plastering over holes, rather than deducing corollary conclusions from existing theoretical premises. Others have argued that any dimensions of quality can be better explained in terms of dimensions of quantity. For example, they might claim that moral pleasures are no higher in quality than immoral pleasures, but that moral pleasures are instrumentally more valuable because they are likely to lead to more moments of pleasure or less moments of pain in the future.

Hedonists also have differing views about how the value of pleasure compares with the value of pain. This is not a practical disagreement about how best to measure pleasure and pain, but rather a theoretical disagreement about comparative value, such as whether pain is worse for us than an equivalent amount of pleasure is good for us. The default position is that one unit of pleasure (sometimes referred to as a Hedon) is equivalent but opposite in value to one unit of pain (sometimes referred to as a Dolor). Several Hedonistic Utilitarians have argued that reduction of pain should be seen as more important than increasing pleasure, sometimes for the Epicurean reason that pain seems worse for us than an equivalent amount of pleasure is good for us. Imagine that a magical genie offered for you to play a game with him. The game consists of you flipping a fair coin. If the coin lands on heads, then you immediately feel a burst of very intense pleasure and if it lands on tails, then you immediately feel a burst of very intense pain. Is it in your best interests to play the game?

Another area of disagreement between some Hedonists is whether pleasure is entirely internal to a person or if it includes external elements. Internalism about pleasure is the thesis that, whatever pleasure is, it is always and only inside a person. Externalism about pleasure, on the other hand, is the thesis that, pleasure is more than just a state of an individual (that is, that a necessary component of pleasure lies outside of the individual). Externalists about pleasure might, for example, describe pleasure as a function that mediates between our minds and the environment, such that every instance of pleasure has one or more integral environmental components. The vast majority of historic and contemporary versions of Prudential Hedonism consider pleasure to be an internal mental state.

Perhaps the least known disagreement about what aspects of pleasure make it valuable is the debate about whether we have to be conscious of pleasure for it to be valuable. The standard position is that pleasure is a conscious mental state, or at least that any pleasure a person is not conscious of does not intrinsically improve their well-being.

The most common definition of pleasure is that it is a sensation, something that we identify through our senses or that we feel. Psychologists claim that we have at least ten senses, including the familiar, sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, but also, movement, balance, and several sub-senses of touch, including heat, cold, pressure, and pain. New senses get added to the list when it is understood that some independent physical process underpins their functioning. The most widely-used examples of pleasurable sensations are the pleasures of eating, drinking, listening to music, and having
sex. Use of these examples has done little to help Hedonism avoid its debauched reputation.

It is also commonly recognised that our senses are physical processes that usually involve a mental component, such as the tickling feeling when someone blows gently on the back of your neck. If a sensation is something we identify through our sense organs, however, it is not entirely clear how to account for abstract pleasures. This is because abstract pleasures, such as a feeling of accomplishment for a job well done, do not seem to be experienced through any of the senses in the standard lists. Some Hedonists have attempted to resolve this problem by arguing for the existence of an independent pleasure sense and by defining sensation as something that we feel (regardless of whether it has been mediated by sense organs).

Most Hedonists who describe pleasure as a sensation will be Quantitative Hedonists and will argue that the pleasure from the different senses is the same. Qualitative Hedonists, in comparison, can use the framework of the senses to help differentiate between qualities of pleasure. For example, a Qualitative Hedonist might argue that pleasurable sensations from touch and movement are always lower quality than the others.

Hedonists have also defined pleasure as intrinsically valuable experience, that is to say any experiences that we find intrinsically valuable either are, or include, instances of pleasure. According to this definition, the reason that listening to music and eating a fine meal are both intrinsically pleasurable is because those experiences include an element of pleasure (along with the other elements specific to each activity, such as the experience of the texture of the food and the melody of the music). By itself, this definition enables Hedonists to make an argument that is close to perfectly circular. Defining pleasure as intrinsically valuable experience and well-being as all and only experiences that are intrinsically valuable allows a Hedonist to all but stipulate that Prudential Hedonism is the correct theory of well-being. Where defining pleasure as intrinsically valuable experience is not circular is in its stipulation that only experiences matter for well-being. Some well-known objections to this idea are discussed below.

Another problem with defining pleasure as intrinsically valuable experience is that the definition does not tell us very much about what pleasure is or how it can be identified. For example, knowing that pleasure is intrinsically valuable experience would not help someone to work out if a particular experience was intrinsically or just instrumentally valuable. Hedonists have attempted to respond to this problem by explaining how to find out whether an experience is intrinsically valuable.

One method is to ask yourself if you would like the experience to continue for its own sake (rather than because of what it might lead to). Wanting an experience to continue for its own sake reveals that you find it to be intrinsically valuable. While still making a coherent theory of well-being, defining intrinsically valuable experiences as those you want to perpetuate makes the theory much less hedonistic. The fact that what a person wants is the main criterion for something having intrinsic value, makes this kind of theory more in line with preference satisfaction theories of well-being. The central claim of preference satisfaction theories of well-being is that some variant of getting what one wants, or should want, under certain conditions is the only thing that intrinsically improves ones well-being.

Another method of fleshing out the definition of pleasure as intrinsically valuable experience is to describe how intrinsically valuable experiences feel. This method remains a hedonistic one, but seems to fall back into defining pleasure as a sensation.

It has also been argued that what makes an experience intrinsically valuable is that you like or enjoy it for its own sake. Hedonists arguing for this definition of pleasure usually take pains to position their definition in between the realms of sensation and preference satisfaction. They argue that since we can like or enjoy some experiences without concurrently wanting them or feeling any particular sensation, then liking is distinct from both sensation and preference satisfaction. Liking and enjoyment are also difficult terms to define in more detail, but they are certainly easier to recognise than the rather opaque "intrinsically valuable experience."

Merely defining pleasure as intrinsically valuable experience and intrinsically valuable experiences as those that we like or enjoy still lacks enough detail to be very useful for contemplating well-being. A potential method for making this theory more useful would be to draw on the cognitive sciences to investigate if there is a specific neurological function for liking or enjoying. Cognitive science has not reached the point where anything definitive can be said about this, but a few neuroscientists have experimental evidence that liking and wanting (at least in regards to food) are neurologically distinct processes in rats and have argued that it should be the same for humans. The same scientists have wondered if the same processes govern all of our liking and wanting, but this question remains unresolved.

Most Hedonists who describe pleasure as intrinsically valuable experience believe that pleasure is internal and conscious. Hedonists who define pleasure in this way may be either Quantitative or Qualitative Hedonists, depending on whether they think that quality is a relevant dimension of how intrinsically valuable we find certain experiences.

One of the most recent developments in modern hedonism is the rise of defining pleasure as a pro-attitude a positive psychological stance toward some object. Any account of Prudential Hedonism that defines pleasure as a pro-attitude is referred to as Attitudinal Hedonism because it is a persons attitude that dictates whether anything has intrinsic value. Positive psychological stances include approving of something, thinking it is good, and being pleased about it. The object of the positive psychological stance could be a physical object, such as a painting one is observing, but it could also be a thought, such as "my country is not at war," or even a sensation. An example of a pro-attitude towards a sensation could be being pleased about the fact that an ice cream tastes so delicious.

Fred Feldman, the leading proponent of Attitudinal Hedonism, argues that the sensation of pleasure only has instrumental value it only brings about value if you also have a positive psychological stance toward that sensation. In addition to his basic Intrinsic Attitudinal Hedonism, which is a form of Quantitative Hedonism, Feldman has also developed many variants that are types of Qualitative Hedonism. For example, Desert-Adjusted Intrinsic Attitudinal Hedonism, which reduces the intrinsic value a pro-attitude has for our well-being based on the quality of deservedness (that is, on the extent to which the particular object deserves a pro-attitude or not). For example, Desert-Adjusted Intrinsic Attitudinal Hedonism might stipulate that sensations of pleasure arising from adulterous behavior do not deserve approval, and so assign them no value.

Defining pleasure as a pro-attitude, while maintaining that all sensations of pleasure have no intrinsic value, makes Attitudinal Hedonism less obviously hedonistic as the versions that define pleasure as a sensation. Indeed, defining pleasure as a pro-attitude runs the risk of creating a preference satisfaction account of well-being
because being pleased about something without feeling any pleasure seems hard to distinguish from having a preference for that thing.

The most common argument against Prudential Hedonism is that pleasure is not the only thing that intrinsically contributes to well-being. Living in reality, finding meaning in life, producing noteworthy achievements, building and maintaining friendships, achieving perfection in certain domains, and living in accordance with religious or moral laws are just some of the other things thought to intrinsically add value to our lives. When presented with these apparently valuable aspects of life, Hedonists usually attempt to explain their apparent value in terms of pleasure. A Hedonist would argue, for example, that friendship is not valuable in and of itself, rather it is valuable to the extent that it brings us pleasure. Furthermore, to answer why we might help a friend even when it harms us, a Hedonist will argue that the prospect of future pleasure from receiving reciprocal favors from our friend, rather than the value of friendship itself, should motivate us to help in this way.

Those who object to Prudential Hedonism on the grounds that pleasure is not the only source of intrinsic value use two main strategies. In the first strategy, objectors make arguments that some specific value cannot be reduced to pleasure. In the second strategy, objectors cite very long lists of apparently intrinsically valuable aspects of life and then challenge hedonists with the prolonged and arduous task of trying to explain how the value of all of them can be explained solely by reference to pleasure and the avoidance of pain. This second strategy gives good reason to be a pluralist about value because the odds seem to be against any monistic theory of value, such as Prudential Hedonism. The first strategy, however, has the ability to show that Prudential Hedonism is false, rather than being just unlikely to be the best theory of well-being.

The most widely cited argument for pleasure not being the only source of intrinsic value is based on Robert Nozicks experience machine thought-experiment. Nozicks experience machine thought-experiment was designed to show that more than just our experiences matter to us because living in reality also matters to us. This argument has proven to be so convincing that nearly every single book on ethics that discusses hedonism rejects it using only this argument or this one and one other.

In the thought experiment, Nozick asks us to imagine that we have the choice of plugging in to a fantastic machine that flawlessly provides an amazing mix of experiences. Importantly, this machine can provide these experiences in a way that, once plugged in to the machine, no one can tell that their experiences are not real. Disregarding considerations about responsibilities to others and the problems that would arise if everyone plugged in, would you plug in to the machine for life? The vast majority of people reject the choice to live a much more pleasurable life in the machine, mostly because they agree with Nozick that living in reality seems to be important for our well-being. Opinions differ on what exactly about living in reality is so much better for us than the additional pleasure of living in the experience machine, but the most common response is that a life that is not lived in reality is pointless or meaningless.

Since this argument has been used so extensively (from the mid 1970s onwards) to dismiss Prudential Hedonism, several attempts have been made to refute it. Most commonly, Hedonists argue that living an experience machine life would be better than living a real life and that most people are simply mistaken to not want to plug in. Some go further and try to explain why so many people choose not to plug in. Such explanations often point out that the most obvious reasons for not wanting to plug in can be explained in terms of expected pleasure and avoidance of pain. For example, it might be argued that we expect to get pleasure from spending time with our real friends and family, but we do not expect to get as much pleasure from the fake friends or family we might have in the experience machine. These kinds of attempts to refute the experience machine objection do little to persuade non-Hedonists that they have made the wrong choice.

A more promising line of defence for the Prudential Hedonists is to provide evidence that there is a particular psychological bias that affects most peoples choice in the experience machine thought experiment. A reversal of Nozicks thought experiment has been argued to reveal just such a bias. Imagine that a credible source tells you that you are actually in an experience machine right now. You have no idea what reality would be like. Given the choice between having your memory of this conversation wiped and going to reality, what would be best for you to choose? Empirical evidence on this choice shows that most people would choose to stay in the experience machine. Comparing this result with how people respond to Nozicks experience machine thought experiment reveals the following: In Nozicks experience machine thought experiment people tend to choose a real and familiar life over a more pleasurable life and in the reversed experience machine thought experiment people tend to choose a familiar life over a real life. Familiarity seems to matter more than reality, undermining the strength of Nozicks original argument. The bias thought to be responsible for this difference is the status quo bias an irrational preference for the familiar or for things to stay as they are.

Regardless of whether Nozicks experience machine thought experiment is as decisive a refutation of Prudential Hedonism as it is often thought to be, the wider argument (that living in reality is valuable for our well-being) is still a problem for Prudential Hedonists. That our actions have real consequences, that our friends are real, and that our experiences are genuine seem to matter for most of us regardless of considerations of pleasure. Unfortunately, we lack a trusted methodology for discerning if these things should matter to us. Perhaps the best method for identifying intrinsically valuable aspects of lives is to compare lives that are equal in pleasure and all other important ways, except that one aspect of one of the lives is increased. Using this methodology, however, seems certain to lead to an artificial pluralist conclusion about what has value. This is because any increase in a potentially valuable aspect of our lives will be viewed as a free bonus. And, most people will choose the life with the free bonus just in case it has intrinsic value, not necessarily because they think it does have intrinsic value.

The main traditional line of criticism against Prudential Hedonism is that not all pleasure is valuable for well-being, or at least that some pleasures are less valuable than others because of non-amount-related factors. Some versions of this criticism are much easier for Prudential Hedonists to deal with than others depending on where the allegedly disvaluable aspect of the pleasure resides. If the disvaluable aspect is experienced with the pleasure itself, then both Qualitative and Quantitative varieties of Prudential Hedonism have sufficient answers to these problems. If, however, the disvaluable aspect of the pleasure is never experienced, then all types of Prudential Hedonism struggle to explain why the allegedly disvaluable aspect is irrelevant.

Examples of the easier criticisms to deal with are that Prudential Hedonism values, or at least overvalues, perverse and base pleasures. These kinds of criticisms ten
d to have had more sway in the past and doubtless encouraged Mill to develop his Qualitative Hedonism. In response to the charge that Prudential Hedonism mistakenly values pleasure from sadistic torture, sating hunger, copulating, listening to opera, and philosophising all equally, Qualitative Hedonists can simply deny that it does. Since pleasure from sadistic torture will normally be experienced as containing the quality of sadism (just as the pleasure from listening to good opera is experienced as containing the quality of acoustic excellence), the Qualitative Hedonist can plausibly claim to be aware of the difference in quality and allocate less value to perverse or base pleasures accordingly.

Prudential Hedonists need not relinquish the Quantitative aspect of their theory in order to deal with these criticisms, however. Quantitative Hedonists, can simply point out that moral or cultural values are not necessarily relevant to well-being because the investigation of well-being aims to understand what the good life for the one living it is and what intrinsically makes their life go better for them. A Quantitative Hedonist can simply respond that a sadist that gets sadistic pleasure from torturing someone does improve their own well-being (assuming that the sadist never feels any negative emotions or gets into any other trouble as a result). Similarly, a Quantitative Hedonist can argue that if someone genuinely gets a lot of pleasure from porcine company and wallowing in the mud, but finds opera thoroughly dull, then we have good reason to think that having to live in a pig sty would be better for her well-being than forcing her to listen to opera.

Much more problematic for both Quantitative and Qualitative Hedonists, however, are the more modern versions of the criticism that not all pleasure is valuable. The modern versions of this criticism tend to use examples in which the disvaluable aspect of the pleasure is never experienced by the person whose well-being is being evaluated. The best example of these modern criticisms is a thought experiment devised by Shelly Kagan. Kagans deceived businessman thought experiment is widely thought to show that pleasures of a certain kind, namely false pleasures, are worth much less than true pleasures.

Kagan asks us to imagine the life of a very successful businessman who takes great pleasure in being respected by his colleagues, well-liked by his friends, and loved by his wife and children until the day he died. Then Kagan asks us to compare this life with one of equal length and the same amount of pleasure (experienced as coming from exactly the same sources), except that in each case the businessman is mistaken about how those around him really feel. This second (deceived) businessman experiences just as much pleasure from the respect of his colleagues and the love of his family as the first businessman. The only difference is that the second businessman has many false beliefs. Specifically, the deceived businessmans colleagues actually think he is useless, his wife doesnt really love him, and his children are only nice to him so that he will keep giving them money. Given that the deceived businessman never knew of any of these deceptions and his experiences were never negatively impacted by the deceptions indirectly, which life do you think is better?

Nearly everyone thinks that the deceived businessman has a worse life. This is a problem for Prudential Hedonists because the pleasure is quantitatively equal in each life, so they should be equally good for the one living it. Qualitative Hedonism does not seem to be able to avoid this criticism either because the falsity of the pleasures experienced by the deceived businessman is a dimension of the pleasure that he never becomes aware of. Theoretically, an externalist and qualitative version of Attitudinal Hedonism could include the falsity dimension of an instance of pleasure even if the falsity dimension never impacts the consciousness of the person. However, the resulting definition of pleasure bears little resemblance to what we commonly understand pleasure to be and also seems to be ad hoc in its inclusion of the truth dimension but not others. A dedicated Prudential Hedonist of any variety can always stubbornly stick to the claim that the lives of the two businessmen are of equal value, but that will do little to convince the vast majority to take Prudential Hedonism more seriously.

Another major line of criticism used against Prudential Hedonists is that they have yet to come up with a meaningful definition of pleasure that unifies the seemingly disparate array of pleasures while remaining recognisable as pleasure. Some definitions lack sufficient detail to be informative about what pleasure actually is, or why it is valuable, and those that do offer enough detail to be meaningful are faced with two difficult tasks.

The first obstacle for a useful definition of pleasure for hedonism is to unify all of the diverse pleasures in a reasonable way. Phenomenologically, the pleasure from reading a good book is very different to the pleasure from bungee jumping, and both of these pleasures are very different to the pleasure of having sex. This obstacle is unsurpassable for most versions of Quantitative Hedonism because it makes the value gained from different pleasures impossible to compare. Not being able to compare different types of pleasure results in being unable to say if a life is better than another in most even vaguely realistic cases. Furthermore, not being able to compare lives means that Quantitative Hedonism could not be usefully used to guide behavior since it cannot instruct us on which life to aim for.

Attempts to resolve the problem of unifying the different pleasures while remaining within a framework of Quantitative Hedonism, usually involve pointing out something that is constant in all of the disparate pleasures and defining that particular thing as pleasure. When pleasure is defined as a strict sensation, this strategy fails because introspection reveals that no such sensation exists. Pleasure defined as the experience of liking or as a pro-attitude does much better at unifying all of the diverse pleasures. However, defining pleasure in these ways makes the task of filling in the details of the theory a fine balancing act. Liking or pro-attitudes must be described in such a way that they are not solely a sensation or best described as a preference satisfaction theory. And they must perform this balancing act while still describing a scientifically plausible and conceptually coherent account of pleasure. Most attempts to define pleasure as liking or pro-attitudes seem to disagree with either the folk conception of what pleasure is or any of the plausible scientific conceptions of how pleasure functions.

Most varieties of Qualitative Hedonism do better at dealing with the problem of diverse pleasures because they can evaluate different pleasures according to their distinct qualities. Qualitative Hedonists still need a coherent method for comparing the different pleasures with each other in order to be more than just an abstract theory of well-being, however. And, it is difficult to construct such a methodology in a way that avoids counter examples, while still describing a scientifically plausible and conceptually coherent account of pleasure.

The second obstacle is creating a definition of pleasure that retains at least some of the core properties of the common understanding of the term pleasure. As mentioned, many of the potential adjustments to the main definitions of pleasure are useful for avoiding one or more of the many objections against Prude
ntial Hedonism. The problem with this strategy is that the more adjustments that are made, the more apparent it becomes that the definition of pleasure is not recognisable as the pleasure that gave Hedonism its distinctive intuitive plausibility in the first place. When an instance of pleasure is defined simply as when someone feels good, its intrinsic value for well-being is intuitively obvious. However, when the definition of pleasure is stretched, so as to more effectively argue that all valuable experiences are pleasurable, it becomes much less recognisable as the concept of pleasure we use in day-to-day life and its intrinsic value becomes much less intuitive.

The future of hedonism seems bleak. The considerable number and strength of the arguments against Prudential Hedonisms central principle (that pleasure and only pleasure intrinsically contributes positively to well-being and the opposite for pain) seem insurmountable. Hedonists have been creative in their definitions of pleasure so as to avoid these objections, but more often than not find themselves defending a theory that is not particularly hedonistic, realistic or both.

Perhaps the only hope that Hedonists of all types can have for the future is that advances in cognitive science will lead to a better understanding of how pleasure works in the brain and how biases affect our judgements about thought experiments. If our improved understanding in these areas confirms a particular theory about what pleasure is and also provides reasons to doubt some of the widespread judgements about the thought experiments that make the vast majority of philosophers reject hedonism, then hedonism might experience at least a partial revival. The good news for Hedonists is that at least some emerging theories and results from cognitive science do appear to support some aspects of hedonism.

Dan Weijers Email: danweijers@gmail.com Victoria University of Wellington New Zealand

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Hedonism | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Where do you see yourself on your next vacation? If the first answer that springs to mind is on the ceiling, well, my friend, you have to see what sets us apart from other couples resorts.

Every room at Hedonism II has a king-size mirror mounted directly above the bed. Its a constant reminder that couples vacations are for indulging in your wildest fantasies. And even if you never tell another soul about your Hedonism II experience, youll always have a witness.

All guestrooms include flat screen TVs, refrigerators, a Euro-style Jacuzzi shower or rain shower, a coffee maker, and a safety deposit box. Rooms also include views of our tropical gardens or panoramic views of our oceanfront, and some have direct beach access and outdoor Jacuzzis.

At Hedonism II, we offer accommodations on both sides of our lush, oceanfront resort in Negril, Jamaica. Our Nude category features Garden View, Ocean View, and our new, fully renovated Premium Rooms located on our nude side of the resort. Our Prude category features Garden View and Ocean View rooms located on our quieter clothing optional beach and gardens. Guests of either category are welcome on both sides of the resort. However, nudity is not permitted in the main public areas.

Our standard rooms boast newly added features such as flat screen TVs and refrigerators set in a tropical theme with our famous ceiling mirror, Euro-style Jacuzzi showers, and large windows. Classic Rooms are available on both the nude and prude side of the resort, with options of Garden View or Ocean View (select Classic Ocean View rooms are available with a private outdoor Jacuzzi tub and complimentary stocked refrigerator).

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Our premium suites are just another way that Hedonism II surpasses other couples resorts. Indulge your every whim and fantasy in our completely renovated ocean and garden view rooms with expanded, fully glass-enclosed bathroom, modern ceiling mirror, deluxe toiletries, complimentary refrigerator, and to complete your dream come true, a private outdoor balcony or patio in select rooms, some with a Jacuzzi tub to seat many (Jacuzzi available in select Premium Suites). These sexy, ultra-lounge Premium Suites are now available for reservation at reservations@hedonism.com, by calling 631-LUV-HEDO (631-588-4336). or by booking online here at http://www.hedonism.com.

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Hedonism II offers WiFi in all guest rooms for an additional charge (complimentary in Premium Jacuzzi Suites). Hedonism II is NOT handicap friendly.

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Couples Resorts, Negril, Jamaica | Hedonism II

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Hedonism | Definition of Hedonism by Merriam-Webster

Popular use of the term well-being usually relates to health. A doctors surgery may run a Womens Well-being Clinic, for example. Philosophical use is broader, but related, and amounts to the notion of how well a persons life is going for that person. A persons well-being is what is good for them. Health, then, might be said to be a constituent of my well-being, but it is not plausibly taken to be all that matters for my well-being. One correlate term worth noting here is self-interest: my self-interest is what is in the interest of myself, and not others.

The philosophical use of the term also tends to encompass the negative aspects of how a persons life goes for them. So we may speak of the well-being of someone who is, and will remain in, the most terrible agony: their well-being is negative, and such that their life is worse for them than no life at all. The same is true of closely allied terms, such as welfare, which covers how a person is faring as a whole, whether well or badly, or happiness, which can be understoodas it was by the classical utilitarians from Jeremy Bentham onwards, for exampleto be the balance between good and bad things in a persons life. But note that philosophers also use such terms in the more standard positive way, speaking of ill-being, ill-faring, or, of course, unhappiness to capture the negative aspects of individuals lives.

Happiness is often used, in ordinary life, to refer to a short-lived state of a person, frequently a feeling of contentment: You look happy today; Im very happy for you. Philosophically, its scope is more often wider, encompassing a whole life. And in philosophy it is possible to speak of the happiness of a persons life, or of their happy life, even if that person was in fact usually pretty miserable. The point is that some good things in their life made it a happy one, even though they lacked contentment. But this usage is uncommon, and may cause confusion.

Over the last few decades, so-called positive psychology has hugely increased the attention paid by psychologists and other scientists to the notion of happiness. Such happiness is usually understood in terms of contentment or life-satisfaction, and is measured by means such as self-reports or daily questionnaires. Is positive psychology about well-being? As yet, conceptual distinctions are not sufficiently clear within the discipline. But it is probably fair to say that many of those involved, as researchers or as subjects, are assuming that ones life goes well to the extent that one is contented with itthat is, that some kind of hedonistic account of well-being is correct. Some positive psychologists, however, explicitly reject hedonistic theories in preference to Aristotelian or eudaimonist accounts of well-being, which are a version of the objective list theory of well-being discussed below. A leader in the field, Martin Seligman, for example, has recently suggested that, rather than happiness, positive psychology should concern itself with positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment (Perma) (Seligman 2011).

When discussing the notion of what makes life good for the individual living that life, it is preferable to use the term well-being instead of happiness. For we want at least to allow conceptual space for the possibility that, for example, the life of a plant may be good for that plant. And speaking of the happiness of a plant would be stretching language too far. (An alternative here might be flourishing, though this might be taken to bias the analysis of human well-being in the direction of some kind of natural teleology.) In that respect, the Greek word commonly translated happiness (eudaimonia) might be thought to be superior. But, in fact, eudaimonia seems to have been restricted not only to conscious beings, but to human beings: non-human animals cannot be eudaimon. This is because eudaimonia suggests that the gods, or fortune, have favoured one, and the idea that the gods could care about non-humans would not have occurred to most Greeks.

It is occasionally claimed that certain ancient ethical theories, such as Aristotles, result in the collapse of the very notion of well-being. On Aristotles view, if you are my friend, then my well-being is closely bound up with yours. It might be tempting, then, to say that your well-being is part of mine, in which case the distinction between what is good for me and what is good for others has broken down. But this temptation should be resisted. Your well-being concerns how well your life goes for you, and we can allow that my well-being depends on yours without introducing the confusing notion that my well-being is constituted by yours. There are signs in Aristotelian thought of an expansion of the subject or owner of well-being. A friend is another self, so that what benefits my friend benefits me. But this should be taken either as a metaphorical expression of the dependence claim, or as an identity claim which does not threaten the notion of well-being: if you really are the same person as I am, then of course what is good for you will be what is good for me, since there is no longer any metaphysically significant distinction between you and me.

Well-being is a kind of value, sometimes called prudential value, to be distinguished from, for example, aesthetic value or moral value. What marks it out is the notion of good for. The serenity of a Vermeer painting, for example, is a kind of goodness, but it is not good for the painting. It may be good for us to contemplate such serenity, but contemplating serenity is not the same as the serenity itself. Likewise, my giving money to a development charity may have moral value, that is, be morally good. And the effects of my donation may be good for others. But it remains an open question whether my being morally good is good for me; and, if it is, its being good for me is still conceptually distinct from its being morally good.

There is something mysterious about the notion of good for. Consider a possible world that contains only a single item: a stunning Vermeer painting. Leave aside any doubts you might have about whether paintings can be good in a world without viewers, and accept for the sake of argument that this painting has aesthetic value in that world. It seems intuitively plausible to claim that the value of this world is constituted solely by the aesthetic value of the painting. But now consider a world which contains one individual living a life that is good for them. How are to describe the relationship between the value of this world, and the value of the life lived in it for the individual? Are we to say that the world has a value at all? How can it, if the only value it contains is good for as opposed to just good? And yet we surely do want to say that this world is better (more good) than some other empty world. Well, should we say that the world is good, and is so because of the good it contains for the individual? This fails to capture the idea that there is in fact nothing of value in this world except what is good for the individual.

Thoughts such as these led G.E. Moore to object to the very idea of good for (Moore 1903, pp. 989). Moore argued that the idea of my own good, which he saw as equivalent to what is good for me, makes no sense. When I speak of, say, pleasure as what is good for me, he claimed, I can mean only either that the pleasure I get is good, or that my getting it is good. Nothing is added by saying that the pleasure constitutes my good, or is good for me.

But the distinctions I drew between different categories of value above show that Moores analysis of the cla
im that my own good consists in pleasure is too narrow. Indeed Moores argument rests on the very assumption that it seeks to prove: that only the notion of good is necessary to make all the evaluative judgements we might wish to make. The claim that it is good that I get pleasure is, logically speaking, equivalent to the claim that the world containing the single Vermeer is good. It is, so to speak, impersonal, and leaves out of account the special feature of the value of well-being: that it is good for individuals.

Indeed, one way to respond both to Moores challenge, and to the puzzles above, is to try, when appropriate, to do without the notion of good (see Kraut 2011) and make do with good for, alongside the separate and non-evaluative notion of reasons for action. Thus, the world containing the single individual with a life worth living, might be said to contain nothing good per se, but a life that is good for that individual. And this fact may give us a reason to bring about such a world, given the opportunity.

Moores book was published in Cambridge, England, at the beginning of the twentieth century. At the end of the same century, a book was published in Cambridge, Mass., which also posed some serious challenges to the notion of well-being: What Do We Owe to Each Other?, by T.M. Scanlon.

Moores ultimate aim in criticizing the idea of goodness for was to attack egoism. Likewise, Scanlon has an ulterior motive in objecting to the notion of well-beingto attack so-called teleological or end-based theories of ethics, in particular, utilitarianism, which in its standard form requires us to maximize well-being. But in both cases the critiques stand independently.

One immediately odd aspect of Scanlons position that well-being is an otiose notion in ethics is that he himself seems to have a view on what well-being is. It involves, he believes, among other things, success in ones rational aims, and personal relations. But Scanlon claims that his view is not a theory of well-being, since a theory must explain what unifies these different elements, and how they are to be compared. And, he adds, no such theory is ever likely to be available, since such matters depend so much on context.

Scanlon does, however, implicitly make a claim about what unites these values: they are all constituents of well-being, as opposed to other kinds of value, such as aesthetic or moral. Nor is it clear why Scanlons view of well-being could not be developed so as to assist in making real-life choices between different values in ones own life.

Scanlon suggests that we often make claims about what is good in our lives without referring to the notion of well-being, and indeed that it would often be odd to do so. For example, I might say, I listen to Alison Krausss music because I enjoy it, and that will be sufficient. I do not need to go on to say, And enjoyment adds to my well-being.

But this latter claim sounds peculiar only because we already know that enjoyment makes a persons life better for them. And in some circumstances such a claim would anyway not be odd: consider an argument with someone who claims that aesthetic experience is worthless, or with an ascetic. Further, people do use the notion of well-being in practical thinking. For example, if I am given the opportunity to achieve something significant, which will involve considerable discomfort over several years, I may consider whether, from the point of view of my own well-being, the project is worth pursuing.

Scanlon argues also that the notion of well-being, if it is to be philosophically acceptable, ought to provide a sphere of compensationa context in which it makes sense to say, for example, that I am losing one good in my life for the sake of gain over my life as a whole. And, he claims, there is no such sphere. For Scanlon, giving up present comfort for the sake of future health feels like a sacrifice.

But this does not chime with my own experience. When I donate blood, this feels to me like a sacrifice. But when I visit the dentist, it feels to me just as if I am weighing up present pains against potential future pains. And we can weigh up different components of well-being against one another. Consider a case in which you are offered a job which is highly paid but many miles away from your friends and family.

Scanlon denies that we need an account of well-being to understand benevolence, since we do not have a general duty of benevolence, but merely duties to benefit others in specific ways, such as to relieve their pain. But, from the philosophical perspective, it may be quite useful to use the heading of benevolence in order to group such duties. And, again, comparisons may be important: if I have several pro tanto duties of benevolence, not all of which can be fulfilled, I shall have to weigh up the various benefits I can provide against one another. And here the notion of well-being will again come into play.

Further, if morality includes so-called imperfect duties to benefit others, that is, duties that allow the agent some discretion as to when and how to assist, the lack of any overarching conception of well-being is likely to make the fulfillment of such duties problematic.

On one view, human beings always act in pursuit of what they think will give them the greatest balance of pleasure over pain. This is psychological hedonism, and will not be my concern here. Rather, I intend to discuss evaluative hedonism or prudential hedonism, according to which well-being consists in the greatest balance of pleasure over pain.

This view was first, and perhaps most famously, expressed by Socrates and Protagoras in the Platonic dialogue, Protagoras (Plato 1976 [C4 BCE], 351bc). Jeremy Bentham, perhaps the most well-known of the more recent hedonists, begins his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation thus: Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do.

In answer to the question, What does well-being consist in?, then, the hedonist will answer, The greatest balance of pleasure over pain. We might call this substantive hedonism. A complete hedonist position will involve also explanatory hedonism, which consists in an answer to the following question: What makes pleasure good, and pain bad?, that answer being, The pleasantness of pleasure, and the painfulness of pain. Consider a substantive hedonist who believed that what makes pleasure good for us is that it fulfills our nature. This theorist is not an explanatory hedonist.

Hedonismas is demonstrated by its ancient rootshas long seemed an obviously plausible view. Well-being, what is good for me, might be thought to be naturally linked to what seems good to me, and pleasure does, to most people, seem good. And how could anything else benefit me except in so far as I enjoy it?

The simplest form of hedonism is Benthams, according to which the more pleasantness one can pack into ones life, the better it will be, and the more painfulness one encounters, the worse it will be. How do we measure the value of the two experiences? The two central aspects of the respective experiences, according to Bentham, are their duration, and their intensity.

Bentham tended to think of pleasure and pain as a kind of sensation, as the notion of intensity might suggest. One problem with this kind of hedonism is that there does not appear to be a single common strand of pleasantness running through all the different experiences people enjoy, such as eating hamburgers, reading Shakespeare, or playing water polo.
Rather, it seems, there are certain experiences we want to continue, and we might be prepared to call thesefor philosophical purposespleasures (even though some of them, such as diving in a very deep and narrow cave, for example, would not normally be described as pleasurable).

But simple hedonism could survive this objection merely by incorporating whatever view of pleasure was thought to be plausible. A more serious objection is to the evaluative stance of hedonism itself. Thomas Carlyle, for example, described the hedonistic component of utilitarianism as the philosophy of swine, the point being that simple hedonism places all pleasures on a par, whether they be the lowest animal pleasures of sex or the highest of aesthetic appreciation. One might make this point with a thought experiment. Imagine that you are given the choice of living a very fulfilling human life, or that of a barely sentient oyster, which experiences some very low-level pleasure. Imagine also that the life of the oyster can be as long as you like, whereas the human life will be of eighty years only. If Bentham were right, there would have to be a length of oyster life such that you would choose it in preference to the human. And yet many say that they would choose the human life in preference to an oyster life of any length.

Now this is not a knockdown argument against simple hedonism. Indeed some people are ready to accept that at some length or other the oyster life becomes preferable. But there is an alternative to simple hedonism, outlined famously by J.S. Mill, using his distinction (itself influenced by Platos discussion of pleasure at the end of his Republic (Plato 1992 [C4 BCE], 582d-583a)) between higher and lower pleasures (1998 [1863], ch. 2). Mill added a third property to the two determinants of value identified by Bentham, duration and intensity. To distinguish it from these two quantitative properties, Mill called his third property quality. The claim is that some pleasures, by their very nature, are more valuable than others. For example, the pleasure of reading Shakespeare, by its very nature, is more valuable than any amount of basic animal pleasure. And we can see this, Mill suggests, if we note that those who have experienced both types, and are competent judges, will make their choices on this basis.

A long-standing objection to Mills move here has been to claim that his position can no longer be described as hedonism proper (or what I have called explanatory hedonism). If higher pleasures are higher because of their nature, that aspect of their nature cannot be pleasantness, since that could be determined by duration and intensity alone. And Mill anyway speaks of properties such as nobility as adding to the value of a pleasure. Now it has to be admitted that Mill is sailing close to the wind here. But there is logical space for a hedonist position which allows properties such as nobility to determine pleasantness, and insists that only pleasantness determines value. But one might well wonder how nobility could affect pleasantness, and why Mill did not just come out with the idea that nobility is itself a good-making property.

But there is a yet more weighty objection to hedonism of any kind: the so-called experience machine. Imagine that I have a machine that I could plug you into for the rest of your life. This machine would give you experiences of whatever kind you thought most valuable or enjoyablewriting a great novel, bringing about world peace, attending an early Rolling Stones gig. You would not know you were on the machine, and there is no worry about its breaking down or whatever. Would you plug in? Would it be wise, from the point of your own well-being, to do so? Robert Nozick thinks it would be a big mistake to plug in: We want to do certain things we want to be a certain way plugging into an experience machine limits us to a man-made reality (Nozick 1974, p. 43).

One can make the machine sound more palatable, by allowing that genuine choices can be made on it, that those plugged in have access to a common virtual world shared by other machine-users, a world in which ordinary communication is possible, and so on. But this will not be enough for many anti-hedonists. A further line of response begins from so-called externalism in the philosophy of mind, according to which the content of mental states is determined by facts external to the experiencer of those states. Thus, the experience of really writing a great novel is quite different from that of apparently writing a great novel, even though from the inside they may be indistinguishable. But this is once again sailing close to the wind. If the world can affect the very content of my experience without my being in a position to be aware of it, why should it not affect the value of my experience?

The strongest tack for hedonists to take is to accept the apparent force of the experience machine objection, but to insist that it rests on common sense intuitions, the place in our lives of which may itself be justified by hedonism. This is to adopt a strategy similar to that developed by two-level utilitarians in response to alleged counter-examples based on common-sense morality. The hedonist will point out the so-called paradox of hedonism, that pleasure is most effectively pursued indirectly. If I consciously try to maximize my own pleasure, I will be unable to immerse myself in those activities, such as reading or playing games, which do give pleasure. And if we believe that those activities are valuable independently of the pleasure we gain from engaging in them, then we shall probably gain more pleasure overall.

These kinds of stand-off in moral philosophy are unfortunate, but should not be brushed aside. They raise questions concerning the epistemology of ethics, and the source and epistemic status of our deepest ethical beliefs, which we are further from answering than many would like to think. Certainly the current trend of quickly dismissing hedonism on the basis of a quick run-through of the experience machine objection is not methodologically sound.

The experience machine is one motivation for the adoption of a desire theory. When you are on the machine, many of your central desires are likely to remain unfilled. Take your desire to write a great novel. You may believe that this is what you are doing, but in fact it is just a hallucination. And what you want, the argument goes, is to write a great novel, not the experience of writing a great novel.

Historically, however, the reason for the current dominance of desire theories lies in the emergence of welfare economics. Pleasure and pain are inside peoples heads, and also hard to measureespecially when we have to start weighing different peoples experiences against one another. So economists began to see peoples well-being as consisting in the satisfaction of preferences or desires, the content of which could be revealed by their possessors. This made possible the ranking of preferences, the development of utility functions for individuals, and methods for assessing the value of preference-satisfaction (using, for example, money as a standard).

The simplest version of a desire theory one might call the present desire theory, according to which someone is made better off to the extent that their current desires are fulfilled. This theory does succeed in avoiding the experience machine objection. But it has serious problems of its own. Consider the case of the angry adolescent. This boys mother tells him he cannot attend a certain nightclub, so the boy holds a gun to his own head, wanting to pull the trigger and retaliate against his mother. Re
call that the scope of theories of well-being should be the whole of a life. It is implausible that the boy will make his life go as well as possible by pulling the trigger. We might perhaps interpret the simple desire theory as a theory of well-being-at-at-a-particular-time. But even then it seems unsatisfactory. From whatever perspective, the boy would be better off if he put the gun down.

We should move, then, to a comprehensive desire theory, according to which what matters to a persons well-being is the overall level of desire-satisfaction in their life as a whole. A summative version of this theory suggests, straightforwardly enough, that the more desire-fulfilment in a life the better. But it runs into Derek Parfits case of addiction (1984, p. 497). Imagine that you can start taking a highly addictive drug, which will cause a very strong desire in you for the drug every morning. Taking the drug will give you no pleasure; but not taking it will cause you quite severe suffering. There will be no problem with the availability of the drug, and it will cost you nothing. But what reason do you have to take it?

A global version of the comprehensive theory ranks desires, so that desires about the shape and content of ones life as a whole are given some priority. So, if I prefer not to become a drug addict, that will explain why it is better for me not to take Parfits drug. But now consider the case of the orphan monk. This young man began training to be a monk at the earliest age, and has lived a very sheltered life. He is now offered three choices: he can remain as a monk, or become either a cook or a gardener outside the monastery, at a grange. He has no conception of the latter alternatives, so chooses to remain a monk. But surely it might be possible that he would have a better life were he to live outside?

So we now have to move to an informed desire version of the comprehensive theory. According to the informed desire account, the best life is the one I would desire if I were fully informed about all the (non-evaluative) facts. But now consider a case suggested by John Rawls: the grass-counter. Imagine a brilliant Harvard mathematician, fully informed about the options available to her, who develops an overriding desire to count the blades of grass on the lawns of Harvard. Like the experience machine, this case is another example of philosophical bedrock. Some will believe that, if she really is informed, and not suffering from some neurosis, then the life of grass-counting will be the best for her.

Note that on the informed desire view the subject must actually have the desires in question for well-being to accrue to her. If it were true of me that, were I fully informed I would desire some object which at present I have no desire for, giving me that object now would not benefit me. Any theory which claimed that it would amounts to an objective list theory with a desire-based epistemology.

All these problem cases for desire theories appear to be symptoms of a more general difficulty. Recall again the distinction between substantive and formal theories of well-being. The former state the constituents of well-being (such as pleasure), while the latter state what makes these things good for people (pleasantness, for example). Substantively, a desire theorist and a hedonist may agree on what makes life good for people: pleasurable experiences. But formally they will differ: the hedonist will refer to pleasantness as the good-maker, while the desire theorist must refer to desire-satisfaction. (It is worth pointing out here that if one characterizes pleasure as an experience the subject wants to continue, the distinction between hedonism and desire theories becomes quite hard to pin down.)

The idea that desire-satisfaction is a good-making property is somewhat odd. As Aristotle says (1984 [C4 BCE], Metaphysics, 1072a, tr. Ross): desire is consequent on opinion rather than opinion on desire. In other words, we desire things, such as writing a great novel, because we think those things are independently good; we do not think they are good because they will satisfy our desire for them.

The threefold distinction I am using between different theories of well-being has become standard in contemporary ethics. There are problems with it, however, as with many classifications, since it can blind one to other ways of characterizing views. Objective list theories are usually understood as theories which list items constituting well-being that consist neither merely in pleasurable experience nor in desire-satisfaction. Such items might include, for example, knowledge or friendship. But it is worth remembering, for example, that hedonism might be seen as one kind of list theory, and all list theories might then be opposed to desire theories as a whole.

What should go on the list? It is important that every good should be included. As Aristotle put it: We take what is self-sufficient to be that which on its own makes life worthy of choice and lacking in nothing. We think happiness to be such, and indeed the thing most of all worth choosing, not counted as just one thing among others (2000 [C4 BCE], Nicomachean Ethics, 1197b, tr. Crisp). In other words, if you claim that well-being consists only in friendship and pleasure, I can show your list to be unsatisfactory if I can demonstrate that knowledge is also something that makes people better off.

What is the good-maker, according to objective list theorists? This depends on the theory. One, influenced by Aristotle and recently developed by Thomas Hurka (1993), is perfectionism, according to which what makes things constituents of well-being is their perfecting human nature. If it is part of human nature to acquire knowledge, for example, then a perfectionist should claim that knowledge is a constituent of well-being. But there is nothing to prevent an objective list theorists claiming that all that the items on her list have in common is that each, in its own way, advances well-being.

How do we decide what goes on the list? All we can work on is the deliverance of reflective judgementintuition, if you like. But one should not conclude from this that objective list theorists are, because they are intuitionist, less satisfactory than the other two theories. For those theories too can be based only on reflective judgement. Nor should one think that intuitionism rules out argument. Argument is one way to bring people to see the truth. Further, we should remember that intuitions can be mistaken. Indeed, as suggested above, this is the strongest line of defence available to hedonists: to attempt to undermine the evidential weight of many of our natural beliefs about what is good for people.

One common objection to objective list theories is that they are litist, since they appear to be claiming that certain things are good for people, even if those people will not enjoy them, and do not even want them. One strategy here might be to adopt a hybrid account, according to which certain goods do benefit people independently of pleasure and desire-satisfaction, but only when they do in fact bring pleasure and/or satisfy desires. Another would be to bite the bullet, and point out that a theory could be both litist and true.

It is also worth pointing out that objective list theories need not involve any kind of objectionable authoritarianism or perfectionism. First, one might wish to include autonomy on ones list, claiming that the informed and reflective living of ones own life for oneself itself constitutes a good. Second, and perhaps more significantly, one might note that any theory of well-being in itself
has no direct moral implications. There is nothing logically to prevent ones holding a highly litist conception of well-being alongside a strict liberal view that forbade paternalistic interference of any kind with a persons own life (indeed, on some interpretations, J.S. Mills position is close to this).

One not implausible view, if desire theories are indeed mistaken in their reversal of the relation between desire and what is good, is that the debate is really between hedonism and objective list theories. And, as suggested above, what is most at stake here is the issue of the epistemic adequacy of our beliefs about well-being. The best way to resolve this matter would consist, in large part at least, in returning once again to the experience machine objection, and seeking to discover whether that objection really stands.

Well-being obviously plays a central role in any moral theory. A theory which said that it just does not matter would be given no credence at all. Indeed, it is very tempting to think that well-being, in some ultimate sense, is all that can matter morally. Consider, for example, Joseph Razs humanistic principle: the explanation and justification of the goodness or badness of anything derives ultimately from its contribution, actual or possible, to human life and its quality (Raz 1986, p. 194). If we expand this principle to cover non-human well-being, it might be read as claiming that, ultimately speaking, the justificatory force of any moral reason rests on well-being. This view is welfarism.

Act-utilitarians, who believe that the right action is that which maximizes well-being overall, may attempt to use the intuitive plausibility of welfarism to support their position, arguing that any deviation from the maximization of well-being must be grounded on something distinct from well-being, such as equality or rights. But those defending equality may argue that egalitarians are concerned to give priority to those who are worse off, and that we do see here a link with concern for well-being. Likewise, those concerned with rights may note that rights are to certain goods, such as freedom, or the absence of bads, such as suffering (in the case of the right not to be tortured, for example). In other words, the interpretation of welfarism is itself a matter of dispute. But, however it is understood, it does seem that welfarism poses a problem for those who believe that morality can require actions which benefit no one, and harm some, such as, for example, punishments intended to give individuals what they deserve.

Ancient ethics was, in a sense, more concerned with well-being than a good deal of modern ethics, the central question for many ancient moral philosophers being, Which life is best for one?. The rationality of egoismthe view that my strongest reason is always to advance my own well-beingwas largely assumed. This posed a problem. Morality is naturally thought to concern the interests of others. So if egoism is correct, what reason do I have to be moral?

One obvious strategy to adopt in defence of morality is to claim that a persons well-being is in some sense constituted by their virtue, or the exercise of virtue, and this strategy was adopted in subtly different ways by the three greatest ancient philosophers, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. At one point in his writings, Plato appears to allow for the rationality of moral self-sacrifice: the philosophers in his famous cave analogy in the Republic (51920) are required by morality to desist from contemplation of the sun outside the cave, and to descend once again into the cave to govern their fellow citizens. In the voluminous works of Aristotle, however, there is no recommendation of sacrifice. Aristotle believed that he could defend the virtuous choice as always being in the interest of the individual. Note, however, that he need not be described as an egoist in a strong senseas someone who believes that our only reasons for action are grounded in our own well-being. For him, virtue both tends to advance the good of others, and (at least when acted on) advances our own good. So Aristotle might well have allowed that the well-being of others grounds reasons for me to act. But these reasons will never come into conflict with reasons grounded in my own individual well-being.

His primary argument is his notorious and perfectionist function argument, according to which the good for some being is to be identified through attention to its function or characteristic activity. The characteristic activity of human beings is to exercise reason, and the good will lie in exercising reason wellthat is, in accordance with the virtues. This argument, which is stated by Aristotle very briefly and relies on assumptions from elsewhere in his philosophy and indeed that of Plato, appears to conflate the two ideas of what is good for a person, and what is morally good. I may agree that a good example of humanity will be virtuous, but deny that this person is doing what is best for them. Rather, I may insist, reason requires one to advance ones own good, and this good consists in, for example, pleasure, power, or honour. But much of Aristotles Nicomachean Ethics is taken up with portraits of the life of the virtuous and the vicious, which supply independent support for the claim that well-being is constituted by virtue. In particular, it is worth noting the emphasis placed by Aristotle on the value to a person of nobility (to kalon), a quasi-aesthetic value which those sensitive to such qualities might not implausibly see as a constituent of well-being of more worth than any other. In this respect, the good of virtue is, in the Kantian sense, unconditional. Yet, for Aristotle, virtue or the good will is not only morally good, but good for the individual.

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Well-Being (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)