The Nature of Pleasure

• Any mental process may have the quality of pleasantness or unpleasantness, but always has other qualities as well.

• Example: eating sugar is normally pleasant, but also has the quality of sweetness; pleasantness depends largely on this additional quality.

• Pleasantness and unpleasantness never occur alone; they are part of complex mental states.

• Ethical consequence: we cannot know by introspection that pleasantness alone is good or valuable.

• What introspection reveals: states containing pleasantness seem directly valuable, but their goodness is not solely due to pleasantness.

• Example: malice can be more evil if it is pleasant to its owner; the pleasantness of harming others defines its distinctive evil (Professor Broad).

• Mental experiences with pronounced pleasantness are called pleasures, and people may aim their actions at these experiences.

• Pleasantness occurs under various conditions:

  1. As a normal quality of certain sensations and perceptions (e.g., sweetness, perception of beauty).

  2. As an accompaniment of any activity (bodily or mental), if not imposed, frustrated, or impeded (e.g., overcoming mountaineering challenges can be pleasant).

  3. As an accompaniment of successful completion of any activity.

  4. As an accompaniment of attaining a desire, a special case of completing an activity and a major source of pleasantness.

• Psychological hedonism: desire for an experience may evolve into a desire for the pleasantness accompanying it.

• Example: natural desire for food may develop into a desire for the pleasantness of eating.

Ethical Hedonism

• Ethical hedonism holds that pleasantness is the only quality making an experience good or valuable.

• A good action is one that leads to a pleasant experience as its consequence.

• The right action at any moment is the one that produces the greatest pleasure compared to all other possible actions at that time.

• Ethical hedonism asserts that no consequences other than pleasantness or unpleasantness (hedonic consequences) are relevant to the goodness of an action.

• It is a theory of ethics, prescribing how men ought to act and what they ought to desire.

• Differs from psychological hedonism, which is a theory of psychology, holding that men always act for pleasant consequences and desire nothing but pleasantness.

• Psychological hedonists generally do not seek the greatest possible pleasure, leaving room for ethics to guide the most intense and lasting pleasures.

• This leads to egoistic ethical hedonism, where each man ought to seek his own maximum pleasure.

• Many ethical hedonists were also psychological hedonists, and if psychological hedonism were proven, egoistic hedonism would be the only possible ethics.

• Two kinds of ethical hedonism:

  1. Egoistic hedonism – seek one’s own maximum pleasure (greatest surplus of pleasantness over unpleasantness).

  2. Universalistic hedonism / utilitarianism – seek maximum pleasure of all beings capable of experiencing pleasantness and unpleasantness.

• In evaluating pleasantness caused by an action, two factors are key:

  1. Intensity or degree of pleasantness.

  2. Duration or length of time the pleasant experience lasts.

• Comparison challenges: short intense pleasure vs. longer, less intense pleasure; e.g., sweetmeat vs. lying in bed, cinema vs. novel.

• Bentham suggested additional factors to compare pleasures:

  1. Certainty – probability of the pleasure resulting from the action.

  2. Propinquity – nearness in time of the pleasure.

  3. Fecundity – ability of the pleasure to produce further pleasures.

  4. Purity – freedom from unpleasant experiences.

  5. Extent – number of persons affected by the pleasure.

• Certainty is important in practical decision-making; example: Hamlet avoided vengeance while uncle prayed due to certainty of failure.

• Propinquity affects probability; nearer pleasures are preferred due to higher likelihood of attainment.

• Fecundity and purity are secondary factors enhancing intensity and duration of pleasure.

• Fecundity increases overall pleasure by generating additional pleasant experiences.

• Purity increases intensity as there is less unpleasantness to diminish the surplus of pleasantness over unpleasantness.

• A moralist may adopt ethical hedonism for three reasons:

• (a) Analytic hedonism – holds that ‘good’ and ‘pleasant’ have exactly the same meaning, or that ‘good’ means productive of pleasant consequences (strictly in ethical sense).

  • If correct, disputes about hedonism would be merely about terminology, not theory.

• (b) Empirical synthetic hedonism – holds that while ‘good’ and ‘productive of pleasant consequences’ are not identical in meaning, experience shows that good actions produce pleasant consequences.

  • Faces the question of what makes a good action good.

  • Some adopt a sceptical attitude about answering this question.

• (c) A priori synthetic hedonism – holds that while ‘good’ and ‘productive of pleasant consequences’ are not identical in meaning, they are in a necessary relation.

  • A good action, by its very nature, must produce pleasant consequences.

  • Considered the most worthy of critical examination if analytic hedonism is rejected.