Hedonism

Hedonism definition is - the doctrine that pleasure or happiness is the sole or chief good in life. How to use hedonism in a sentence. The Modern Definition of hedonism.

The word ‘hedonism’ comes from the ancient Greek for‘pleasure’. Psychological or motivational hedonism claimsthat only pleasure or pain motivates us. Ethical or evaluative hedonismclaims that only pleasure has worth or value and only pain ordispleasure has disvalue or the opposite of worth. Jeremy Benthamasserted both psychological and ethical hedonism with the first twosentences of his book An Introduction to the Principles of Moralsand Legislation: “Nature has placed mankind under thegovernance of two sovereign masters, pain, andpleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought todo, as well as to determine what we shall do”. Debate abouthedonism was a feature too of many centuries before Bentham, and thishas also continued after him. Other key contributors to debate overhedonism include Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Aquinas, Butler, Hume,Mill, Nietzsche, Brentano, Sidgwick, Moore, Ross, Broad, Ryle andChisholm.

In general, pleasure is understood broadly below, as including or asincluded in all pleasant feeling or experience: contentment, delight,ecstasy, elation, enjoyment, euphoria, exhilaration, exultation,gladness, gratification, gratitude, joy, liking, love, relief,satisfaction, Schadenfreude, tranquility, and so on. Pain or displeasuretoo is understood broadly below, as including or as included in allunpleasant experience or feeling: ache, agitation, agony, angst,anguish, annoyance, anxiety, apprehensiveness, boredom, chagrin,dejection, depression, desolation, despair, desperation, despondency,discomfort, discombobulation, discontentment, disgruntlement, disgust,dislike, dismay, disorientation, dissatisfaction, distress, dread,enmity, ennui, fear, gloominess, grief, guilt, hatred, horror, hurting,irritation, loathing, melancholia, nausea, queasiness, remorse,resentment, sadness, shame, sorrow, suffering, sullenness, throb,terror, unease, vexation, and so on. ‘Pain or displeasure’is usually stated below just as ‘pain’ or just as‘displeasure’. Further economy is sometimes secured bystating, just about pleasure or just about displeasure, points that door might apply to both. Whether such pleasure-displeasure parallelsactually hold is a significant further issue, touched upon only brieflyin the present entry.

What sort of entity is pleasure or pain? Candidates include: state,state of affairs, thing, event and property. Second, is it afirst-order entity or a higher-order entity? For example, is your painyour toothache, its naggingness, or both? When you enjoy the cityscapebelow your viewpoint, is your pleasure your view, your enjoyment of it,the pleasurableness of your enjoyment of it, or all three? And so on.Third, does pleasure essentially have a ‘feel’ orphenomenology, a ‘something it is like’ (Nagel 1974).Fourth, does it essentially have directedness or‘aboutness’ or intentionality? These issues about thenature of pleasure and displeasure are discussed below (see also theentry for pleasure) as they bear on thenature and merits of various forms of hedonism.

• 1. Psychological Hedonism
• 2. Ethical Hedonism

1. Psychological Hedonism

Bentham's claim that pain and pleasure determine what we domakes him a psychological hedonist, and more specifically a hedonistabout the determination of action. This section focuses instead on themore modest claim that only pleasure or displeasure motivates us. Thisform of psychological hedonism helpfully allows that some hedonicmotivations of ours fail to determine our action, and that some of ourhedonically 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 ofour hedonically motivated or determined action actually secures lesspleasure than we would otherwise have got (e.g., Sidgwick: 48f).

1.1 Arguments For Psychological Hedonism

Why believe even the relatively modest motivational form ofpsychological hedonism? One argument infers it from the motivationalegoist claim that each of us is always motivated to maximize what wetake to be our own good, plus the claim that we each accept that ourgood 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 psychologicalthesis that each of us accepts hedonism about our own good. For onething, it ungenerously implies that those who think they rejecthedonism about their own good do not even know their own minds on thismatter.

Another argument for motivational hedonism is this: sometimes we aremotivated by pleasure, every case can be accounted for in thisway, the more unified the account the better, and hedonism is the mostunified account. But at most, this argument shows only that in theunification respect hedonism is the best account of our motivation.Even if that is so, unification is not the only feature that it isdesirable for theories of motivation to have, and the argument issilent on how motivational hedonism scores on any other desirablefeature. The argument consequently fails to establish the overallplausibility of motivational hedonism, let alone the thesis that it isthe most plausible theory of motivation. In addition, parallelarguments arguably ‘show’ that we are sometimes motivatedto improve ourselves, to survive, to attend to our near-and-dear, tolive with integrity, and so forth; that every case can be narrated insuch terms; and thus that all these rival views are just as unified asis motivational hedonism.

A third argument for motivational hedonism claims that it is a truthof everyday meaning that the words ‘is motivated’ just meansome such thing as ‘aims for the greatest balance of pleasureover pain’. The core trouble here is that motivational hedonismis not a truth of everyday meaning. Even if it were such a truth, themain issue of substance would remain. Rivals would simply re-state theongoing central issue using neighbouring concepts; for example:‘however it might be with the narrower concept“motive”, the claim that we are always moved bypleasure is false’. Nor would it help motivational hedonists tomake a Humpty Dumpty move here (see Carroll: ch. 6): ‘whenI use the words “is motivated”, said HumptyDumpty, they mean just what I choose them to mean, namely“is aimed at pleasure”’. Such stipulation does notidentify any good reason for anyone to join Humpty Dumpty in hiseccentric word usage.

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

1.2 Arguments Against Psychological Hedonism

Some challenges to motivational hedonism are demands for its thesisto be made more determinate. First, is it about every motivation; or isit only about the motives of ours that predominate, with exceptionswhen little pleasure or displeasure is at stake and/or when much elseis at stake (c.f. Kavka: 64–80 on ‘predominant egoism’)?The present entry takes motivational hedonism to be the first of theseviews. Second, is it about all motivational entities, including alldesires, wants, preferences, inclinations, intentions, decisions, andchoices; or is it instead a claim about only an incomplete subset ofthese? The present entry treats it as a claim just about desires (seethe entries on desire and intention). Third and relatedly, is it a pair ofclaims, one about desires for pleasure and the other about aversions todispleasure; or is it instead a single claim about overall or netdesires for a sufficient or maximal net pleasure-displeasure balance?The present entry generally treats it as the latter. Fourth, is it aclaim about every desire whatever, or just a claim about every humandesire? The present entry treats it as the latter, though it is a goodquestion why human desirers might be thought to be speciallypleasure-oriented. Fifth, is it the egoistic claim that one desiresonly one's own pleasure, or the egocentric claim that one desiresonly the pleasure of oneself and one's near-and-dear, or is itinstead a non-egoistic claim? When it makes a difference, the presententry takes motivational hedonism to be the first of these claims.Sixth, is it the production-based claim that we are motivated to causepleasure, or does it allow, for example, that being moved to laughmight be being motivated to express rather than to produce pleasure?The present entry considers production-based claims, plus the distinctidea that our desire only ever has pleasure as its object.

From critical demands for more determinacy, turn now to thefollowing articulated ‘incredulous stare’ (after Lewis: 86)challenge to motivational hedonism. We direct our richly various mentallives – our beliefs, musings, intentions, enthusiasms, hopes,aspirations, and so on and on – at massively plural and diverseitems in ourselves, in others, in myriad aspects of the non-humanworld, and in the infinities of contingent future possibility. Inkeeping with this overall psychological picture, our motivations toohave objects that are massively plural and diverse. In the light ofsuch facts, motivational hedonism merits an incredulous stare: whywould anyone believe even for a minute that all human motivation takesas its object just one sort of item? On this point, some go beyondincredulity to contempt. Thus Nietzsche: “Man does not strive forpleasure; only the Englishman does” (Nietzsche: ‘Maxims andArrows’ #12). Perhaps the most promising motivational hedonistresponse, about all humans including Englishmen, is to say that all ourbasic motives are directed at pleasure and all our non-basic motivesare pleasure-centred too, but less directly so. This move is examinedfurther below in discussion of Butler and Hume.

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

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

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

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

As noted above, some statements of motivational hedonism areindeterminate. Consider now the more precise thesis that each ofone's desires or passions or appetites has one's ownpleasure and only this as its object, as that at which alone it isaimed or is directed or is about. This thesis was a target of BishopJoseph Butler in his 1729 work Fifteen Sermons Preached at theRolls Chapel. Butler noted in his Preface that there are:“such passions in mankind as desire of esteem, or of beingbeloved, or of knowledge”. All of these have objects other thanpleasure. Drawing on Butler's critique, David Hume added furtherexamples: 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 ofanother's happiness and good” (Hume: Appendix 2, 12–13).All these appetites have objects other than just one's ownpleasure or displeasure. By appeal to such cases Butler and Humearguably refuted the strong motivational hedonist thesis thatone's every desire has one's own pleasure and that alone asits object.

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

Despite the implicature of the cliché, it is possible to sinkeven as one swims. Still, the foregoing does supply hedonists with somepotential buoyancy aids. They can claim that one's every basicdesire is directed at one's own pleasure, and one's everynon-basic desire, directed at something other than pleasure, is hadonly because one thinks this will or might bring one pleasure. The widerange of ways in which one's desire for non-pleasure could bringone pleasure include: by this desire's itself being an instanceof pleasure (e.g., by appeal to a desire-pleasure identity thesis; seeHeathwood), by the desire's having the property ofpleasurableness (e.g., deploying the thought that pleasure is ahigher-order property of every desire), by the desire's causingone pleasure independently of whether its object obtains (e.g., afan's desire to be a vampire or a hobbit might cause him pleasureeven though this desire of his is never fulfilled); or by thedesire's causing its object to obtain, where this object is aninstance of one's pleasure, or has pleasure as one of itsproperties, or causes one pleasure. Well and good. But again, it is onething to tell such motivational hedonist stories and it is anotherthing to identify any reason to think the stories true.

A wider issue about motivational hedonism is this: is it acontingent claim about an aspect of our psychology that could have beenotherwise; or does it posit a law of our psychological nature; or is ita necessary truth about all metaphysically or conceptually or logicallypossible motivations? The answers to such questions also bear on thesorts of evidence and argument we need if we are fully to appraisemotivational hedonism. If it is an empirical psychological thesis, asit seems to be, then it is reasonable to expect application of themethods and evidence of empirical psychology, social inquiry, andperhaps 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 byspecialist scientists and social scientists through their systematicconduct of meta-analyses of large numbers of empirical studies.Philosophical work will continue to be needed too, to weed outincoherent ideas, to separate out the numerous distinct motivationalhedonist theses; and to scrutinize whether, and if so with whatsignificance, various empirical findings actually do bear on thesevarious hedonist theses. For instance, even the feasibility of aresearch design that is capable of empirically separating out our basicfrom our non-basic motives would be a serious challenge. Philosophicalwork can also identify the various features that it is desirable fortheories of motivation to have and to be appraised against.Unification, determinacy, and confirmation by cases are treated aboveas desirable. Other desirable features might include consistency andmaximal scope. Philosophers and others can systematically appraisetheories of motivation in such terms, including through pairwisecomparative assessments of rival theories in terms of those desirablefeatures.

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

2. Ethical Hedonism

At its simplest, ethical hedonism is the claim that all and onlypleasure has positive importance and all and only pain or displeasurehas negative importance. This importance is to be understoodnon-instrumentally, that is, independently of the importance ofanything that pleasure or displeasure might cause or prevent. Fromethical hedonism, it follows that if our relationships, achievements,knowledge, character states, and so on, have any non-instrumentalimportance, this is just a matter of any pleasure or displeasure thatis in their natures. Otherwise, they have only instrumental importancethrough the pleasure they cause or displeasure they diminish. At leastfrom the simple forms of ethical hedonism, it also follows thatpleasure is good whenever it is had, even in matters that arethemselves worthless or worse. Some hedonists are willing to bite suchbullets; others develop more complex forms of ethical hedonism thatseek 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. Thesetwo matters can also pull in opposite directions. Your pain of beingonce bitten has non-instrumental negative importance, for example, butit might also have instrumental positive importance through the furtherpain you avoid by its making you twice shy. Instrumental importance isa contingent matter and it varies widely from case to case. This is whythe non-instrumental claims of pleasure and displeasure are the presentfocus.

Ethical hedonism can be universalist, me-and-my-near-and-dearegocentric, 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, goodand bad, or right and wrong. And these are not the onlypossibilities. The discussion below aims for both determinacy offormulation and generality across the different forms of ethicalhedonism, albeit that these two aims are in some tension with oneanother. For economy of expression, discussion proceeds below in termsof hedonism about value. At its simplest, this is the thesis thatanything has non-instrumental value if and only if it is an instance ofpleasure, and has non-instrumental disvalue if and only if it is aninstance of pain or displeasure.

2.1 Ethical Hedonism and the Nature of Pleasure

Aristotle (1095a15–22) claimed that we all agree that the good iseudaimonia but there is disagreement among us about whateudaimonia is. Similarly, ethical hedonists agree with oneanother that the good is pleasure, but there is some disagreement amongthem, and among non-hedonists too, about what pleasure is. Accounts ofpleasure are canvassed below, and issues with them are brieflyreviewed, especially regarding the various ways in which they bear onthe prospects for ethical hedonism.

Phenomenalism about pleasure is the thesis that pleasure is a mentalstate 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 classicutilitarians Jeremy Bentham and J.S. Mill were phenomenalists aboutpleasure. With various complexities and qualifications, so too are somemore recent writers (e.g., Moore: 64, Broad: 229–33, Schlick: ch. 2,Sprigge: ch. 5, Tännsjö: 84–84, Crisp 2006: 103–109, Bradley,Labukt).

Intentionalism about pleasure is the thesis that pleasure is anintentional state or property and thus has ‘directedness’.Intentional or representational states or properties are many anddiverse, but they share a subject-mode-content structure (Crane: ch.1). You or I or the next person might be the subject, belief orintention or desire or perception or emotion or pleasure might be theintentional mode, and the content of this intentional state or propertyincludes 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 hasdelight 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 aproperty in the pleasure mode that has some object. Brentano(1874/1973) was an intentionalist about pleasure, and so too are somemore recent philosophers (e.g., Chisholm, Crane, Feldman 2004).

Intentionalist accounts of pleasure are less well known thanphenomenalist accounts, so they merit brief elaboration on severalpoints. First, to say that pleasure is an intentional state or propertyis 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'srelation to the will. Second, if pleasure is an intentional state orproperty then it has an object, but it does not follow that allpleasures are propositional attitudes, with states of affairs orpropositions as their objects. On one standard account, anypsychological verb that can be inserted into the φ place in theschema ‘S φs that p’ is an attitude (e.g.,‘thinks’, ‘hopes’, ‘wishes’,‘prefers’, ‘delights’, ‘enjoys’) toa proposition p. Some accept the universal thesis that all intentionalstates are propositional attitudes. But this thesis is vulnerable tocounterexample from object-directed emotions including personal loveand hate, the objects of which seem not to be fully specifiable asstates of affairs or as propositions. Relatedly, though someintentional pleasures are indeed propositional attitudes, it is asignificant further question whether they all are. A thirdclarification is this. If there are intentional pleasures then they aresuch that their objects might or might not exist. I could delight inthe concert performance of my favourite musician, for example, even ifthe actual performer is instead just a talented imposter, or even ifthe ‘performer’ is in fact just an audio-visual effect ofclever sound and light projection. Or, to update and to make concretean older and more abstract example from Chisholm (28–29), Gore mightfor a time have enjoyed his victory in the 2000 U.S. presidentialelection, even though he actually did not win it. These claims aboutintentional pleasures are instances of the wider and admittedly ratherperplexing point that the objects of some intentional states andproperties do not exist (see entry on Intentionality).

In various significant ways, issues concerning the phenomenal andintentional nature of pleasure bear on hedonism about value. Suchmatters are canvassed below.

Intentionalism about the mental is the thesis that all mentalmatters are intentional, that they all have directedness or‘aboutness’ (e.g., Brentano 1874/1973, Crane). Pleasure is amental matter, so intentionalism about pleasure implies that anypleasure is an intentional matter and thus has an object. Strongintentionalism implies that phenomenal character is purely a matter ofintentional character, and this implies in turn that intentionalcharacter exhausts phenomenal character. All intentionalist accounts ofpleasure are of course consistent with intentionalism about pleasure.But intentionalism about pleasure is inconsistent with any radicalphenomenalist account that claims, of some or all pleasure, that it hasno intentional character. Moderate phenomenalist accounts instead claimthat all pleasure is both phenomenal and intentional; so they areconsistent with intentionalism, and some are also consistent withstrong intentionalism. Some phenomenalist accounts of pleasure areneither radical nor moderate; but are instead indeterminate on thematter of whether or not pleasure has any intentional character. Suchindeterminacy then carries through to any form of hedonism that isbuilt on them. Insofar as such indeterminacy is undesirable in anyaccount of pleasure, and in any hedonist thesis, it is a count againstthese views.

Phenomenalism about pleasure is the thesis that all pleasure hasphenomenal character. Radical intentionalist accounts (e.g., Feldman2004: 56, Shafer-Landau: 20) claim, of some or all pleasure, that ithas no phenomenal or felt character. Any such account is inconsistentwith phenomenalism about pleasure. Though Feldman and Shafer-Landau doargue that intentional pleasure need not have any phenomenology or feltcharacter, they also argue, respectively, that there is a distinct‘sensory’ or ‘physical’ sort of pleasure thatdoes have felt character. Moderate intentionalist accounts, bycontrast, claim that all pleasure is both phenomenal and intentional,and this makes them consistent with phenomenalism about pleasure. Mostintentionalists are mindful that all pleasure has a phenomenalreputation, and they attempt to account for this.

Moderate phenomenalism and moderate intentionalism can be re-framedas hybrid accounts that build on the idea that pleasure has bothphenomenal and intentional character. A strong intentionalist hybridview (e.g., Crane: chs. 1, 3) is that pleasure is a property or statethe phenomenal character of which is fully captured in its intentionalcharacter. On one account of this sort, the phenomenal property orstate of my delighting in the day just is my having a state or propertyin the intentional mode of delight, with content that includesdirectedness at the day. A different hybrid account is that pleasure isan intentional state or property that also has a phenomenalhigher-order property. Along these lines, it might be held that delightin the day is a state or property in the delight mode that is directedat the day, and that in addition has a certain felt character. A thirdhybrid account is that pleasure is an intentional state or propertythat has a phenomenal object. Along these lines, my delighting in theday might be taken to be my intrinsically desiring a certain day-causedphenomenal delight-state or delight-property of mine. A fourth hybridaccount is that pleasure is a phenomenal state or property that inaddition 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 ofhybrid view is rather demanding, because any subject who lacks thecapacity ‘implicitly to apprehend as desirable’ isincapable of such pleasure.

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

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

One option is to claim that some pleasures do not have anyintentional character and are thus not directed at or about anything.For example, it might be claimed that there is objectless euphoria andecstasy, or that undirected feelings of anxiety or suffering exist.Such cases would be no trouble for the sorts of phenomenalism thatreject any form of intentionalism about pleasure. Intentionalists, bycontrast, must insist that every pleasure and displeasure has anobject. They might argue, for example, that allegedly objectlesseuphoria and ecstasy or anxiety in fact do have objects, even if theseobjects are not fully determinate; perhaps, for example, they aredirected at things in general, or one's life ingeneral. Intentionalists might add that the indeterminacy of theseobjects is part of the charm of ‘objectless’ euphoria andecstasy, and of the awfulness of ‘objectless’ anxiety anddepression. In support of the broader idea that intentional states canhave vague or indeterminate objects, while ordinary or substantialobjects cannot, Elizabeth Anscombe offered this pugilist'sexample: “I can think of a man without thinking of a man of anyparticular height; I cannot hit a man without hitting a man of anyparticular height, because there is no such thing as a man of noparticular height” (Anscombe: 161). A different response to theclaim that some pleasures and displeasures are objectless is to move toa fundamentally pluralist view, according to which some pleasure anddispleasure is intentional, other pleasure and displeasure isphenomenal, and some of the latter has no intentional character atall.

Monism about pleasure is the thesis that there is just one basickind of mental state or property that is pleasure. Phenomenal monismholds that there is just one basic kind pleasure feeling or tone, whileintentional monism claims there is just one basic kind of pleasureintentional state or property. The disunity objection to monism isbased on the claim that there is no unified or common element in allinstances of pleasure (e.g., Sidgwick: 127, Alston: 344, Brandt: 35–42,Parfit: 493, Griffin: 8, Sprigge: ch. 5). With few exceptions if any,such objections have to date targeted phenomenal monism. But both theobjection and the possible replies to it are under-explored in thedifferent context of intentional monism. The standard phenomenal monistreply is to insist that there is just one basic kind ofpleasure and that this is a matter of there being a common element inpleasure's feeling, felt tone, or phenomenology, or in‘what it is like’ to have pleasure (e.g., Moore: 12–13,Broad: 229, Sumner: 87–91). Broad, for example, wrote that the commonphenomenal character of pleasure is something “we cannot definebut are perfectly acquainted with” (Broad: 229). Alternatively,if some definition is to be attempted, one thought is that the commonphenomenal character of all pleasure is just its felt pleasantness. Adifferent claim is that there is a common feel-good character or feltpositivity in all pleasure. This claim is not clear, but can be speltout in at least the following three different ways: that there is sucha property as felt positivity and that all instances of pleasure haveit; that all pleasure consists partly in feeling the existence ofgoodness or value; or that all pleasure has goodness or value as anintentional object, and this is so whether or not goodness or valueexists.

Pluralism in the present setting is the thesis that there is morethan one basic kind of state or property that is pleasure, thatpleasure is multiply or variously or diversely realizable, or thatthere is a basic plurality of sufficient conditions for pleasure. Thecore idea is that there is a basic plurality of kinds of feel or ofintentional state, each of which is a kind of pleasure (e.g., Rachels,Labukt, perhaps Rawls: 557). The unity objection to any such pluralismis that all instances of pleasure must meet some unitary sufficientcondition, and that pluralism is inconsistent with this. The obviouspluralist reply is to reject this demand for unitariness. One rationalefor this reply is that multiple or plural realization theses about manykinds of mental states are coherent, widely made and merit seriousconsideration, so the unity objector is not justified in thus seekingto rule them out at the outset of inquiry into the nature ofpleasure.

Reflection on both the disunity objection to monism and the unityobjection to pluralism about pleasure suggests a further option. Thisis the thesis that there is some feature that is phenomenal orintentional or both and that is common to all instances of pleasure,and that in addition, some pleasures differ from others in at least oneother respect that has phenomenal or intentional character or both. Onemotivation for such views is to draw out and combine insights from bothmonism 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 valuein a pleasure or a pain’: intensity, duration, certainty oruncertainty, propinquity or remoteness, fecundity, and purity (Bentham:ch. 4). On one account, fecundity is a matter of being instrumental inother pleasure or pain, purity is a matter of separating pleasure outfrom non-pleasure, propinquity and remoteness concern temporal and/orspatial nearness or farness, and the essentials of certainty anduncertainty are plain enough. Recalling that non-instrumental value isthe present point of focus, Bentham's account suggests thequantitative hedonist idea that the non-instrumental value of pleasureis a matter just of its quantitative features, and that these reducejust to its duration and its intensity.

Quantitative hedonism is consistent with monist phenomenalism aboutpleasure, with ‘intensity’ here understood as ‘feltintensity’. It is also consistent with pluralist phenomenalismabout pleasure, but only on the assumption that none of theplurality-making features of pleasure also adds non-instrumentally toits value. It is less straightforward to see how to combinequantitative hedonism with those forms of intentionalism that deny thatpleasure need have any phenomenal character. Such accounts would needto explain the intensity or strength of pleasure in intentional termsand 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 isirreducibly a matter of its quality as well as its quantity. Millargued that of two sorts of pleasures, if there is one that at least amajority of those who have experience of both prefer then it is themore desirable. The standard criticism of this qualitative hedonism isthat pleasure's quality reduces either to its quantity, or tosome anti-hedonist claim about value. The best sort of reply forqualitative hedonists is to present an account that does not sufferfrom either such reduction or such collapse. Pluralism about the natureof pleasure seems to be necessary for this, together with the claimthat one or more of the plurality-constituting features of pleasuredoes also add non-instrumentally add to its value. Qualitativehedonists who are also phenomenalists about pleasure will seek to findthe sources of such value differences in phenomenal differences.Qualitative hedonists who are also intentionalists about the nature ofpleasure will seek to find the sources of such value differences inirreducibly non-quantitative differences amongst pleasures in theintentional mode, in the intentional content, or in both of theseaspects of these mental states or properties. Feldman's‘Truth-Adjusted Intrinsic Attitudinal Hedonism’ is a viewof this sort, due to its claim that the amount of intrinsic value of alife is a matter of the truth-adjusted amount of its intrinsicattitudinal pleasure (Feldman 2004: 112). The same is true ofFeldman's ‘Desert-Adjusted Intrinsic AttitudinalHedonism’, according to which the amount of intrinsic value of alife is a matter of the desert-adjusted amount of its intrinsicattitudinal pleasure (Feldman 2004: 121).

One significant objection to hedonism about value is based on claimsabout the nature and existence of pleasure. It assumes hedonism aboutvalue, conjoins this with the eliminativist thesis that there is nosuch thing as pleasure, infers the nihilist thesis that nothingactually has value, rebounds by rejecting this value nihilism, and thenconcludes by retaining eliminativism about pleasure while rejectinghedonism about value. The most radical forms of eliminativism aboutpleasure are across-the-board theses: there is no such thing aspleasure, or there is no such thing as pain (e.g., Dennett; criticizedby Flanagan amongst others), or both. Objections of the above sort thatare based on the most radical eliminativist thesis speak against allforms of hedonism. Objections based on eliminativism about onlyphenomenal pleasure, or about only intentional pleasure, or about onlysensational pleasure (e.g., Ryle, perhaps Sidgwick: 127, perhapsAristotle 1175a22f) speak against only the correspondingly narrowerforms of hedonism.

Why believe eliminativism about phenomenal or intentional pleasure?One sort of argument for it moves from the premise that there is nophenomenally or intentionally distinctive character common to allinstances of, for example, new romantic love, slaking a powerfulthirst, sexual orgasm, solving a hard intellectual problem, andfireside reminiscence amongst friends, to the conclusion that there isno such thing as phenomenal or intentional pleasure. This sort ofargument relies on monism about pleasure, and monism about pleasure isargued above to be questionable. Why believe eliminativism aboutsensational pleasure? One sort of argument for it is that any suchpleasure must be a sensation, and any sensation must have feltlocation, but no pleasure has felt location, so no pleasure sensationexists. Perhaps the most promising sort of hedonist response is toargue against eliminativism about pleasure, or at least againsteliminativism about pleasure on some particular favoured account of itsnature.

This section has discussed the nature of pleasure as it bears onethical hedonism. It has outlined phenomenalist accounts,intentionalist accounts and hybrid accounts of pleasure. It hasexamined various critical issues for hedonism that are related to thenature of pleasure, especially: quantitative versus qualitativehedonism, disunity objections to monistic hedonism and unity objectionsto pluralistic hedonism, and arguments from eliminativism aboutpleasure to the rejection of hedonism about value. One overallconclusion to draw from this sub-section is that there would be benefitin further philosophical examination of the multiple connectionsbetween ethical hedonism and the phenomenal and intentional characterof pleasure and displeasure.

2.2 Other Arguments For Ethical Hedonism

At its simplest, ethical hedonism is the thesis that all and onlypleasure has positive non-instrumental importance and all and only painor displeasure has negative non-instrumental importance. The focusbelow is on hedonism about value, and the discussion is intended to begeneralizable also to other forms of ethical hedonism.

Consider the following unification argument for hedonism aboutvalue: the case for the value of pleasure is stronger than the case forthe value of any non-pleasure; the more unified the theory of value thebetter it is; unification around the strongest case is better thanunification around any other case; therefore: hedonism is the besttheory of value. This argument has weaknesses. Its first premise is notobviously true and needs further argument. In addition, the furtherargument that it still needs is in effect a separate argument forhedonism over its rivals, so this unification argument is notself-standing. Its second premise is also ambiguous between the claimthat 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 moreunified. Plausibility requires the first interpretation, but theunification argument requires the second interpretation. In short,there are significant problems with this unification argument forethical hedonism.

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

One scientific naturalist argument for hedonism is this: in thevalue domain we should be scientific naturalists in our methods ofinquiry; hedonism is the best option in respect of scientificnaturalism; therefore, we should be hedonists about value. Variousissues arise. Both premises of the argument need support. First, whatare scientific naturalist forms of inquiry into value, and why thinkthey should be adopted them in the value domain? One broadly scientificrationale for adopting such methods is the claim that their empiricaltrack record is superior to that of philosophical theorising aboutvalue. But the thesis that naturalistic methods have a superiorempirical track record or prospect is not obviously true and needsargument. A case also needs to be made that hedonism does do betterthan its rivals in the scientific naturalist respect. Why think it hasbetter naturalistic credentials, for example, than the numerousnon-hedonic and extra-hedonic mental states and properties, and thevarious forms of agency and of personal relationship, that are amongstthe promising rival or additional candidates for non-instrumental valuestatus?

Consider now this doxastic or belief argument for hedonism aboutvalue: all or most of us believe hedonism about value, albeit that someof us suffer from self-deception about that; and this state of ourbeliefs supports hedonism itself. One response is that even if thepremise is true it fails to support the conclusion. Considerstructurally similar cases. First, even if we all believe we have freewill and even if we cannot but believe this, it does not show that weactually have free will. Second, suppose instead that a strong generalform of belief involuntarism is true, according to which we are notfree 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 thesebeliefs of ours, however robustly it might permit our having them. Anyconvincing form of the doxastic or belief argument would need toovercome such difficulties.

Phenomenal arguments for hedonism move from some aspect of the feltcharacter of pleasure or pain to a thesis about the value of pleasureor pain.Some argue that pain or pleasure or both have felt character orfelt quality that generates reason to avoid or alleviate or minimizethe former and seek the latter (e.g., Nagel 1986: 156–162). It might bethought that such phenomenal considerations can be deployed also in anargument for some form of ethical hedonism. One overall point is thatthe most such phenomenal arguments can show is the sufficiency ofpleasure for value, and/or of pain for disvalue. Even if the relevantphenomenal character is unique to pleasure and pain, this canestablish at most that pleasure is necessary to phenomenal argumentsfor value, and that pain is necessary to phenomenal arguments fordisvalue. It cannot show that pleasure and pain alone havenon-instrumental value. Phenomenal arguments also need to avoid appealto any equivocation on ‘quality’. From the mere fact thatpain or pleasure has a certain felt quality in the sense of ‘feltcharacter’, it does not immediately follow that it has any feltquality in the sense of ‘value’ or‘disvalue’.

Can phenomenal arguments be strengthened? First, one might conjointhe premise that pleasure has certain felt character with the premisethat all or most of us believe this felt character to be good. But thisis just a doxastic argument again, plus a phenomenal account of thenature of pleasure. Second, one might instead appeal to the epistemicthesis that the felt character of pain and pleasure gives us directawareness, perception or apprehension of the badness of pain and thegoodness of pleasure. One construal of this idea is that pleasure is anintentional feeling that has its own value or goodness as an object.Even if this thesis is granted, however, it is a general feature ofintentional states that their objects might or might not exist. Thisbeing so, even if its own goodness is an intentional object of pleasureand its own badness is an intentional object of pain, it does notfollow that pleasure is good or that pain is bad. A third way tointerpret the phenomenal argument is as claiming that pleasure and painare propositional feels that have feels-to-be-good and feels-to-be-badintentional and phenomenal character, respectively. Again however, ifsuch 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 aboutpleasure's causal relations to the conclusion that pleasure aloneis valuable. One thing to note about the particular causal argumentsfor hedonism that are discussed below (c.f. Crisp 2006: 120–122) isthat they are in tension with doxastic arguments for hedonism (and withepistemic arguments, on which see below), because they counsel cautionor even skepticism about the epistemic credentials of ourhedonism-related beliefs.

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

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

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Explanatory arguments for hedonism about value invite us to make alist of the things that we regard as good or valuable, to ask of eachof them ‘why is it good?’ or ‘what explains its beinggood?’, to agree that all of the goodness or value of all but onesuch listed item is best explained by its generation of pleasure, andalso to agree that no satisfactorily explanatory answer can be given tosuch questions as ‘why is pleasure good?’ or ‘whatexplains pleasure's being good?’. Proponents of theexplanatory argument then conclude in favour of hedonism aboutvalue.

Those already sympathetic to hedonism about value should findexplanatory arguments congenial. It is a good question, partlyempirical in nature, how the explanatory argument will strike those notalready inclined either for or against hedonism about value. Thosealready sympathetic to non-hedonist pluralism about value, however, canreasonably respond with some scepticism to explanatory arguments forhedonism. They can hold that the non-instrumental value of each ofpleasure, knowledge, autonomy, friendship and achievement (or any othergood proposed instead) is best explained by its own non-instrumentalfeatures. Subjectivists will add that these non-instrumental featuresare matters of each item's being some object of some actual orcounterfactual pro-stance. Objectivists will instead claim that thenon-instrumental features of pleasure, achievement, friendship,knowledge and autonomy that explain its value are independent of itsbeing any object of any pro-stance. All parties can also agree that atleast part of the instrumental goodness or value of pleasure,knowledge, autonomy, friendship and achievement is best explained byits generation of pleasure.

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Epistemic arguments for hedonism about value claim that pleasureclearly or obviously has value (c.f. Crisp 2006: 124), and that nothingelse clearly does; and they conclude that this justifies belief inhedonism about value. But the assertion that pleasure's valueclaims are clearer or more robust or more obvious than those of anyother candidate for value status needs argument. Until this issupplied, perhaps by doxastic, phenomenal, explanatory, or causalarguments, epistemic arguments add little to the case for hedonismabout value.

This sub-section has outlined and reviewed some of the main forms ofargument for hedonism about value: unification, motivation, scientificnaturalist, doxastic, phenomenal, explanatory, causal and epistemicarguments. Arguments of each of these sorts could also be made forother forms of ethical hedonism. Each argument is problematical, butperhaps one or more of them can be made robust. Perhaps other promisingarguments for ethical hedonism might also be developed. Even if allsuch arguments fail, this would still not in itself be a convincingoverall case against hedonism. The next sub-section examines argumentsagainst ethical hedonism.

2.3 Other Arguments Against Ethical Hedonism

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

2.3.1 Non-Necessity Objections

At its simplest, ethical hedonism is the thesis that all and onlypleasure is good non-instrumentally, and all and only pain ordispleasure is bad non-instrumentally. The non-necessity objection tothis rejects its claim that only pleasure is good, or its claim thatonly displeasure is bad, or both of these claims. Its thesis is thatpleasure is not necessary for positive importance, or that displeasureis not necessary for negative importance, or both. Its basic idea isthat something other than pleasure has value, and/or that somethingother than displeasure has disvalue. Any cases that are hedonic equalsbut value unequals would deliver what the non-necessity objectorseeks.

One expression of the non-necessity objection is the followingarticulated ‘incredulous stare’ (after Lewis 1986). Whywould anyone think, even for a minute, that hedonism is a plausibletheory of value? Even if we focus very narrowly, just on those mentalstates of ours that arguably are instances of pleasure or have pleasureas 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 mentalstates or events or properties also has one or more non-hedonicproperties that contribute to its importance. Beyond pleasure, ourmental lives are full of significant and diverse thoughts, perceptions,emotions, imaginings, wishes, and so on. These engage with massivelyplural and diverse items in ourselves, in others, in myriad aspects ofthe non-human world, and in the infinities of contingent futurepossibility. This is true also of our relationships with ourselves andwith others, and with multiple aspects of the wider world. It is truealso of our agency – our deliberations, choices, plans,intentions, and so forth. In the light of such reflections, anincredulous stare might be thought an apt response to a profession ofbelief in ethical hedonism. This incredulous stare argument is far fromdecisive, but perhaps it should disrupt any complacent presumption infavour of hedonism.

Many well-known criticisms of hedonism can reasonably be interpretedas non-necessity objections. A short survey of some of the moresignificant of these follows.

Plato pointed out that if your life is just one of pleasure then itwould not even include any recollection of pleasure; nor any distinctthought that you were pleased, even when you were pleased. Hisconclusion 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 thathedonism is a “doctrine worthy only of swine”.

Nozick (1971) and Nagel (1970) present schematic descriptions oflives that have all the appearance but none of the reality ofself-understanding, achievement, loving relationships,self-directedness, and so on, alongside lives that have theseappearances and also the corresponding realities. On the face of it,hedonism is committed to the hedonic equality and thus the equal valueof 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” andnot just to be an “indeterminate blob” floating in a tank,and “to make a difference in the world” rather than merelyto appear to oneself to do so. He concluded: “something mattersto us in addition to experience” (Nozick 1974: 43–44).

Consider further the idea that actually having certain relationshipswith oneself (e.g., relations of self-understanding) and with others(e.g., mutual relations of interpersonal love) matters, in addition tothe value of any experience one has that is just as if one has suchrelationships. The thought here is that the motto ‘alsoconnect’ 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 beautybut without its contemplation, and indeed without any mental stateswhatever, is better than a world that is “simply one heap offilth” (Moore: sec. 50; contrast Sidgwick: 114). If Moore isright about this ‘beauty and the filth’ case, then pleasureis not necessary for value.

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

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

There is a range of possible hedonist responses to non-necessityobjections. One reply is that the allegedly non-hedonic item on whichthe objector focuses just is an instance of pleasure, so itsbeing valuable is just what a hedonist would expect. A related reply isthat the item to which the objector points is sufficient for value onlyinsofar as it is an instance of pleasure, so the thesis that pleasureis necessary for value again remains unscathed. Responses of thesesorts are relatively easy for hedonists to make; but it is less easy toshow anyone who is not already a hedonist that these replies providegrounds for taking the hedonist side of the arguments. A third replyhedonists might make to non-necessity objections is to allow that theitem in question is or includes non-pleasure that has value, but thento argue that this is merely instrumental value. A fourth and moreconcessive reply is that the item in question might be a non-pleasureand 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-sentientenvironment has non-hedonic moral value but lacks prudential value forthe agent. An option that is yet more concessive is for hedonists is toagree that pleasure is not necessary for value or that displeasure isnot necessary for disvalue or both of these things, but to continue toinsist that pleasure is sufficient for value or that displeasure issufficient for disvalue or both of these things.

2.3.2 Insufficiency Objections

As noted above, the simplest form of ethical hedonism is the claimthat all and only pleasure is good non-instrumentally and all and onlypain or displeasure is bad non-instrumentally. The insufficiencyobjection rejects the ethical hedonist claim that all pleasure is good,or that all displeasure is bad, or both claims. Its contrary thesis isthat pleasure is insufficient for good, and/or that displeasure isinsufficient for bad; some pleasure has no value, and/or somedispleasure has no disvalue. Any pair of cases that are value equalsbut hedonic unequals would deliver what the insufficiency objectorseeks.

Various insufficiency objections are outlined below. Each aims toshow that some pleasure is worthless or worse and is thus insufficientfor good or value. Some focus on the bad as cause of pleasure, otherson the bad as object of pleasure. A third possible focus is on pleasureunderstood as a property of something bad such as a sadistic thought oract, rather than as an effect of something bad.

Aristotle (Book x, ch. 3) argued that some pleasure is disgracefulor base. Brentano (1889/1969: 90) argued that “pleasure in thebad” both lacks value and has disvalue. Moore (sec. 56) expressedsimilar thoughts in a bracingly concrete manner by imagining thepleasures of “perpetual indulgence in bestiality” andclaiming them to be not good but bad. Self-destructive or masochisticpleasure, pleasure with a non-existent or false object, andcontra-deserved pleasure are some other targets of insufficiencyobjections 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 toaccept that the objector's case is an instance of pleasure, butthen to claim that it is sufficient for value. This responseis underpinned by insistence on the wider thought that any pleasure issufficient for value. Consistent with this, but rather concessively, itcould also be claimed that pleasure is sufficient for only very littlevalue, and that substantial or major value is present only if furtherconditions are met. Such further conditions might concern the extent towhich the pleasure is ‘higher’ rather than‘lower’, whether its object exists, or whether its objectmerits pleasure. Feldman (2004) has formulated and sympatheticallyexamined several views that have this sort of structure, includingAltitude-Adjusted, Truth-Adjusted, and Desert-Adjusted forms ofIntrinsic Attitudinal Hedonism.

A second hedonist response is to accept that the insufficiencyobjector has indeed found a case that is insufficient for value, butthen to claim that it is not an instance of pleasure. Thissort of response is underpinned by the hedonist's insistence onthe wider thought that anything insufficient for value is notpleasure.

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

A fourth hedonist response is concessive. It abandons altogether thethesis that pleasure is sufficient for value, while also continuing toinsist that pleasure is necessary for value. Consistent with thisresponse, one could claim that pleasure is conditionally valuable; thatis, sufficient for value when and only when certain further conditionsare met. These conditions could be specified either negatively (e.g.,pleasure is valuable only when it does not arise from and is notdirected at a bad deed or character state or state of affairs), orpositively (e.g., pleasure is valuable only when its object exists, oronly when its object is deserving of it). Modified forms ofAltitude-Adjusted, Truth-Adjusted, and Desert-Adjusted IntrinsicAttitudinal Hedonism would have this structure (see Feldman 2004).

3. Concluding Remarks

The critical discussion of Section 2 above has supplemented theSection 1 consideration of psychological hedonism, by examiningarguments both for and against ethical hedonism. On one influentialview that John Rawls attributes to Henry Sidgwick, justification inethics ideally proceeds against “standards of reasonedjustification… carefully formulated”, and“satisfactory justification of any particular moral conceptionmust proceed from a full knowledge and systematic comparison of themore significant conceptions in the philosophical tradition”(editor's ‘Foreword’ to Sidgwick). This entry has notattempted any such systematic comparative examination of psychologicalhedonism or ethical hedonism against its main rivals.

Both psychological hedonism and ethical hedonism remain worthy ofserious philosophical attention. Each also has broader philosophicalsignificance, especially but not only in utilitarian and egoisttraditions of ethical thought, and in empiricist and scientificnaturalist philosophical traditions.

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• Nagel, T. (1974), ‘What is it like to be a bat?’,Philosophical Review, 83(4): 435–450; reprinted inThomas Nagel (1979), Mortal Questions, Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.
• Nagel, T. (1989), The View From Nowhere, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.
• Nietzsche, F. (1889), Twilight of the Idols, trans. Walter Kaufmann, in The Portable Nietzsche. New York: Viking Press, 1968.
• Nozick, R. (1971), ‘On the Randian Argument’,in Reading Nozick, Essays on Anarchy, State, and Utopia, J. Paul(ed.), Totowa: Rowman and Allanheld, pp. 206–231; reprinted inR. Nozick, Socratic Puzzles, Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press, 1997. pp. 249–264.
• Nozick, R. (1974), Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Oxford: Blackwell.
• Parfit, D. (1984), Reasons and Persons, Oxford: ClarendonPress.
• Plato (4th Cent. BCE), Republic. Available online in English or Greek from The Perseus Digital Library, ed. Gregory Crane.
• Plato (4th Cent. BCE), Philebus. Available online in English or Greek from The Perseus Digital Library, ed. Gregory Crane.
• Plato (4th Cent. BCE), Protagoras. Available onlinein English, from The Perseus Digital Library, ed. Gregory Crane.
• Rachels, S. (2000), ‘Is Unpleasantness Intrinsic toUnpleasant Experience?’, Philosophical Studies,99: 187–210.
• Rawls, J. (1971), A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press.
• Ross, W.D. (1939), Foundations of Ethics, Oxford: ClarendonPress.
• Ryle, G. (1954), ‘Pleasure’, in Gilbert Ryle,Dilemmas, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Schlick, M. (1939), Problems of Ethics,New York: Prentice-Hall.
• Shafer-Landau, R. (2010), The Fundamentals of Ethics,Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Sidgwick, H. (1907/1982), The Methods of Ethics,7^th edition, John Rawls (ed.), Indianapolis: Hackett.
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Academic Tools

Other Internet Resources

• Henry Sidgwick's The Methods of Ethics by Alex Scott.
• The Cyrenaics and the Origin of Hedonism, on hedonism, introduced through key figuresin the history of philosophy.
• “Hedonism”, byDaniel Weijers in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Related Entries

belief consciousness consciousness: and intentionality consequentialism consequentialism: rule desire egoism intention intentionality pleasure qualia value: intrinsic vs. extrinsic weakness of will well-being

Copyright © 2013 by
Andrew Moore<Andrew.Moore@stonebow.otago.ac.nz>

English[edit]

Etymology[edit]

First attested 1856: from Ancient Greekἡδονή(hēdonḗ, “pleasure”) +‎ -ism.

Pronunciation[edit]

• enPR: hēdənĭzəm, IPA^(key): /ˈhiːdənɪzəm/

• Audio (US)

• Audio (AU)

• Hyphenation: he‧don‧ism

Noun[edit]

hedonism (usually uncountable, pluralhedonisms)

1. (ethics,uncountable) The belief that pleasure or happiness is the highest good in life. Some hedonists, such as the Epicureans, have insisted that pleasure of the entire mind, not just pleasure of the senses, is the highest good.
2. (countable) A general devotion to the pursuit of pleasure.

Antonyms[edit]

Related terms[edit]

Translations[edit]

See also[edit]

Further reading[edit]

• hedonism in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911
• hedonism at OneLook Dictionary Search

Anagrams[edit]

• demonish, monished