A New Defense of Hedonism about Well-Being

Abstract

According to hedonism about well-being, lives can go well or poorly for us just in virtue of our ability to feel pleasure and pain. Hedonism has had many advocates historically, but has relatively few nowadays. This is mainly due to three highly influential objections to it: The Philosophy of Swine, The experience Machine, and The resonance Constraint. In this paper, I attempt to revive hedonism. I begin by giving a precise new definition of it. I then argue that the right motivation for it is the 'experience requirement' (i.e., that something can benefit or harm a being only if it affects the phenomenology of her experiences in some way). next, I argue that hedonists should accept a felt-quality theory of pleasure, rather than an attitude-based theory. Finally, I offer new responses to the three objections. Central to my responses are (i) a distinction between experiencing a pleasure (i.e., having some pleasurable phenomenology) and being aware of that pleasure, and (ii) an emphasis on diversity in one's pleasures. 1. In this essay, I will use 'pain' to refer to unpleasurable experiences more generally. 2. These include Democritus, Aristippus, epicurus, Jeremy Bentham, and J. S. Mill. Others whose views seem at times to come close to hedonism include Socrates, Aristotle, Locke, Hobbes, Hume, Kant, and Sidgwick. 3. notable exceptions include Feldman (2004), Crisp (2006), Heathwood (2006), and Bradley (2009). note that Heathwood counts as both a hedonist and a desire-based theorist of well-being due to his desire-based theory of pleasure.

A Defense of Free-Roaming Cats from a Hedonist Account of Feline Well-being

“…first reason for saying that outdoor pleasures are more pleasurable than indoor pleasures is that outdoor pleasures, unlike indoor pleasures, involve qualitative diversity. In defense of this view, I draw on and slightly modify BenBramble's (2016) sophisticated hedonist account of well-being, which invokes an illustrative distinction between flow pleasures and bodily pleasures. Consider Bramble's analysis of Fred Feldman's example of Porky, the human being who: spends all his time in the pigsty, engaging in the most obscene sexual activities imaginable … Porky derives great pleasure from these activities and the feelings they stimulate.…”

“…This account of well-being draws on the one developed byBramble (2016), and it can be viewed as an extension of the simple hedonist theory considered byPalmer and Sandøe (2014).…”

Is pleasure all that is good about experience?

“…Historically, after having gone from the status quo to a nearly extinct view in the past century, such theories now appear to be undergoing a revival (e.g. Crisp 2006a;Tännsjö 2007;Bradley 2009;Moen 2016;Bramble 2016a). Generally, experiential theories of wellbeing are hedonistic.…”

“…Crisp 1997;Feldman 2002;Bramble 2016a). This objection is older than the experience machine objection (see for example Mill 1871).…”

“…While it is common to assume for experiential theories, and in particular for hedonistic theories, that the value of a whole life for the person who is living it is the sum of the value of its (temporal) parts, I consider it an open question whether this is necessary (cf. Bramble 2014Bramble , 2016a.…”