Hedonism Case

Hedonism

Motivational hedonism is the claim that only pleasure or pain motivates us. It is the most significant form of psychological hedonism. Normative hedonism is the claim that all and only pleasure has worth or value, and all and only pain has disvalue. Jeremy Bentham endorsed both sorts of hedonism in the ringing passage that opens his An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation: "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, as well as to determine what we shall do" (Bentham 1789). Other major contributors to debate about hedonism include Plato, Aristotle, Mill, Moore, Sidgwick, Ross, and Broad. The discussion below nevertheless proceeds analytically rather than historically, discussing each main form of hedonism in turn.

Pleasure will here be understood broadly, to include all pleasant feeling or experience, such as elation, ecstacy, delight, joy, and enjoyment. Pain will be taken to include all unpleasant feeling or experience: aches, throbs, irritations, anxiety, anguish, chagrin, discomfort, despair, grief, depression, guilt and remorse. Ordinary language must be stretched to accommodate these broad usages. Pleasure and pain themselves might be states, states of affairs, things, events or properties. Below, 'pleasurableness' and 'painfulness' will be used when talk of properties is intended; and 'pleasure' and 'pain' will do duty for all the other options. The intention is to avoid commitment as to which category pleasure and pain fit into. Further economy will often be secured by making 'pleasure' do duty for 'pleasure or pleasurableness'.

1. Motivational Hedonism.

Bentham's claim that pain and pleasure determine what we shall do makes him a hedonist about the determination of action. The more modest view that pleasure and pain determine our motivation to act will instead be the focus below. It can accommodate cases in which hedonistic motivation fails to generate hedonistic action, and cases in which, though it does generate such action, that action itself fails in hedonist terms. Indeed, the 'paradox of hedonism' is, roughly, the claim that those motivated in favour of pleasure get less of it, and those motivated against pain get more of it (see Sidgwick 1907, 48f).

Motivational hedonism will here be construed as the egoistic claim that one is motivated by one's own pleasure or pain, and as including the claim that one is motivated for pleasure and against pain. Being motivated 'for' pleasure and 'against' pain will be construed in 'productivist' terms, as a matter of producing pleasure or reducing pain, rather than, for example, expressing these things. The further idea will also be built in that one is always and only motivated by the greatest balance of pleasure over pain for oneself; that is by maximization of the net amount or value of pleasure minus pain for oneself.

Various objections might be made to motivational hedonism: that we are often motivated by things that do not in fact maximize our pleasure, such as motivation to step under a shower that one takes to be suitably warm but which is in fact scalding hot; that not every pleasure that our options for action make available to us motivates us; or that the very idea of maximum 'pleasure over pain' or 'pleasure minus pain' or 'net pleasure' assumes a common measure which cannot be had. Motivational hedonists can reply that one is always and only motivated by what one takes to maximize one's pleasure over pain. There is no implication that one always gets this right, or that any option one takes to be hedonistically non-maximizing motivates one, or even that the idea of maximizing the balance of pleasure over pain itself makes ultimate sense.

Now consider this argument for motivational hedonism. We sometimes are motivated to maximize our balance of pleasure over pain, every case can be explained in these terms, and the more unified the explanation the better; hence motivational hedonism is true. One response to this argument is that motivational hedonism lacks other explanatory virtues. Aspects of this issue are revisited below.

Another argument for motivational hedonism runs as follows. We are motivated to maximize what we regard as value for ourselves, and we believe maximal value consists in maximal balance of pleasure over pain; therefore, we are motivated by what we regard as maximal balance of pleasure over pain for ourselves. This argument claims that our motivation is egoistic and our value commitments are hedonistic. Both claims are questionable, but these issues will not be pursued further here.

Motivational hedonism is a thesis about 'us'. Who counts as one of us? The obvious answer is 'all and only human beings'; a rival answer is 'all entities whatever'. Many entities are incapable of motives, but this second form of motivational hedonism implies merely that if an entity is motivated by anything, it is by pleasure or pain. It also implies that all entities that have motives -- perhaps including humans, parrots, sharks, and alpha centaurians -- are also capable of pleasure or pain. However, according to some views in the philosophy of biology and psychology, differences of biological form or evolutionary history make many species incapable of such humanistic mental states. To sidestep issues of this sort, it will here be assumed that motivational hedonism is a thesis about all and only human beings.

Any confirmed case of an individual being motivated by something other than pleasure or pain would refute motivational hedonism. Here are some standard candidates: the soldier with no belief in the afterlife who opts for a painful death for himself to save his comrades, the parent motivated to give her or his child a good start in life, the walker motivated to kick a stone just 'for the hell of it'. The standard response to such cases is to conjecture a suitably hedonistic rival motivational story. Despite himself, the soldier was really motivated by the underlying belief that it would secure him a joyful afterlife, or at least a half-second's sweet pleasure of heroic self-sacrifice. The parent was really motivated only by his own pleasurable intention to give the child a good start in life. And so on. If one already accepts motivational hedonism, one might be convinced by such re-interpretations. They show that hedonist rival conjectures can generally be made, even when humans seem clearly to be motivated by other and more diverse things, but they do not show that the hedonist re-interpretations are the more plausible ones.

Hedonists