Fred Feldman distinguishes two categories of hedonism: sensory hedonism and attitudinal hedonism. Both categories of hedonism center around the notion that pleasure is what makes a life worth living (for the person living that life). In other words, if one obtains (receives or acquires) pleasure from life, then one’s life is going well. Additionally, the more pleasure a life contains, the better the life (the more prudential value it contains). Feldman, however, promptly classifies two interpretations of pleasure: pleasure as feeling (sensory pleasure) and pleasure as an attitude (the attitude of enjoyment). And, it is the latter conception of pleasure (pleasure as an attitude/mental state) that Feldman is interested in.
Sensory hedonism (SH), Feldman contends, embraces sensory pleasure (pleasure as a literal feeling). With SH, physical pleasure is the only necessity for a good life. A life which lacks sensory pleasure, on this view, lacks prudential value. Thus, for SH, the only metric for prudential value is sensory pleasures and sensory pains. But, Feldman does not wish to defend SH. Instead, Feldman is interested in advancing pleasure as an attitude and attitudinal hedonism. According to Feldman, “the presence of ‘enjoyment’” is what gives life value (267L). Pleasure, construed in this manner (enjoyment as an attitude), serves as the foundation for attitudinal hedonism.
After providing some rationale on why he believes sensory hedonism fails, Feldman then turns his attention to attitudinal hedonism. In fact, Feldman successively develops and critiques four flavors of attitudinal hedonism : Attitudinal Hedonism (AH), Intrinsic Attitudinal Hedonism (IAH), Veridical Intrinsic Attitudinal Hedonism (VIAH), and Desert-Adjusted In...
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... This passage hints of less pain when pain is taken in an object worthy of pain. Hence, if I understand Feldman correctly, this suggests that because of Ian’s unjust imprisonment (which is an object worthy of pain), he experiences less pain than Gary (who is justly imprisoned). As a consequence of being an object worthy of pain, this further implies that Ian has a better life than Gary. Thus, as the case of Ian and Gary demonstrates, DAIAH declares that the intrinsic attitudinal pain that an innocent person experiences when unjustly imprisoned is less bad then the intrinsic attitudinal pain experienced by a justly imprisoned criminal. Although Feldman seems ‘happy to accept’ the implications of DAIAH, my intuitions on the case of Ian and Gary do not agree with the conclusions of DAIAH -something about DAIAH is amiss in cases of veridical intrinsic attitudinal pains.
In chapter 2, Shafer-Landau proceeds to list the theories that attempt to disprove hedonism by highlight the shortcomings in its logic and hedonism's replies to these objections. The Argument from Autonomy, is one of strongest objections to hedonism listed. Shafer-Landau states that for a theory to pose a serious threat to hedonism, it needs to challenge the idea that happiness is the only thing of intrinsic value (34). Chapter 2 discuses four strong objections that have the potential and support to disprove hedonism. The Argument from Autonomy provides an abundance of strong information to support its claims.
To show that consequentialism squares with the commonsense moral rules used by deontology or “moral absolutism,” Nielsen assumes, as many do, that outside of cases where one may has to choose the lesser of two evils, consequentialists generally make the same moral decisions as deontologists. He alluded to this general understanding when he wrote that “a consequentialist has very good utilitarian grounds for being so appalled” at acts like the “judicial execution” or “punishment, torture, and killing of the innocent,” but we should consider this assumption to be a premise in his argument so that the argument will be represented here with its full force.
... of public humiliation or being locked up for year. There is also a mention of how non-violent criminals are being affected by prison. This affects the reader emotional aspect toward the argument because it make’s the reader have sympathy causing them to lean toward Jacoby’s view. This is called an appeal to emotion and is not generally a good thing to have in a credible paper.
Frederick, Shane. “Hedonic Treadmill.” Encyclopedia of Social Psychology. Ed. Roy F. Baumeister, and Kathleen D. Vohs. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2007. SAGE knowledge. Web. 8 July 2014.
Hedonism is a theory of morality. There are several popular philosophers who support hedonism; some of whom offer their own interpretation of the theory. This paper will focus on the Epicurean view. Epicurus, a Greek philosophers born in 341 B.C., generated a significant measure of controversy amongst laymen and philosophical circles in regards to his view of the good life. Philosophers whom teachings predate Epicurus’ tended to focus on the question of “How can human beings live a good, morally sound, life?” Epicurus ruffled feathers and ultimately expanded the scope of philosophy by asking “What makes people happy?”
As humans we are constantly in search of understanding the balance between what feels good and what is right. Humans try to take full advantage of experiencing pleasure to its fullest potential. Hedonism claims that pleasure is the highest and only source of essential significance. If the notion of hedonism is truthful, happiness is directly correlated with pleasure. Robert Nozick presented the philosophical world with his though experiment, “The Experience Machine” in order to dispute the existence and validity of hedonism. Nozick’s thought experiment poses the question of whether or not humans would plug into a machine which produces any desired experience. Nozick weakens the notion of hedonism through his thought experiment, claiming humans need more than just pleasure in their lives. Nozick discovers that humans would not hook up to this machine because they would not fully develop as a person and consider it a form of suicide.
As we see in the daily news, people are often cruel and inhumane, and we also see kinder people in everyday life. We see people who give up their own personal pleasure so they can serve others. But while these people are far and few between, it becomes quickly obvious that humans are drawn towards self-happiness. Bibliography:.. 1. What is the difference between a. and a Leviathan.
Another problem is that some pleasures are more alluring than others. Pleasure does not deal with just quantity, quality is also important. The old saying, “You ...
Epicurus was admittedly a Hedonist, and this philosophy has had a huge influence on his work. Especially so on his death argument. Hedonism is, “the doctrine that pleasure is the only thing that is good in itself for a person, pain the only thing that is bad in itself for a person.”
With any form of hedonism, one is committed to the concept that pleasure is the chief good. In an extremely generic form of hedonism, it seems as though the quality of sensual pleasure should be given no more weight than the quality of emotional pleasure and vice versa. Additionally, this sort of hedonism would hold that the acquisition of kinetic pleasures would increase overall pleasure to seemingly no end, a concept which Epicurus’ doctrine would reject. Even if we understand death to be a genuine ceasing to exist, we must conjecture that it is bad for a person to die in the sense that it terminates even the possibility to acquire more pleasure. Under this concept of hedonism, we must agree that a person who lives a pleasurable life for ...
Hedonism is a way of life that is rooted in a person’s experiences or states of consciousness that can be pleasant or unpleasant. The ethical egoist would state that a person should maximize his or her pleasant states of consciousness in order to lead the best life. Act Utilitarian on the other hand would state that these enjoyable states of consciousness should be maximized by one’s actions for everyone in order to attain the most utility. On the surface, this appears to be a good way to live, however, as Nozick states through his example of the experience machine that living life as a hedonist can be detrimental. It is a hollow existence that will ultimately be unsatisfactory because of the lack of making real decisions and relationships which are important to living a fulfilling life.
Hedonism means to live only for pleasure. It means not thinking about the consequences of your actions as long as make you happy. It’s a total abandon of all responsibilities. This type of lifestyle often has negative results. I mean, look at the hippies, and how their hedonistic society turned out. They are all either in rehab centers or have kids running around with names like “Moonbeam” and “Starchild”. But enough hippie bashing - let’s look at how the Hedonistic way of life is integrated into The Great Gatsby. Let’s take the parties for example. Gatsby has a party just about every week, no matter what. He has tons of people come over, and they party all night. Gatsby has tons of booze at his parties, and no one thinks of consuming anything but alcohol.
Additionally, he does not make an effort to explain why corporal punishment would be more effective or successful than imprisonment. He persuades the audience by using verbal irony and statistics. When he first mentions prison, he uses verbal irony towards the subject to express his true attitude towards imprisonment by saying that locking people in cages is more humane than punishing them physically (197). This statement is ironic because he actually believes that imprisonment is a worse punishment than corporal punishment, but says that it is more humane to ridicule the opposing argument.
A conditional pleasure is a sensory pleasure, meaning it is something that appeases our senses. This can be activities such as sex, eating a steak, or enjoying a refreshing alcoholic beverage. While all of these pleasures can be enjoyable, they are only enjoyable for a limited time, meaning they are pleasures that are only enjoyed to a certain extent. I couldn’t smoke several cigarettes in a day, but, I often enjoy a cigarette after a meal. An unconditional pleasure is one which can be consumed or carried out repeatedly without losing the sense of enjoyment. This type of pleasure includes activities where pain my also coincide with the act. To the die-hard runner, the marathon may serve as an unconditional pleasure (Aristotle, 1999). Next, I will explain another concept proposed by Albert Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus.
When talking about pleasure there needs to be a distinction between the quality and the quantity. While having many different kinds of pleasures can be considered a good thing, one is more likely to favor quality over quantity. With this distinction in mind, one is more able to quantify their pleasures as higher or lesser pleasures by ascertaining the quality of them. This facilitates the ability to achieve the fundamental moral value that is happiness. In his book Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill offers a defining of utility as pleasure or the absence of pain in addition to the Utility Principle, where “Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness” (Mill 7). Through this principle, Mill emphasizes that it is not enough to show that happiness is an end in itself. Mill’s hedonistic view is one in support of the claim that every human action is motivated by or ought to be motivated by the pursuit of pleasure.