Classroom issues re hedonism.

This page is intended to document the various issues that arise about hedonism in class about hedonism by me and/or by students. If there’s some contribution you’d like to make here, send me an email. You could offer an objection, or an argument for some point related, and so forth.

Contents
Socratic hedonism, in the Protagoras
The Long-Lived Pig objection
Experience Machine
ethical vs. psychological hedonism

1. Socratic hedonism, in the Protagoras.   

The good is pleasure, and the bad is pain. The better action is the action that results in a greater amount of pleasure on balance.  Given a choice between two actions resulting in pain, the better is the one that results in the lesser amount of pain. Pleasures and pain can be measured, and hence, the good can be measured. Further, an interesting consequence of this, if it is correct, is that one can make mistakes about judging what is good. One is mistaken when one believes that one thing or action results in more pleasure than another on balance, when in fact it does not.

2. The long-lived pig objection to quantitative hedonism.

Quantitative hedonism is the view that what makes one thing more valuable than another is the fact that it produces or results in, or consists in, on balance, a greater quantity of pleasure on balance than another. This seems problematic. Consider two lives. The lives of Josef Haydn, and the life of Squeaky the Pig.  Haydn was regarded as living an admirable human life. He was a great composer, had many friends all over Europe, was well-traveled, had a happy family life, etc. Suppose Haydn experienced over  his entire life 100,000 units of pleasure. Now consider Squeaky the Pig. He lives an admirable pig’s life. He has a first class mud pit to wallow in, he eats food he enjoys eating, the temperature is always pefect for him, etc. Suppose Squeaky experiences 1 unit of pleasure per day. Then, in 100,001 days, on balance Squeaky’s life would have resulted in more pleasure than Haydn’s. (I’m ignoring pain to keep things simple. Suppose they both experienced the same amount of pain.)  It would seem that, according to quantitative hedonism, Squeaky’s life is better, more valuable, than Haydn’s life. But, who would choose Squeaky’s life? If you’d choose Haydn’s life, or similar exemplary human life, and it’s true all actions aim at the apparent good, then it would seem you regard Haydn’s life as more valuable. But, if so, then you’ve got to think that the quantity of pleasure a life results in, isn’t the sole factor determining the value of a life. There’s something more to the value of a life, which Haydn’s possesses, and Squeaky’s does not, that accounts for the fact that you’d value Haydn’s life, or life like his, more highly.  Quantitative hedonism fails to recognize this additional valuable element/s, and hence must be incorrect as a theory of value. It’s either just wrong about what’s good, or it’s incomplete.  

Reply. Hedonists usually at this point make a distinction between the quantity of  pleasure and quality of a pleasure--J.S. Mill, for example. Squeaky’s life is not more valuable than Haydn’s because, while consisting in greater pleasure over all, the sort of pleasure it consists in, is different in quality than the pleasure that Haydn experiences over his life.  Haydn’s pleasure has a qualitative difference, and it’s the qualitative difference that makes Haydn’s pleasure more valuable, and hence his life more valuable.  There seems something intuitively right about this, but it’s not as easy to secure as some might think. The burden is now on the hedonist to describe what makes a pleasure better qualitatively without appealing to anything else valuable other than pleasure.  For,  if you bring in something else besides pleasure that is valuable or good in order to explain why differences in quality can result in greater value, then you’ve got to give up the idea that it’s just pleasure that is good and pain that is bad.

3. Experience Machine.

Suppose we can hook up human beings to a machine, the experience machine, in such a way that the machine sends electrical signals through your nervous system just as if you were receiving the external stimuli you would if you were living a real life. (Think of the Matrix here). Consider the following two lives.

A. Jack chooses to live a life in the experience machine, and lives a life of great pleasure, of all sorts, intellectual, physical, sensual, etc.

B. Mack lives a real human life, one which is full of the same sorts of pleasures in the same quantitities as Jack’s life in the experience machine.

Suppose both die at about the same time. Being students of the human good, we reflect on their lives.  Which was better? Which was more preferable?

Now, if you say, Mack’s life was better, then it would seem you can’t be a hedonist about value. For, both lives resulted in the same amount and kind of pleasure. If you say Mack’s life, then it appears that you’re at least implicitly judging that there’s something over and beyond the pleasure of Mack’s life that makes it more valuable. But if so, then there’s something, whatever it is that makes Mack’s life more valuable, which is valuable but is not pleasure. So, if hedonism is the view that only pleasure is good, etc., then hedonism would seem to be false.  

This isn’t an argument against hedonism. It doesn’t establish that hedonism is false. A hedonist could simply say that given both lives result in the same amount and kind of pleasure, both are equally choice-worthy. In fact some will have the intuition that there really is no difference. They’re probably the true hedonists.  Think of Cypher in the Matrix. He’s the one that betrays his comrades in order to return to the Matrix and live a life of pleasure, blissfully ignorant of the fact that he’s in fact in the Matrix. Cypher is probably a true hedonist.  On the other hand, if you have the intuition that there’s something about Mack’s life that makes it more valuable, then you will want to consider seriously whether you really subscribe to hedonism.

4.  Ethical vs. psychological hedonism

This is rough distinction between two forms of hedonism. Much more could be said about it, and much more will.  Each of these views, roughly characterized, have specific forms, which I’ll introduce later.

Ethical hedonism, roughly, is the view that what is good, or valuable, desirable, or choice-worthy is pleasure.  

Psychological hedonism, roughly, is the veiw that what determines action or our behavior is pleasure, either present, remote, or actual.

Ethical views consist in statements about what is good or right.  Psychological hedonism doesn’t say anything about what is good or right. It states a fact about the motivation or cause of human action or behavior.  As such, it is probably something more like a  scientific view, if pleasure itself and it’s causal role in bringing about human behavior can be adequately made a proper object of scientific investigation. (There’s a fair amount of dispute about whether psyhological hedonism can be rationally established empircally, or in any way, for that matter.)

The relation between these views is interesting. Many who are sympathetic or commited to ethical hedonism, in some form or another, are so on the grounds that psychological hedonism is true.  That is, they believe that ethical hedonism is true, because psychological hedonism is true. (There’s a fair amount of dispute also about whether any form of psychological hedonism supports any form of ethical hedonism. Most philosophers, I think, believe that psychological hedonism doesn’t support ethical hedonism in any interesting way.)