[T]here are quite commonplace instances of our not being averse to, or even relishing, pain. I can deliberately probe a loose tooth with my tongue and find the sharp pang which results quite delicious. In this case I have no difficulty identifying the feeling as painful; indeed, that seems to be part of its appeal.
Wayne Sumner, Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics, Oxford, 1996, p. 101
Revisions are the food additives of theory construction. In the case of utilitarian revisionism the junk theories which have flooded the market have been particularly indigestible.
Wayne Sumner, ‘Classical Utilitarianism and the Population Optimum’, in R. I. Sikora and Brian Barry (eds.), Obligations to Future Generations, Philadelphia, 1978, p. 96
Along with such other persistent offenders as the real and the natural, the concept of the subjective is one of the most treacherous in the philosophers’ lexicon.
Wayne Sumner, Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics, New York, 1996, p. 27