Our view does not deny the importance, and indeed inevitability, of our sustaining the construction of a world in which values pertain to things which are not conceived as anyone’s mere personal experience. It will, however, think that for critical reflection the values of the constructed world only matter to whatever extent they, or the belief in them, are values realized in immediate experience.
Timothy Sprigge, The Rational Foundations of Ethics, London, 1988, p. 182
[I]t is an objective fact whether a certain experience is pleasurable or unpleasurable, and relatedly whether a particular conscious individual is presently experiencing something pleasurable or painful. It is an objective fact, so we may put it, about a subjective state.
Timothy Sprigge, ‘Is the esse of Intrinsic Value percipi?: Pleasure, Pain and Value’, in Anthony O’Hear (ed.), Philosophy, the Good, the True and the Beautiful, Cambridge, 2000, p. 123
If one goes for a long time without serious pain, one can more or less forget its distinctive nature. But then, when it comes, one is reminded only too well of what it is like, that is, of its reality as a distinctive quality of experience.
Timothy Sprigge, ‘Is the esse of Intrinsic Value percipi?: Pleasure, Pain and Value’, in Anthony O’Hear (ed.), Philosophy, the Good, the True and the Beautiful, Cambridge, 2000, p. 127