Pleasure and the phenomenology of value

Abstract

Value is identifiable not through formal or substantial axiology alone, but as a natural property explainable through the phenomenology of pleasure. By framing hedonism as an explanation rather than a mere assignment of value, the perceived explanatory gap between natural facts and normative properties can be closed. Value is reducible to the hedonic nature of experience, specifically defined as internally liked experiences where the qualitative feel of pleasure constitutes the basic value fact. This naturalistic approach treats pleasure not as a detector of an external property, but as the property of value itself. While evaluative intuitions serve as the primary evidence for axiological claims, these intuitions are rooted in the affective and motivational systems of the brain. Consequently, although human agents often assign intrinsic value to non-hedonic objects such as knowledge or friendship, these assignments are psychological outgrowths of pleasure’s foundational role. This explanatory framework suggests that while refined evaluative judgments may appear independent, they remain fundamentally grounded in the immediate, phenomenological value of hedonic states. Traditional axiological projects are thus supplemented or replaced by a model that accounts for the emergence of value through mental states and biological systems. – AI-generated abstract.