Hedonic value
1998
Abstract
This essay presents and defends a theory of hedonic value, arguing that pleasant experiences are intrinsically good and unpleasant experiences are intrinsically bad. The author supports this theory by demonstrating how sentient experience provides evidence for founding ethics, specifically that pain is inherently bad. The theory is further developed by arguing that the normative import of pleasure and unpleasantness derives from their intrinsic nature, not from extrinsic factors. This leads to the conclusion that pleasures and unpleasures have agent-neutral moral significance, implying that one has as much reason to promote another’s hedonic well-being as their own. The essay then explores the application of this theory to practical issues, including assessing the hedonic value of states of affairs and addressing ethical challenges posed by Derek Parfitt.
Quotes from this work
Ethics is founded on evidence that can’t be shared. My experience of severe pain gives me reason to believe that nihilism is false. In other words, when I am in severe pain, that pain, as it’s presented to me, gives me evidence that it’s bad in some way. I can’t share this evidence with you; you can’t feel my pain. Even if you could peer inside my head and see it, you wouldn’t be presented with it in a way that gave you evidence of its badness. But you, of course, are in the same position regarding your pain: when you are in severe pain, that pain, as it’s presented to you, provides you with evidence that it’s bad in some way. So, each of us has evidence for his or her severe pain being bad in some way. In the case of infants and nonhuman animals, the evidence is there, but the creature is too unsophisticated to recognize it as such.