Simple Hedonism
I. Introductory Material: The Good Life, Welfare
Here’s a fundamental question in moral philosophy: What makes someone’s life go well? We ask the same question when we ask what well-being is, or what welfare is. Or when we ask, What makes life worth living or worthwhile? Or when we ask: What makes a life go well for the subject who lives it? Call proposed answers to this question ‘theories of welfare’.
II. A Distinction between Intrinsic and Instrumental Value
Some things are intrinsically valuable; they are valuable in themselves. Things that possess positive intrinsic value (intrinsic goodness) have a kind of value that they would continue to have even if they did not (i) lead to the existence of further bearers of positive value or (ii) prevent things of negative value from obtaining. If completely cut off from their causal chains, bearers of intrinsic value would remain valuable.
Similarly, things that possess negative intrinsic value (intrinsic badness) have a kind of negative value that they would continue to have even if they did not (i) lead to the existence of further bearers of negative value or (ii) deprive the world of things of positive value from obtaining.
Contrasting with intrinsic value is instrumental value. Some things possess a kind of value that they would not continue to have if they didn’t (i) lead to the existence of further bearers of value, or (ii) prevent things of negative value from obtaining, or (iii) deprive the world of things of positive value from obtaining. If completely cut off from their causal chains, bearers of instrumental value would no longer be instrumentally valuable.
“In order to [determine what things have intrinsic value] it is necessary to consider what things are such that, if they existed by themselves, in complete isolation, we should yet judge their existence to be good; and in order to decide upon the relative degrees of [intrinsic] value of different things, we must similarly consider what comparative value seems to attach to the isolated existence of each.”
From §112 of G. E. Moore’s Principia Ethica
An acceptable theory of the Good Life (or theory of welfare) must identify precisely
which things are intrinsically responsible for making a life either
good or bad for the person who lives it.
III. Hedonism
Aristippus of Cyrene (c. 435-350 BC) is generally recognized as the founder of the so-called Cyrenaic school of hedonism. (Diogenes Laertius)
“Philebus was saying that enjoyment and pleasure and delight, and the class of feelings akin to them, are what is good for all creatures.”
From Plato’s Philebus
“Every pleasure then because of its natural kinship to us is good…even as every pain is also an evil….”
From Epicurus’ Letter to Menoeceus
“Now, pleasure is in itself a good: nay, even setting aside immunity from pain, the only good: pain is in itself an evil; and, indeed, without exception, the only evil; or else the words good and evil have no meaning. And this is alike true of every sort of pain, and of every sort of pleasure.”
From Jeremy Bentham’s An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
Let the hedono-doloric value of a life, L, be the result generated from “subtracting” the total amount of pain in L from the total amount of pleasure in L.
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Simple Hedonism: The intrinsic value of a life, L, for the subject who lives it is identical to the hedono-doloric value of L. L1 is a better life for the person who lives it than L2 iff L1 has a greater hedono-doloric value than L2.
“There we have Prof. Sidgwick’s argument completed. We ought not,
he thinks, to aim at knowing the Truth, or at contemplating Beauty, except in
so far as such knowledge or such contemplation contributes to increase the pleasure
or the diminish the pain of sentient beings. Pleasure alone is good for its
own sake: knowledge of the Truth is good only as a means to pleasure.”
The concluding paragraph of §51 of Moore’s Principia Ethica
IV. Mill's Argument for Hedonism (Probably endorsed by Jeremy Bentham and Aristippus as well)
Psychological Hedonism: Every person is ultimately motivated only tby the desire for pleasue and/or the fear of pain.
But:
“To suppose that life has no higher end than pleasure—no better and nobler object of desire and pursuit—they designate as utterly mean and grovelling; as a doctrine worthy only of swine.”
Chapter Two of Mill’s Utilitarianism
V. Plato’s Argument Against Hedonism
Extracted from Plato’s Philebus (20de-21de)
“Socrates, we see, persuades Protarchus that Hedonism is absurd. If we are really going to maintain that pleasure alone is good as an end, we must maintain that it is good, whether we are conscious of it or not. We must declare it reasonable to take as our ideal (an unattainable ideal it may be) that we should be as happy as possible, even on condition that we never know and never can know that we are happy. We must be willing to sell in exchange for the mere happiness every vestige of knowledge, both in ourselves and in others, both of happiness itself and of every other thing. Can we really still disagree? Can any one still declare it obvious that this is reasonable? That pleasure alone is good as an end?” (PE §52)
VI. Matrix-Motivated Argument Against Hedonism
“There are also substantial puzzles when we ask what matters other than how people’s experiences feel ‘from the inside.’ Suppose there were an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired. Superduper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain.” Robert Nozick: Anarchy, State, and Utopia (42)
“Consider then the result machine, which produces in the world any result you would produce and injects your vector input into any joint activity.” A,S,&U (44)
‘In the movie “The Matrix”, the machines have taken over the world. Millions of human beings are kept alive in little pods. They are connected to a huge computer called “the Matrix”. It pumps tiny electrical charges into the brains of the comatose humans. It makes it seem to them that they are living real lives. They have all sorts of completely realistic experiences—but of course it’s all just virtual reality. So no matter how much pleasure these pod-people experience, their lives are completely worthless. They have no real friends or family; they have never seen an actual sunset. This example shows that sometimes a famous old philosophical theory (in this case, hedonism) can be shown to be false by a movie!’ (Extracto Exercise cooked up by Fred Feldman)
Nozick’s Reasons for Accepting Premise (2):
“What does matter to us in addition to our experiences? First, we want to do certain things, and not just have the experience of doing them…. [P]lugging into an experience machine limits us to a man-made [or machine-made] reality, to a world no deeper or more important than that which people [or machines] can construct. There is no actual contact with any deeper reality, though the experience of it can be simulated.”
“What is most disturbing about them [these experience machines] is their living our lives for us.” (A,S,&U)
VII. Moore's Bestiality Objection against Hedonism