Some hedonist intuitions

Explaining why I think mental states are all that matters

The difficult and arduous task of figuring out the best theory of self interest would likely be a book length project. I have, however, already written about some considerations that count in favor of ethical hedonism¹. I shall provide several more here.

One intuition motivating this that may not be shared by everyone is that consciousness is all that matters. As Sidgwick pointed out, a universe devoid of sentience could not possess value. The notion that for something to be good it must be experienced is a deeply intuitive one. Consciousness seems to be the only mechanism by which we become acquainted with value.

One might object that, while consciousness is required for things to possess any value, the value doesn’t have to be proportional to its effect on consciousness. This is true. However, if B can’t be had without A, that at least counts in favor of the view that A and B are the same. Additionally, the consciousness based intuitions that I have seem to point to consciousness being the only thing that matters. It seems strange to imagine that I could be made worse off by something that doesn’t affect my conscious experiences at all.

Second, hedonism seems to be the simplest way of ruling out posthumous harm. Absent hedonism, things can be bad for a person after they die. This is, however, implausible. It would be strange to suggest that dead people can benefit or be harmed. This article fleshed out the view in greater detail.

Third, pleasure seems to be the thing that is most obviously good. Many people like Parfit provide intuitions to argue that things can have desire independent relevance. All of the examples that are given are examples of one not caring about their pleasures.

Parfit gives the example of a person with future Tuesday indifference—one who doesn’t care about their suffering if it occurs on a future Tuesday. Thus, they’d be willing to experience horrific suffering on Tuesday rather than a pinprick on Monday. Parfit also provides the agony argument—a person who does not desire avoiding future agony would be acting foolishly. The example that I find most persuasive is side of body pulled out of a hat indifference. This person at the start of a day pulls out either left or right out of a hat at random. For the duration of the day, they are indifferent to their suffering that occurs on the part of their body that they pulled out of a hat.

If they pulled out left they are indifferent to suffering that occurs on the left side of their body. If they pulled out right, the opposite. This person at the start of a day pulls out right. They are then given the option of having the right side of their body burned with a hot iron or having a pinprick on the left side of their body. They choose to be burned with a hot iron. This seems clearly irrational.

One might object that it wouldn’t be if they didn’t truly desire avoiding being burned with a hot iron on the right side of their body. However, they still have identical qualia to what any of us would experience if we were burned with a hot iron on one side of our body. This person merely has no preference for avoiding that type of pain. We can even stipulate that when they’re burned with the hot iron on the right side of their body they are hypnotized to think that they pulled left out of the hat, such that they’re experience is identical to what it would have been if they had, in fact, pulled left out of the hat. This choice seems clearly irrational, despite them acting in accordance with their desires.

However, cases like this almost exclusively appeal to hedonic experiences. One who is indifferent to being plugged into the experience machine would not seem to be irrational. Thus, the case for desire independent relevance for well-being is far more robust.

Fourth, other theories seem to have trouble accounting for experiences that don’t produce pleasure not being valuable, but ones that do producing value.

Beginning with preference views, scenarios like the one’s described above show that preference views can hold that people are benefitted by things that decrease the quality of their mental experiences. In the case before, the one who experiences but does not desire avoiding agony, is indifferent to future Tuesdays, or is indifferent to suffering that occurs on the right side of their body, has no desire to avoid these sufferings. However, it still seems like it’s bad to torture people on Future Tuesday’s, despite their indifference to it.

It might be objected that one has to desire the experience of pleasure and avoidance of suffering. This is, however, false. As Parfit showed, people are frequently indifferent to their suffering. Sinners who believe they’ll be condemned to hell frequently go on sinning, despite it being bad for the quality of their experiences. I’ve certainly had times when I was experiencing something harmful but didn’t want it to stop for reasons of stubbornness. Additionally, these views are willing to account for higher order desires. One who wants to help their friend even at their own expense would not be acting irrationally. Thus, these views are willing to accommodate placing extra importance on higher order desires. If one has a higher order desire which renders them overall indifferent to experiences of pain, these views would be unable to condemn them.

An additional point is worth making. Very often people experience unpleasantness but they don’t have any particular desire for it to stop. I might be hungry but not focusing on my hunger. Thus, I have no unfulfilled desire for my hunger to stop. In this case, it’s not clear how desire theories make sense of this.

They might hold that what matters is the desires that I would have about things if I focused on them. This, however, runs into issues. If I focused deeply on any world tragedy, I would have a desire for it to stop. However, it seems strange to say that it is bad for me that a tsunami hits some far away place, to the extent that it doesn’t distress me.

One who committed a heinous crime before developing a concern for others and developing retributivist intuitions may hold that they deserve to suffer. Thus, they have no desire for their misery to cease. However, it still seems intuitive that their misery is bad for them. This is a real world case in which people have no desire for the cessation of their agony.

A final point is worth making. There is no conceptual relationship between suffering and one desiring for it to stop. A desire is something that one aims for. While the nature of suffering provides people a reason² to desire its cessation, there is no necessary relation between suffering and desiring for it to stop. Given that one is a reaction and one is an experience, it is hard to see why they would necessarily be linked.

One might simply define suffering as experiences that people desire the end of. However, this definition has several problems. First, it seems to run afoul of common usage and intuitions about several of the aforementioned cases. The retributivist who believes he deserves to be in pain and is burned with a hot iron is clearly suffering. The same is true of the other examples given. The person with no desire to avoid being in pain on Future Tuesdays is still clearly suffering when they’re burned with a hot iron on Tuesday’s, while being hypnotized to believe that it’s Monday.

Second, people can conceivably experience self loathing, wherein they don’t value their own happiness. A depressed person may not care about being happy. However, it would be strange to suggest that being happy doesn’t produce pleasure for them.

Third, one can imagine a person with an addiction. They may have no desire to gain pleasure from an experience, though it would still be pleasurable.

However, a similar problem is faced by the objective list theorist. OLT is, in my view, far more plausible than preference utilitarianism. The most plausible version is the one given by people like Yetter-Chappel, according to which pleasurable experiences are more valuable if they’re achieved by appreciating something that is in fact good. He thinks the most plausible candidates for things being good are relationships with other people. Thus, one’s happiness caused by appreciation of a loved one is more valuable than their happiness if garnered by eating ice-cream.

This view, however, runs into the following dilemma. Does pain alleviation caused by appreciation also bring about the same type of objective value. If the answer is no, this introduces a strange asymmetry. Suppose that one is experiencing a headache with 5 units of pain. Appreciating another person could either give them 5 units of pleasure to offset, or could eliminate the 5 units of pain. On the asymmetric account, it would be better to experience the 5 units of pleasure. This is implausible. Pleasure is not more valuable than comparable pain elimination, regardless of the source.

However, if we say the opposite, then one can benefit from something despite it producing no pleasure for them. Suppose a friend of mine writes a birthday card to me that is intended to be nice, but that says certain things that I find hurtful. However, knowing that my friend intended to help and be kind makes me not be offended, though I get no joy from reading the letter. My appreciation of my friend’s attempted kind gesture only serves to blunt the hurt it would have otherwise caused, but brings no joy. It would seem strange to suggest that I am made better off by reading this letter that doesn’t make me happy at all. However, on OLT, I am made better off. This is counterintuitive and runs afoul of Sidgwick’s principle that something can only benefit you if it brings you joy.

Additionally, we can add that reading the letter brings me a small amount of suffering. Suppose that reading the letter gives me a papercut that is a little bit painful. On OLT, I would still benefit from it. This already seems very counterintuitive. However, it can be made much more so.

Much like hedonist accounts hold that if I was given a pleasurable experience, before having my memory erased, such that I experienced it again, it would be good for me, OLT accounts would seem to have to hold that appreciating good things over and over again would be especially good. Thus, if I could be given the experience of appreciating my friends gesture, and reading the letter that gave me a papercut and that I didn’t enjoy reading 100^100^200 times the total value from this would exceed all of the value in the universe. This is deeply implausible. Experiencing 100^100^200 unenjoyable experiences and papercuts does not possess enough value to offset the badness of the holocaust an unfathomable number of times.

The Objective List Theorist may hold that there is some limit, such that one only benefits from an experience the first time they experience it. This, however, is either implausible or inadequate to avoid the objection. If they hold that the same type of experience cannot possess value beyond the first time it’s experienced, then it would make many things that Objective List Theorists believe are valuable not, in fact, valuable. If one is hanging out with their friends, OLT would hold that this is valuable, even if they’ve had previous similar experiences with their friends. If experiences are only valuable the first time, then this extra interaction would not be valuable.

They might hold that the same experience happening multiple times cannot generate Objective List based value. However, this is both no objection to the broader principle and is implausible. Suppose that the plot of groundhog day were true, and at the end of each day, it got reset and relived. This wouldn’t seem to eliminate the value of people being in love. Additionally, we can stipulate that each time they write the letter it’s different in subtle ways, such that the same experience is not, in fact, repeated.

Going back to the earlier point, even if the OLT is able to work out some account of why repeated experiences are not valuable that boxes out the repeated letters but includes the repeated friend interactions, we can add an additional stipulation. Each time the letter is written by a different person. Suppose this person is very popular and has 100^100^200 friends, each of whom writes the same general letter. In this case, the experience is not repeated. However, the conclusion is still deeply implausible.

The Objective List Theorist could finally reject some form of aggregation, and say that lots of small good things can’t add up to produce as much good as one single very good major thing like the goodness of the world. However, as I have argued (As has Norcross), this is very implausible. The Objective List Theorist holds presumably that the experience of opening the letter produces more value than is avoided by preventing a dust speck from entering a person’s eyes. If, as I have argued, oodles of dust specks entering people’s eyes produces as much disvalue as lots of tortures, then many people opening letters that they don’t enjoy and getting pinpricks would be good enough to offset lots of tortures. This is implausible.

The Objective List Theorist could bite the bullet and argue that our intuitions relating to huge numbers are unreliable, as I have argued when arguing that lots of bad things can outweigh a single very bad thing. However, in the case I gave, I argued we had lots of plausible independent reasons to accept the utilitarian conclusion. The OLT would be hard pressed to come up with a similarly adequate justification that appeals to principles as plausible as the one’s that I gave.

The failures of our intuitions in certain cases relating to large numbers certainly cuts against the reliability of those intuitions. However, that doesn’t mean we can throw them out entirely.

Additionally, in this case, the counterintuitive result came merely from aggregating lots of cases of things that the OLT holds are good. The reason it seems unintuitive has more to do with the verdict about reading letters that one doesn’t enjoy and getting a paper cut being bad, rather than the aggregative intuitions.

Even if one is convinced that our intuitions relating to very big numbers are very unreliable, they should still rely the intuition prior to aggregation. The intuition that one is made worse off by getting a paper cut from a letter they don’t enjoy reading, rather than better off, is fairly strong. Aggregation just made the point more salient.

The OLT might object that hedonism has the opposite implication which is just as unintuitive, namely that one should torture and kill lots of people to prevent someone from getting a papercut from a letter they don’t enjoy reading 100^100^200 times. However, I’ve already defended similar judgements. Additionally, this just comes from aggregating a judgement about some action being bad. The OLT is the one who holds the counterintuitive judgement about the moral status of the action.

Another related worry arises for OLT of the type that’s been described earlier. Suppose that friend A gives me book A and friend B gives me book B. However, I get confused and think that friend B gave me book A and friend A gave me book B. As I’m reading book A I have a deep appreciation for friend B and as I’m reading book A I have a great appreciation for friend B. In this case, it would seem that this confusion doesn’t make me worse off. However, on OLT, it seems it would have to. Given that this confusion causes me to be mistaken about facts, such that when I think I’m appreciating some experience, I’m not truly experiencing the thing on my objective list that I think I am, it would prevent me from getting objective list value. This is implausible. It seems strange that there has to be a parity between appreciation from some event and that event actually existing for a person to be benefitted by that event.

A similar case raises a similar point. Suppose I mistakenly believe my friend did something which I appreciate, but I also don’t realize my friend did something else nice for me, which benefits me, which I don’t appreciate. For example, suppose my friend bakes me cookies, but I mistakenly think they baked me brownies. When I eat the brownies, my appreciation is based on a false assumption. Much like in the experience machine, my experience of appreciation is divorced from the actual facts of the world. However, this doesn’t make it less valuable.

The OLT might object, claiming that even if I’m wrong about the details, I’m still right about it being the type of thing for which I ought to appreciate them. Much like appreciating a friend would still have OL value, even if you are wrong about certain facts about them, if they still have the defining characteristics that cause you to appreciate them, mixing up the particular food that was baked would be an erroneous detail, not relevant to OL value.

However, we can modify the case. Suppose that friend A bakes me cookies, but I think friend B baked them. I appreciate friend B. Given that this is based on a false pretense, the OLT would have to hold that this lacks OL value. However, suppose additionally that ten years later friend B bakes me cookies, but I get confused and appreciate friend A. OLT would hold that these confusions leave me worse off. This is implausible.

The OLT might hold that what matters is the Parity between there being something that’s worth appreciating and someone appreciating it. On this view, it is irrelevant whether I am appreciating the thing that is actually good. If I am appreciating something and also there is something worth appreciating, I gain OL based value. However, this yields implausible conclusions.

Suppose that I am in the experience machine because my wife who cares about me greatly decided to put me into the experience machine. I did not know about this, but I would have consented. However, I was on the brink of death prior to being plugged in. I gain sufficient joy from being plugged in for it to benefit me on OLT. In this case, there is something to truly be appreciated in every good experience I have. However, it would be odd to suppose I gain OL based value every time I appreciate an imaginary person who exists merely in my mind.

Consider a final case. Suppose I am talking to a person at a costume party. I falsely believe them to be friend A. They are really friend B. I appreciate their contribution. This would seem to be valuable, despite the false pretense. Now suppose that they are in fact the brother of friend A who I don’t know (they’re not intending to be deceptive). This still seems valuable. Now let’s suppose that they’re a robot that is a copy of friend A but it not conscious. It seems hard to hold that this would not be valuable but the others would.

Let’s say they were a copy of friend A who was half as sentient. Would the value be lower? These logistical questions seem to pose major hurtles for OLT.

Sidgwick held that good things have to be appreciated—an unobserved galaxy would not be better if it were beautiful than if it were ugly. Hedonism just extrapolates that trend. Much like it’s hard to compare two states of the world that aren’t observed by anyone, it’s similarly hard to compare two states of the world in which there are differences which no one is aware of. If no one experiences a difference between two states of the world, those states of the world aren’t morally different.

1. For clarificatory purposes, ethical hedonism is the view that the only thing which matters is pleasure, or desirable mental states.

2. I use reason in the indefinable counting in favor of sense here, not in the motivational sense