User:Phlsph7/Hedonism - Basic concepts

Basic concepts

Pleasure and pain

Main articles: Pleasure and Pain

Pleasure and pain are fundamental experiences about what is attractive and aversive, influencing how people feel, think, and act. They play a central role in all forms of hedonism. Both pleasure and pain come in degrees corresponding to their intensity. They are typically understood as a continuum ranging from positive degrees through a neutral point to negative degrees. However, some hedonists reject the idea that pleasure and pain form a symmetric pair and suggest instead that avoiding pain is more important than producing pleasure.

The nature of pleasure and pain is disputed and affects the plausibility of various versions of hedonism. In everyday language, these concepts are often understood in a narrow sense associated with specific phenomena, like the pleasure of food and sex or the pain of an injury. However, hedonists usually take a wider perspective in which pleasure and pain cover any positive or negative experiences. In this broad sense, anything that feels good is a pleasure, including the joy of watching a sunset, whereas anything that feels bad is a pain, including the sorrow of losing a loved one. A traditionally influential position says that pleasure and pain are specific bodily sensations, similar to the sensations of hot and cold. A more common view in contemporary philosophy holds that pleasure and pain are attitudes of attraction or aversion toward objects. This view implies that they do not have a specific location in the body and do not arise in isolation since they are always directed at an object that people enjoy or suffer.

Measurement

Both philosophers and psychologists are interested in methods of measuring pleasure and pain to guide decision-making and gain a deeper understanding of their causes. A common approach is to use self-report questionnaires in which people are asked to quantify how pleasant or unpleasant an experience is. For example, some questionnaires use a nine-point scale from -4 for the most unpleasant experiences, to +4 for the most pleasant ones. Some methods rely on memory and ask individuals to retrospectively assess their experiences. A different approach is for individuals to evaluate their experiences while they are happening to avoid biases and inaccuracies introduced by memory.

In either form, the measurement of pleasure and pain poses various challenges. As a highly subjective phenomenon, it is difficult to establish a standardized metric. Moreover, asking people to rate their experiences using an artificially constructed scale may not accurately reflect their subjective experiences. A closely related problem concerns comparisons between individuals since different people may use the scales differently and thus arrive at different values even if they had similar experiences. Neuroscientists avoid some of these challenges by using neuroimaging techniques such as PET scans and fMRI. However, this approach comes with new difficulties of its own since the neurological basis of happiness is not yet fully understood.

Based on the idea that individual experiences of pleasure and pain can be quantified, Jeremy Bentham proposed the hedonistic calculus as a method to combine various episodes to arrive at their total contribution of happiness. This makes it possible to quantitatively compare different courses of action based on the experiences they produce to choose the course with the highest overall contribution to happiness. Bentham considered several factors for each pleasurable experience: its intensity and duration, the likelihood that it occurs, its temporal distance, the likelihood that it causes further experiences of pleasure and pain, and the number of people affected. Some simplified versions of the hedonic calculus focus primarily on intrinsic value to a person and only consider two factors: intensity and duration.

Happiness, well-being, and eudaimonia

Main articles: Happiness, Well-being, and Eudaimonia

Some theorists formulate hedonism in terms of happiness rather than pleasure and pain. According to a common interpretation, happiness is the balance of pleasure over pain. This means that a person is happy if they have more pleasure than pain and unhappy if the balance is overall negative. There are also other ways to understand happiness that do not fully align with the traditional account of hedonism. One view defines happiness as life satisfaction. This means that a person is happy if they have a favorable attitude toward their life, for example, by being satisfied with their life as a whole or by judging it to be good overall. This attitude may be affected by the balance of pleasure over pain but can also be shaped by other factors.

Well-being is what is ultimately good for a person. According to a common view, pleasure is one component of well-being. It is controversial whether it is the only factor and what other factors there are, such as health, knowledge, and friendship. Another approach focuses on desires, saying that well-being consists in satisfaction of desires. The view that the balance of pleasure over pain is the only source of well-being is called prudential hedonism.

Eudaimonia is a form of well-being rooted in ancient Greek thought, serving as a foundation of many forms of hedonism during this period. Aristotle understood eudaimonia as a type of flourishing in which a person is happy by leading a fulfilling life and manifesting their inborn capacities. Ethical theories based on eudaimonia are not pure versions of hedonism since they combine an interest in long-term happiness with a form of virtue ethics advocating an active lifestyle focused on self-realization.

Paradox of hedonism and hedonic treadmill

Main articles: Paradox of hedonism and Hedonic treadmill

The paradox of hedonism is the thesis that the direct pursuit of pleasure is counterproductive. It says that conscious attempts to become happy usually backfire, acting as obstacles to one's personal happiness. According to one interpretation, the best way to produce pleasure is to follow other endeavors, with pleasure being a by-product rather than the goal itself. For example, this view suggests that a tennis player who tries to win a game may enjoy the activity more than a tennis player who tries to maximize their enjoyment. It is controversial to what extent the paradox of hedonism is true since, at least in some cases, the pursuit of pleasure is successful.

A related phenomenon, the hedonic treadmill is the theory that people return to a stable level of happiness after significant positive or negative changes to their life circumstances. This suggests that good or bad events affect a person's happiness temporarily but not in the long term—their overall level of happiness tends to revert to a baseline as they get used to the changed situation. For instance, studies on lottery winners indicate that their happiness initially increases as the newly acquired wealth augments their living standards but returns to its original level after about one year. If true, this effect would undermine efforts to increase happiness in the long term, including personal efforts to lead a healthy lifestyle and social efforts to create a free, just, and prosperous society. While there is some empirical support for this effect, it is controversial how strong this tendency is and whether it applies to all fields or only to certain aspects of life.

Non-hedonism and asceticism

Non-hedonist theories reject certain aspects of hedonism. One form of non-hedonism says that pleasure is one thing in life that matters but not the only thing. Another form argues that some pleasures are good while others are bad. The strongest rejection of hedonism, sometimes termed anti-hedonism, claims that all pleasures are bad. Motivations to adopt this view include the ideas that pleasure is an irrational emotion and that the pursuit of pleasure is an obstacle that prevents people from leading a good life.

Asceticism is a lifestyle dedicated to a program of self-discipline that renounces worldly pleasures. It can take various forms, including abstinence from sex and drugs, fasting, withdrawal from society, and practices like prayer and meditation. This lifestyle is often motivated by religious aspirations to become close to the divine, reach a heightened spiritual state, or purify oneself. Most forms of asceticism are opposed to hedonism and its pursuit of pleasure. However, there are forms of ascetic hedonism that combine the two views, for example, by asserting that the right form of ascetic practice leads to higher overall happiness by replacing simple sensory pleasures with deeper and more meaningful spiritual pleasures.

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