HEDONISM AND HAPPINESS 1 (original) (raw)

Hedonism and happiness

2003

Abstract Hedonism is a way of life, characterised by openness to pleasurable experience. There are many qualms about hedonism. It is rejected on moral grounds and said to be detrimental to long-term happiness. Several mechanisms for this' paradox of hedonism'have been suggested and telling examples of pleasure seekers ending up in despair have been given. But is that the rule? If so, how much pleasure is too much? An overview of the available knowledge is given in this paper.

Hedonism: Considering the Options

The idea of hedonism is almost as old as western society itself. During the Hellenic era, Epicureanism, the forerunner of modern hedonism, was a popular and widespread belief system. However, in the following centuries, it suffered a decline that has continued, with very little exception, to the modern day. Some of the most infamous characters in history have been accused of being "hedonists" and have, by acting in ways generally held to be morally unconscionable, created hatred and mistrust for hedonistic philosophies. In the popular mind, the term hedonism conjures up images of sexual excess and overindulgent spending. Although the philosophic community claims to be above these basic popular misconceptions, the body of literature dealing with hedonism shows that, for the most part, they are not. Many philosophers, like most members of the general public, are deceived by the seeming simplicity of hedonism.

Critique of Hedonism

Hedonistic Values: The term 'Hedonism' derives its origin from the Latin word hedone which means pleasure. This implises that hedonistic values subsists in pleasure,i.e, pleasure is the highest good.This is how man augments his actions with a view to derive maximum pleasure. The exponents of hedonism are J.S. Mill, James Bentham, David Hume andEpicurians. These thinkers assert that pleasure if the ultimate objective or SummumBonum of life. So it is an obvious phenomenon that according to these thinkers man always hankers after pleasure and avoid pain. Again according to these thinkers pleasure is that quality of mental process which man gets after the successful completion of an action entailing pleasurable perception with regard to a stupendous fortune.1 In view of the above we shall quote here the views of Bentham and Mill which are elucidated as follows. ``Bentham observes``Nature has placed mankind under the sovereign masters, viz , pleasure and pain; that man always seeks pleasure and pain.''2It is because of pleasure and pain only we do what we ought to do and what we shall do, i.e, our prospect is always some pleasure for which the action is facilitated as a means to produce pleasure thereby some pain are prevented with fruitful actions. Our motive is substantially nothing more than pleasure and pain acting in a particular manner. It is evident the , according to Bentham, actions are to be carried on keeping in view of pleasure /pain considerations. J.S. Mill also expounds``desiring a thing and finding it pleasant, aversion to it and thinking of it as painful are phenomena are entirely inseparable, rather two aspects of the same phenomena3''. The statement of Mill holds that attaining pleasure is the main objective of every action to which we are going to materialize. Hedonism emphasizes supreme importance to the heretic aspect of human nature. This revels that feeling or perceptual knowledge is the vital action of mental process.``Reason and will are good only as means of procuring and maintaining feeling; but feeling itself is good only in so far as it is pleasurable.''4 All that are not withstanding hedonistic values are basically perceptual or sensualistic by nature. In view of the above we may quote the aphorism of a British poet which are elucidated as follows.

A New Defense of Hedonism about Well-Being

Ergo

According to hedonism about well-being, lives can go well or poorly for us just in virtue of our ability to feel pleasure and pain. Hedonism has had many advocates historically, but has relatively few nowadays. This is mainly due to three highly influential objections to it: The Philosophy of Swine, The Experience Machine, and The Resonance Constraint. In this paper, I attempt to revive hedonism. I begin by giving a precise new definition of it. I then argue that the right motivation for it is the 'experience requirement' (i.e., that something can benefit or harm a being only if it affects the phenomenology of her experiences in some way). Next, I argue that hedonists should accept a felt-quality theory of pleasure, rather than an attitude-based theory. Finally, I offer new responses to the three objections. Central to my responses are (i) a distinction between experiencing a pleasure (i.e., having some pleasurable phenomenology) and being aware of that pleasure, and (ii) an emphasis on diversity in one's pleasures.

The portrait of a hedonist: The personality and ethics behind the value and maladaptive pursuit of pleasure

Personality and Individual Differences, 2015

Hedonism is the prioritizing of pleasure over other life values and is theorized to be independent of wellbeing. However, popular culture depicts hedonists as unhappy, as well as selfishly unconcerned with others' well-being. Because the current literature has not differentiated between people's value of pleasure and their maladaptive pursuit of it, we examined if these related, but not equivalent, dispositions had different personality and morality profiles. We found that value-based hedonists have a distinct moral profile (i.e., they are less likely to endorse moral foundations associated with social conservatism) and, yet, they differ little from others in regard to personality traits. We also found that people's maladaptive hedonism (i.e., excessive pleasure-seeking) was best predicted by their personality traits (i.e., being less agreeable, less conscientious, and more neurotic) rather than by their conceptions of right and wrong. We discuss how these results contribute to our understanding of hedonism and why some people pursue their value of pleasure into over-indulgence.

Predatory and Alternative Hedonism – Better Later than Now?

ACTA VŠFS, 2020

Hedonistic ethos is to intensify in the environment of consumer culture and in the atmosphere of unlimited consumerism, intentionally supported by market mechanisms. The value patterns of hedonistic life style are defined by experience motivations, excitement, sensual pleasures, delight, self-satisfaction, intensive need for emotional stimulations, present-time orientation or accelerated pace of life. It is considered identical with radical inclination towards individualization life practices, rapidly growing egoism and narcissistic tendencies confirming the meaning of one’s own existence. Life philosophy of independence, non-determination and “inner orientation” logically leads to the application of such life strategies that can support and develop this attitude to life. Predatory hedonism focusing on the values of pleasurable experience requires mobility, flexibility and variability; it refuses to accept stability and obligations, i.e. anything that could tie and restrict life move...

Two Types of Psychological Hedonism

Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences , 2016

I develop a distinction between two types of psychological hedonism. Inferential hedonism (or “I-hedonism”) holds that each person only has ultimate desires regarding his or her own hedonic states (pleasure and pain). Reinforcement hedonism (or “R–hedonism”) holds that each person's ultimate desires, whatever their contents are, are differentially reinforced in that person’s cognitive system only by virtue of their association with hedonic states. I’ll argue that accepting R-hedonism and rejecting I-hedonism provides a conciliatory position on the traditional altruism debate, and that it coheres well with the neuroscientist Anthony Dickinson’s theory about the evolutionary function of hedonic states, the “hedonic interface theory.” Finally, I’ll defend R-hedonism from potential objections.

Critically evaluate the position termed “Experiential Hedonism”.

Universally intrinsic value is theorised to only be possible through Experiential Hedonism; affective experiences dictate goodness and badness, and meaning. This theory is vulnerable to objections from the likes of Moore’s Open Question, as well as extreme reductionist and evolutionary debunking arguments. The basis of affective experiences in this position intensifies the plausibility of moral naturalisation, so long as it is not a result of basic moral intuitions, and that it has sufficient relation to goodness or badness. To even establish that positive affective experiences are not intuitions, and are connected, goodness would not prove it to be a plausible naturalisation of morality. As Nozick argues, this would create a situation where, if experience governed meaning, then imagining an experience without a physical occurrence would be sufficient to our consciousness (1974, p. 44). Since this is not the case for many humans, it seems that experiential hedonism takes caution to human desire to contact reality, and that the position is a “philosophy of swine”, and does not explain morality in a natural way. However it is this very desire that humans wish to make contact with reality that separates them from less sentient beings. Affective experience is more than simple emotion and behaviour, or instinct, but an explanation that makes hedonistic utilitarianism one of the strongest moral naturalisation theories to date.