Epicurean Hedonism as Qualitative Hedonism

Epicurus’ theory of what is good for a person is hedonistic: only pleasure has intrinsic value. Critics object that Epicurus is committed to advocating sensualist excess, since hedonism seems both to imply that more pleasure is always of some good for you, and to recommend even debauched, sensual kinds of pleasure. However, Epicurus can respond to this objection much like J. S. Mill responds to the objection that hedonism is a “doctrine worthy only of swine”. I argue that Epicurus’ hedonism is a version of qualitative hedonism on which static pleasure is intrinsically superior to other kinds of pleasure. I also argue that Epicurus conceives of pleasure as a phenomenal or felt quality of experience, and that this is compatible with his troublesome claim that there is an upper limit to pleasure and wellbeing.     

Intuitive Hedonism

The hoary philosophical tradition of hedonism – the view that pleasure is the basic ethical or normative value – suggests that it is at least reasonably and roughly intuitive. But philosophers no longer treat hedonism that way. For the most part, they think that they know it to be obviously false on intuitive grounds, much more obviously false on such grounds than familiar competitors. I argue that this consensus is wrong. I defend the intuitive cogency of hedonism relative to the dominant desire-based and objectivist conceptions of well-being and the good. I argue that hedonism is still a contender, and indeed that our current understanding of commonsense intuition on balance supports it. An erratum to this article is available at .     

Hedonism and Happiness

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. The relation between hedonism and happiness has been studied at two levels: that of the nation and the individual. At the national level average happiness is correlated with moral acceptance of pleasure and with active leisure. At the individual level it is similarly linked with hedonistic attitudes and also correlated with hedonistic behaviours such as frequent sex and use of stimulants. In most cases the pattern is linearly positive. The relation between happiness and consumption of stimulants follows an inverted U-curve, spoilsports and guzzlers are less happy than modest consumers. Yet, these data cannot settle the issue, since the observed relations may be spurious or due to the effects of happiness on hedonism rather than the reverse. Even if we can prove a positive effect of (mild) hedonism on happiness, there is still the question of how that gains balances against a possible loss of health. A solution is to assess the effect of hedonistic living on the number of years lived happily.     

Desire Satisfactionism and Hedonism

Hedonism and the desire-satisfaction theory of welfare (“desire satisfactionism”) are typically seen as archrivals in the contest over identifying what makes one’s life go best. It is surprising, then, that the most plausible form of hedonism just is the most plausible form of desire satisfactionism. How can a single theory of welfare be a version of both hedonism and desire satisfactionism? The answer lies in what pleasure is: pleasure is, in my view, the subjective satisfaction of desire. This thesis about pleasure is clarified and defended only after we proceed through the dialectics that get us to the most plausible forms of hedonism and desire satisfactionism.     

An Objection to Attitudinal Hedonism

This article argues that attitudinal hedonism is false as atheory of what is intrinsically good for us because it impliesthat nothing is intrinsically good for someone who does nothave the psychological capacity for the propositional attitudeof enjoyment even if he has other important mental capacitiesthat humans have.     

Explaining the Paradox of Hedonism

The paradox of hedonism is the idea that making pleasure the only thing that we desire for its own sake can be self-defeating. Why would this be true? In this paper, I survey two prominent explanations, then develop a third possible explanation, inspired by Joseph Butler's classic discussion of the paradox. The existing accounts claim that the paradox arises because we are systematically incompetent at predicting what will make us happy, or because the greatest pleasures for human beings are found in certain special goods which hedonists cannot enjoy. On the account that I develop, the paradox is a consequence of a theory about the nature of pleasure, together with a view about the requirements of rational belief. Which of these explanations is correct, I argue, bears on central questions about how to understand the nature and extent of the paradox.     

Reconsolidation Reconsidered

Some of the considerations that led to a consolidation interpretation of retrograde amnesia (RA), which states that RA results from the disruption of memory processing and storage when neural activity is interrupted by a brain insult, are reviewed here. The time-dependent gradient of memory loss (i.e., new memories are more vulnerable to amnesia than old memories) that characterizes RA seemed to fit nicely with the notion of a cascade of cellular events occurring during the immediate post-acquisition period that would transform a labile representation into a more stable form (i.e., consolidate the memory). However, a variety of observations came to challenge the storage-disruption model, and among these was the finding of amnesia for old but reactivated memories. A recent study by Nader, Schafe, and LeDoux (2000) provides an important analytic extension of the work on "reconsolidation" by showing that inhibition of protein synthesis in the lateral and basal nuclei of the amygdala immediately following the reactivation of old memory will induce retrograde amnesia. We offer a retrieval-oriented conceptualization to account for the temporal gradient and the "reconsolidation" phenomena.     

Spirituality Reconsidered

Counseling and the helping arts in general have been hesitant to openly embrace the concept of spirituality as part of their working knowledge base. Part of the dilemma centers on sometimes confusing a religious view with a more secular conception of the term. Another potentially confounding element is the existing variety of ways the term is actually being used by both. In this investigation of the roots of the problem I hope to catalyze a more inviting and open dialogue as the profession considers the possibilities associated with an expansion or consolidation of definition(s).