Why hedonism is false

The present entry considers production-based claims, plus the distinct idea that our desire only ever has pleasure as its object. We direct our richly various mental lives — our beliefs, musings, intentions, enthusiasms, hopes, aspirations, and so on and on — at massively plural and diverse items in ourselves, in others, in myriad aspects of the non-human world, and in the infinities of contingent future possibility.

In keeping with this overall psychological picture, our motivations too have objects that are massively plural and diverse. In the light of such facts, motivational hedonism merits an incredulous stare: why would anyone believe even for a minute that all human motivation takes as its object just one sort of item? On this point, some go beyond incredulity to contempt.

Perhaps the most promising motivational hedonist response, about all humans including Englishmen, is to say that all our basic motives are directed at pleasure and all our non-basic motives are pleasure-centred too, but less directly so.

This move is examined further below in discussion of Butler and Hume. Some other criticisms of motivational hedonism can be quickly rebutted. One such criticism is that we are often motivated by things that in fact give us neither pleasure nor the best available pleasure-displeasure balance, such as when we step under a shower that we take to be suitably warm but find instead to be scalding hot.

Another is that the idea of maximal pleasure, or of the best feasible pleasure-displeasure balance, assumes a common measure that cannot be had. A third criticism is that not every pleasure in prospect motivates us. Hedonists can reply: first, that one is always and only motivated by what one thinks to be one's maximal or sufficient pleasure or pleasure-displeasure balance; second, that this is possible even if the idea of pleasure maximization in such settings does not ultimately make sense; and third, that hedonism does not imply that one is motivated by every pleasure prospect.

Motivational hedonism would be seriously undermined by any case of an individual who is motivated otherwise than by pleasure or displeasure.

The standard style of hedonist response to attempted counterexamples is to offer rival motivational stories: the soldier was really motivated only by an underlying belief that her dying would secure her a joyful afterlife or at least a half-second's sweet pleasure of hero's self-sacrifice; the parent was actually motivated only by his own pleasurable intention to give the child a good start or by his expectation that his now having this intention will somehow cause him to have pleasure later; the dying non-believer in any afterlife in fact hangs on only because she really believes that in her life there is still pleasure for her; and so on.

The capability of hedonists to tell hedonic stories as to our motives does not in itself generate any reason to think such narratives true. To escape refutation by counterexample, motivational hedonists need to tell the tale of every relevant motive in hedonic terms that are not merely imaginative but are also in every case more plausible than the anti-hedonist lessons that our experience seems repeatedly to teach some of us about many of our motives.

As noted above, some statements of motivational hedonism are indeterminate. Consider now the more precise thesis that each of one's desires or passions or appetites has one's own pleasure and only this as its object, as that at which alone it is aimed or is directed or is about. All of these have objects other than pleasure. All these appetites have objects other than just one's own pleasure or displeasure. By appeal to such cases Butler and Hume arguably refuted the strong motivational hedonist thesis that one's every desire has one's own pleasure and that alone as its object.

In pulling things together downstream from the Butler-Hume critique, hedonist responses might first distinguish basic from non-basic desires. A desire is basic if one has it independently of any thought one has about what else this will or might cause or bring about.

A desire is non-basic if one's having it does depend on one's having such further thought. Equipped with this distinction, motivational hedonists can claim that one's every basic desire has one's own pleasure as its object, and one's every non-basic desire depends on one's thinking this will or might bring one pleasure.

Thus propelled, hedonists can swim back against the broader Butler-Hume stream by claiming, of everyone in every case, that has only non-basic desire for esteem or knowledge or to be beloved, and this only because one thinks it will or might give one pleasure; and likewise with one's appetite for food or drink, one's mental passion for fame or power or vengeance, and one's desire for the happiness or good of any other.

Still, the foregoing does supply hedonists with some potential buoyancy aids. They can claim that one's every basic desire is directed at one's own pleasure, and one's every non-basic desire, directed at something other than pleasure, is had only because one thinks this will or might bring one pleasure.

The wide range of ways in which one's desire for non-pleasure could bring one pleasure include: by this desire's itself being an instance of pleasure e.

Well and good. But again, it is one thing to tell such motivational hedonist stories and it is another thing to identify any reason to think the stories true. A wider issue about motivational hedonism is this: is it a contingent claim about an aspect of our psychology that could have been otherwise; or does it posit a law of our psychological nature; or is it a necessary truth about all metaphysically or conceptually or logically possible motivations?

The answers to such questions also bear on the sorts of evidence and argument we need if we are fully to appraise motivational hedonism. If it is an empirical psychological thesis, as it seems to be, then it is reasonable to expect application of the methods and evidence of empirical psychology, social inquiry, and perhaps also biological science, to do the main work of appraising it.

It is also reasonable to expect that most of this work is to be done by specialist scientists and social scientists through their systematic conduct of meta-analyses of large numbers of empirical studies.

Philosophical work will continue to be needed too, to weed out incoherent ideas, to separate out the numerous distinct motivational hedonist theses; and to scrutinize whether, and if so with what significance, various empirical findings actually do bear on these various hedonist theses. For instance, even the feasibility of a research design that is capable of empirically separating out our basic from our non-basic motives would be a serious challenge. Philosophical work can also identify the various features that it is desirable for theories of motivation to have and to be appraised against.

Unification, determinacy, and confirmation by cases are treated above as desirable. Other desirable features might include consistency and maximal scope. Philosophers and others can systematically appraise theories of motivation in such terms, including through pairwise comparative assessments of rival theories in terms of those desirable features.

This section has critically reviewed motivational hedonism and has found weaknesses in some central arguments for the view, together with some significant problems of determinacy and disconfirmation.

It has also found that there are arguments against motivational hedonism that have some force. Ongoing inquiry is continuing to assess whether such troubles for motivational hedonism can be overcome, and whether any of its rivals fare any better overall than it does.

At its simplest, ethical hedonism is the claim that all and only pleasure has positive importance and all and only pain or displeasure has negative importance. This importance is to be understood non-instrumentally, that is, independently of the importance of anything that pleasure or displeasure might cause or prevent. From ethical hedonism, it follows that if our relationships, achievements, knowledge, character states, and so on, have any non-instrumental importance, this is just a matter of any pleasure or displeasure that is in their natures.

Otherwise, they have only instrumental importance through the pleasure they cause or displeasure they diminish.

At least from the simple forms of ethical hedonism, it also follows that pleasure is good whenever it is had, even in matters that are themselves worthless or worse. Some hedonists are willing to bite such bullets; others develop more complex forms of ethical hedonism that seek to soften the bullets or even to dissolve them. Some things have both instrumental and non-instrumental importance, and in such cases their overall importance is a function of both.

These two matters can also pull in opposite directions. Your pain of being once bitten has non-instrumental negative importance, for example, but it might also have instrumental positive importance through the further pain you avoid by its making you twice shy. Instrumental importance is a contingent matter and it varies widely from case to case. This is why the non-instrumental claims of pleasure and displeasure are the present focus.

Ethical hedonism can be universalist, me-and-my-near-and-dear egocentric, or egoistically focused just on one's own pleasure.

It can also be a claim about value, morality, well-being, rationality, reasons or aesthetics. It can be a claim about grounds for action, belief, motivation or feeling; or a claim about ought, obligation, good and bad, or right and wrong. And these are not the only possibilities. The discussion below aims for both determinacy of formulation and generality across the different forms of ethical hedonism, albeit that these two aims are in some tension with one another.

For economy of expression, discussion proceeds below in terms of hedonism about value. At its simplest, this is the thesis that anything has non-instrumental value if and only if it is an instance of pleasure, and has non-instrumental disvalue if and only if it is an instance of pain or displeasure. Aristotle a15—22 claimed that we all agree that the good is eudaimonia but there is disagreement among us about what eudaimonia is. Similarly, ethical hedonists agree with one another that the good is pleasure, but there is some disagreement among them, and among non-hedonists too, about what pleasure is.

Accounts of pleasure are canvassed below, and issues with them are briefly reviewed, especially regarding the various ways in which they bear on the prospects for ethical hedonism. On the face of it, the classic utilitarians Jeremy Bentham and J. Mill were phenomenalists about pleasure. With various complexities and qualifications, so too are some more recent writers e.

Intentional or representational states or properties are many and diverse, but they share a subject-mode-content structure Crane: ch.

You or I or the next person might be the subject, belief or intention or desire or perception or emotion or pleasure might be the intentional mode, and the content of this intentional state or property includes its object or that which it is about.

If I delight in the day, for example, I am the subject of this mental state or property that has delight as its intentional mode and the day as its intentional object. My delight in the day is thus an instance of intentional pleasure. Intentionalism implies that pleasure is an intentional state or a property in the pleasure mode that has some object.

Intentionalist accounts of pleasure are less well known than phenomenalist accounts, so they merit brief elaboration on several points. First, to say that pleasure is an intentional state or property is not to make any claim about deliberateness, choice or intention. Second, if pleasure is an intentional state or property then it has an object, but it does not follow that all pleasures are propositional attitudes, with states of affairs or propositions as their objects.

Some accept the universal thesis that all intentional states are propositional attitudes. But this thesis is vulnerable to counterexample from object-directed emotions including personal love and hate, the objects of which seem not to be fully specifiable as states of affairs or as propositions. Relatedly, though some intentional pleasures are indeed propositional attitudes, it is a significant further question whether they all are.

A third clarification is this. If there are intentional pleasures then they are such that their objects might or might not exist. Or, to update and to make concrete an older and more abstract example from Chisholm 28—29 , Gore might for a time have enjoyed his victory in the U. These claims about intentional pleasures are instances of the wider and admittedly rather perplexing point that the objects of some intentional states and properties do not exist see entry on Intentionality.

In various significant ways, issues concerning the phenomenal and intentional nature of pleasure bear on hedonism about value. Such matters are canvassed below. Pleasure is a mental matter, so intentionalism about pleasure implies that any pleasure is an intentional matter and thus has an object. Strong intentionalism implies that phenomenal character is purely a matter of intentional character, and this implies in turn that intentional character exhausts phenomenal character.

All intentionalist accounts of pleasure are of course consistent with intentionalism about pleasure. But intentionalism about pleasure is inconsistent with any radical phenomenalist account that claims, of some or all pleasure, that it has no intentional character.

Moderate phenomenalist accounts instead claim that all pleasure is both phenomenal and intentional; so they are consistent with intentionalism, and some are also consistent with strong intentionalism. Some phenomenalist accounts of pleasure are neither radical nor moderate; but are instead indeterminate on the matter of whether or not pleasure has any intentional character. Such indeterminacy then carries through to any form of hedonism that is built on them. Insofar as such indeterminacy is undesirable in any account of pleasure, and in any hedonist thesis, it is a count against these views.

Phenomenalism about pleasure is the thesis that all pleasure has phenomenal character. Radical intentionalist accounts e.

Any such account is inconsistent with phenomenalism about pleasure. Moderate intentionalist accounts, by contrast, claim that all pleasure is both phenomenal and intentional, and this makes them consistent with phenomenalism about pleasure. Most intentionalists are mindful that all pleasure has a phenomenal reputation, and they attempt to account for this. Moderate phenomenalism and moderate intentionalism can be re-framed as hybrid accounts that build on the idea that pleasure has both phenomenal and intentional character.

A strong intentionalist hybrid view e. On one account of this sort, the phenomenal property or state of my delighting in the day just is my having a state or property in the intentional mode of delight, with content that includes directedness at the day. A different hybrid account is that pleasure is an intentional state or property that also has a phenomenal higher-order property. Along these lines, it might be held that delight in the day is a state or property in the delight mode that is directed at the day, and that in addition has a certain felt character.

A third hybrid account is that pleasure is an intentional state or property that has a phenomenal object. Along these lines, my delighting in the day might be taken to be my intrinsically desiring a certain day-caused phenomenal delight-state or delight-property of mine. A fourth hybrid account is that pleasure is a phenomenal state or property that in addition meets an object-of-intentional-state condition. Ryle argued that all sensations have felt location.

For example, one feels the pain of toe-stubbing to be located in one's toe. Maximising pleasure, unlike with debauchery or addiction, need not take the form of more, bigger, better. Instead, we savour everyday pleasures. Read more: Emotions and eating: a marketer's dream? So, if my morning coffee gives me pleasure, I might pause and relish it while I drink it: inhale the fragrance of it fully and focus on the nuanced warm, smoky, bitter deliciousness of it.

I should fully attend to the warmth of it in my hands, to the feeling of it in my mouth, and to the cascade of sensations and flavours it delivers.

Not only that, in the morning, before my coffee, I can anticipate it. I can think how lovely it will be. And later, as I go about my day, I can pause and think about that coffee, about just how warm and good it was, how it smelled and tasted. In other words, I can immerse myself in these moments, in the anticipation, in the drinking itself, and in the remembering, and bring all my attention to them.

This kind of savouring results in a totally different, and richer, experience than if I absent-mindedly gulp down the coffee while dodging traffic and talking on the phone. The act of savouring intensifies the pleasure we extract from simple things and delivers greater satisfaction from them. One study found that spending a little time savouring the anticipation before eating chocolate led participants to eat less chocolate overall.

And attention seems to be key to the link between pleasurable feelings and well-being. A state of pleasure is linked with reducing stress. So when we feel pleasure, our sympathetic nervous system — that fight or flight response we experience when we feel threatened — is calmed. Studies show pleasurable emotions are associated with broader and more creative thinking , and a range of positive outcomes including better resilience , social connectedness , well-being , physical health , and longevity.

So, pleasure might not only help us to live more enjoyably, but longer. Maximising everyday pleasures can be used in therapy and shows promise as an intervention for depression. Fecundity refers to the likelihood of the pleasure or pain leading to more of the same sensation. Purity refers to the likelihood of the pleasure or pain leading to some of the opposite sensation.

Extent refers to the number of people the pleasure or pain is likely to affect. Intensity refers to the felt strength of the pleasure or pain. Duration refers to how long the pleasure or pain are felt for. It should be noted that only intensity and duration have intrinsic value for an individual. Certainty, propinquity, fecundity, and purity are all instrumentally valuable for an individual because they affect the likelihood of an individual feeling future pleasure and pain. Folk Hedonists rarely consider how likely their actions are to lead to future pleasure or pain, focussing instead on the pursuit of immediate pleasure and the avoidance of immediate pain.

For example, Bentham held that pleasure from the parlor game push-pin was just as valuable for us as pleasure from music and poetry. Mill also thought happiness, defined as pleasure and the avoidance of pain, was the highest good. Mill argued that pleasures could vary in quality, being either higher or lower pleasures. Mill employed the distinction between higher and lower pleasures in an attempt to avoid the criticism that his hedonism was just another philosophy of swine.

Lower pleasures are those associated with the body, which we share with other animals, such as pleasure from quenching thirst or having sex. Higher pleasures are those associated with the mind, which were thought to be unique to humans, such as pleasure from listening to opera, acting virtuously, and philosophising.

Mill justified this distinction by arguing that those who have experienced both types of pleasure realise that higher pleasures are much more valuable. He dismissed challenges to this claim by asserting that those who disagreed lacked either the experience of higher pleasures or the capacity for such experiences.

For Mill, higher pleasures were not different from lower pleasures by mere degree; they were different in kind. Indeed, since G. Moore, hedonism has been viewed by most philosophers as being an initially intuitive and interesting family of theories, but also one that is flawed on closer inspection. Moore himself thought the heap of filth example thoroughly refuted what he saw as the only potentially viable form of Prudential Hedonism — that conscious pleasure is the only thing that positively contributes to well-being.

Moore used the heap of filth example to argue that Prudential Hedonism is false because pleasure is not the only thing of value. In the heap of filth example, Moore asks the reader to imagine two worlds, one of which is exceedingly beautiful and the other a disgusting heap of filth. Moore then instructs the reader to imagine that no one would ever experience either world and asks if it is better for the beautiful world to exist than the filthy one.

As Moore expected, his contemporaries tended to agree that it would be better if the beautiful world existed. Relying on this agreement, Moore infers that the beautiful world is more valuable than the heap of filth and, therefore, that beauty must be valuable.

Moore then concluded that all of the potentially viable theories of Prudential Hedonism those that value only conscious pleasures must be false because something, namely beauty, is valuable even when no conscious pleasure can be derived from it. The demise of these arguments was partly due to mounting objections against them, but mainly because arguments more suited to the task of refuting Prudential Hedonism were developed. These arguments are discussed after the contemporary varieties of hedonism are introduced below.

Several contemporary varieties of hedonism have been defended, although usually by just a handful of philosophers or less at any one time. Other varieties of hedonism are also theoretically available but have received little or no discussion. Contemporary varieties of Prudential Hedonism can be grouped based on how they define pleasure and pain, as is done below.

In addition to providing different notions of what pleasure and pain are, contemporary varieties of Prudential Hedonism also disagree about what aspect or aspects of pleasure are valuable for well-being and the opposite for pain. The most well-known disagreement about what aspects of pleasure are valuable occurs between Quantitative and Qualitative Hedonists.

Quantitative Hedonists argue that how valuable pleasure is for well-being depends on only the amount of pleasure, and so they are only concerned with dimensions of pleasure such as duration and intensity. Quantitative Hedonism is often accused of over-valuing animalistic, simple, and debauched pleasures. Qualitative Hedonists argue that, in addition to the dimensions related to the amount of pleasure, one or more dimensions of quality can have an impact on how pleasure affects well-being.

The quality dimensions might be based on how cognitive or bodily the pleasure is as it was for Mill , the moral status of the source of the pleasure, or some other non-amount-related dimension. Qualitative Hedonism is criticised by some for smuggling values other than pleasure into well-being by misleadingly labelling them as dimensions of pleasure.

How these qualities are chosen for inclusion is also criticised for being arbitrary or ad hoc by some because inclusion of these dimensions of pleasure is often in direct response to objections that Quantitative Hedonism cannot easily deal with. That is to say, the inclusion of these dimensions is often accused of being an exercise in plastering over holes, rather than deducing corollary conclusions from existing theoretical premises.

Others have argued that any dimensions of quality can be better explained in terms of dimensions of quantity. For example, they might claim that moral pleasures are no higher in quality than immoral pleasures, but that moral pleasures are instrumentally more valuable because they are likely to lead to more moments of pleasure or less moments of pain in the future.

Hedonists also have differing views about how the value of pleasure compares with the value of pain. This is not a practical disagreement about how best to measure pleasure and pain, but rather a theoretical disagreement about comparative value, such as whether pain is worse for us than an equivalent amount of pleasure is good for us.

The default position is that one unit of pleasure sometimes referred to as a Hedon is equivalent but opposite in value to one unit of pain sometimes referred to as a Dolor. Several Hedonistic Utilitarians have argued that reduction of pain should be seen as more important than increasing pleasure, sometimes for the Epicurean reason that pain seems worse for us than an equivalent amount of pleasure is good for us.

Imagine that a magical genie offered for you to play a game with him. The game consists of you flipping a fair coin. If the coin lands on heads, then you immediately feel a burst of very intense pleasure and if it lands on tails, then you immediately feel a burst of very intense pain.

Is it in your best interests to play the game? Another area of disagreement between some Hedonists is whether pleasure is entirely internal to a person or if it includes external elements.

Internalism about pleasure is the thesis that, whatever pleasure is, it is always and only inside a person. Externalism about pleasure, on the other hand, is the thesis that, pleasure is more than just a state of an individual that is, that a necessary component of pleasure lies outside of the individual.

Externalists about pleasure might, for example, describe pleasure as a function that mediates between our minds and the environment, such that every instance of pleasure has one or more integral environmental components. The vast majority of historic and contemporary versions of Prudential Hedonism consider pleasure to be an internal mental state.

Perhaps the least known disagreement about what aspects of pleasure make it valuable is the debate about whether we have to be conscious of pleasure for it to be valuable. The standard position is that pleasure is a conscious mental state, or at least that any pleasure a person is not conscious of does not intrinsically improve their well-being.

The most common definition of pleasure is that it is a sensation, something that we identify through our senses or that we feel. Psychologists claim that we have at least ten senses, including the familiar, sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, but also, movement, balance, and several sub-senses of touch, including heat, cold, pressure, and pain. New senses get added to the list when it is understood that some independent physical process underpins their functioning. The most widely-used examples of pleasurable sensations are the pleasures of eating, drinking, listening to music, and having sex.

Use of these examples has done little to help Hedonism avoid its debauched reputation. It is also commonly recognised that our senses are physical processes that usually involve a mental component, such as the tickling feeling when someone blows gently on the back of your neck. If a sensation is something we identify through our sense organs, however, it is not entirely clear how to account for abstract pleasures. This is because abstract pleasures, such as a feeling of accomplishment for a job well done, do not seem to be experienced through any of the senses in the standard lists.

Some Hedonists have attempted to resolve this problem by arguing for the existence of an independent pleasure sense and by defining sensation as something that we feel regardless of whether it has been mediated by sense organs.

Most Hedonists who describe pleasure as a sensation will be Quantitative Hedonists and will argue that the pleasure from the different senses is the same. Qualitative Hedonists, in comparison, can use the framework of the senses to help differentiate between qualities of pleasure. For example, a Qualitative Hedonist might argue that pleasurable sensations from touch and movement are always lower quality than the others. Hedonists have also defined pleasure as intrinsically valuable experience, that is to say any experiences that we find intrinsically valuable either are, or include, instances of pleasure.

According to this definition, the reason that listening to music and eating a fine meal are both intrinsically pleasurable is because those experiences include an element of pleasure along with the other elements specific to each activity, such as the experience of the texture of the food and the melody of the music.

By itself, this definition enables Hedonists to make an argument that is close to perfectly circular. Defining pleasure as intrinsically valuable experience and well-being as all and only experiences that are intrinsically valuable allows a Hedonist to all but stipulate that Prudential Hedonism is the correct theory of well-being.

Where defining pleasure as intrinsically valuable experience is not circular is in its stipulation that only experiences matter for well-being. Some well-known objections to this idea are discussed below. Another problem with defining pleasure as intrinsically valuable experience is that the definition does not tell us very much about what pleasure is or how it can be identified.

For example, knowing that pleasure is intrinsically valuable experience would not help someone to work out if a particular experience was intrinsically or just instrumentally valuable. Hedonists have attempted to respond to this problem by explaining how to find out whether an experience is intrinsically valuable.

One method is to ask yourself if you would like the experience to continue for its own sake rather than because of what it might lead to. Wanting an experience to continue for its own sake reveals that you find it to be intrinsically valuable. While still making a coherent theory of well-being, defining intrinsically valuable experiences as those you want to perpetuate makes the theory much less hedonistic. The fact that what a person wants is the main criterion for something having intrinsic value, makes this kind of theory more in line with preference satisfaction theories of well-being.

Another method of fleshing out the definition of pleasure as intrinsically valuable experience is to describe how intrinsically valuable experiences feel. This method remains a hedonistic one, but seems to fall back into defining pleasure as a sensation. It has also been argued that what makes an experience intrinsically valuable is that you like or enjoy it for its own sake. Hedonists arguing for this definition of pleasure usually take pains to position their definition in between the realms of sensation and preference satisfaction.

They argue that since we can like or enjoy some experiences without concurrently wanting them or feeling any particular sensation, then liking is distinct from both sensation and preference satisfaction.

Merely defining pleasure as intrinsically valuable experience and intrinsically valuable experiences as those that we like or enjoy still lacks enough detail to be very useful for contemplating well-being. A potential method for making this theory more useful would be to draw on the cognitive sciences to investigate if there is a specific neurological function for liking or enjoying.

Cognitive science has not reached the point where anything definitive can be said about this, but a few neuroscientists have experimental evidence that liking and wanting at least in regards to food are neurologically distinct processes in rats and have argued that it should be the same for humans.

The same scientists have wondered if the same processes govern all of our liking and wanting, but this question remains unresolved. The life of eternal pleasure would clearly be the better option for Edie. If there is one plausible axiom about well-being, it is that continued life of eternal suffering is worse for a person than continued life of eternal pleasure. So, in order to avoid this problem, Bramble needs to reject the Ron-Repetition Requirement. This is especially unfortunate for Bramble because the purpose of adopting the Non-Repetition Requirement was to avoid the Porky problem.

If Bramble rejects the Non-Repetition Requirement, his hedonism is susceptible to that objection again, which he regarded as too large a bullet to bite for hedonism.

We think it is clearly the former and we suspect that, if a committed hedonist were forced to choose between these two alternatives, she would agree with us. For that matter, we are quite confident that non-hedonists would agree with us too. The proposition that continued life of eternal suffering could be as good for a person as continued life of eternal pleasure is simply too implausible to regard as a viable option.

At best, his view is deeply inchoate and is committed to absurd claims about which acts can maximize well-being. Moreover, it entails that maximizing well-being requires preventing any quantity of repeated pain no matter how small over allowing any quantity of repeated pleasure no matter how large. At worst, his view avoids the Porky problem at the expense of incurring a new, significantly worse, problem, viz.

These routes are untenable. The best route for Bramble is to either I reject the Non-Repetition Requirement and bite the bullet on the Porky problem or II reject hedonism altogether. Bramble also defends the non-repetition requirement in his a: and his b: In his 29—33 , Bramble adds an additional unique component to his hedonism. He argues that hedonism cannot, and need not, make sense of temporal well-being.

For discussion, see McMahan and for an argument against the Experience Requirement , see Fischer Note that this asymmetry is much more radical, and mysterious, than the one Benatar ; posits in his defense of anti-natalism.

Bramble has no such explanation at his disposal. We thank an anonymous referee for suggesting that we consider this sort of case. In a personal correspondence, Bramble opted for the second horn of the dilemma. Blumenfeld This example is fantastical, though the same point may be illustrated with more realistic examples that concern finite amounts of pain and pleasure.

Here is one.