Objections to Hedonism
From Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s excellent Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on “consequentialism“:
Some critics argue that not all pleasures are valuable, since, for example, there is no value in the pleasures of a sadist while whipping a victim. Other opponents object that not only pleasures are intrinsically valuable, because other things are valuable independently of whether they lead to pleasure or avoid pain. For example, my love for my wife does not seem to become less valuable when I get less pleasure from her because she gets some horrible disease. Similarly, freedom seems valuable even when it creates anxiety, and even when it is freedom to do something (such as leave one’s country) that one does not want to do. Again, many people value knowledge of other galaxies regardless of whether this knowledge will create pleasure or avoid pain.
I find all of these objections totally persuasive. Is there any reason for resisting them other than a prior commitment to hedonism?
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You found *all* of those objections persuasive? Really? I think they are possibly valid against a pure hedonic utilitarianism like Layard’s, but not against broader notions of utilitarianism or consequentialism (and recall that the encyclopedia entry was about the latter).
Even taking a purely hedonic view, it’s not hard to justify love. I think the happiness literature pretty clearly demonstrates the hedonic value of companionship. At the very least, we need to consider the value to both parties: continued love is presumably a great comfort to the person stricken with a horrible disease.
The freedom to leave one’s country example is particularly unpersuasive, even on purely hedonic grounds. Why? Because freedom often creates *option* value. I don’t expect that I’ll ever want to become an expatriate, but I can imagine circumstances where I would, so I like to preserve the option. Indeed, if the U.S. ever became the kind of country that would prevent me from leaving, that’s just the kind of situation I can most easily imagine wanting to leave.
And what makes it so obvious that there is no value in the pleasure obtained by the sadist? Obviously, I would object to involuntary whipping (because we cannot be sure the sadist’s pleasure really outweighs the victim’s pain). But with a willing victim — presumably a masochist — I find the utilitarian argument highly compelling: such interactions ought to be allowed because of the near certainty that both parties gain from the interaction.
Glen, You’ll notice that I was talking specifically about hedonism.
Clearly love has hedonic value. And that’s one reason to value love. It may be what makes us initially want to love. But love is also an expression of value-responsive devotion and commitment, which is valuable in itself. It is a source of self discovery and self knowledge, and may Socrates strike you dead if you think the value of self knowledge is hedonic.
Regarding option value, I think it is a common intuition that simply having (certain kinds of) options are valuable, whether or not it they are ever exercised, and, stronger, whether or not one even knows that they exist. When one discovers a certain kind of new possibility, there is a kind of excitement in that, because one recognizes that the it is good that it is there, and its good is in its being there, not just in believing that it is.
As with the other examples, I think you shouldn’t be so eager to find an escape hatch for the utilitarian, but should reflect on the point of the sadist objection: it is bad to take pleasure in some things. Suppose you can be sure the sadist’s pleasure will outweigh the victims pain. Suppose the victim is a masochist, but won’t consent. Perhaps a different illustration will be more compelling. If I take delight in painlessly murdering and raping the corpses of animals or homeless people no one will ever miss, my pleasure has no value. Indeed, my pleasure amplifies the evil of my actions.
There’s really no harm in acknowledging that pleasure is not unconditionaly valuable.
I think that many of these objections can be summarized as “people value good character.” Knowing what we do about the characters of people, relationships, and governments, there is something wrong with someone who wants to rape corpses or with a government that forbids citizens from leaving its territories, and there is something right about a man who loves his sick wife, and with a relationship in which love of this strength and resilience has been present. The question is whether acts that exemplify these kinds of character are similarly wrong or right, and whether that value is intrinsic to the acts. We should be wary of our intuitions here, since there is evidence that people have a tendency to overgeneralize from simple moral emotions like disgust. Of course people value things like love, knowledge, and freedom that are so often critical to human flourishing, but does that mean that they are the bearers of ultimate value, or might they have their value for more indirect reasons? Even a person who does not have a hedonistic definition of “flourishing” might think that these various goods, like health, get their value because they enable flourishing rather than for intrinsic reasons. Perhaps it is because they are less concrete than health that people are more likely to mistake their value for something intrinsic.
One serious problem with including a diverse set of goods as bearers of intrinsic value is that it can become harder to give an account of what makes something have intrinsic value. Why is it that pleasure, freedom, love, knowledge, and various other things are all intrinsically valuable (but only sometimes - sometimes, as with sadists, they are not (although there also are cases where sadists’ pleasures are intrinsically valuable))? The answer should involve more than our reactions to various examples (”Well of course love is valuable”, “There doesn’t seem to be anything good about that sadist’s pleasure”, …). Morality should involve a great deal of complexity, but this account seems to put that complexity in the wrong place, in the definition of intrinsic value. The hedonist at least gives a single, well-motivated answer to the question of what is intrinsically valuable - the positive experiences of any creature that is capable of experiencing. Further, this definition is easily extended to other possible creatures and societies, while a more pluralistic account of intrinsic value might need to keep adding and subtracting values in order to plausibly fit a society of beings with different characters (different emotions, different types of relationships, etc.).