Nigel Warburton in Conversation with Thomas Hurka on Pleasure and Pain

Ali Kalani Tehrani (translator): The question of the meaning and role that pleasure plays in human life has, over many centuries, engaged the minds and pens of numerous philosophers and theorists. Various branches of contemporary philosophy, each in its own way, are also striving to arrive at a suitable answer to the issues and questions related to pleasure and its opposing concept, pain. Accordingly, they have offered novel theorizations and exemplifications concerning these fundamental concepts. Professor Thomas Hurka (b. 1952), a Canadian philosopher, a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada who has held the distinguished chair in philosophical studies at the University of Toronto since 2002, and before that was a professor of philosophy at the University of Calgary for twenty years, endeavors to answer the questions posed by the renowned British philosopher Nigel Warburton about the meaning and concept of pleasure, the types of pleasure, and its relation to other valuable concepts in life such as art and knowledge. Thomas Hurka's main areas of study and research are political philosophy and moral philosophy, particularly normative ethics. Most of his published works concern absolutist moral theories. Hurka has also published articles on moral judgment, punishment, nationalism, friendship, and the ethics of war. Hurka's engaging and non-academic work, which is perhaps the main reason for Nigel Warburton's invitation to him, titled The Best Things in Life, was published in 2011; in this book, Hurka examines topics such as pleasure, knowledge, achievement, virtue, and love.

Happiness and Pain

David Edmonds: Pleasure is certainly one of the good things in life. But how do we compare pleasure with other human goods, like knowledge and art? How do we weigh different types of pleasure against one another? And what is the connection between pleasure and happiness? The American philosopher, Robert Nozick, depicted an experience machine that, whenever we are plugged into it, gives us any pleasurable sensation we might desire, but it is not clear to us whether these experiences are real or not. We might believe we are eating a chocolate éclair while the wires connected to our brain are the real cause of this delicious feeling. The question Nozick poses is: would you choose the machine over real life? He thinks you would not make such a choice, and this shows that pleasure is not as important as a thinker like Jeremy Bentham, the late-eighteenth-century English utilitarian, believed. Our guide on the concept of pleasure is Thomas Hurka,[1] professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto.

Nigel Warburton: The topic we want to discuss is pleasure. It is quite obvious that pleasure is something pleasant; isn't it?

Thomas Hurka: I hope so. If it is not a good thing, most of us are wasting our time. But I accept that there is a kind of strong intuitive feeling that pleasure is a good thing (by pleasure I mean all types of feeling good. Any sensation, any inner feeling that feels good and has a positive resonance). Humans use different words for different types of feeling good: pleasure, satisfaction, joy, happiness. I mean all of these, and I think yes, feeling good is a good thing.

Nigel Warburton: But we experience feeling good in various ways; surely they are not all the same thing, are they?

Thomas Hurka: That is exactly what I intend to talk about. I think utilitarians like Jeremy Bentham believed that pleasure is just one thing, so to speak, “pleasure pellets.” But in my view, there are different types of good feelings. When I say pleasure is good, I don’t mean that only “pleasure” is good. So the best life is not necessarily the most pleasant life. Achievement is a human value; knowledge is a human value; being a morally good person is a human value; yet pleasure is also a human value, and I don’t think it’s possible to conceive of a good life without pleasure. Pleasure is a necessary element of the good life. But as you said, there are different types of pleasure. The first distinction is between pleasures that are mere sensations and are not about anything, and pleasures that are about something (pleasure that). Let’s suppose you are eating chocolate, your eyes are closed, and you are focused on your sensation (a kind of wonderfully pleasant feeling from eating a chocolate full of cream), but your pleasure is not about anything. You are not taking pleasure “that something” has happened. This pleasure is simply a kind of sensation that is pleasant (for us).

Nigel Warburton: So you are saying that these simple pleasures are really sensations, pleasant sensations.

Thomas Hurka: Each of them will be a complex sensation with an aspect of pleasure and pleasantness; in addition, there are other elements that distinguish one pleasant sensation from another. So the pleasure of eating the chocolate mentioned above is a combination of pleasure and the taste of chocolate and the richness of the cream. The pleasure of sunbathing from lying in the sun will also have an aspect of pleasure, and the person will feel the hot sand beneath their body. So each of them are quite different complexes, but they have an aspect of pleasure.

Nigel Warburton: What about the other case? The case of pleasure “that something.”

Thomas Hurka: Well, that is when you take pleasure “that” something has happened. You think that an event has occurred in the world (or will occur) and you take pleasure in the fact that such an event will happen in the future. So you can take pleasure that the Liverpool team scored a point five minutes ago. You can take pleasure that your child has just started walking. You can take pleasure that the audience liked your lecture and asked precise questions at the end of it. So you take pleasure that something has happened. This is much more complex than a purely physical sensation, because you cannot take pleasure that Liverpool scored a point five minutes ago without thinking that Liverpool scored a point five minutes ago. For example, we might think that animals can have purely physical pleasures: they can eat meat and enjoy eating it, but they cannot take pleasure that Liverpool has scored a point unless they possess the thought that Liverpool has scored a point, and most animals are not capable of doing that.

Nigel Warburton: So we must distinguish between pure pleasures, like eating chocolate, and pleasures like the pleasure “that” Liverpool has scored a point. Are these all the different types of pleasure we recognize?

Thomas Hurka: No. I think there is another distinction between what we might call straightforward pleasures and more general (extensive) pleasures. So let me put the first type alongside mere pleasures that are not of the "pleasure that" kind. If you experience a physical pleasure, like eating chocolate or sunbathing, this pleasure is usually localized to a part of your body—you feel the pleasure of sunbathing in your back or the pleasure of eating chocolate in your taste organs. Similarly, the sensation of pain is usually localized to a part of your body: you feel pain in your right elbow or in your left thigh. So they are localized and also exist as discrete elements within the container of consciousness. You might have multiple sensations at one time. You might have a pain in your right elbow, and while eating chocolate, enjoy sunbathing and feel a burning sensation in your left thigh, all happening at the same moment. They are discrete elements in your consciousness. The broader simple pleasures are pleasures of the "being in a good mood" type. You feel good overall. You are elated overall. Now, there are pleasures that are not localized to a part of your body. You don't feel a good mood or spirit in your left elbow or right thigh. This type of pleasure has no physical location, nor is it merely a discrete element alongside other elements in the container of consciousness; this type of pleasure suffuses consciousness. This feeling pervades your entire mental state. It can also vary in intensity. You might feel slightly good, or you might be elated, which is an intensified form of feeling good. Moods, because they pervade the whole of consciousness, differ from physical pleasures. They saturate consciousness and are a background for other mental states. Like a thin wash of blue in a painting that makes everything slightly bluish. And of course, it stands in contrast to a bad mood or depression, where a negative feeling pervades the container of your consciousness.

Nigel Warburton: So moods are very general and are not about anything, unlike emotions which are about something.

Thomas Hurka: Yes, that's right. So a good mood is more general and extensive than physical pleasure, but we are still in the category of simple feeling and not "pleasure that." Furthermore, there is a more general and extensive type of good feeling that falls under the "pleasure that" category. Most of what I have described as "pleasure that" has been about particular things having happened. So I simply take pleasure that Liverpool scored, or that my child learned to walk, or that people appreciated my lecture. But one can use "pleasure that" for much larger subjects, and one of these subjects is taking pleasure in and feeling satisfaction with my life as a whole. I am not just observing one dimension of my life; I view my life as an integrated whole, from its earliest stages to the present, and I plan for the future ahead. I look at my personal life, my career, my hobbies and activities, my friends—at all these things—and I feel good about it. I take pleasure that my life has taken this path. This is a type of "pleasure that." I take pleasure that something is the case (or was the case). But this something is much larger than Liverpool scoring: it is my life as an integrated whole. I want to review the outlines of this four-part distinction. So we have four types of pleasure: (a) simple, localized pleasures (physical pleasures); (b) simple, extensive pleasures (a kind of pervasive good mood); (c) specific "pleasure that" (pleasure that Liverpool scored); (d) more extensive "pleasure that" (feeling satisfaction with my life as a whole). These are varieties of feeling good, but they differ from one another.

Nigel Warburton: So we now have a scientific classification. But how can we compare these different pleasures with one another?

Thomas Hurka: I want to be a bit Benthamite again because I think these four types of pleasure all involve feeling good, they all involve a kind of positive resonance, and this positive resonance is more or less intense. In my view: all that matters is the amount of positive resonance you get. If you just think about the words we use in English, the word "pleasure" seems a bit lightweight. You wouldn't praise someone with the sentence "He devoted his life entirely to pleasure." But happiness has more positive connotations than pleasure. I want to be happy, that sounds better. People usually use the word happiness for something much broader than those four types of feeling good mentioned above. So I think you would probably be more inclined to call someone who is in a pervasive good mood happy, whereas, if they merely derived a specific pleasure from eating chocolate, you would use the word pleasure and not happiness. Furthermore, if someone takes pleasure "in the fact that" Liverpool scored a goal or that his daughter learned to walk, you wouldn't say that this event made him happy. But if someone feels good about their life as a whole, we tend to say that they are a happy person. Many philosophers have defined happiness as satisfaction and feeling good about one's life as a whole. So if you use this word (happiness) with its positive connotations for broader forms of feeling good, I think this is an attempt to persuade us that they are better, but I am not persuaded by this. Think of the song "Every love is a good love," well, every good feeling is a good feeling. Only its intensity matters.

Nigel Warburton: So you are saying that pleasure, however it is obtained, is a good thing. It seems one could conclude that a person who has devoted their life to simple, basic pleasures and has many intense experiences could have a life as happy and pleasurable as a person who has devoted their life more to following reason and thought.

Thomas Hurka: I am not saying that the first person's life is as good as the second person's, because pleasure is not the only good. But if you ask how much pleasure (how much good feeling) there is in a life, one could answer: the pleasure in this life is equal to the pleasure in the contemplative life you described. Let's compare a few examples. On one side, there is a pleasure-seeker, someone who spends their life eating delicious foods and pursuing erotic adventures, but does not believe they are living in the best way. They suffer from guilt because of the actions they perform and therefore do not feel much satisfaction with their life, do not feel good about their life as a whole. Nevertheless, they have all these specific, intense pleasures. And on the other side, we have an ascetic monk whose food is bread and water, whose physical enjoyments are very few, but on the other hand, possesses a kind of stable (not intense) contentment, a kind of all-encompassing stability, a good state that pervades the person's consciousness. He does what he thinks is right. He serves his God and feels satisfied with his life. He doesn't jump up and down, but he feels a complete satisfaction with the way he spends his life. These people enjoy pleasure in different ways, but there might be no answer to the question of which one enjoys more pleasure. They are equal, or more or less equal; one cannot say that the life of one of them is more pleasant and pleasurable than the life of the other. A pleasure-seeker has all the intense physical pleasures, but rarely experiences the pleasure of a good mood or the broad "pleasure in the fact that". The ascetic person has a kind of stable good mood, and satisfaction with life, but does not experience many physical pleasures. What one person gains in a specific form of pleasure, the other person gains in another form of pleasure. One could suppose, at the end of the day, they had, in different ways, equally pleasant and pleasurable lives.

Nigel Warburton: We have talked only about pleasure without regard to how it arises, but in real life, how pleasure arises is important. Taking pleasure in torturing animals is not a good thing.

Thomas Hurka: I couldn't agree more. We talked about pleasure as one good thing in life, and I said: I do not believe it is the only good thing. There are other elements to a good life, such as achievement, knowledge and understanding, certain kinds of personal relationships, and also being morally good. So, based on Bentham's famous statement, if the quantity of pleasure is equal, pushpin is as good as poetry. (Pushpin is the name of an 18th-century game that closely resembles tiddlywinks). This can be true as far as pleasure is concerned, both are equally good; but poetry requires the exercise of intellectual capacities, understanding, and empathetic feeling, which add to the pleasure and give reading poetry much greater value compared to an equal amount of pleasure found in the game of pushpin. You spoke about a person who enjoys torturing animals. Well, I said being morally good is a good thing, and of course being morally bad (evil) is a bad thing. If you take pleasure in the pain of others—let's say the sadism of a human or an animal—it can have positive value because it is pleasurable; but it also has negative value: because it is malevolent and involves a kind of positive attitude toward the delight and enjoyment of a bad thing, namely another person's suffering. Therefore, this act is good to the extent it is pleasurable and bad to the extent it is evil. This pleasure is worse than similar pleasures whose object is not evil; and it is even worse when the pain of others that the sadist enjoys is great pain. So sadistic pleasure is, on the whole, evil: its badness, which stems from evil, outweighs its goodness, which stems from pleasure.

Nigel Warburton: From what you have said, it is clear that, although you are very interested in the discussion of pleasure and consider pleasure one of the good things in life, you are not a utilitarian and you reject the notion that pleasure is the only possible good for human beings.

Thomas Hurka: Yes, I am not a utilitarian and (more specifically) I am not a hedonist about values. According to the tradition, there are two fundamental objections to hedonism, the first concerns foolish pleasures and the second concerns pleasures arising from moral evils. So, foolish pleasures like the pleasure of playing pushpin when compared to poetry, the pleasures of the Deltas and Epsilons in the novel "Brave New World"[2], or those pleasures that Robert Nozick's experience machine provides for humans. If all that is valuable is pleasure, then pushpin is as good as poetry. The Deltas and Epsilons who say "we are happy here" actually have the best lives, and we should all plug into the experience machine. But most of us do not think this way. In our view, a life that is less pleasant but includes real activities, real achievements, real knowledge and understanding of our place in the universe (as opposed to an imaginary life) is better than a life that contains more pleasure but lacks these kinds of goods. Therefore, I reject utilitarianism or hedonism, first of all because it values foolish pleasures and activities that involve questioning and exercising skill and such things equally. The second reason for my opposition concerns morally evil pleasures, because a committed hedonist thinks that the pleasure a torturer takes in their victim's pain makes the situation better. If a torturer enjoys their victim's pain, we should encourage them because it is better than the torturer's indifference to the victim's pain. According to hedonism, there are no good pains and sufferings. But if you have suffered a calamity, is it good that I feel compassionate suffering for the calamity and loss that has befallen you? I would tell you that this is a good thing because compassionate suffering is a fitting and appropriate response to the calamity that has befallen you and is, on that basis, a good thing. But according to hedonism: it is better not to suffer from the misfortunes of others; it is merely pointless suffering. You should forget about it or, if possible, enjoy it. But this is difficult to accept, or at least I cannot accept it.

Nigel Warburton: But pleasure is good. How can we evaluate pleasure in comparison to other goods in life?

Thomas Hurka: Your final question is extremely difficult. There is no simple answer to it. We talked about completely distinct subjects of value. Pleasure on one side, knowledge and achievement on the other. I think pleasure is good, but I think those other things are often more important, and one of those things is a form of virtue that involves taking pleasure in good things. So, if your life contains all the other values (your understanding of the world around you, the difficult goals you pursue and achieve, and your being morally virtuous), one aspect of your moral virtue will be that you enjoy your knowledge and understanding of the world and your achievements, and your life will contain pleasure. Part of the value of this pleasure is due to its being pleasure, but in my view, it gains more value because it is pleasure taken in something good (namely, your understanding and achievement). You have asked me a very difficult question; some philosophers might come here and say: very well, knowledge and achievement are good, but what matters is the feeling of pleasure as long as it is not very evil and completely foolish. I lean towards the opposite position. If we all had a Nozickian experience machine at home, some philosophers would say, if you spend most of your afternoon in that machine when you get home from work, you will have a better life. I would say, act the same way you ration children's television watching and web browsing. Using the experience machine is relatively valuable, but if it significantly disrupts achievements and personal relationships, it harms other things that are far more valuable.

[1] Thomas Hurka

[2] Brave New World is the title of a science fiction novel published in 1932 by the English writer Aldous Huxley.

"Pleasure and Pain"

A Conversation between British Philosopher Nigel Warburton and Canadian Philosopher Professor Thomas Hurka

Translator: Ali Kalani Tehrani

Source: Issue 114 of the Specialized Scientific Monthly Ettela'at-e Hekmat va Ma'refat