That makes sense – your account sounds way more persuasive than what I came up with when I tried to steelman the view.
The power of this argument comes from taking this direct concept of phenomenal goodness (“feels good”) and inflating it into a full fledged account of moral goodness (hedonic utilitarianism).
This is where the logic doesn’t work for me. As I describe in the section “pleasure’s goodness is under-defined,” I disagree that the sense in which “pleasure feels good” is the same sense as “pleasure is good” according to hedonist axiology. Those seem like different claims, and the latter cannot reveal itself to us from mere observations about the way things are.
You say that “her position focuses on the intrinsic nature of pleasure and pain as feelings, not any relationship they have either to some even more fundamental concept of ‘objective value’ or to our judgements, thoughts, and desires.” I see the way the argument is supposed to work and that this explains how her position is “naturalist” in spirit, but on close inspection, I don’t buy it. I feel like Hewitt Rawlette (and other hedonists) are smuggling in extra connotations of “pleasure feels good” that bridge the gap to the normative realm. However, those connotations are subjective assumptions, which beg the question. As I phrase it in the post, “My error theory is that moral realist proponents of hedonist axiology tend to reify intuitions they have about pleasure as intrinsic components to pleasure.”
That makes sense – your account sounds way more persuasive than what I came up with when I tried to steelman the view.
This is where the logic doesn’t work for me. As I describe in the section “pleasure’s goodness is under-defined,” I disagree that the sense in which “pleasure feels good” is the same sense as “pleasure is good” according to hedonist axiology. Those seem like different claims, and the latter cannot reveal itself to us from mere observations about the way things are.
You say that “her position focuses on the intrinsic nature of pleasure and pain as feelings, not any relationship they have either to some even more fundamental concept of ‘objective value’ or to our judgements, thoughts, and desires.” I see the way the argument is supposed to work and that this explains how her position is “naturalist” in spirit, but on close inspection, I don’t buy it. I feel like Hewitt Rawlette (and other hedonists) are smuggling in extra connotations of “pleasure feels good” that bridge the gap to the normative realm. However, those connotations are subjective assumptions, which beg the question. As I phrase it in the post, “My error theory is that moral realist proponents of hedonist axiology tend to reify intuitions they have about pleasure as intrinsic components to pleasure.”