I think an important distinction is 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. We know pleasure feels good in the same way we know what the redness of red is like. Defining pleasure in terms of behaviors, beliefs, or desires can’t capture this in the same way that the wavelength of red light doesn’t convey the experience of seeing red. 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).
Put another way: If we started out with no language for normativity, we wouldn’t be able to describe pleasure and pain without inventing one. (Try it!).
So pleasure has a “what we should value” property in the sense that “should” is already defined in terms of pleasure. But at a more basic level, value just is pleasure in the way water just is H2O.
Since moral knowledge in this view is just a special kind of descriptive knowledge the subjective position seems to flow from the objective one in a relatively straightforward way.
This argument is a bit circular, but I think that’s hard to avoid in general re: qualia. Of course discussion of qualia in your OP is relevant.
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.”
I think an important distinction is 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. We know pleasure feels good in the same way we know what the redness of red is like. Defining pleasure in terms of behaviors, beliefs, or desires can’t capture this in the same way that the wavelength of red light doesn’t convey the experience of seeing red. 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).
Put another way: If we started out with no language for normativity, we wouldn’t be able to describe pleasure and pain without inventing one. (Try it!).
So pleasure has a “what we should value” property in the sense that “should” is already defined in terms of pleasure. But at a more basic level, value just is pleasure in the way water just is H2O.
Since moral knowledge in this view is just a special kind of descriptive knowledge the subjective position seems to flow from the objective one in a relatively straightforward way.
This argument is a bit circular, but I think that’s hard to avoid in general re: qualia. Of course discussion of qualia in your OP is relevant.
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.”