I’m not sure if “pleasure” is the right word. I certainly think that improving one’s mental state is always good, even if this starts at a point in which there is no negative experience at all.
This might not involve increasing “pleasure”. Instead it could be increasing the amount of “meaning” felt or “love” felt. If monks say they prefer contentment over intense pleasure then fine—I would say the contentment state is hedonically better in some way.
This is probably me defining “hedonically better” differently to you but it doesn’t really matter. The point is I think you can improve the wellbeing of someone who is experiencing no suffering and that this is objectively a desirable thing to do.
I think one crux here is that Teo and I would say, calling an increase in the intensity of a happy experience “improving one’s mental state” is a substantive philosophical claim. The kind of view we’re defending does not say something like, “Improvements of one’s mental state are only good if they relieve suffering.” I would agree that that sounds kind of arbitrary.
The more defensible alternative is that replacing contentment (or absence of any experience) with increasingly intense happiness / meaning / love is not itself an improvement in mental state. And this follows from intuitions like “If a mind doesn’t experience a need for change (and won’t do so in the future), what is there to improve?”
Can you elaborate a bit on why the seemingly arbitrary view you quoted in your first paragraph wouldn’t follow, from the view that you and Teo are defending? Are you saying that from your and Teo’s POVs, there’s a way to ‘improve a mental state’ that doesn’t amount to decreasing suffering (/preventing it)? The statement itself seems a bit odd, since ‘improvements’ seems to imply ‘goodness’, and the statement hypothetically considers situations where improvements may not be good..so thought I would see if you could clarify.
In regards to the ‘defensible alternative’, it seems that one could defend a plausible view that a state of contentment, moved to a state of increased bliss, is indeed an improvement, even though there wasn’t a needfor change. Such an understanding seems plausible in a self-intimating way when one valence state transitions to the next, insofar as we concede that there are states of more or less pleasure, outside an negatively valanced states. It seems that one could do this all the while maintaining that such improvements are never capable of outweighing the mitigation of problematic, suffering states. **Note, using the term improvement can easily lead to accidental equivocation between scenarios of mitigating suffering versus increasing pleasure, but the ethical discernment between each seems manageable.
Are you saying that from your and Teo’s POVs, there’s a way to ‘improve a mental state’ that doesn’t amount to decreasing suffering (/preventing it)?
No, that’s precisely what I’m denying. So, the reason I mentioned that “arbitrary” view was that I thought Jack might be conflating my/Teo’s view with one that (1) agrees that happiness intrinsically improves a mental state, but (2) denies that improving a mental state in this particular way is good (while improving a mental state via suffering-reduction is good).
Such an understanding seems plausible in a self-intimating way when one valence state transitions to the next, insofar as we concede that there are states of more or less pleasure, outside an negatively valanced states.
It’s prima facie plausible that there’s an improvement, sure, but upon reflection I don’t think my experience that happiness has varying intensities implies that moving from contentment to more intense happiness is an improvement. Analogously, you can increase the complexity and artistic sophistication of some painting, say, but if no one ever observes it (which I’m comparing to no one suffering from the lack of more intense happiness), there’s no “improvement” to the painting.
It seems that one could do this all the while maintaining that such improvements are never capable of outweighing the mitigation of problematic, suffering states.
You could, yeah, but I think “improvement” has such a strong connotation to most people that something of intrinsic value has been added. So I’d worry that using that language would be confusing, especially to welfarist consequentialists who think (as seems really plausible to me) that you should do an act to the extent that it improves the state of the world.
Okay, thanks for clarifying for me! I think I was confused in that opening line when you clarified that your views do not say that only a relief of suffering improves a mental state, but in reality it’s that you do think such is the case, just not in conjunction with the claim that happiness also intrinsically improves a mental state, correct?
>Analogously, you can increase the complexity and artistic sophistication of some painting, say, but if no one ever observes it (which I’m comparing to no one suffering from the lack of more intense happiness), there’s no “improvement” to the painting.
With respect to this, I should have clarified that the state of contentment, that becomes a more intense positive state was one of an existing and experiencing being, not a content state of non-existence and then pleasure is brought into existence. Given the latter, would the painting analogy hold, since in this thought experiment there is an experiencer who has some sort of improvement in their mental state, albeit not a categorical sort of improvement that is on par with the sort the relives suffering? I.e. It wasn’t a problem per se (no suffering) that they were being deprived of the more intense pleasure, but the move from lower pleasure to higher pleasure is still an improvement in some way (albeit perhaps a better word would be needed to distinguish the lexical importance between these sorts of *improvements*).
I’m not sure if “pleasure” is the right word. I certainly think that improving one’s mental state is always good, even if this starts at a point in which there is no negative experience at all.
This might not involve increasing “pleasure”. Instead it could be increasing the amount of “meaning” felt or “love” felt. If monks say they prefer contentment over intense pleasure then fine—I would say the contentment state is hedonically better in some way.
This is probably me defining “hedonically better” differently to you but it doesn’t really matter. The point is I think you can improve the wellbeing of someone who is experiencing no suffering and that this is objectively a desirable thing to do.
Relevant recent posts:
https://www.simonknutsson.com/undisturbedness-as-the-hedonic-ceiling/
https://centerforreducingsuffering.org/phenomenological-argument/
(I think these unpack a view I share, better than I have.)
Edit: For tranquilist and Epicurean takes, I also like Gloor (2017, sec. 2.1) and Sherman (2017, pp. 103–107), respectively.
I think one crux here is that Teo and I would say, calling an increase in the intensity of a happy experience “improving one’s mental state” is a substantive philosophical claim. The kind of view we’re defending does not say something like, “Improvements of one’s mental state are only good if they relieve suffering.” I would agree that that sounds kind of arbitrary.
The more defensible alternative is that replacing contentment (or absence of any experience) with increasingly intense happiness / meaning / love is not itself an improvement in mental state. And this follows from intuitions like “If a mind doesn’t experience a need for change (and won’t do so in the future), what is there to improve?”
Can you elaborate a bit on why the seemingly arbitrary view you quoted in your first paragraph wouldn’t follow, from the view that you and Teo are defending? Are you saying that from your and Teo’s POVs, there’s a way to ‘improve a mental state’ that doesn’t amount to decreasing suffering (/preventing it)? The statement itself seems a bit odd, since ‘improvements’ seems to imply ‘goodness’, and the statement hypothetically considers situations where improvements may not be good..so thought I would see if you could clarify.
In regards to the ‘defensible alternative’, it seems that one could defend a plausible view that a state of contentment, moved to a state of increased bliss, is indeed an improvement, even though there wasn’t a need for change. Such an understanding seems plausible in a self-intimating way when one valence state transitions to the next, insofar as we concede that there are states of more or less pleasure, outside an negatively valanced states. It seems that one could do this all the while maintaining that such improvements are never capable of outweighing the mitigation of problematic, suffering states. **Note, using the term improvement can easily lead to accidental equivocation between scenarios of mitigating suffering versus increasing pleasure, but the ethical discernment between each seems manageable.
No, that’s precisely what I’m denying. So, the reason I mentioned that “arbitrary” view was that I thought Jack might be conflating my/Teo’s view with one that (1) agrees that happiness intrinsically improves a mental state, but (2) denies that improving a mental state in this particular way is good (while improving a mental state via suffering-reduction is good).
It’s prima facie plausible that there’s an improvement, sure, but upon reflection I don’t think my experience that happiness has varying intensities implies that moving from contentment to more intense happiness is an improvement. Analogously, you can increase the complexity and artistic sophistication of some painting, say, but if no one ever observes it (which I’m comparing to no one suffering from the lack of more intense happiness), there’s no “improvement” to the painting.
You could, yeah, but I think “improvement” has such a strong connotation to most people that something of intrinsic value has been added. So I’d worry that using that language would be confusing, especially to welfarist consequentialists who think (as seems really plausible to me) that you should do an act to the extent that it improves the state of the world.
Okay, thanks for clarifying for me! I think I was confused in that opening line when you clarified that your views do not say that only a relief of suffering improves a mental state, but in reality it’s that you do think such is the case, just not in conjunction with the claim that happiness also intrinsically improves a mental state, correct?
>Analogously, you can increase the complexity and artistic sophistication of some painting, say, but if no one ever observes it (which I’m comparing to no one suffering from the lack of more intense happiness), there’s no “improvement” to the painting.
With respect to this, I should have clarified that the state of contentment, that becomes a more intense positive state was one of an existing and experiencing being, not a content state of non-existence and then pleasure is brought into existence. Given the latter, would the painting analogy hold, since in this thought experiment there is an experiencer who has some sort of improvement in their mental state, albeit not a categorical sort of improvement that is on par with the sort the relives suffering? I.e. It wasn’t a problem per se (no suffering) that they were being deprived of the more intense pleasure, but the move from lower pleasure to higher pleasure is still an improvement in some way (albeit perhaps a better word would be needed to distinguish the lexical importance between these sorts of *improvements*).