Whoever supposes that this preference takes place at a sacrifice of happiness that the superior being, in anything like equal circumstances, is not happier than the inferior confounds the two very different ideas, of happiness, and content.
It is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low, has the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed being will always feel that any happiness which he can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect.
But he can learn to bear its imperfections, if they are at all bearable; and they will not make him envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but only because he feels not at all the good which those imperfections qualify. It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.
And if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides. It may be objected, that many who are capable of the higher pleasures, occasionally, under the influence of temptation, postpone them to the lower.
But this is quite compatible with a full appreciation of the intrinsic superiority of the higher. Men often, from infirmity of character, make their election for the nearer good, though they know it to be the less valuable; and this no less when the choice is between two bodily pleasures, than when it is between bodily and mental. They pursue sensual indulgences to the injury of health, though perfectly aware that health is the greater good.
It may be further objected, that many who begin with youthful enthusiasm for everything noble, as they advance in years sink into indolence and selfishness. But I do not believe that those who undergo this very common change, voluntarily choose the lower description of pleasures in preference to the higher.
I believe that before they devote themselves exclusively to the one, they have already become incapable of the other. Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which their position in life has devoted them, and the society into which it has thrown them, are not favorable to keeping that higher capacity in exercise.
Men lose their high aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes, because they have not time or opportunity for indulging them; and they addict themselves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer them, but because they are either the only ones to which they have access, or the only ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying. It may be questioned whether any one who has remained equally susceptible to both classes of pleasures, ever knowingly and calmly preferred the lower; though many, in all ages, have broken down in an ineffectual attempt to combine both.
From this verdict of the only competent judges, I apprehend there can be no appeal. On a question which is the best worth having of two pleasures, or which of two modes of existence is the most grateful to the feelings, apart from its moral attributes and from its consequences, the judgment of those who are qualified by knowledge of both, or, if they differ, that of the majority among them, must be admitted as final.
If there is some phenomenal difference between intellectual and bodily pleasures which cannot be put down to the different neural correlates of cognition and sensory experience, that difference must correlate with certain physically realized relations between cognition and the pleasure-circuits on the one hand, or sensory experience and the pleasure-circuits on the other hand, that do not consist merely in co-existence. And these physical substrates would themselves have to be of different kinds, to explain the difference at the phenomenal level.
But we would expect evolution not to produce such physical substrates unless they are necessary. And as far as we can see, there is no reason to think that mere co-existence as described by the bolt-on view would not be functionally sufficient.
Further, important phenomenal differences, if they correlate with the lack of any common neural currency, might be expected to make comparisons of pleasures more difficult than they appear to be, and themselves more costly in terms of expenditure of evolutionary energy. This does not mean that it may not emerge when and if new brain imaging technologies and methodologies of interpreting images emerge. But what is clear is that the existing data show that: 1 intellectual pleasure and bodily pleasure share final common pathways in the ensuing reactions to pleasurable stimuli irrespective of type; 2 evolution appears to have conserved and re-used the neural pleasure mechanisms used for bodily pleasures when dealing with intellectual, social, and other more complex pleasures; and 3 the existence of a common currency allows for pleasures of different kinds to be compared and acted upon.
Footnote 4. For further discussion, see [ 6 ]: — For a good survey, see [ 7 ]. We are not arguing that pleasure is some kind of very specific sensation, such as an itch. Rather we seeing it as equivalent to enjoyment, which we believe any plausible view must see as an aspect of felt experience rather than as a matter of mere attitudes or behaviour.
Plato Republic , 2nd edn. Grube, rev. Indianapolis: Hackett. Mill, J. Utilitarianism , ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar. Sumner, L. Welfare, happiness, and ethics. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Owen, G. Aristotelian pleasures. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society — Crisp, R. Reasons and the good. Book Google Scholar. Kringelbach, M. Berridge, eds. Pleasures of the brain. Berridge, K.
Pleasure Systems in the Brain. Neuron — Article Google Scholar. Building a neuroscience of pleasure and well-being. Psychology of Well-being: Theory, Research and Practice. Neuroscience of affect: Brain mechanisms of pleasure and displeasure. All animals eat, using the senses of smell and taste. Philosophers have generally assumed that to take pleasure in eating is simply to sate a primitive desire.
Eating is a complex act. Simply gathering the ingredients takes thought, since what we buy not only requires planning but affects the wellbeing of growers, producers, animals and the planet. Cooking involves knowledge of ingredients, the application of skills, the balancing of different flavours and textures, considerations of nutrition, care for the ordering of courses or the place of the dish in the rhythm of the day.
Eating, at its best, brings all these things together, adding an attentive aesthetic appreciation of the end result. Eating illustrates how the difference between higher and lower pleasures is not what you enjoy but how you enjoy it. Wolfing down your food like a pig at a trough is a lower kind of pleasure. Preparing and eating it using the powers of reflection and attention that only a human being possesses turns it into a higher pleasure.
This form of higher pleasure need not be intellectual in the academic sense. An accomplished chef might be judging the balance of flavours and textures intuitively; a home cook might simply be thinking about what his guests are most likely to enjoy. What makes the pleasure higher is that it engages our more complex human abilities.
It expresses more than just the brute desire to satisfy a craving. For every pleasure, it should not be difficult to see that the how matters more than the what. Furthermore, the highest pleasures do not merely use our distinctively human capacities, they use them for a valuable end. Someone who goes to the opera to be seen in a new dress is not experiencing the higher pleasures of music but indulging the lower pleasures of vanity. Someone who reads Dr Seuss with a careful ear for language gets a higher pleasure than someone who mechanically recites The Waste Land without any understanding of what T S Eliot was doing.
Rather, morality is dictated by the greatest happiness principle; moral action is that which increases the total amount of utility in the world.
Pursuing one's own happiness at the expense of social happiness would not be moral under this framework. SparkTeach Teacher's Handbook.
Page 1 Page 2. Summary Mill attempts to reply to misconceptions about utilitarianism, and thereby delineate the theory. Commentary This chapter provides the definition of utilitarianism.
Popular pages: Utilitarianism. Take a Study Break.
0コメント