Dennis Monokroussos writes by e-mail:
A quick thought on your dilemma for Mill: it might be the case that pleasure is the ultimate standard, and we then interpret “higher quality” or “better” pleasures as those that tend (in some empirically generalizable way) to produce more pleasure in those who have developed the appropriate discriminating faculties. Alternatively, one might speak of the pleasures of a life one takes to be worth living, a life characterized by a pervasive, pleasant feeling of self-satisfaction at having acquired, experienced or attained certain sorts of goods (pleasure-producing things, persons, events, dispositions and so on). In short, I’m trying to split the difference here: maintain hedonism but also make sense of calling some pleasures “better” than others. If one redefines the nature of the normative along utilitarian lines (wrongly, in my view), then there’s no further problem. Right?
I am having some trouble with your talk of some types of pleasure producing more pleasure than others. Perhaps your point could be reformulated in terms of one type of activity being better than another if the first produces more pleasure than a second type of activity. Thus, playing chess produces more pleasure than watching television. You and I will agree that this is true for people who are reasonably competent in both activities. Still, why should the first activity be better than the second, given that 'better' packs a normative punch? Why is more pleasure better than less pleasure? (Related questions: Why are more intellectual pleasures better than less intellectual pleasures? Why are 'chronic' pleasures (e.g. the pleaure of being physically fit) better than 'acute' pleasures (e.g., the pleasure of sexual orgasm?))
You speak of defining the normative in utilitarian terms, but I think you mean hedonistic terms. As you know, hedonism and utilitarianism are distinct. Roughly, the utilitarian judges actions by their consequences and recommends those actions that lead to the greatest good of the greatest number. This leaves open what the good is. The hedonist identifies the good with pleasure, but one could be a utilitarian without being a hedonist.
So I take your question to be this. Why not just define the locution, 'X is better than Y' in hedonistic terms? E.g., X is better than Y because X produces more pleasure than Y. But here something like Moore's Open Question Objection kicks in. That the more pleasurable is more pleasurable than the less pleasurable is obvious. But why should the former be better? One who denies this hasn't contradicted himself. So it is an 'open question' whether the more pleasurable is better than the less pleasurable. There is a logical gap between 'X is more pleasurable than Y' and 'X is better than Y.'
I take it that the ignoring of that logical gap is what the naturalistic fallacy consists in. Can one just enforce the reduction? The reduction cannot be enforced in my opinion. One might say that water is (identically) H2O and the phenomenology be damned! But one cannot say that the good = pleasure or the good = what is desired (rationally or otherwise) without violating the very sense of 'good' — a sense that cannot be 'damned.'
In a slogan: the normative is naturalistically irreducible.
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