The distinctive feeling theory of pleasure

Bramble, Ben ORCID: 0000-0003-1752-9667 (2013) The distinctive feeling theory of pleasure. Philosophical Studies, 162 (2). pp. 201-217.

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Abstract

In this article, I attempt to resuscitate the perennially unfashionable distinctive feeling theory of pleasure (and pain), according to which for an experience to be pleasant (or unpleasant) is just for it to involve or contain a distinctive kind of feeling. I do this in two ways. First, by offering powerful new arguments against its two chief rivals: attitude theories, on the one hand, and the phenomenological theories of Roger Crisp, Shelly Kagan, and Aaron Smuts, on the other. Second, by showing how it can answer two important objections that have been made to it. First, the famous worry that there is no felt similarity to all pleasant (or unpleasant) experiences (sometimes called 'the heterogeneity objection'). Second, what I call 'Findlay's objection', the claim that it cannot explain the nature of our attraction to pleasure and aversion to pain. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Pain Research
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	15 Oct 2018 09:50
Last Modified:	17 Mar 2024 01:02
DOI:	10.1007/s11098-011-9755-9
Related URLs:	Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3027529