Are there hierarchies of pleasure?

[African_Love]

Most people, I think, would respond 'yes' but think before you do. I'm using 'pleasure' interchangeably with 'happiness' as an umbrella term for all positive, desirable emotions (sexual pleasure, love, the pleasure that comes from good music, food, video games etc.). If you argue that some pleasures are intrinsically 'higher' than other pleasures, like John Stuart Mill did, you have to base this distinction on something other than the pleasurable-ness of pleasure (since saying that one form of pleasure is more pleasurable than another is like saying one shade of blue is more blue than another, there are quantitative degrees of blueness but all shades of blue are equally blue). You might consider some pleasures to be more 'noble' or 'appropriate' than others but can any be considered more pleasurable?

Intuitively I feel that some pleasures are 'higher' than others but I'm not sure if this can be logically defended. There's no doubt in my mind that the pleasurable-ness of love and feeling connected to others is more intense and durable than the pleasurable-ness of food (and probably necessarily so) but I can't see how it can be considered qualitatively better. If it was somehow possible to feel love that wasn't pleasurable, why would it be 'good' to feel that love, if it wasn't a pleasurable feeling?

[Cat Square]

Objectively speaking, I suppose you're right, nothing is intrinsically more pleasurable than anything else -- but I believe pleasure is subjective, not objective.

Certain pleasures are tied to biological needs -- the pleasure of sex is tied to our intrinsic biological need to reproduce. The pleasure we derive from beauty can be traced to nature in the form of symmetry and the golden mean. These (and other) pleasures are more or less hard wired into all "normal" humans, and therefore could be called "intrinsic", but the vast complex of the human psyche throws a serious wrench in the works. The natural pleasure derived from sex can be taken away through psychological damage, which means that even our baseline "hard-wired" pleasures are not necessarily intrinsic to all.

To explain and quantify pleasure would involve an impossibly deep excavation of one's own psychology. That said, I see no problem with rating my pleasure in my own subjective system of pleasurable-ness.


For me, the problem with rating pleasure doesn't seem to be in the rating itself, but rather in the explanation of the reasoning behind the hierarchy.

[ktm5124]

The Epicureans sure thought so. They thought that the most meaningful forms of pleasure were those that were also the most secure - the least easy to be lost. For this reason they held philosophy to be the chiefest of pleasures, as it requires nothing else but the human mind and thus can always be pursued. On the contrary, they wouldn't think too highly of eating out every night at Zagat-rated restaurants. Unless you're really rich, you will run out of money and no longer be able to dine downtown (that is, the pleasure will be lost).

Well, there's a little advice from the damned...

[baaaaadgoatjoke]

Not a philosopher, but maybe Maslowe's Hierarchy could help? You mentioned love being more pleasurable than food, but that's probably not the case if you're starving. I don't know what the general opinion of Maslowe's Hierarchy is, but I think he's probably right that until needs such as food and shelter are filled then love and companionship take a back seat.

[Persuasion]

Not a philosopher, but maybe Maslowe's Hierarchy could help? You mentioned love being more pleasurable than food, but that's probably not the case if you're starving. I don't know what the general opinion of Maslowe's Hierarchy is, but I think he's probably right that until needs such as food and shelter are filled then love and companionship take a back seat.



You mean that until our needs for food and shelter are filled we can't feel love or enjoy companionship???

[Cunninglinguist]

Of course we can feel different degrees of the same type of pleasure (winning 100 million dollars from the lottery would entail a higher degree of pleasure than winning only 10 million or 1 million), but I think the question might be are there different types of pleasure. i.e. is the pleasure of winning a nobel peace prize fundamentally the same as the 100 million, or even just eating a nice dinner.

I think your intuition is onto something. For me, I'd rather have the satisfaction of being morally responsible than have the greatest coke high ever experienced. I think the reasons for this can be logically defended, but I dont know if we can call these pleasures different types.

Note: the word happiness has far too loose a definition to go undefined in philosophical discussion. Today it is referred to interchangably as a state of ones mind or a state of ones life; the greeks only used the latter (an important thing to know while interpreting). But, I find, that, undefined, it can lead to at least considerable confusion, at most perhaps sneaky equivocation.

[blazeofglory]

I do not think there are hierarchies of pleasures and in point of fact there are varieties of pleasures only, not hierarchal at all. Sexual pleasure for instance cannot compared with the pleasures we get from music. It is a different taste. Some people like sour fruits, others like salty and I like sweet foods and there is no hierarchy of tastes at all but of course it is variety not hierarchy. Mill was wrong to make such hierarchies. Likewise you cannot say hierarchies of loves at the same time. You may have love for parents, for your spouses, for your sisters, for your mistresses if you have any. They are immeasurable and you can make no comparison or you cannot grade.

[Rores28]

Most people, I think, would respond 'yes' but think before you do. I'm using 'pleasure' interchangeably with 'happiness' as an umbrella term for all positive, desirable emotions (sexual pleasure, love, the pleasure that comes from good music, food, video games etc.). If you argue that some pleasures are intrinsically 'higher' than other pleasures, like John Stuart Mill did, you have to base this distinction on something other than the pleasurable-ness of pleasure (since saying that one form of pleasure is more pleasurable than another is like saying one shade of blue is more blue than another, there are quantitative degrees of blueness but all shades of blue are equally blue). You might consider some pleasures to be more 'noble' or 'appropriate' than others but can any be considered more pleasurable?

Intuitively I feel that some pleasures are 'higher' than others but I'm not sure if this can be logically defended. There's no doubt in my mind that the pleasurable-ness of love and feeling connected to others is more intense and durable than the pleasurable-ness of food (and probably necessarily so) but I can't see how it can be considered qualitatively better. If it was somehow possible to feel love that wasn't pleasurable, why would it be 'good' to feel that love, if it wasn't a pleasurable feeling?

This question in general as well as the way you presented it runs into all kinds of linguistic ambiguity but I think I know what your asking... but if not sorry :(

I think you are implicitly making a confounding assumption here that the person or entity acting as conduit to this pleasure/happiness is residing in a contextual and temporal vacuum.

That is, you have some being who has previously and is currently experiencing an "average" amount of love, satiety, shelter, carnal pleasure, etc..... Now throw at them pleasure experience x, then y, then z, and gauge which gives more/better pleasure. If that is the nature of your unspoken thought experiment than it is a thought experiment that has become to abstract, I think, too yield any useful information.


As alluded to by a previous poster... Contextually speaking

Someone who has just had their way with 20 women in one night and is famished is going to gain a greater degree of pleasure at this point from a BigMac than another woman... likewise one who has just gorged himself at Golden Coral probably would prefer the woman. And that logic can of course be applied to all different kinds of pleasure. You mention love being more intense, but in light of this is it? When your significant other has angered you recently or neglected you etc.... how pleasureable are your feelings of love? What about when they surprise you with a particularly thoughtful present for no reason at all? The feelings even of love wax and wane, though many of us like to think there is some constant current of it running through us... sometimes the person you love the one you loved for years... you just don't love on a given day at least not beyond the expectation of a word and the resultant guilt and discomfort of thinking otherwise.

The temporal element is important here as well.
There's no doubt in my mind that the pleasurable-ness of love and feeling connected to others is more intense and durable than the pleasurable-ness of food

The use of the word durable here is key. Why is love more durable than food? Are you at greater risk of running out of food whenever you want it... or breaking up with your g/f / b/f? I think here you see eating as a broken chain but fall prey to the assumption that at all times you are at least passively loving, but you aren't. You think about a person and you love them, but when your thoughts drift away you dont, at least not in the sense your talking about... you are receiving no direct pleasure from your "love." Your brain can only handle so much pleasure/info at a given time.

But I think this gets more sticky when you consider prospect and remembrance of pleasure/happiness. If I was starving literally starving and I then I was given some food and was just filled with exultant happiness, well I bet that would be pretty happy. But then let's say I've been pining for this girl in my calculus class for the whole semester, she's perfect, she's popular but not stuck up, she's extremely attractive and intelligent and the last day of the semester she approaches me and in a stultifyingly candid discourse admits that she has had feelings for me all semester and has been too chicken to talk to me until just right now because she thought she might not see me on campus again. Well I bet that would be a pretty happy day too. But when you look back on both of these events I think its probably pretty clear the second is gonna give you better returns on your happiness. Thinking about he starving then eating feeling just doesn't seem like its going to be a "happy time" in your life that you revisit, but the calculus girl does. Even if the pleasure at the time was say equal. This I think gets pretty confusing, I have some ill-formed hypotheses but I think this post is long enough.

[baaaaadgoatjoke]

You mean that until our needs for food and shelter are filled we can't feel love or enjoy companionship???

Maslowe's Hierarchy may have been the wrong thing to point to because, if I remember correctly, he was pretty rigid about it and would answer yes to what you just asked. I only meant to point out that sometimes a meal is more rewarding than love.

Another school of thought to throw out there is basic economics since the whole field is at essence a study of human wants and needs. Hard to measure anything you can't quantify, but ideas like diminishing returns are valid nonetheless.