What is pleasure?

[Belacqua]

I agree with you Belacqua, about those two definitions of pleasure. I used to use the second one a lot in the past. But nowadays, as you can see, I use the first.


Can you give me an example of one?

Having a child, passing an exam, discovering new meaning in your life.  You're putting the cart before the horse.

I think everyone understands that pleasures may be a mixture of good-in-themselves and good-for-a-further-end. I'd say that all those you list here are of that type. 

Passing an exam, for example, is a pleasure because you've accomplished something. But don't most exams have some instrumental reason why you took them? Like they allow you to pass a course, or gain a new qualification for employment, or get a driver's license, or something like that. I don't know of any cases where people take exams simply for the pleasure of the exam (though there might be such people). 

"Discovering a new meaning in your life" is not clear to me. Does this mean that you have come to understand something that was going on for a long time before? Like an epiphany about why you've been living a certain way? Or does it mean that you discover a new path that you want to follow from now on? The latter would imply something instrumental, I think. "From now on, living in this way will make me the kind of person I want to be." 

An art dealer, I think, can get non-instrumental pleasure from looking at a painting. But if he's inspecting the painting for quality, attempting to make an attribution, estimating its value at auction, etc., then he's being instrumental. I would hope that an art dealer got into the business because he likes art, so the aesthetic pleasure of seeing the painting would be included in the mix.