What is pleasure?

[Disagreeable]

We don't just care about our own pleasure, we also care about the pleasure of others that we care about. But then maybe giving them pleasure gives us pleasure.

We also care about suffering. In a negative way, we want to avoid it for ourselves and others we care about.

I define pleasure and displeasure in a very broad way. A pleasure is any experience that is worth having for its own sake, and not because it leads to something else that we value. So I see intrinsically good experiences and intrinsically pleasurable experiences as interchangeable.

A displeasure is any experience that is *not* worth having for its own sake.

Because I define pleasure very broadly it's able to account for things like aesthetic and intellectual pleasures, and not just mere sensory satisfaction.

An interesting question is how to categorize neutral experiences. Are they worth having? Well, they're not not worth having. So I guess that means they're worth having?

Perhaps we could talk about experiences worth having and experiences worth avoiding. And then experiences that are neither worth having nor worth avoiding, which are the neutral experiences.

To be clear, when I'm talking about experiences worth having or experiences not worth having, or worth avoiding or not worth avoiding, etc, I still mean *intrinsically*.

There are plenty of experiences that are instrumentally good but not pleasurable, not worth having for their own sake. Although that might be because they lead to something that either is pleasurable or lead to something that decreases/minimizes/avoids displeasure, pain, discomfort or suffering, etc.