What is pleasure?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Perhaps we're over thinking this.





Boru

[Belacqua]

experiences worth having

So you got me thinking about experiences worth having that are neither utilitarian nor undertaken for pleasure, yet people still do them. There's one category I can think of that sort of fits this.

Japanese didn't have a word for "art" until fairly recently. In the Meiji period scholars started translating German philosophy and realized they lacked such a term, so they settled on 美術 which means "beauty skill." Before that, traditional arts were defined as a "way" rather than as a skill. 

"Way" here is 道, which is the same character as the Tao, in Chinese Taoism. It can also mean simply a street, or a way of doing something. 

Judo 柔道 means "weak way" or "flexible way," something like that. Flower arrangement is flower-way 花道. Tea ceremony is tea-way 茶道. There are lots of others. The point is that these are practices that one does, and in most cases they don't result in any tangible object the way art is said to do. Flower arrangements only last a few days, after all. 書道, "write-way," is calligraphy, and can provide you with a beautiful object, but the emphasis is on practice and one's state of mind while doing it. The goal is beauty, but not the kind you frame and display, usually. 

Naturally doing these things can be a pleasure, but I don't think anyone would say that pleasure is the real purpose of doing them. Nor are they training for anything, other than more of the same practice. 

When I first heard about the "ways" I assumed they were intended to improve one's character somehow. I think this was my Western habit of seeing practices as worthwhile only if they were a kind of payment for a later reward. Now I think this is not the correct way to think about them.

Doing them is about... doing them. They are a kind of time set aside from regular life, in which one focusses one's mind and lives in the moment. Again, no one talks about the goal being pleasure, in the way that most hobbies or other pastimes might be. It would be strange to hear "You should try the tea ceremony, it's fun!" There might well be benefits in terms of calming a hectic day, but if you were to practice them as therapy that would also be too utilitarian, I think. 

(Similarly, the Zen practice of mindfulness has become a kind of therapy in America, but that isn't how Zen Buddhists think of it.) 

So I'd say that's a kind of category of action which is neither utilitarian nor pleasure-seeking. But still seems worth doing to me. 

I don't know if that's the kind of thing you were thinking about.

[Ahriman]

listening to music does not bring me pleasure at all....The only 2 ways I respond to hearing music, are getting hyped up, and experiencing pain.

Now see, that's interesting. I knew you'd be likely to come up with something that no one else here would say.

2) Have you always responded this way to music? 1) I seem to remember you used to like a pop star -- wasn't that your profile photo for a while? Or maybe you liked her image but not her music? 

Anyway, music is the normal go-to example for non-utilitarian pleasure, but it doesn't have to be the only one. Isn't there anything you enjoy for its own sake?

1) Yeah, Billie Eilish....I liked her music for a little while....I also think she's fairly attractive, physically....Kind of my type....
2) Pretty much, yeah....I never felt any type of actual 'euphoria' when hearing music, although just by hearing how the other kids talked about music, I could tell they were experiencing something different than what I was experiencing....I like heavy metal a lot, and when listening to it, I feel amped and energetic....But any other type of music just makes me feel pain inside, especially Pop....

[Ahriman]

experiences worth having

So you got me thinking about experiences worth having that are neither utilitarian nor undertaken for pleasure, yet people still do them. There's one category I can think of that sort of fits this.

Japanese didn't have a word for "art" until fairly recently. In the Meiji period scholars started translating German philosophy and realized they lacked such a term, so they settled on 美術 which means "beauty skill." Before that, traditional arts were defined as a "way" rather than as a skill. 

"Way" here is 道, which is the same character as the Tao, in Chinese Taoism. It can also mean simply a street, or a way of doing something. 

Judo 柔道 means "weak way" or "flexible way," something like that. Flower arrangement is flower-way 花道. Tea ceremony is tea-way 茶道. There are lots of others. The point is that these are practices that one does, and in most cases they don't result in any tangible object the way art is said to do. Flower arrangements only last a few days, after all. 書道, "write-way," is calligraphy, and can provide you with a beautiful object, but the emphasis is on practice and one's state of mind while doing it. The goal is beauty, but not the kind you frame and display, usually. 

Naturally doing these things can be a pleasure, but I don't think anyone would say that pleasure is the real purpose of doing them. Nor are they training for anything, other than more of the same practice. 

When I first heard about the "ways" I assumed they were intended to improve one's character somehow. I think this was my Western habit of seeing practices as worthwhile only if they were a kind of payment for a later reward. Now I think this is not the correct way to think about them.

Doing them is about... doing them. They are a kind of time set aside from regular life, in which one focusses one's mind and lives in the moment. Again, no one talks about the goal being pleasure, in the way that most hobbies or other pastimes might be. It would be strange to hear "You should try the tea ceremony, it's fun!" There might well be benefits in terms of calming a hectic day, but if you were to practice them as therapy that would also be too utilitarian, I think. 

(Similarly, the Zen practice of mindfulness has become a kind of therapy in America, but that isn't how Zen Buddhists think of it.) 

So I'd say that's a kind of category of action which is neither utilitarian nor pleasure-seeking. But still seems worth doing to me. 

I don't know if that's the kind of thing you were thinking about.

I've been meditating regularly for a very long time, and only just recently have I reaped the full benefits....I mean, the shit does work, but it takes so fucking long to become truly effective, that most Americans would definitely not be able to handle it, and would simply become distracted with some other form of escapism....

[Disagreeable]

Well, I think that's ONE way to define pleasure. We've been focussing on pleasure as a non-utilitarian experience enjoyed for its own sake. 

I think that people may use the word in other ways, though. If someone says he gets pleasure from accomplishing a utilitarian goal, I wouldn't tell him he was wrong.

Yeah, like I said in the OP I'm fine with people accepting or not accepting my definition.

I also want to be wary of making "good" and "pleasurable" into synonyms. Though doing something good may well give pleasure in different ways, I feel that the two words have different meanings.

There are many ways to define the word "good" but I think that in the context of talking about an intrinsically good experience it means the same thing as an intrinsically pleasurable experience. In that context I'm talking about the same thing. 

Normally if we think of unpleasant experiences that are worth having, we're thinking of some goal further on -- not, I think, something intrinsic to the experience. Do you have an example in mind? That would make it clearer for me.

I can think of one example. A masochist experiences pain. That experience is unpleasant but pleasurable to the masochist. This is because they don't *only* experience pain, they experience a pleasurable aspect to the experience and that aspect makes the experience worth having overall, for its own sake. Because it outweighs the pain.

So I think that a pleasure can involve an ambivalent experience. For an experience to count as a pleasure it just has to be pleasurable overall. Or good overall. *Intrinsically*.

I am sure that someone could define a dutiful or honorable experience as intrinsically good even if it's not pleasurable. But I don't accept that definition because I don't believe in such intrinsic goodness. I'm a hedonist. Which is why I like my definition of intrinsically good experiences, being identical to intrinsically pleasurable experiences, so much.

Because you seem to be equating good experiences with pleasurable experiences, I'm not sure how "worth having" differs from one or the other of these words.

Well "worth having" is also synonymous with "good" or "pleasurable" but again, I'm specifically talking about experiences and *intrinsically*.

Another point to make is the difference between wanting and liking. You can want an experience because it's instrumentally good, it leads to something else that is good.

But liking seems to be about the intrinsic goodness of the experience itself. If an experience is intrinsically good then it's identical to me liking it.

[The Grand Nudger]

There's probably a point where believing in intrinsic goodness of your own particular type and not any other, as a hedonist, falls apart. That's just someone else's hedonist content, right? You not believing in it is something akin to not being into it, even if it does exist, and that other person is into it.

[Paraselene]