IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/utilit/v24y2012i02p172-199_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Hedonic Tone and the Heterogeneity of Pleasure

Author

Listed:
  • LABUKT, IVAR

Abstract

Some philosophers have claimed that pleasures and pains are characterized by their particular ‘feel’ or ‘hedonic tone’. Most contemporary writers reject this view: they hold that hedonic states have nothing in common except being liked or disliked (alternatively: pursued or avoided) for their own sake. In this article, I argue that the hedonic tone view has been dismissed too quickly: there is no clear introspective or scientific evidence that pleasures do not share a phenomenal quality. I also argue that analysing hedonic states in terms of liking or wanting is implausible. If it is correct that pleasures and pains are not united by any particular hedonic tone, we should instead simply conclude that there are several different hedonic tones. This pluralistic understanding of the hedonic tone view has generally been overlooked in the literature, but appears to be fairly plausible as a philosophical account of pleasure and pain.

Suggested Citation

  • Labukt, Ivar, 2012. "Hedonic Tone and the Heterogeneity of Pleasure," Utilitas, Cambridge University Press, vol. 24(2), pages 172-199, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:utilit:v:24:y:2012:i:02:p:172-199_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0953820812000052/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Andrew Alwood, 2018. "The Value of Heterogeneous Pleasures," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 19(8), pages 2303-2314, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:utilit:v:24:y:2012:i:02:p:172-199_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/uti .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.