Theories of Pleasure

How to Unify Theories of Sensory Pleasure: An Adverbialist Proposal

A lot of qualitatively very different sensations can be pleasant or unpleasant. The Felt-Quality Views that conceive of sensory affect as having an introspectively available common phenomenology or qualitative character face the “heterogeneity problem” of specifying what that qualitative common phenomenology is. In contrast, according to the Attitudinal Views, what is common to all pleasant or ...

Desire-Based Theories of Reasons, Pleasure, and Welfare

Desire-Based Theories of Reasons, Pleasure, and Welfare (Final for OSME)

One of the most important disputes in the foundations of ethics concerns the source of practical reasons. On the desire-based or internalist view, only one’s desires (broadly construed) provide one with reasons to act. On the value-based view, the strongest form of externalism about reasons, reasons are instead provided by the objective evaluative facts, and never by our desires. Lying in betwe...

The pleasure of publishing

When assessing manuscripts eLife editors look for a combination of rigour and insight, along with results and ideas that make other researchers think differently about their subject.

The Pleasure of Eating

I begin with the proposition that eating is an agricultural act. Eating ends the annual drama of the food economy that begins with planting and birth. Most eaters, however, are no longer aware that this is true. They think of food as an agricultural product, perhaps, but they do not think of themselves as participants in agriculture. They think of themselves as “consumers.” If they think beyond...