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Notes
All in-text page references will be to Feldman (2004).
Sumner makes this point in Sumner (2005), p. 86.
Feldman (2002), p. 607.
The foregoing remarks borrow from Zimmerman (2001), Sect. 6.2. There are hints in Feldman’s text that he has some sympathy with what I have just said. Although he officially draws a distinction between attitudinal pleasure and enjoyment (p. 62, n. 14), he nevertheless couches a good deal of his discussion of attitudinal pleasure in terms of enjoyment. As I understand it, enjoyment is an attitude that has an affective component. If you enjoy something, you feel good.
As does Sumner, who calls the two values at issue “prudential” and “ethical” in Sumner (1996), pp. 20 ff.
There are complications here that I will address in the next section.
Cf. Feldman (1986), pp. 36–38, where it is claimed that whether an act is overall morally obligatory is determined solely by whether it is performed in a world accessible to the agent such that no accessible world is “intrinsically” better. This is actually a stronger claim than the one I am presently making. In my view, what has intrinsic value (in the present, impersonal, ethical sense) morally requires some sort of response, but other factors (such as moral rights) might also morally require some sort of response independently of any intrinsic value that they might involve, so that an agent’s overall moral obligation might not be determined solely by the relative intrinsic values of the worlds accessible to him. On the ethical nature of intrinsic value cf. Lemos (1994), pp. 12 ff., in which the discussion of intrinsic value is couched in terms of “ethical requirement”; cf. also Sumner (1996), p. 48, in which the sort of intrinsic value with which Moore is concerned is called intrinsic ethical value.
See Zimmerman (2001), pp. 24–25 and 88–90 for further discussion.
As does Sumner in Sumner (1996), p. 48.
All his official formulations of hedonism, from the simplest (DH, p. 27) to the most qualified (such as DAIAH, p. 121), that have to do with personal value, are put in terms of what is “intrinsically good” and “intrinsically bad,” with no “for” explicitly attached. Other formulations of hedonism (such as SDAIAH, p. 195), that have to do with impersonal value, are also put in terms of “intrinsically good” and “intrinsically bad.” Feldman distinguishes between these kinds of hedonism by saying that the former have to do with the values of lives whereas the latter have to do with the values of worlds. This reinforces what I take to be the misleading impression that he subscribes to View 2 rather than View 1.
One question that might be raised about View 1 is this: what sense does it make to talk of the personal value of worlds? Well, suppose that Joe lives a pleasant life in some world W. Then, I assume, his life is personally good for him. I see no reason not to extend this assessment and say that W is therefore personally good for him. Of course, that does not mean that W is personally good for someone else. If Jane leads an unpleasant life in W, then W is not good for her. We might also want to talk of the “overall” personal value of W, which would somehow reflect the personal values of W for Joe, Jane, and others who live there.
In this light, consider again my assessment of the two worlds introduced by Ross, but now with the emphasis relocated: it is ethically fitting that personal goods and evils be distributed as they are in the first world, ethically unfitting that they be distributed as they are in the second world. This presupposes that the pleasures that the vicious people experience are indeed personally good, and that the pains that the vicious people experience are indeed personally bad. This presupposition seems right to me, although many people with whom I have discussed this issue claim to disagree. Following Mill (1863), ch. 2, they say such things as that it is “better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied” and claim thereby to be making a judgment about personal welfare. I wonder. I can certainly agree that, understood as a judgment about ethical value (whether intrinsic or extrinsic), what Mill says may well be true, but that of course is not the type of value at issue. How exactly is it supposed to be that Socrates is better off than the fool? To put the question in terms of Feldman’s crib test: why would love for Socrates incline one to prefer his discontentedly living a life of wisdom to his contentedly living a fool’s life? My suspicion is that, to the extent that one prefers the former life, one is letting something other than love for Socrates influence one’s judgment.
Cf. Sumner (2005), pp. 93–94.
I undertake to do so in Zimmerman (2001), ch. 3.
See Feldman (2000), pp. 323 ff., 344 n. 25.
Feldman (2000), p. 328.
The seminal work here is Korsgaard (1983).
The reason why no number is given to reflect the “size” of duration is that Feldman is working (p. 174) under the simplifying assumption that all basic intrinsic value states involve “minimal” time intervals.
I assume that minimal time intervals (see the last note) constitute a single unit on the scale of duration.
This paragraph borrows from Zimmerman (2001), p. 179.
Cf. Sumner (2005), pp. 95–97.
More cautiously still: I would restrict this claim to ethical value. Also, I would say that there is something of value only if states worthy of pleasure or displeasure obtain, rather than merely exist. This repeats the first point about bearers of value made in the last section.
There are some who would go so far as to say that an object’s being intrinsically good just is its being deserving of having pleasure (or some other “pro-attitude”) taken in it. Cf. Scanlon (1998), pp. 95 ff., on what he calls the “buck-passing account” of value.
Many thanks to Ish Haji for comments on an earlier draft.
References
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Sumner, L. W. (2005). Feldman’s hedonism. In R. Feldman, K. McDaniel, J. R. Raibley & M. J. Zimmerman (Eds.), The Good, the right, life and death: Essays in honor of Fred Feldman (pp. 83–100). Aldershot: Ashgate.
Zimmerman, M. J. (2001). The nature of intrinsic value. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
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Zimmerman, M.J. Feldman on the nature and value of pleasure. Philos Stud 136, 425–437 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-006-9042-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-006-9042-3