A Dialectic of Morals—II

Extract

TO MAKE a fresh start, let us ask about the meaning of pleasure as a criterion of preference. Precisely what does the student mean when he says that he prefers A to B because A pleases and B displeases, or because A pleases him more than B?

The student may be somewhat bewildered by this question, for he has already told us that such judgments as “A pleases me more than B” are equivalent to saying “I like A more than B.” In fact, he confesses, much of the discussion we have had so far has seemed to him to consist in making verbal substitutions of this sort. We started out by admitting that the fact of preference was equivalent to the judgment of “A-better-than-B-for-me” and that in turn became equivalent to two other forms of statement: “A pleases me more than B” and “I like A more than B.” What has been gained by saying the same thing over and over again in different words? Pleasure and displeasure, it would seem, do not explain the fact of preference; far from explaining it, the fact of being pleased (or displeased) seems to be identical with the fact of preferring (or not preferring).

One thing the student says is false, but one thing is true. The falsity arises from his failure to remember that something was gained by introducing the notion of pleasure into our discussion.