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Value, Reason and Hedonism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2008

ALISON HILLS
ALISON HILLS*
Affiliation:
St John's College, [email protected]
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Abstract

It is widely believed that we always have reason to maximize the good. Utilitarianism and other consequentialist theories depend on this ‘teleological’ conception of value. Scanlon has argued that this view of value is not generally correct, but that it is most plausible with regard to the value of pleasure, and may even be true at least of that. But there are reasons to think that even the value of pleasure is not teleological.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , March 2008 , pp. 50 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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References

1 Scanlon, T. M., What We Owe To Each Other (Cambridge, Mass., 1998), p. 80.Google Scholar

2 Scanlon, What We Owe To Each Other, p. 87.

3 Scanlon, What We Owe To Each Other, p. 82.

4 Scanlon, What We Owe To each Other, p. 100.

5 Timmermann, Jens, ‘Too Much of a Good Thing? Another Paradox of Hedonism’, Analysis 65.2 (2005), pp. 144–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Timmermann, ‘Hedonism’, p. 146.

7 Timmermann, ‘Hedonism’, p. 144.

8 Timmermann, ‘Hedonism’, p. 144.

9 Timmermann considers a response to the new paradox which denies that we have reason to maximize pleasure, on the basis that we are not capable of appreciating goodness under all circumstances. He rejects this response, questioning whether it is right to separate the theory of value from the theory of what we ought to do; and whether it makes sense to say that pleasure is good, independently of its being the kind of experience that we appreciate. By contrast, if we deny that we have reason to maximize pleasure because pleasure is not a teleological value, we do not separate the theory of value from the theory of what we ought to do; and we do not claim that the value of pleasure is independent of our appreciation of it.

10 Timmermann, ‘Hedonism’, p. 144.