GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

ETHICAL THEORY SURVEYED 4! I
and do not happen to be wanting chocolates, my cognition
of the chocolates will probably be characterized by a
neutral hedonic tone; if I am badly in need of chocolates
but am unable to pay for them, it is probable t&at the
hedonic tone which characterizes my cognition will be
disagreeable. If9 however, I buy them and taste them and
enjoy them, I shall be cognizing the chocolates pleasurably.
Now it seems improbable that we lever have an
experience which has no qualities except its hedonic ones:
it seems unlikely, that is to say, that we ever have an
experience which is one of pure pleasure or of pure pain;
for all our experiences, if I am right, are experiences of
something, and it is that of which they are experiences
which gives them their distinctive non-hedonic qualities.
Thus when I say that an experience of excessive drinking,
or of drug-taking, is pleasant but shameful, what I mean, if
this analysis is right, is that I like it for its hedonic
qualities, although I dislike it for its non-hedonic qualities;
if I say that so-and-so is virtuous but disagreeable, I
mean that the non-hedonic qualities which characterize
my cognition of so-and-so are respectful,
but that the
hedonic qualities are unpleasant. This is probably what
Mill meant by his ambiguous distinction between higher
and lower pleasures. 1 If the foregoing is right, all
hedonic qualities are qualitatively the same; they differ
only in degree. The difference between die so-called
higher and lower pleasures is, therefore, a difference^
between the non-hedonic qualities that characterize two
states of mind which may be the same in respect of
their hedonic qualities. To revert to the case <
lates, we should not say, on this view, that
a chocolate, I am desiring pleasure,
is the characteristic experience of <
happens to have a pleasant hedonic
aim purely at pleasure; what we
which the hedonist would say that
own pleasure, is the enjoyment of a
* See Chapter IX, p, 330.^