Exceptions in Nonderivative Value

Sid is pleased, let’s suppose. Is that good? Philosophers of value give three different responses to that question: Yes, No, and It depends. On the third of these views, the answer depends on what Sid is pleased by. If what pleases him is the fine weather, then Yes, his being pleased is good; but if it is someone else’s agony, No. On the second, Sid’s being pleased by the fine weather is good, and his being pleased by suffering is bad, but his just being pleased is “evaluatively inadequate”. However, the first view answers Yes. Sid’s being pleased by suffering is bad; but his being pleased is nonderivatively good, no matter what he is pleased by. This is the Mainstream View about the value of pleasure: Plato, Brentano, Sidgwick, Moore, Ewing, Frankena, Chisholm, Lemos and Hurka all hold it. In what follows, I argue that we should reject the Mainstream View and accept the third (It depends) view instead. I shall call this the Aristotelian Alternative, since Aristotle suggests it when he says “that not every pleasure is choiceworthy, and that some are choiceworthy in themselves”. Although, sometimes, a person’s being pleased is nonderivatively good, there are exceptions: elsewhere it is not good at all. The popularity of the Mainstream View is not surprising, because there are forcefullooking arguments for accepting it. There is an Argument from Intrinsic Goodness: when we consider the value of being pleased as it is in itself, independently of its relationship to anything else, it is good; so it is always good. There is an Argument from Crudeness: without the Mainstream View’s value-distinction, we get the wrong evaluations of many misdirected pleasures. And above all, there is an Argument from Explanation: when a