Introduction
This article has two aims. Firstly, it will defend an ‘attitudinal’ account of pleasure. That is, an account that explains pleasure for a subject in terms of a certain kind of de re desire which that subject has towards that experience. Secondly, in doing so, the article aims to further our understanding of unconscious desires, and what the subjects of such desires can be. As I will argue, understanding that we can have de re desires for experiences that we're not aware of provides us with the tools that attitudinal accounts of pleasure need to deal with some important counter-examples.
In Section 1 I'll do the necessary groundwork by explaining ‘phenomenological’ and ‘attitudinal’ theories of pleasure. In Section 2 I'll introduce a recent problem for attitudinal theories, put forward by Bramble: that of the existence of unknowable pleasurable (or unpleasant) experiences. Two attitudinal theorists so far, Heathwood and Feldman, have stepped up and denied the existence of such cases. In Section 3 I'll briefly describe these attempts and a rebuttal from Bramble. I'll show why neither side is successful in determining whether unknowable experiences provide a counter-example to attitudinal theories. A better option, as I'll argue in Section 4, is to show how attitudinal theories can allow for the existence of unknowable pleasurable experiences, if they exist. And that is through arguing for the existence of unconscious de re desires.
1. The set-up: attitudinal and phenomenological theories
Suppose I reflect upon an experience that seems pleasurable to me: drinking coffee. What is it about this experience that makes it feel so good to me? After all, I find it to be more than just a neutral collection of sensations, such as that of the coffee's taste, texture, smell; I also find those sensations to be something enjoyable. Furthermore, what is it that makes those sensations seem pleasurable to me, but not to some others who don't like coffee?
One way to divide up some theories about the nature of pleasure is to categorise them as either ‘phenomenological’ approaches or ‘attitudinal’ approaches. Theories of the first kind say that whatever it is that makes an experience a pleasurable one is something about the way the experience feels. For this article, the theory of this kind that I'm most interested in will be Bramble's version of the ‘distinctive feeling’ theory. According to the distinctive feeling theory,
for an experience to be pleasant (or unpleasant) is just for it to involve or contain a distinctive kind of feeling, one we might call ‘the feeling of pleasure itself’.Footnote 1
Included in the regular sensations of an experience, then, can be a specific and distinct feeling of pleasurableness or of unpleasantness. When I enjoy coffee, the sensations – the taste, the smell, the texture – are permeated with this additional feeling of pleasure. Someone who doesn't like coffee may have no such additional sensation as a part of their experience, but rather the same taste, smell, and texture may even be accompanied by a distinctive unpleasant feeling.
The second approach is an ‘attitudinal’ one, according to which the explanation comes not from the feelings themselves but from our attitudes towards those feelings. Heathwood formulates his version like this:
a sensation S, occurring at time t, is a sensory pleasure at t iff the subject of S desires, intrinsically and de re, at t, of S, that it be occurring at tFootnote 2
So when I sip the coffee, the sensations of taste, smell, and texture are each ones that I want to be having. And for my coffee-disliking counterpart, when they drink coffee they want not to be having those sensations.
It is clear from Heathwood's formulation that not just any desire will constitute pleasure. Because it will be an important focus of this article, I'll say more in particular about what it means for a desire to be de re in this context. It means that the desire for a particular experience to continue must be a desire for that particular experience to be the one that continues. Heathwood says the following:
one's desire must be genuinely about the very sensation one is getting – [. . .] Indeed, this does seem to capture the metaphor [. . .] about giving the sensation a thumbs up, as well as the talk of having a desire directed towards the particular sensation. One couldn't really give a sensation a thumbs up, in the sense intended, or have a desire directed towards the particular sensation, unless one were directly acquainted with the sensation.Footnote 3
Suppose I am enjoying another cup of coffee. The desire that would make this experience pleasurable for me is a desire for the experience of drinking the coffee to continue. But it can't just be the de dicto desire for whatever sensation I am having in virtue of drinking the coffee to continue. The desire must be for those particular sensations themselves to continue – the sensations that I am having at the time of the pleasurable experience.
2. A problem: unknowable pleasures
The existence of unknowable pleasures provides a supposed ‘decisive objection’ to attitudinal theories. In this section I'll begin by explaining the objection, and then why existing responses are unconvincing.
Supposedly, there are some experiences that subjects find pleasurable or unpleasant without realising, at the time, that they are either pleasurable or unpleasant.Footnote 4 The experiences might even be such that they wouldn't even notice it upon careful reflection at the time. For this reason Bramble refers to the objection as the ‘reflective blindness objection’, taking the term from Schwitzgebel.Footnote 5 Think about me, sipping coffee while editing. There are a wide range of things going on in my mind: I'm puzzled by a theory, and some difficult phrasing. There's a cool breeze on my feet, birds chirping outside, and the coffee at my lips tastes creamy and feels lukewarm. Some of these things I'll be aware of, at the time – they'll feature prominently in the foreground of my mind. Others I might not really be aware of at all. Perhaps because they're very insignificant sensations in a busy and distracted mind, or because they're occurring somewhere beneath the surface of my conscious thoughts. More still might be completely beyond my reach – such as a low humming sound from the light or a fluctuation in my mood that I just would not be able to notice at the time.
Some of the experiences that we're not aware of, argues Bramble, are experiences that are either pleasurable or unpleasant. He goes on to argue that such cases make the attitudinal theories implausible. One example he uses is this:
imagine being suddenly transported into a younger body. Isn't it likely you would learn immediately, due to the contrast, of unpleasant experiences you had been having in your older body that you had been completely unaware of at the time (say, ones due to physical pressures being put on your body as a result of aging)? Unpleasant experiences seem to be capable of sneaking up on us by starting in very small amounts or very low intensities and then slowly accumulating or intensifying over time. In this way, we can come to suffer a considerable amount without ever having any idea of it.Footnote 6
It's important to note a distinction here between mental states that a subject isn't aware of and mental states that a subject cannot be aware of. For advocates of this objection, it's not just that some pleasurable experiences might be ones that we're not attending to at a certain time, but some will be those that we could not attend to even if we tried. The mental states are not, as Williamson put it, ‘luminous’ to the subject.Footnote 7 For this reason, I will refer to the objection as one of ‘unknowable pleasures’, instead of, for example, ‘unknown pleasures’Footnote 8 or ‘unconscious pleasures’.Footnote 9
Bramble argues that such cases provide strong counter-examples to attitudinal theories of pleasure, because subjects cannot have desires for unknowable pleasures to continue, saying that ‘one can hardly have the relevant kind of attitude (be it disliking, not wanting, disvaluing, or whatever) toward an experience that one is entirely unaware of’.Footnote 10 At least, not the particular kinds of desire that such theorists think would constitute a pleasurable experience.Footnote 11 It's this that I'll argue against in Section 4. Before then, I will briefly analyse a response from two advocates of attitudinal accounts, Heathwood and Feldman, and argue that neither are successful.
3. A solution: knowable pleasures
Heathwood and Feldman both deny the force of Bramble's objection by denying the existence of fully unknowable pleasures, suggesting instead that they are in some way conscious or knowable. Heathwood makes this case by arguing for a distinction between different levels of unawareness: strong and weak. In cases of reflective blindness, a subject might not be aware of the sensation enough to notice it upon reflection, but they might be ‘weakly aware’: enough that they would notice the change if the sensation stopped.Footnote 12 Such weak awareness would be enough for the subject to have the required desire about those sensations. Feldman responds by simply denying that reflective blindness cases are cases of pleasurable or unpleasant experiences at all, going through some examples from Bramble and disagreeing with each.
It's not clear that these responses work in every instance, though, nor is it clear that Bramble successfully refutes them. He responds by giving two reasons to support unknowable pleasures: (1) later inference, and (2) objective physical signs.
First, he argues that sometimes, instead of noticing the cessation of an experience, and the difference between that experience stopping and our current one beginning (as Heathwood argued was the case when we are weakly unaware), we might instead reflect on facts about our current phenomenology and use that to infer a previous pleasure or displeasure.Footnote 13 It might not even be immediately after the sensations stop – we might realise it a while later. Presumably in a lot of cases we never become aware.
But whether we're (correctly) inferring that those experiences were unpleasant for us at the time seems to be exactly what's up for debate. The same is the case when Feldman and Bramble disagree on whether all of the cases of reflective blindness really are unpleasant or pleasurable for the person. The real crux of their disagreement, when it comes down to it, just seems to be about what a pleasurable or unpleasant experience is. And so, they're unable to make any progress.
Second, Bramble argues that there are physical signs that can show us we're experiencing pleasure,
That one's heart is beating faster than it should be, one has goose pimples on one's arm, one's face is growing redder, etc., might alone be evidence of certain phenomenology in one, including pleasures and pains (whether one is in a position to introspect this phenomenology or not).Footnote 14
Perhaps, then, we can trust those external signs over the conscious thoughts of the subject.
But this won't be enough, still, to make progress in the debate and persuade attitudinal theorists. Once again, whether these physical symptoms are reliable indicators of pleasure is exactly where the sides disagree. Appealing to these cases, in which there's disagreement about the intuitions, isn't enough.
4. A better solution: desires for the unknowable
After giving his argument against the possibility of unconscious pleasures, Feldman's concluding section points towards an alternative response. He asks:
if there can be unconscious pleasurable sensations, and there can be other unconscious attitudes, why can't there be unconscious attitudinal pleasure, displeasure and desire?Footnote 15
This turns out to be the best defence of attitudinal theories, and it is this that I will develop more fully in the rest of this article. The attitudinal theorist doesn't need to determine first whether we can have unknowable pleasures, they can skip straight to explaining how such pleasures could be accounted for.
In this section, I'll argue briefly in favour of the existence of unconscious desires. Next, I'll narrow my target, arguing specifically that the kinds of desires that are said to constitute pleasure – those that are de re – can not only be unconscious, but they can be directed towards the kinds of experiences that constitute the cases of reflective blindness.
It seems that not all of our desires at a certain time can be found floating through our consciousness, and appearing explicitly in our thoughts. My desire to be a respectable philosopher doesn't go away in the mornings when my thoughts are completely distracted by the warmth of my bed, and when the thoughts of being a respectable philosopher leave me as cold as the world outside it.Footnote 16 And if you wanted to rouse me you might say ‘look, you want to be a respectable philosopher, so you'd better get up!’ and not ‘well, I suppose you don't currently want to be a respectable philosopher, so I guess I have no way to argue with you.’Footnote 17
But it's not that Bramble thinks desires can't be unconscious, but rather that a problem seems to come from having unconscious de re desires. He says:
One cannot want de re that a feeling be occurring if one has no idea that it is occurring.Footnote 18
What is it about this kind of desire in particular that seems to pose such a problem? Why does a de re desire presume there to be some extra level of awareness?
The worry seems to be one, in part, about this kind of desire over-intellectualising an otherwise fairly basic mental state. Later in the above paragraph, Bramble says that ‘attitudinal theories require that we possess unbelievably vast unconscious cognitive processing powers.’Footnote 19 Perhaps by requiring there to be an extra desire on top of the phenomenology, the attitudinal theorist risks attributing too much complexity to an unknowable mental state.
Another recent example of this kind of criticism against attitudinal theories comes from Aydede (although without the specific concern with unknowable pleasures). He says:
it turns out that, according to attitudinal views, in order for a creature to be able to undergo pleasant sensations, the creature needs to be capable of forming thoughts about its own sensations, which is to say, it needs to be able to introspect its sensations. This is simply not credible.Footnote 20
Aydede, like Bramble and Heathwood, takes it that de re desires require some potential (at least) for introspection about the sensations being desired. If we take the ability to introspect, again, to be the same sort of thing that Heathwood understands by the sensations being luminous, and that Bramble means by talk of awareness, then the cases of unknowable pleasures that we've been looking at are a perfect exploration of this kind of criticism. Solving one should also give us a good answer to the other.
To address this worry, then, I need to take a closer look at what the attitudinal theorist really is committed to in terms of desire. Let's suppose, then, that there really are some unknowable pleasurable experiences, and compare what the attitudinal theorist must say about a case next to the phenomenological theorist. Let's say that Archibald is getting on in age, and has slowly accumulated aches in his joints that crept up on him in such small increments that he hasn't noticed them at all. When he goes about his day the aches in his knees are an unpleasant sensation, but he simply isn't aware of it – and would deny having the aches if asked. Nonetheless, the aches are there. Both theories will have to agree that the bare sensations themselves are there in the subject's mind on some level, even if they're unknown, unknowable, unconscious, etc. After all, a person can't have an unpleasant sensation if there isn't a sensation there to be unpleasant.
But neither can you have an unpleasant sensation without it being unpleasant, and so both theories will also have to agree that there's something more about this particular sensation that makes it unpleasant. Its unpleasantness is also there. Compare this to having the sensation alone and it not being unpleasant. Sometimes we can experience the same bare sensations and they'll be unpleasant, sometimes we can have them and they'll be pleasant, sometimes they'll be neither. I might have the same bare sensations in my knee that I used to have and no longer find them unpleasant, for example. I might have the same bare sensations now of what broccoli tastes like as I used to have when I was young, but now I find those sensations delightful and as a child I found them to be torturously unpleasant.
The theories do differ in their explanations of what that unpleasantness comprises. For the attitudinal theorist, that additional component of unpleasantness just is a kind of desire – one that, I argue, can be unconscious just as much as the unpleasantness can be. But the attitudinal theorist isn't alone in having to add something onto the sensation – the phenomenological theorist also has to say something else is there in virtue of which the sensation is unpleasant. For Bramble it's something that can be found in the sensation. The sensation, when it's unpleasant, is ‘permeated’ by the distinct feeling of unpleasantness.Footnote 21 And when it's pleasurable, it's permeated by the distinctive feeling of pleasure.
So we've established that on both accounts there need to be sensations, and that there is something additional to those sensations in virtue of which they're pleasurable or unpleasant. Why, then, is the pleasantness and unpleasantness of the attitudinal theory more problematic, why does it require more of our minds than the phenomenologist requires?
Well, the phenomenologist doesn't require much. And the thing they do require isn't of a different type from what's already there. The distinctive feeling is just another feeling, one that's there whether or not it's ‘available’ to us or prominent enough for us to notice upon a careful reflection or introspection.
From here, I'll make a number of points in support of the attitudinal theory's de re desire not being ‘too much’ to expect for an unknowable experience either. My first point I've already made – that the attitudinal theory doesn't require an additional number of parts, compared to the alternative. Where the attitudinal theorist requires the presence of a desire, the distinctive feeling theorist still requires a distinctive feeling.
My second point defends the type of additional part. Our de re desires, too, can be very simple. They don't require complex psychological machinery, or detailed conceptual frameworks. In describing his objection, Aydede says: ‘Many animals that we intuitively take to be capable of having affective sensory experiences, as well as young infants, don't have the capacity to think (have desires) about their own sensations.’Footnote 22 But what do they have desires for, if not that? Think about a small child who's bumped their head. They have a new and sudden phenomenology of the way the impact feels to them. What's so complicated about that child wanting these new feelings to stop? Think of an animal enjoying a snack and giving a kind of mental ‘thumbs up’, as Heathwood put it, towards the sensations that they're enjoying, or who wants the feeling of fear to go away when they're at the vet's. There doesn't seem to be any extra complex conceptual schema required for a subject to have a desire directed towards a mental state than one directed towards, say, the food itself or the objects of which they're afraid. What could be easier to have an intentional state towards than the phenomena or sensations or feelings? And these desires are exactly the kinds of de re desires that the attitudinal theorist needs to be able to explain those experiences as being pleasurable or unpleasant.
This brings me to my third point: that if anything, it seems like the de re nature of the pleasure or displeasure means that there is even less worry about over-intellectualisation. After all, there's no need for more complex concepts. If I'm enjoying the ice cream I don't need to know that it's ice cream, I don't need to know what flavour it is, or how long it will last. The only thing I need to have a desire about is the sensations themselves that I am experiencing at the time.
Perhaps this works in terms of ice cream, but people are usually aware of ice cream when they're eating it. So, what about cases of reflective blindness? Well, a proper understanding of the advantages of the de re nature of desire also gives us a solution to some supposed counter-examples here, ones where we don't have the proper concepts for or knowledge of what we're really experiencing. Take the example of depression – a kind of unpleasantness that a subject can suffer from for years without knowing that they're depressed. It seems right that the subject cannot have a de dicto desire to stop being depressed, but they can still have a de re one. After all, if there are still sensations that the subject is aware of – sensations, for example, of simply getting out of bed or going to work – and the subject finds those unpleasant because of the way that depression has tinted them, then that's enough for the attitudinal theorist to point at as an object of the desire. The subject can de re desire those experiences to stop, because those experiences are the ones with which they are familiar.Footnote 23 The subject is not aware – or perhaps even capable of being aware (at the time) – of their depression, but they are likely to be conscious and aware of the way in which it manifests: through reduced enjoyment of things the subject would normally enjoy, through feelings of alienation, through not wanting to get out of bed, etc.
Fourth, and finally, I will say that our de re desires just need not be something knowable and conscious to us, nor directed towards sensations that are. It's certainly not the case that our desires generally are knowable to us, and there's nothing special about de re desires for sensations that changes that. Remember our direct comparison of Archibald above, and what his unconscious discomfort would feel like according to attitudinal and phenomenological accounts. Even the phenomenological theorist agrees that the sensations themselves, and the unpleasantness, are both there in some capacity, even though Bramble describes those sensations as being ‘unavailable’. The fact that the desire is de re doesn't mean that it needs to, itself, be something that we're aware of on any kind of higher level, nor does it mean that it needs to be directed towards something we're aware of. If the unpleasantness of Archibald's ache is there, then he can – consciously or not, knowing about it or not knowing about it – want it to stop.
Whether or not cases of reflective blindness are actually cases of sensory pleasure is still up for grabs. But if there are such cases, the attitudinal theorist can account for them.
Conclusion
I've argued for the (possible) existence of unconscious de re desires aimed at unknowable mental states. Furthermore, I hope to have shown that the possibility of such desires provides the attitudinal theorist with their best defence against supposed ‘reflective blindness’ counter-examples.
I began by setting up two possible explanations for what makes a sensation a pleasurable (or an unpleasant) one. Attitudinal theories aim to explain pleasurableness in terms of a desire, where phenomenological accounts aim to explain it in terms of something about the feeling of the sensation itself.
Although there were worries that the specific kind of desire required for pleasure and unpleasant experiences was too complex to be unconscious and directed towards the unknowable, I argued that such worries are unfounded. I gave four reasons for this: (1) the additional desire didn't mean there would be an additional number of parts in an explanation of pleasure, since the distinctive feeling theory also requires a distinctive (pleasurable) feeling, (2) de re desires can be very basic mental states, (3) de re desires require even less complexity than de dicto desires, and (4) simply that we have no more reason to think de re desires need to be knowable and conscious than for any other kind of desire.
As well as providing a sturdy defence of attitudinal accounts of pleasure, I hope that this article has done some work in developing our understanding of unconscious states generally, and of giving desire-based theories a good tool to answer similar objections about how they might over-intellectualise other matters. Desire-based theories of normativity, of reasons, and of well-being, might benefit here too.Footnote 24
