Richard Warner, Sean Stidd, and Steven Wagner

Enjoyment

Enjoyment

Richard Warner, Sean Stidd, and Steven Wagner

Enjoyment is an intellectual height philosophers have failed to scale. The path is plain. We must account for two facts: we feel enjoyment, and we appeal to it in justifying and explaining action. The problem is that philosophers routinely give pride of place to one fact while regulating the other to a secondary role, if they give it any significant role at all. This is unfortunate and surprising. It is unfortunate that we lack an adequate account of a concept that plays a central role in evaluation and practical reasoning. It is surprising that a central concept should go for so long so inadequately analyzed. We seek to remedy this lack.

Our central idea is that enjoyment consists in a causal harmony: an activity or experience causes you desire itand simultaneously causes you to believe that that desire is satisfied.[1] To capture the feeling of enjoyment, we require that the desire befelt and the belief,occurrent. We address the justificatory/explanatory aspect by noting that the belief/desire pairis typically (but importantly not always) a reason to act in ways that ensure the existence or continuance of the enjoyed experience or activity.

We construct our accountby completing the following biconditional:

x enjoys φ if and only if ... ,

whereφ is an individual, non-repeatable experience or activity. Our talk of experiences and activities is just a convenient way to describe the range of items that is our primary concern. We merely have in mind the rough and ready distinction enshrined in ordinary talk and thought. Even so, the restriction of values of ‘φ’ to experiences and activities may still seem problematic since we obviously enjoy things that are not experiences and activities: wine and works of art, for example. But, of course, you can enjoy wine only if you taste it, andthe painting, only if you look at it. In general, where y is something other than an experience or activity, you enjoy y if and only if you enjoyφ, where φ is a suitable experience or activity involving y.

Desire, Belief, and Quantification

To state our account, we need toquantifying over individuals and properties in desire and belief contexts. To this end, we adopt the standard Quineanconvention. Where ‘[’ and ‘]’ are the left and right corner quotes, a singular term [t] may be substituted salvaveritatefor a term [t'] in the context [...desires (believes), of t, that . . .] given the true identity [t = t’]. We need one further refinement. Imagine you are enjoying the experience of tasting bittersweet chocolate. The bitter sweetness pervades a gustatory field that captures your attention, and it is this bitter sweetness you desire. We will express this by saying that you desire, of the experience, under the feature bittersweet, that it should occur. A similar point holds for activities.

We adopt the same conventions for belief for the same reason. When one of believes that a particular ongoing experience or activity realizes a certain array of features, we will say that one believes, of the experience or activity, under that array, that it is occurring.

Desire and the Need for More

We take it for granted that you enjoy φ only if you desire to have or doφ.[2] We understand ‘desire’ in the broadest possible sense to include such diverse sources of motivation as values, ideals, needs, commitments, personal loyalties, and patterns of emotional reaction.[3]

It is clearly not a sufficient condition for enjoying φ that you desire to φ. Suppose you desire to undergo dental treatment. In our canonical form: you desire, of your current experience, under the feature needed dental treatment, that it should occur. However, dental treatment is for you an ordeal of discomfort and anxiety. You desire to undergo your current experience only as a means to the end of adequate dental health, and you most certainly do not enjoy the experience. The obvious response is to distinguish between desiring something for its own sake and desiring something only as a means to an end.To desire that p for its own sake is to desire that p and not to desire it merely for the sake of some other end q.[4] To desire that p merely for the sake of q is to desire that p, and desire that q, where one would not desire that p if one did not desire that q or believe that realizing p was a means to realizing q.[5]

Simplicity argues for the following account: one enjoys φ under A if and only if one φ’s, and one desires, of φ, under A, that it should occur for its own sake.[6] The condition is not sufficient, however, as the following example shows.[7] You have never been deep-sea fishing, but have long had a desire to do so for its own sake, and are now in fact engaged in that very activity, and you of course believe that you are. That belief combines with your standing desire to go deep sea fishing to yield the desire, of your present activity, under deep-sea fishing, that it occur for its own sake. You are not, however, enjoying the activity under the feature deep-sea fishing. You find the activity distasteful. You get seasick; you are disgusted by the crowded, noisy deck from which you must fish; you are repelled by the necessity of barehandedly catching the small, live fish used for bait, and you are even more repelled by the fact that, once you have succeeded in grabbing the bait, you have to impale the struggling fish by the gills on your hook. But your desire to fish survives this initial shock, and you continue to fish even though you admit to yourself that you are not enjoying it. You only continue to fish in the hope that you will enjoy it. In the present, however, your desire to fish is waning. It persists, but it persists despite your reactions, and it is only the hope that things will change that keeps it alive.

It easy to construct similar examples. You just need (1) a preexisting desire to have a type of experience or engage in a a type of activity for its own sake; (2) the belief, of a particular instance of the experience or activity, under an array of features A, that it is now occurring; and (3) the resulting desire, of the experience or activity, under A, that it should occur for its own sake, where (4) the desire in (3) persists for a while in spite of, not because of the particular experience or activity. These examples to show that it is not sufficient to count as enjoying φ, under A that one φ’s and desires, of φ, under A, that it occur for its own sake. The examples are convincing because the relevant desire persists, in spite of, not because of, the experience or activity.

Transforming this feature into its opposite transforms the example into one of enjoyment, and generalizing from transformation yields an account of enjoyment. Thus: suppose a large fish suddenly strikes your line, and all of your attention is immediately focused on the fight to land it. Your seasick feeling, your impinging awareness of the crowded deck, and your qualms about catching the live bait are instantly eclipsed by the excitement of the fight; moreover, after you have landed the fish, you find that you are no longer seasick. The deck no longer seems inhospitably crowded but full of cooperative people who are congratulating you on your catch. Even catching and hooking the live bait now seems just one of those necessities which disquiet only the uninitiated. You find now that you want to fish not in spite of, butbecauseof your experiences. Youare—as you now realize—enjoying it.

We interpret the “not in spite of, but because of” causally. This appeal to causation is to be understood in the context of everyday causal explanations. The identification of causes in such explanations is highly pragmatic. For example, when eight-year-old Sally asks her mother why the mill wheel turns, her mother replies that the wheel turns because the watertrikes it. When Sally, now an undergraduate, is working on a similar homework problem for her Physics course, her answer includes a calculation of the friction in the mill’s system. With causation so understood, we suggest that after the large fish strikes your line, but not before, there is an array of features A meeting these conditions: your activity of deep-sea fishing causes you to believe, of that activity, under A, that it is occurring; and, to desire, of that activity, under A, that it should occur. Thus, the activity not only causes you to desire it for its own sake, it also ensures the—at least apparent—satisfaction of that desire by causing you believe that you are getting exactly what you want.

Generalizing, we have

x enjoys φ under A if and only if

(1) xφ’s;

(2) x'sφing causes x

(a) to believe, of φ, under A, that it occurs, and

(b) to desire, of φ, under A, that it occur for its own sake.[8]

Note that (b) reads “occur” not “continue to occur.” To see why, consider enjoying writing the last word of an essay. Writing the last word is necessarily an activity that occurs in a relatively short time span; if it takes a year for one to “write the last word,” then whatever one is doing, it is not, in any normal understanding of the phrase, writing the last word. Thus, when one enjoys writing the last word, one does not desire the impossible: that one’s writing the word should continue beyond writing the last word; one simply desires that it happen.

Enjoyment and Reasons for Action

We explain the explanatory-justificatory aspect of enjoyment by focusing on the “of φ, under A” belief/desire pair: such pairs are typically reasons to have or do φ. But isn’t this already to take a wrong step? When φ is an activity, it makes sense to think of the belief/desire pair as a reason to φ, but how are we to understand ‘reason to φ’ when φ is an experience? Reasons for action guide our voluntary choices, but—so the objection goes—we do not choose our experiences, we just have them. It is of course just false that we do not choose our experiences. Having an experience is typically under your voluntary control in two ways: you may be able to determine both whether it occurs and how long it endures. You can control whether you have the experience of tasting the wine by taking or not taking a sip, and you can control the duration of your taste experience by how deeply you drink. By ‘a reason to have an experience’, we mean a reason to exercise control in one of the above ways.

But even if reason for action is the right concept, haven’t we chosen the wrong belief/desire combination? If we want to illuminate the explanatory/justificatory dimension of enjoyment, shouldn’t we be focusing on the general desire for enjoyment and the various expectation that arise that one will enjoy some particular experience or activity φ? That would be mistake. To explain reason-providing role of the desire for enjoyment/expectation of enjoying φ, we need to appeal to the reason-providing role of the “of φ, under A” belief/desire pair involved in the enjoyment itself. To explain why, we need an account of reasons for action. We need the account in any case; otherwise, our suggestion that the belief/desire pairs are typically reason is a mere gesture toward a possible explanation of the explanatory/justificatory aspect of enjoyment. We sketch the account we have in mind, beginning with the observation that ‘reason for action’is ambiguous.

Reasons may be belief/desire pairs that motivate a particular person to act in a certain way, and that the person takes to justify, at least to some degree, acting in that way. We label such reasons first-person reasons. A first-person reasonfor a person to perform some action A is a belief/desire pair that plays, or in appropriate circumstances would play, a certain role for that person in motivating and justifying doing A. First-person reasons contrast with reasons that—even if they do not do so—should motivate a person to perform an action, and that the person should regard as providing at least some degree of justification for doing so. We will call such reasons third-person reasons. Third-person reasons may be reasons for a particular person, or group of persons, or all persons.[9]

We focus on first-person reasons. We take it to be clear that there is a characteristic motivational-justificatory role is associated with first-person reasons. We will not offer any further description of that role, except for the following. We assume that a belief/desire pair is a first-person reason for one to perform an action φ only if one believes it provides (at least some degree of) justification for doing φ. We guide our actions by the light of the justifications we take our first-person reasons to provide. We may lament that the light is weak, all too subject to distorting factors such as prejudice, and that such light as it does give is too frequently disregarded, but it is the light by which we proceed nonetheless.

The link between first-person reasons and justification explains why we described the “of φ, under A” belief/desire pairs astypically reasons to have or do φ. The “typically”is required because you can enjoy φ when the relevant belief/desire pair does not serve as a reason. A detailed canvassing of the distinction between the two cases would illuminate the reasons for action dimension of enjoyment. Here we consider just one example to show why the belief/desire pairs do not always function as first-person reasons.

Thomas Gouge’s intensely religious upbringing instilled in him the conviction that a man should not feel erotic desire for another man. The adolescent Gouge nonetheless enjoys looking at his best friend under an array of features A indicative of sexual attraction. Thus, in terms of the definition of enjoyment, he believes, of his experience of looking at his friend, under A, that it is occurring, and he desires, of the experience, under A, that it should occur for its own sake. Gouge’s religious convictions, however, lead him to conclude that the belief/desire pair does not provideeven the most miniscule degree of justification for looking in a sexual way at his friend; he views the desire as an alien invader to be resisted and destroyed, not a citizen of the realm of desires capable of providing him with a justification for action. Even though the relevant belief/desire pair does not serve as a first-person reason for Gouge, he does enjoy looking at his friend in a sexual way. He regards the enjoyment in the same way in regards its constituent belief/desire: a temptation Satan has placed in his path. But he enjoys nonetheless.

The example shows why we should reject the plausible view that the desire for enjoyment and the expectation that you will enjoy φ under A is always a first-person reason to φ. Unless you expect the relevant “of φ, under A” belief/desire pair involved in an enjoyment of φ to function as a first-person reason, the desire to enjoy and the expectation of enjoyment will not combine to serve as a first-person reason.

Call the enjoyments in which the belief/desire pair serves as a first-person reason first-person-reason enjoyments. They figure prominently in our lives because what is of actions generally is true of our enjoyment-seeking actions: we try to perform those for which we find some at least some degree of justification in our belief/desire pairs. First-person-reason enjoyments merit detailed investigation, but our goal is to illustrate how our account combines and explains both the felt and reason-for-action aspects of enjoyment. Accordingly, we turn to enjoyment as a feeling.

In the definition of enjoyment that we gave earlier, we did not require that the desire be felt or that the belief be occurrent. The consequence is that the definition states a necessary but not a sufficient condition. To explain why, we first need to explain what we mean by a felt desire and an occurrent belief. We do so by examples.

Felt Desire and Occurrent Belief

Felt desire. Imagine quenching a demanding thirst with a drink of water. Before you drink, you desire, of your future experience φ of drinking the water, under quenching your thirst, that it should occur for its own sake; moreover, you feel the desire as an insistent, attention-riveting craving to drink. When you drink, you continue to desire, of your now presently occurring experience φ, under quenching your thirst, that it should occur.

Occurrent belief. Occurent beliefs are those beliefs present to consciousness in more or less the way your belief that you are now reading this sentence is currently before your mind. Occurrent beliefs vary greatly in the way they are present to consciousness, and the variation accounts in part for the variations in the feeling of enjoyment. Imagine your belief that you are experiencing the taste of the Kung Pao Chicken is before your mind as a consciousness-gripping complex of sensations. Compare the belief that you are experiencing understanding, insight, and affirmation as you read the lines from Faust. The belief is before your mind with an assent-compelling clarity, an experience that differs in feeling from the consciousness-gripping sensations that comprise the Kung Pao Chicken belief. Like felt desires, occurrent beliefs also vary in intensity. Suppose, for example, that early in the day you receive some good news—that you do not need the operation that your doctor first thought you would. For the rest of the day, the belief that the operation is unnecessary lingers on the periphery of self-consciousness. Although it is not always before your mind in the way that your belief that you are now reading this sentence is currently before your mind, you nonetheless have it "in mind" all day. It contrasts in this way with your belief, for example, that your grandmother was not married to Mussolini. You are never, during the entire day, aware even in the slightest degree of that belief.