Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • Nagel Section 8.5

    Uploaded by

    LSW
    10 views7 pages

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    PDF or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    Report this Document

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    10 views7 pages

    Nagel Section 8.5

    Uploaded by

    LSW

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    of 7
    the values of strange communities, will prove objectively inaccessible, To take an example in our midst: people who want to be able to run twenty-six miles without stopping are not exactly irational, but their reasons can be ‘understood only from the perspective of a value system that some find alien to the point of unintelligibility. A correct objective view will have « allow for such pockets of unassimilable subjectivity, which need not clash with objective principles but won't be affirmed by them either. Many aspects of personal taste will come in this category if, as T think, they caxnot all be brought under a general hedonistic principle. But the most difficult and interesting problems of accommodation appear where objectivity can be employed as a standard, and we have to decide how. Some of the problems are these: To what extent should an objective view admit extemal values? To what extent should it admit agent-neutral values? ‘To what extent should reasons to respect the interests of others take an agent- relative form? To what extent is it legitimate for each person to give priority to his own interests or to the interests of those close to him? These are all ‘questions about the proper form of generality for different kinds of practical reasoning, and the proper relation between objective principles and the deliberations of individual agents. ‘We shall return to some of them later, but a great deal will b= left out. 1 shall concentrate on the proper form of values or reasons which depend on interests or desires. They can be objectified in more than one way, and I believe different forms of objectification are appropriate for different cases. 5. Pleasure and Pain 1, however, with a case for which I think the solution is clear: physical pleasure and pain, comfort and discomfort—the pleasures of food, drink, sleep, sex, warmth, and ease; the pains of injury, sickness, hunger, thirst, cold, and exhaustion. Let me leave out of consideration mild pleasures ‘and pains that we don’t care about much, and concentrate on those sensory experiences that we strongly—perhaps intensely—like or dislike. ! am not an ethical hedonist, but I think pleasure and pain are very important, and that they provide a clearer case for a certain kind of objective value than preferences and desires, which will be discussed later on. I shall defend the ‘unsurprising claim that sensory pleasure is good and pain bad, no matter whose they are, The point of the exercise is to see how the pressures of objectification operate in a simple case. Physical pleasure and pain do not usually depend on activities or desires which themselves raise questions of justification and value. They are just sensory experiences in relation to which we are fairly passive, but toward which we feel involuntary desire or aversion. Almost everyone takes the avoldance of his own pain and the promotion of his own pleasure as subjective reasons for action in a faitly simple way; they are not backed up by any further reasons. On the other hand if someone pursues pain or avoids pleasure, either its as a means to some end or its backed up by dark reasons like guilt or sexual masochism, What sort of general value, if any, aught to be assigned to pleasure and pain when we consider these facts from an objective standpoint? What kind of judgment can we reasonably make

    You might also like