Here is how I would define axiological hedonism:
- Suffering, i.e. any negatively valenced experience, has intrinsic disvalue.
- Pleasure, i.e. any positively valenced experience, has intrinsic value.
- Nothing else has intrinsic value or disvalue.
The core of my take on axiology is that something has intrinsic (dis)value if and only if it literally is valuable. Intuitions are not evidence for intrinsic value.
I am convinced that suffering (and pleasure) fit this criterion. The disvalue of suffering is self-evident from introspection, i.e. from observing how suffering feels. The disvalue is inherent in the experience; it is not a matter of an evaluation done by me, or a desire for the suffering to stop felt by me (even though there is a strong correlation), or me having a certain attitude towards suffering.
That being said, I think a subjective judgment cannot be avoided when it comes to comparison of (different kinds of) suffering and pleasure. In the words of John Stuart Mill:
Neither pains nor pleasures are homogeneous, and pain is always heterogeneous with pleasure. What is there to decide whether a particular pleasure is worth purchasing at the cost of a particular pain, except the feelings and judgment of the experienced? (What Utilitarianism Is)
An experience does not inherently carry information about its commensurability with other experiences, but it does carry the basic information that its value is positive or negative. The basic variant of axiological hedonism is only concerned with the latter.
I'm a long time committed axiological hedonist and have never believed that pleasure was objectively commensurable with suffering, and I also strongly suspect (but could be wrong) that pleasures are heterogenous and therefore not all pleasureable experiences are commensurable with each other (and the same with suffering). I find this makes it easier to explain clear cases of ambiguity in ethics, because I think ambiguity is baked into the axiological ground truth. I do believe that some things are objectively good and some things are objectively bad, but there is no universally accessible objective utility function by which you can rank all things from most to least desirable. Recognizing this clarifies weird edge cases where one form or another of utilitarianism seems to lead to a bad result, like symmetric utilitarianism leading to the repugnant conclusion or negative utilitarianism implying that we should destroy the world. These seem to be examples where maximizing hedonistic utility functions leads to bad things happening, because they are.
Axiological hedonism follows logically from materialist metaphysics and empiricist epistemology. Good and bad are qualities of experiences rather than external events or objects, hence why reasonable people may disagree whether or not a song was good. One person's experience of listening to the song was good, while the other person's experience was bad. Projecting qualities like "good" and "bad" onto things besides experiences is to mistake the map for the territory. And if anyone doubts that pleasure is good then they just haven't experienced the pleasures I have.
We are mostly in agreement, though I don't quite understand what you meant by:
If suffering and pleasure are incommensurable, in what way are such outcomes bad?
I would also be interested in your response to the argument that suffering is inherently urgent, while pleasure does not have this quality. Imagine you are incapable of suffering, and you are currently experiencing pleasure. One could say that you would be indifferent to the ple... (read more)