Running head: KAGAN VERSUS FELDMAN 1

Kagan Versus Feldman:

A Dispute Over the Deceived Businessman Objection to Hedonism
James Bain
University of Alabama
















KAGAN VERSUS FELDMAN 2

Kagan Versus Feldman
What makes a persons life go well? Does living a life full of instances in which you get
what you want count as a good life? Is it one that is filled with more pleasures than pains? Or
perhaps, it is simply enjoying what happens to you during your life that suffices? One of the
more common approaches to the answer to these questions lies with the concept of hedonism.
Hedonism, in its most basic form, is the view that pleasure is the ultimate good. If a life contains
more pleasures than pains, according to hedonism, that life is good, period. Yet, a principle
about the goodness of lives based on merely pleasures, intuitively, seems to leave out some
aspects of a life that we may regard as significant. Shelly Kagan (1994), in his paper Me and
My Life, brings to light one of these said featuresnamely, that what an agent believes to be
the case (in regards to the agents life) actually is the case. While Kagan sees this reality of a
life as troubling for any hedonist, Fred Feldman (2002), in his paper The Good Life: A Defense
of Attitudinal Hedonism, proposes, a reformulation to hedonism that Feldman sees as a solution
to this problem. As such, this paper will discuss the dispute that arises in Feldmans (2002) The
Good Life: A Defense of Attitudinal Hedonism towards Kagans (1994) objection to hedonism
mentioned in his paper Me and My Life. Accordingly, the structure of this paper will be as
follows: I will present Kagans objection to hedonism and explain his reasoning behind it. I will
then present Feldmans solution to this objection, and discuss its soundness. Lastly, however, I
will present a puzzling concern for Feldmans view involving false pains and consider how
Feldman may respond to this concern.
Hedonism
Kagans (1994) objection to hedonism is aimed at a basic version of the theory. For
simplicity, however, I will use a slightly modified formulation of hedonism, one based on Justin
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Klocksiems notes for his Fall 2011 intrinsic value class. When I refer to hedonism, I will be
referring to the following formulation:
i. Episodes of pleasure are intrinsically good; episodes of pain are intrinsically bad.
ii. The intrinsic value of an episode of pleasure, e, is equal to the number of hedons of
pleasure contained in e; the intrinsic value of an episode of pain is equal to the number of
dolors of pain it contains multiplied by negative 1.
iii. The intrinsic value of a state of affairs or a life is equal to the sum of the intrinsic values
of all the episodes of pleasure and pain contained within that state of affairs or life.
The terms hedon and dolor are simply the units of measurement in a hedonistic calculation,
hedons for pleasures and dolors for pain. Any episode of pleasure contains a certain number of
hedons. Likewise, any episode of pain contains a certain number of dolors. For example, my trip
to the zoo may contain 5 hedons of pleasure, +5h. Likewise, getting attack by a gorilla while at
the zoo may contain 20 dolors of pain, -20d. The state of affairs in which I go to the zoo can be
expressed as: 5h - 20d = -15d. Therefore, the intrinsic value of the state of affairs in which I go
the zoo has a net total of 15 units of pain. According to hedonism, and perhaps most ethical
theories, my trip to the zoo was not a good thing. Now, if my life contains numerous amounts of
these intrinsically bad trips to the zoo, and not many episodes of pleasure, (so that the sum of all
of my episodes of pleasures and pains is less than 0) then my entire life is going to turn out to not
be a good life.
Deceived Businessman
Shelly Kagan (1994) takes hedonism to be a certain type of ethical theory. One that
derives the value of an agents life from the types of mental states the agent possesses. Kagan
(1994) sees hedonism as classifying where the agent will land on the well-being scale as a matter
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of how much pleasure is contained in the agents mental states. Restricting the value of an
agents life to merely how pleasant the agents mental states are is, according to Kagan (1994),
problematic. Kagan (1994) demonstrates this problem in his example of the deceived
businessman, Kagan asks us to,
Imagine a man who dies contented, thinking he has achieved everything he wanted in
life: his wife and family love him, he is a respected member of the community, and he
has founded a successful business. Or so he thinks. In reality, however, he has been
completely deceived: his wife cheated on him, his daughter and son were only nice to
him so that they would be able to borrow the car, the other members of the community
only pretended to respect him for the sake of the charitable contributions he sometimes
made, and his business partner has been embezzling funds from the company which will
soon go bankrupt. (p. 311)
It seems that no one would choose to live a life like that of the deceived businessman. His life
did not go well. In fact, it could be considered a bad life, and at the very least not an ideal one.
However, Kagan (1994) contends that this is the conclusion that hedonism must arrive at.
Holding that the businessmans life of deception is, in fact, a good life. To see how Kagan come
to this conclusion, we only need to refer back to our formulation of hedonism. The businessman
experiences an immense number of episodes of pleasure. The businessmans family loves him
an episode of pleasure, he is respected in his communityan episode of pleasure, etc. The
businessman receives many hedons of pleasure and little to no dolors of pain from each of these
states of affairs. Clause ii states that the intrinsic value of each of these episodes of pleasure is
equal to the number of hedons of pleasure contained in the episode. Therefore, the intrinsic value
of most of the states of affairs in the businessmans life has a positive number attached to them.
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Furthermore, clause iii states that the intrinsic value of the businessmans life is equal to the sum
of the intrinsic values of all the episodes of pleasure and pain contained in his life. And since the
businessman died contented, it is easy to imagine his life containing fewer amounts of episodes
of pain than episodes of pleasure. Hedonism, as formulated, assigns a positive number to the
intrinsic value of the businessmans life, and therefore the businessman lived a good life. Kagan
(1994) does not see this conclusion as sound and, consequently, rejects hedonism.
One may dispute this and reply that the deceived businessman, despite the deception,
lived a good life. Well, we can simply imagine that the deceived businessman has a brother, the
undeceived businessman. The undeceived businessmans life is almost exactly like that of his
brother. His life is filled with the same instances of pleasure and pain. The only difference being
that what the undeceived businessman believes to be the case about the relationships in his life
actually is the case. The way the undecided businessman judges all the people in his life to feel
about him actually is the way they feel about him. Now, if we were to rank the two
businessmans lives, surely, we would say that the undeceived businessmans life is better. This
is how Kagan would regard the two lives. The deceived businessman thought he was respected
and loved, nonetheless the episodes of pleasure he received from the sates of affairs is
indistinguishable from that of his brother. Hedonism, which restricts itself to the pleasantness of
the businessmens mental states, would be forced to rank the two live as being equal in value.
Intuitively, this is not an appropriate response for it is clear that the businessmens lives do not
have the same value. The hedonist, instead of having to concede defeat altogether, may be able
to respond to Kagans objection. One such hedonist that believes he can solve this problem for
hedonism is Fred Feldman (2002), and I will now turn the attention of this paper to Feldmans
response to Kagans deceived businessman objection.
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Feldmans Response
From earlier, we know that Kagans (1994) deceived businessman objection is
directed towards a more basic conception of hedonism (one even more basic than the formulation
I proposed for this paper). Despite this, Fred Feldman (2002) takes the liberty of applying
Kagans objection towards his version of hedonism. As such, it will be necessary to discuss
Feldmans version of hedonism, and we will then be in a position to apply the deceived
businessman objection to it.
Intrinsic Attitudinal Hedonism
Feldmans (2004) version of hedonism takes enjoyment as the key element in the
goodness of a life. He is clear to point out that this enjoyment is not a sensory feeling but rather a
type of attitude, like that of hope or fear. You do not have a sensory experience of fear. You are
not literally feeling fear, what is actually happening, is that you are having the conscious
awareness of being fearful. Similarly, enjoyment is the experience of enjoying a state of affairs.
Say an agent is enjoying a state of affairs, such as writing a philosophy paper. Feldman (2002)
describes this type of enjoyment (one in which an agent enjoys a state of affairs) as: the agent is
taking attitudinal pleasure in the state of affairs (p. 314). If an agent is enjoying the state of
affairs that the agent is currently involved in, the agent is experiencing attitudinal pleasure in that
state of affairs. Likewise, if the agent is not enjoying the current state of affairs, then the agent is
experiencing the opposite of attitudinal pleasureattitudinal pain (Feldman, 2002).
Furthermore, Feldman (2002) describes the amount of attitudinal pleasure or pain that an
agent may experience. He explains that the intensity and duration of the episode of pleasure
determines how attitudinally pleased the agent is. We can assign a numerical value to each
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episode. All things being equal, the more intense the pleasure, the higher the value of the
attitudinally pleasure. An analogous situation occurs with regards to the duration of the episode.
If the duration is longer, the value of the attitudinal pleasure is higher (Feldman, 2002). In order
to prevent any type of double counting that may arise when evaluating a state of affairs, Feldman
(2002) only assigns value to intrinsic attitudinal pleasures, or pains. He describes intrinsic
pleasure, or pain as pleasure or pain taken in thing for it own sake (p. 612). For example,
suppose an agent would be pleased to degree +10 to have a glass of water. The agent is also
pleased to degree +10 that there are cups in the cabinet, another +10 degrees of pleasure that the
cups are clean. The agent also finds +10 degrees of pleasure in the fact that there are freshly
frozen ice cubes in the freezer to cool down his glass of water. Feldman (2002) does not see it as
plausible to give the agent a score +40 for the satisfaction of his thirst. The agent is not pleased
about the fact that there are cups in the cabinet itself, but simply as means to the pleasure of
satisfying her thirst. Consequently, Feldman (2002) only recognizes the end of these pleasure
chains as being relevant for our purposes. The intrinsic pleasure in this case would be the
pleasure the agent receives from quenching her thirst. The agent is intrinsically attitudinally
pleased when she drinks the glass of water. The agent enjoys quenching her thirst and not
because it leads to any other types of enjoyment, but merely because of what it is.
Concurrent with other varieties of hedonism, Feldman (2002) takes the value of an
agents life to be the sum of all of the cases of intrinsic attitudinal pleasure and intrinsic
attitudinal pains contained within the agents life (p. 613). It is worth noting that in the same
way that intrinsic attitudinal pleasure receives a (+) score and can be simply added together,
intrinsic attitudinal pain receives a () score and can simply be subtracted. That being said, we
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know seem to be a position to formulate Fred Feldmans version of hedonism: Intrinsic
Attitudinal Hedonism (IAH).
i. Intrinsic Attitudinal pleasure is good; Intrinsic Attitudinal pain is bad
ii. If S is attitudinally pleased to degree n about p at t, but not in virtue of the fact that he
is attitudinally pleased about something else at t, then S is intrinsically attitudinally
pleased to degree n about p at t.
iii. The value of Ss life is determined by the sum of all the intrinsic attitudinal pleasures
and intrinsic attitudinal pains contained in Ss life.
We can know look at the deceived businessmans life from the viewpoint of IAH. The
businessman is intrinsically attitudinally pleased that his family loves him, that his co-worker
revere him, and his community respects him. Only this is not the case. It only seems, to the
businessman, to be the case. Intrinsic attitudinal hedonism implies that the businessmans life is
a good one, even as good as that of his cousinthe undeceived businessman. The deceived
businessmans life, plausible, cannot be as good of a life as that of his cousin. If the
businessman were to simply become aware of the ruse, his life would no longer be going well.
Therefore, Kagans (1994) deceived businessman objection applied to IAH is successful.
Feldman (2002) admits this and as result moves to an alternative formulation he refers to as
Veridical Intrinsic Attitudinal Hedonism (VIAH).
Veridical Intrinsic Attitudinal Hedonism
To avoid the complications for hedonism that Kagans objection brings to light, Feldman
(2002) makes a slight reformulation to IAH. The deceived businessmans life is not going as
well as his cousin the undeceived businessmans life simply because the undeceived
businessman takes pleasure in a true state of affairs rather than a false one. The undeceived
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businessmans wife truly does love him. Therefore, the pleasure he receives from this seems to
be greater than the pleasure the deceived businessman receives from the state of affairs were it
only seems that his wife loves him. Therefore, the undeceived businessmans life is going better
than the deceived businessmans. Feldmans (2002) modification is intended to reinforce this
intuition. Feldman (2002) writes, such taking of pleasures enhance the value of a life more
when they are takings of pleasures in true states of affairs (p. 616). The value of a pleasure is
enhanced when the state of affairs that produces the pleasure actually occurs.
We now find ourselves in a position to compare the lives of the businessmen. Feldman
(2002) does not stipulate how much enhancement the value of a pleasure receives from actually
being taken in a true sate of affairs, he merely states that is does enhance the value and leaves it
at that. Nevertheless, we can assume a situation such as the following: The undeceived
businessman is intrinsically pleased that his wife loves him to degree +10 and his wife does, in
fact, love him, so it seems valid to multiply this pleasure by 10. Now we have +10(10) = 100.
The undeceived businessman can now be said to be pleased to degree +100 that he is loved by
his wife. Likewise, the deceived businessman is intrinsically pleased that his wife loves him to
degree +10, yet it is the case that his wife, in fact, does not love him. It does not seem justifiable
to assign a negative degree to this pleasure. Feldman (2002) only states that the truth enhances
the value of the pleasure, he says nothing about the pleasure taken in a false situation. So, the
value of the deceived businessmans pleasure remains unchanged, or for uniformity, we can
multiply this pleasure by 1. Thus, we now have +10(1) = 10. I see my interpretation of the
hedonistic calculations in the light of VIAH as plausible, and it does not seem to me that
Feldman would disagree with my interpretation. As such VIAH does, in fact, capture our
intuitions about the two businessmen and ranks the their lives as our intuitions do. The value the
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undeceived businessmans life is enhanced only if the pleasures in his life are taken in true states
of affairs. The value of the deceived businessmans life in unchanged, and therefore, according
to VIAH, the undeceived businessman lives a better life. Feldmans (2002) reformulation of
hedonism, on the surface, seems to solve the issue raised by Kagan (1994). However, VIAH
may have unfortunate consequences when it is applied to the evaluation of pain.
False Pains
We can imagine 2 worlds. In the first world there exists a politician, politician T, whose
only pleasures are taken in the fact that his constituents look upon him favorably. Politician T
has 100 constituents, half that looks upon him favorably and the other half that looks upon him
unfavorably. (For simplicity, there are no constituents that have no opinion of politician T, that
is, no one neither looks upon him favorably nor unfavorably) Politician T is pleased to degree
+10 for each constituent that looks upon him favorably, and is pained to degree -10 for each
constituent that looks upon him unfavorably. Furthermore, in each situation in which politician
T is pleased of pained by a constituents opinion, it actually is the case that the constituent holds
that opinion. If politician T received pleasure from being aware that that Sally looks upon him
favorably, Sally does, in fact, look upon politician T favorably. We can now evaluate politician
Ts life: 50 constituents look upon him favorably, 50(+1010) = 500 units of pleasure. 50
constituents look upon him unfavorably,
50(-1010) = 500 units of pain. 500 units of pleasure minus 500 units of pain is equal to 0 units
of pleasure. The net value of politician Ts life is 0.
In the second world, there exists another politician, politician F. Politician F is just like
politician T in almost every respect. The only difference between them is that Politician F is
mistaken as to which of his constituents look upon him favorably and which ones look upon him
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unfavorably. If politician F receives pleasure from Sally because she looks upon him favorably,
Sally, in fact, looks upon him unfavorably. Politician F is mistaken in each of his 100
constituents cases. We can now evaluate politician Fs life utilizing the method I have proposed.
50 constituents look upon him favorably, 50(+101) = 50 units of pleasure. 50 constituent look
upon him unfavorably 50(-101) = 50 units of pain. 50 units of pleasure minus 50 units of pain is
equal to 0 units of pleasure. The net value of politician Fs life is exactly the net value of
politician Ts, 0.
It does not seem plausible that the two politicians lives would be assigned the same
value. If presented with the option of choosing the life of politician T or politician F, intuitively,
one would choose politician T. It is important to realize that this is not simply a case of two lives
that chance upon the same value. These two lives are, from the point of view of the politicians,
indiscernible. VIAH entails that the two lives are indiscernible in value as well. Therefore,
VIAH is not a sound version of hedonism and is not an acceptable refutation of Shelly Kagans
(1994) deceived businessman objection.
Discussion
My politician thought experiment doe not rely as much on the similarity of the lives of
the two politicians as it does in the evaluation of the pains received by politician F. Perhaps,
Feldman could respond by saying that VIAH has no implications for the calculations of pain, and
thus my objection does not hold. This does not seem like an appropriate move, if one were
forced into this corner they should maybe throw out VIAH altogether. This would be analogous
to a basic form of hedonism that added the pleasures of a life together, but then had no method of
how to calculate pains. Such a theory would not hold much weight and is likely the reason I
have never read any literature on such a theory.
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Feldman (2002) never states his position on false pleasure he only mentions that pleasure
taken in a true sate of affairs enhances the value of the pleasure. Logically, the pain taken in a
true state of affairs enhances the value of the pain. Say you have just been told of your beloved
pet dogs tragic death. The pain you are experiencing would certainly become enhanced when
you see, for yourself, that your dog is, in fact, dead. So, if you experience pain with the intensity
of -100 in the death of your dog and it is the case that your dog is dead. The net value of this
pain is -100(10) = 10,000 units of pain. Now, lets say that it was a mistake and it was your
neighbors dogs who was ran over and not your own (though you move away before you become
aware of this and you never do become aware of it). It seems as if this would not be as truly
painful as you dogs actual death. We can say that the net value of this pain is -100(1) = 100
units of pain. I propose that any holder of VIAH is forced to committing to the view that the
value of the pain experienced in a state of affairs is enhanced if that state of affairs is true. Of
course, Feldman never makes such a claim about the calculations of pains. He may simply
develop an alternative system for their calculation that may avoid this situation. However, I find
my interpretation to be the most logical position on the table (I am not aware of any other
plausible ways to calculate them), yet I cannot rule out an alternatives possibility.







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References
Feldman, F. (2002). The good life: A defense of attitudinal hedonism. Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, 65(3), 604-628.
Kagan, S. (1994). Me and my life. Proceedings Of The Aristotelian Society, 94, 309-324.
Klocksiem, J. (2011). Two Proposed Formulations of Hedonism [PDF document]. Retrieved
from PHL 380 Class Website: http://bama.ua.edu/~jklocksiem/380/