III



III. Feeling Enjoyment

Despite the diversity of feelings associated with enjoyment, it is possible to give any informative generalization about what it feels like to enjoy something: namely, the felt aspect of enjoyment consists in having a felt desire to Φ at precisely the same time that one occurrently believes that one is Φing. The first step in making this plausible is to clarify the concepts of a felt desire and an occurrent belief. A felt desire is a desire one is aware of in—roughly—the way one is aware of an insistent thirst. “Roughly” because the desire feels differently in different cases—sexual gratification, a sudden whiff of perfume, the first moment at which one understands Cantor’s diagonal argument, reading lines spoken by the angels at the end of Faust: “Wer immer strebend sich bemüht,/Den können wir erlösen.” Awareness of one’s desire to read the lines need not take the form of the insistent urge as in the thirst example. One’s consciousness may be filled with an appreciation of the significance of the lines in the overall context of Faust, with whatever feelings and associations the lines engender, and one’s awareness of one’s desire may take the form of an awareness of the appreciation, feelings, and associations as suffused with desire. In the deep-sea fishing case, one may be aware of desiring the excitement of landing a large fish, but this awareness may occupy the background with one’s concentration on working the reel, pumping the rod, and moving as the fish moves occupying the foreground.

Similar remarks hold for occurrent belief. An occurrent belief is a belief that is before one's mind—in the way that the belief that you are reading this sentence is now before your mind. This is not to say that every occurrent belief is before your mind in just this way. An occurrent belief is a belief that manifests itself to consciousness in a way more or less like the way that belief manifests itself. There are distinctions of degree to draw here, for beliefs may linger at the periphery of self-consciousness. For example, 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. It is not always before your mind in the way that the belief about reading the sentence is, but you have it "in mind" all day. It contrasts in this way with your belief, for example, that Washington, D.C., is the capital of the United States. You are never, during the entire day, aware even in the slightest degree of that belief. Occurrent beliefs form a continuum—from those beliefs that are before one's mind in the way that the belief about reading the sentence is to those beliefs that linger on the periphery of self-consciousness. Similar remarks hold for felt desires, for they, like beliefs, may linger on the periphery of self-consciousness (e.g., on a sunny day, one's desire to sail may, while one is occupied with other activities, linger on the edge of self-consciousness).

Finally, it is important for phenomenological accuracy not to assume too sharp a distinction between the sensory, on the one hand, and the cognitive and affective, on the other. Imagine tasting the bitter-sweet chocolate. When the taste makes you want the experience, the sensory and the affective are mixed together in the state "experiencing/desiring the taste." The experience and the desire arise together in a state with both sensory and affective aspects. The same is true for belief: when you taste the bitter-sweet chocolate, the experience of the bitter-sweet taste and the belief that the taste is bitter-sweet are mixed together in the state of "experiencing/believing" that the taste is bitter-sweet. The feeling of enjoyment is an inextricable mixture of an experience or activity, an occurrent belief, and a felt desire. The immense variety in the feelings associated with enjoyment is the result of the variety of experiences and activities enjoyed. The water relief of satisfying an urgent thirst differs from the feeling of sexual gratification or from the feelings associated with deep-sea fishing in part because relieving a thirst feels different than sexual gratification and both differ from the feelings associated with deep-sea fishing. They differ in part because relevant desires feel different, and because occurrently believing that one is feeling sexual gratification is not like occurrently believing that one is satisfying a thirst or occurrently believing that one is deep-sea fishing. But there is no need to claim that the differences in belief and desire fully account for the difference; they simply contribute to it.

The occurrent believe and the felt desire involved in enjoyment are linked to enjoyment’s explanatory/justificatory role in two ways: through causation, and through a complex of relations between enjoyment and reasons for action. We conclude his section with a discussion of the links to causation. We begin our discussion of reasons in the next section. To illustrate the links to causation, suppose Jones and Jillian are listening to a jazz band play a Miles Davis song at the Green Dolphin jazz club. Jones enjoys listening to the music. That is, his experience of listening to the music causes him to have the felt desire, of his experience of listening to the music, under the feature being good jazz, that it occur for its own sake, and to occurrently believe, of that experience, under the feature being good jazz, that it is occurring. Jones does not, however, know the first thing about what makes jazz good, and so, as he listens to the music, he is unable to identify any feature that makes it good. He only believes what he is listening to is good jazz because, and only because, he listening to the music at the Green Dolphin, and he believes that the Green Dolphin hires good jazz musicians. Compare Jillian’s experience. Jillian is a jazz connoisseur, and, as she listens to the music, she hears it as having an array A of features which, to her mind at least, make the music good jazz. Her experience of hearing the music as having A causes her (1) to have the occurrent belief, of that experience, under A, that it is occurring; and (2) to desire, of that experience, under A, that it occur, for its own sake. The crucial point is that the cause of Jillian’s belief and desire is not merely hearing the music, but hearing the music as having A. We take to be a clear aspect of our everyday talk of causation that one’s causal explanations often identify features of experiences or activities as playing a crucial explanatory role. To take a classic example, you did not startle me merely by saying “hello” but by saying “hello” so loudly. Similarly, the causal explanation of Jillian’s belief and desire is that she hears the music as having A.[1] A key difference between Jones and Jillian is that, with the exception of the feature being played at the Green Dolphin and hence being good jazz, Jones does not hear the music as having an array of features A, where the features, at least in his opinion, make the music good jazz. This descriptive difference in the felt-aspect of their enjoyments corresponds to a difference in explanatory and justificatory roles. Suppose, after the Miles Davis piece concludes, Jillian requests that the band play some Coltrane. When Jones asks her why she requested Coltrane, she explains and justifies her request by noting that she enjoyed the Miles Davis piece for electric instrument combination of jazz, funk, and R & B, and the Coltrane piece she requested is similar and that she expects to enjoy that too. Jones, who also enjoyed the Miles Davis song, and also expects he would enjoy something similar, did not identify anything particular features of his experience that could serve as a basis for a specific request.

Similar remarks hold for activities. When you engage in your activity of deep-sea fishing, you see it as having certain features; you see as full of cooperative people congratulating you on your catch; you see the grabbing the live bait is no longer repulsive but as a necessity the initiated take in stride, and so on; your engaging in activity. Let us say you engage in the activity under this array of features. We adopt the same way of describing experiences; thus, we will say, for example, that Jillian hears the music under the appropriate array A. It is, of course, more natural to say that Jillian hears the music as having A, but the “under A” formulation conveniently covers both experience and activities. In the case of activities, just as in the case of experiences, the fact that you engage in your deep-sea fishing under a certain array causes you to believe, of that activity, under that array, that it is occurring, and to desire, of that activity, under that array, that it occur for its own sake. Note that before you landed the large fish, you engage in your activity of deep-sea fishing under an array of features that had quite different causal properties; engaging in the activity under that array caused the relevant belief and desire to wane.

In light of the above considerations, we offer the following definition of enjoyment.

x enjoys Φ under the array of features A if and only if

(1) x Φ’s as having A;

(2) x's Φing under A causes x

(a) to occurrently believe, of Φ, under A, that it occurs;

(b) to have the felt desire, of Φ, under A, that it occur for its own sake.

In arguing for this account, we have focused primarily on experiences. A shift of focus to activities suggests a seemingly serious counterexample. Imagine yourself absorbed in deep-sea fishing. Your attention is fully focused on reeling in a large fish. You are enjoying deep-sea fishing, but you do not occurrently believe that you are engaged in that activity; that belief is not before your mind in the relevant way. What is before your mind is the need to pump the rod, reel in the line, and move with the fish. Moreover, although you desire to be deep-sea fishing, that the desire is not a paradigmatic felt desire; insofar as you have felt desires, they concern pumping, reeling, and moving.

To see that this is not really a difficulty, suppose that, after landing the fish, you stand back and survey the scene of your recent efforts. You now do have the felt desire, of your deep-sea fishing, under the array A, that it occur for its own sake, and you occurrently believe, of that activity, under A, that it is occurring. As you continue to fish, this occurrent belief/felt desire pair is immediately at hand; that is, under suitable conditions, your activity of deep-sea fishing as having A would cause that occurrent belief and felt desire. Moreover: if it were not at hand, you would not count as enjoying deep-sea fishing. To see why, suppose that, in the deep sea fishing example, there is no array A such that your activity of deep-sea fishing under A causes you to have a felt desire, of your activity of deep-sea fishing, under A, that it occur for its own sake. You never feel such a desire—no matter how carefully you reflect and introspect. When you stand back and survey the scene on the boat, you have—let us suppose—a sense of well-being but never the felt desire to fish. In such a case, you may be enjoying something—perhaps being on the boat, being in the open air; but you are not enjoying deep-sea fishing specifically, for—and we take this to be clear—what one enjoys is that for which one has a felt desire. What gives enjoyment its special experiential character is having the felt desire simultaneously with the relevant occurrent belief. In light of these considerations, the best course is to take the core cases of enjoyment as involving occurrent beliefs and felt desires. We count as derivative cases of enjoyment those cases in which no occurrent belief/felt desire pair is present but in which pair is nonetheless immediately at hand.

This completes our discussion of the links between occurrent belief/felt desire pairs and causation. We now turn to the connections to reasons for action. We will distinguish two types of reasons, active and normative (as we will call them). The belief/desire pairs involved in enjoyment are typically (but not always) active reasons to bring it about that one engages in the enjoyed activity or experience. When the belief is occurrent and the desire felt, the reason is in that way manifested in one’s experience. Such presence to consciousness turns out to be particularly important in the case of normative reasons. Normative reasons are (on the view we will suggest) propositions, and the normative reasons involved in certain kinds of enjoyment are propositions that one should engage in an activity under some array A or have an experience under some array A.

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[1] We do not take these claims to commit us to any position in regard to the “individuation of events” for purposes other than everyday causal explanation. We may remain agnostic about Donald Davidson’s proposal, in “The Logical Form of Action Sentences,” that we should, for purposes of representing the “logical form” of action sentences, treat, e. g., saying hello and saying hello loudly as the same “event.” This is consistent with assigning a causal role to saying hello loudly that saying hello does not have. It would simply mean that the recognition of the singular causal statement “Saying hello loudly caused the startle response” assumed an underlying law-like connection between the event of saying hello when that event was an event of doing so loudly.

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