Enjoyment and Reasons
Enjoyment consists in a causal harmony: the experience or activity φ
causes both the occurrent belief, of φ, under A, that it is occurring; and the
felt desire, of φ under A, that it should occur for its own sake. The “of φ,
under A” belief/desire pair is typically a reason for one to have the experience
or engage in the activity. That is the burden of this chapter. We emphasize the
“typically”: one can enjoy φ when the relevant belief/desire pair does
constitute such a reason. Canvassing the distinction between the two cases
yields an account of the explanatory-justificatory role of enjoyment. This may
strike some as odd. Why focus on the “of φ, under A” belief/desire pairs?
Why not begin with the obvious fact that the prospect of enjoyment is a
reason for action? Because our characterization of the explanatoryjustificatory role of the “φ, under A” belief/desire pairs allows us to define an
variety of enjoyment characterized by the fact that the of “φ, under A”
belief/desire pairs are reasons to φ. Such enjoyments explain the reasonproviding role of the prospect of enjoyment, and, more generally and more
importantly, such enjoyments a central role in one’s life. They are also a key
building block of our account of beauty.
An essential preliminary is clarifying the notion of a reason for action.
Some may reasonably object that we have already turned down the wrong
road. The objection is that it is only in some cases that an “φ, under A”
belief/desire pair is a reason for action—namely, when φ is an activity;
surely, it is just confused to describe the pair as a reason for action when φ
is an experience. Reasons for action guide our voluntary choices, but, so the
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objection goes, there is no clear sense in which reasons similarly guide our
choice of experiences. The latter claim is of course false. Having an
experience is typically under one’s voluntary control in two ways: one can
often determine whether it occurs, and how long it endures. One can control
whether one has the experience at all (by tasting or not tasting the wine, for
example), and one can often control the duration of the experience (by how
long one keeps the wine glass to one’s lips, for example). By “a reason to
have an experience,” we mean a reason to exercise control in one of the
above ways.
I. First-person reasons
Talk of “reasons for action” is equivocal in least two ways. Reasons
may be considerations that motivate one to act and which one regards as
justifying the action (at least to some degree); or, they may be
considerations that should play a motivational-justificatory role whether or
not they do so. An example: Robert is a prominent wine critic. His doctor
has informed him he has severe and chronic gout, and must stop drinking
the wines in which he delights. Robert persists nonetheless; he thinks of
himself as a badly injured warrior who, although doomed to defeat, defiantly
refuses to cease fighting for his ideal, the ideal being the refinement of taste
as a source of pleasure. His friends try to change his mind, but their
arguments fall on deaf ears. The problem is not that Robert fails to believe
that ceasing his gourmet pursuits would preserve his health, nor is it that
does not desire to remain healthy; the problem is that the belief/desire pair
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fails to play the motivational-justificatory role of a reason. It fails to
motivate Robert to alter his habits, and he denies the pair any justificatory
role in dinning decisions; as he says with regard to his health, “I am just not
paying any attention to that.” Robert’s friends, who realize that the pair
does not for Robert play the motivational-justificatory role of a reason to
abandon his gourmet pursuits, nonetheless think it should. The hardliners
insist that it should play a decisive role; the softliners merely think it should
play some role, albeit it a possibly overridden one. Both groups agree,
however, that the pair is a reason in the “should play” sense.
We will focus on reasons for action as considerations that do (or would
in appropriate circumstances) play a motivational-justificatory role in guiding
and evaluating thought and action. We will call such reasons first-person
reasons for action. The “first-person” label contrasts such reasons with
“third-person” reasons, reasons in friends’ “should play” sense. Third-person
reasons raise important and interesting questions; however, given our
purposes, we will put those issues aside. First-person reasons comprise our
exclusive concern. We take them to consist of appropriate belief/desire
pairs. We first identify the general motivational-justificatory role such pairs
play when they serve as first-person reasons and then turn to the “of φ
under A” belief/desire pairs that comprise our primary concern. An essential
preliminary is addressing an objection to the assumption that first-person
reasons are belief/desire pairs.
A. “Humeans” Versus “Kantians”
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The objection: Aren’t we taking sides in the long-standing debate
about what sort of psychological state is required to account for the
motivational dimension of reasons? “Humeans”—crudely—insist that beliefs
alone cannot motivate; an motivational factor—a desire, hope, aspiration, an
allegiance to an ideal, or some such thing—is required. “Kantians”—equally
crudely—insist that beliefs may motivate on their own. Our answer is that
these crude extremes are untenable. Plausible Humeans must interpret
“desire” broadly to include such diverse sources of motivation as values,
ideals, needs, commitments, persona loyalties, and patterns of emotional
reaction. Plausible Kantians must refer to such sources of motivation to
explain why the same belief may motivate one person but not another. We
use “desire” to refer to the items in the broad and variegated range of
motivating factors that both Humeans and Kantians must recognize.
Desires so construed are particularly responsive to beliefs, which
can play a central role in creating, eliminating, and modifying desires. We
complete our gloss on our use of “desire” by offering examples of creation,
elimination, and modification. Take elimination first. Suppose that, by the
time your hosts take you to dinner after your arrival in Beijing, you are
utterly famished; the first dish that arrives looks appealing, and you
immediately form the desire to eat some; as you serve yourself, you ask
what it is. The answer, “Stomach lining,” eliminates your desire to eat. Two
more examples: In Cyrano de Bergerac, Roxane is in love with the author of
the love letters, whom she mistakenly believes to be Christian; when she
finally realizes that Cyrano is the author, she ceases to desire Christian.
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When Charles discovers that Jim thinks him a buffoon, Charles is unable to
put the disrespect aside, and his desire to vote in Jim’s favor for tenure
disappears.
Beliefs can also create desires. Hungry only for steak, you do not
desire to eat the meat before you, which you have mistakenly identified as
pork; when I point out that it is steak, you immediately form the desire to
eat it. To take a more elaborate example, imagine a lawyer’s client, a victim
of years of spousal abuse, killed her husband with a shotgun blast as he
walked in the door of their home. The lawyer argues for acquittal not merely
by arguing that, as legally required for self-defense, the husband posed an
immediate threat of grievous bodily harm, but also by portraying the woman
as an innocent, long-suffering victim, trying for the sake of the children to
hold the marriage together despite ever-increasing brutal physical and
psychological domination until, finally, the shotgun blast was the only real
route to save, not only herself, but also to salvage any reasonable life for the
children. If the picture works as the lawyer hopes, it generates a desire to
acquit.
Finally, changes in belief can work changes in desire. Suppose you
desire to be kind to your spouse, grow roses, and teach philosophy
effectively. Over time, you acquire a variety of interrelated beliefs about
what counts as being kind, about the pros and cons of rose-growing
strategies, and about what philosophy is and how you can most effectively
teach it. Your beliefs about what counts as kind focuses your original desires
on the types of activities those beliefs pick out; your beliefs about the pros
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and cons of rose-growing strategies lead you to desire to grow roses in this
way or that; your insights into the nature of philosophy and how to teach it
lead you to desire to teach in particular ways.
In sum, we mean by “desire” any of a wide range of motivational
states, states are typically inextricably tied to beliefs, which may create,
eliminate, and modify them.
B. The Motivational-Justificatory Role
A first-person reason for one to perform some action A is a
belief/desire pair that plays, or in appropriate circumstances would play, a
certain motivational-justificatory role to do A.1 An example: Smith devotes
considerable time to chess; he studies the game, analyzes his past games,
seeks out chess partners, browses in the chess section of bookstores, and so
on. When asked why he engages in these activities, he explains that a wellplayed game displays the beauty of forces in dynamic tension and reveals
creativity, courage, and practical judgment in an exercise of intuition and
calculation akin to both mathematics and art. This belief combines with
various desires to motivate him to engage in a variety of actions, and the
belief/desire pairs serve as at least part of the justification for performing the
actions, a justification that he offers to himself and, if fully truthful, to others.
The chess example involves the explicit articulation of reasons, and
this may suggest the implausibly rationalistic view that a reason always plays
its motivational-justificatory role through explicit reasoning. Worse yet, it
1
Comparison to agent-relative reasons.
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may associate reasons with dispassionate reflection. Reasons do course
sometimes operate explicitly and dispassionately. Reflecting on his need to
improve his ability to blend strategy and tactics, Smith may explicitly and
dispassionately reason his way to the conclusion that he should study former
world champion Mikhail Tal’s games. The same reasons, however, could
operate implicitly and in the presence of passion. Imagine that Smith,
without prior reasoning, accidentally happens on a collection of Tal’s games
while wandering around a bookstore to kill time. The collection catches his
eye; the conviction, “I need this!” takes hold of him, and straightaway he
decides to buy the book. The conviction and the decision occur against the
background of an emotion-laden memory of a recent bitter defeat caused by
his lack of skill in blending strategy and tactics. Despite the passion and lack
of explicit reasoning, the same belief/desire pair that figures in the explicit
reasoning may also operate in this case. If Smith were later asked why he
bought the book, it would hardly be odd for him to say, “I wanted to improve
my ability to blend strategy and tactics, and I realize that realized I needed
to study Tal’s games to do so.” In offering this answer, he would both justify
his choice and identify a motive. 0ne may on occasion treat such after the
fact rationalizations skeptically, as the likely products of self-deception or
fabrication, on the whole, however, they are part and parcel of the routine
conduct of everyday life, and one generally accepts them unless one has
specific grounds for doubt.2 We take it to be clear that belief/desire pairs can
See the excellent account of after-the-fact attribution of reasons in Paul Grice,
Aspects of Reason (Oxford University Press, 2001); see also the related discussion of
2
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play a distinctive motivational-justificatory role in guiding and evaluating
thought and action. Neither the motive nor the justification need be decisive.
All that is required is that the belief/desire pair provide some, possibly
overridden, motivation and justification.
For our purposes, it is enough to note that a distinctive motivationaljustificatory role exists; we need not describe it in detail—with one exception.
We take it to be clear that a first-person reason plays its motivationaljustificatory role at least in part through a belief that the relevant
belief/desire pair justifies action. One is not blindly driven along by one’s
first-person reasons; rather, one guides one’s conduct by the light of the
justifications one takes them to provide. In support, recall Smith. He
desires to improve his ability to bend strategy and tactics, and he believes
that he can do so by studying Tal’s games. To see this belief/desire pair as
first-person reason for Smith to buy the collection of Tal’s games is, in part,
to see Smith as prepared, to the extent he has sufficient self-knowledge and
is truthful with himself and others, to offer the pair as a justification for
buying the book. One cannot be prepared, at the time one acts, to truthfully
identify the belief/desire pair as a reason unless one believes, at that time,
that it is. The belief need not, of course, be present to one’s mind; Smith
may buy the book with little or no self-conscious thought at all. We assume
therefore that the following necessary condition holds: a belief/desire pair is
a first-person reason for one to perform an action A only if one believes it
“deeming” in the attribution of intentions in Paul Grice, “Meaning Revisited,” in Paul
Grice, Studies in the Ways of Words (Harvard University Press, 1969).
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provides (at least some degree of) justification for doing A. Some may
suggest a further claim: that one believes a belief/desire pair justifies an
action only if one believes that performing that action realizes, or aids in
realizing, something one values.3 We need not pursue this suggestion. (We
are, however, reluctant to adopt it without considerably elaboration; indeed,
later we explicating valuing in terms of a certain type of belief about
justification, and generally we take the relation between valuing and
justification to be fairly complex.)
II. First-Person-Reason Enjoyments
Enjoyments in which the “of φ, under A” belief/desire pair functions as
first-person reason to φ comprise an important type of enjoyment. Call
them, first-person-reason enjoyments. It would, of course, be wrong to
single out such enjoyments as a special type if the relevant “of φ, under A”
belief/desire pair involved an enjoyment were always a first-person reason to
φ. But this is clearly not the case, as the following examples show.
A. Enjoyments That Lack the Relevant First-Person Reason
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 that includes several features indicative of sexual
attraction. Thus, he believes, of his experience of looking at his friend, under
3
Joeseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom
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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 provide even the most
miniscule degree of justification for looking in a sexual way at his friend; he
sees 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 as a temptation Satan has placed in his path, but he
enjoys it nonetheless.
Such examples abound. Suppose Sarah is eating a desert she
mistakenly thought contained no chocolate. She suddenly finds herself
occurrently believing, of her taste experience, under tasting chocolate, that it
is occurring; and having the felt desire, of the experience, under tasting
chocolate, that it should occur for its own sake. She reacts with disgust.
Until recently, she suffered from an uncontrollable urge to eat to chocolate,
and her inability to resist diminished her self-respect; finally, she rebelled
against by banning chocolate entirely from her diet. She now views any
desire for chocolate just as Gouge views any sexual attraction to men, an
alien invader to be resisted and destroyed, not a citizen of the realm of
justification-providing desires. The sudden taste of chocolate does not make
Sarah waver from her convictions; she spits out the desert and attacks the
desire by recalling vivid memories of her loss of self-respect and her weight
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gain. She most certainly does not regard the belief/desire pair as providing
any degree of justification for tasting the chocolate.
Is there another class of examples in which one does not believe that
the associated “of φ, under A” belief/desire pair does not provide any
justification to φ, but in which that pair nonetheless does not serve as a firstperson reason to φ? Suppose, for example, you are having scotch in the
lobby bar after a transatlantic flight; the combination of jet lag and alcohol
has produced a detached, hazy self-consciousness from which you
bemusedly observe the bar. You enjoy the experience. Must the associated
“of φ, under A” belief/desire serve as a first-person reason to have the
experience? There is no need to answer the question here; we do, however,
offer the following considerations. Recall that one is not blindly driven along
by one’s first-person reasons; rather, one guides one’s conduct by the light
of the justifications one takes them to provide, and there are certainly
circumstances in which you would believe that the bar belief/desire pair
provides a justification for having your experience, and in which that belief
would guide your conduct. Suppose someone asked you why you were
gazing out at the bar instead of preparing for the paper you must present
tomorrow. You might well respond, “I am enjoying it,” intending thereby to
indicate that your desire for the experience plus the belief that it is occurring
justifying your devoting time to the experience. Does this show that the
belief/desire pair serves as a first-person reason to have the experience even
no one—neither you nor someone else—raises the question of why you are
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having the experience? It is impossible to answer without a more detailed
account of the motivational-justificatory role of a reason.
B. First-Person-Reason Enjoyments: Definition and Feedback Loop
The enjoyments which consistently occupy center stage in one’s life
are typically first-person-reason enjoyments, enjoyments in which the
associated “φ, under A” belief/desire pair serves as a first-person reason to
φ. Imagine Victoria is watching her eight–year old daughter perform in the
school play put on by her daughters’ fourth grade class. She enjoys the
experience of watching the performance under an array A that includes,
among a variety of other features, watching my daughter perform in the
school play, watching her daughter do what many other children have done
but do it in her particular way as something new to her. Thus, she believes,
of her experience, under A, that it is occurring, and she desires, of that
experience, under A, that it should occur for its own sake. The belief/desire
pair functions as a first-person reason. She regards the pair as providing (at
least a partial) justification for watching her daughter perform, a justification
she would readily, indeed passionately, offer to others. If she were to offer
the pair to others as a justification, she would describe some or all of the
features in A, intending thereby to specify the features she believes watching
her daughter exemplifies, and with regard to which she is filled with desire.
Thus, the belief/desire pair is not merely a first-person reason to watch her
daughter perform; it is a reason to have that experience as exemplifying the
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features in A. We will express this by saying that the pair is a reason under
A for Victoria to have the experience.
We define first-person-reason enjoyment as follows:
x first-person-reason enjoys an experience or activity φ under A if
and only if
(1) x φ’s, and x's φing causes (2) – (3):
(2) (a) x occurrently believes, of φ, under A, that it occurs; (b) and
has the felt desire, of φ, under A, that it should occur for its own
sake;
(3) the belief/desire pair in (2) is a first-person reason under A for
x to φ.
Two points bear emphasis.
First, the first-person reason consists of an occurrent belief and a felt
desire, the same belief and desire that are components of the feeling of
enjoyment. In this way, the first-person-reason affirmation of φing is
manifest in the feeling of enjoyment. One may rightly object that it is not
manifest that the belief/desire pair is a first-person reason; it is just the
components of that reason, the belief and desire that are present to
consciousness. However, if one has sufficient self-knowledge and is
sufficiently reflective, one may be able to readily identify the present-to-mind
belief and desire pair as a first-person reason.
Second, what do we mean by saying that φ causes the first-person
reason? Our answer rests on a point we made earlier: a belief/desire pair
functions as a first-person reason only if one believes it provides some
justification for action. The enjoyed experience or activity causes—or
causally sustains—the belief/desire pair in its first-person-reason role by
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causing (causally sustaining) the belief that the pair provides a justification.
We will (as we have been) use ‘cause’ for “cause to come into existence or
causally sustain in existence”; we will, however, sometimes use ‘causally
sustains’ when the context calls for it. The notion of causation to which we
appeal continues to be the pragmatic, context-driven everyday concept of
causation. To fully explain a particular use of the concept, one must exhibit
the characteristic patterns in which the concept is typically deployed. We do
so in the course of this section.
Why single out this type of enjoyment as a particularly important?
This question divides into two. What is the rationale for condition (3)? And,
what is what the rationale for including the condition that φ causes (3)? Our
answer in both cases is the same: first-person-reason enjoyments so
defined play an important descriptive and explanatory role. It is, however,
convenient to consider the questions separately, beginning with the rationale
for requiring (3).
A sufficient reason to include (3) is that enjoyments characterized by
this condition play a central role in one’s life. Consider Victoria’s enjoyment
of watching her daughter perform. When she enjoys watching her daughter
perform under an array A that includes, among a variety of other features,
watching my daughter perform in the school play, watching her daughter do
what many other children have done but do it in her particular way as
something new to her. For Victoria, the associated belief/desire serves as
a first-person reason to have the experience of watching her daughter
perform. She finds in the belief/desire pair a justification for having the
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experience; he pair reveals the experience or activity as something she is
for, not against. Compare Gouge’s enjoyment of looking at his best friend in
a sexual way. Gouge cannot tear his gaze away. He is held in the causal
grip of the experience, which makes him believe, of it, under the relevant
array of features A, that it is occurring, and to desire, of it, under A, that it
should occur for its own sake. This belief/desire pair does not, however,
function as a first-person reason to gaze at his friend in a sexual way; rather,
Gouge regards it as a Satanic temptation thrown in his path and, as such, he
sees the pair as something to be resisted and, if possible, destroyed.
We take it to be clear that enjoyments in which the “of φ, under A”
belief/desire pair functions as a first-person reason play a central role in
one’s life. On its own, this is a good reason to single out such enjoyments as
a type worthy of attention. Further reason is provided by the rationale for
requiring that the enjoyed experience or activity causes the relevant “of φ,
under A” belief/desire pair (by causing the belief that the pair provides a
justification).
C. Causation
There are two reasons for the causal requirement. The first is that the
requirement partially explains the power enjoyment can exercise. It explains
in part the power enjoyment can exercise over one. It explains in part why
one eats another piece of chocolate or has another bottle of wine, why one
goes sailing for hours on end, and why, although the annoyance of one’s
dinner companion is visibly increasing, one cannot stop gazing at the
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attractive person at the other table. The power of first-person-reason
enjoyments does not consist merely in the blind impulse to satisfy a felt
desire; those enjoyments also invoke the authority of reason by making us
think, “This is justified.” Consider the following example. Jim, who is
married, is having lunch with a much younger woman whom knows is eager
to begin a sexual and romantic relationship with him. The activity of dinning
with her causes him to believe, of that activity, that it is occurring, and to
desire, of the activity, under an appropriate array A, that it should occur for
its own sake. The belief that the experience has the features in A causally
causes him to believe that the pair justifies his dining with the woman and
thereby causally sustains the belief/desire pair in its role as a first-person
reason to engage in that activity. The activity-caused belief plays this further
causal role because the array A includes features which depict a vision Jim
finds compelling. He sees the dinning activity as romantic rebellion in the
name of freedom, love, and passion in the face of social mores that require
fidelity even in a marriage from which ardor has been absent for years.
The causal power of first-person-reason enjoyments extends beyond
merely making one believe that the associated belief/desire pair justifies;
such enjoyments can capture on in a reason-mediated feedback loop in
which the enjoyed experience or activity plays a double causal role: it
causes the belief/desire pair, and it causes the conviction that the
belief/desire pair provides a justification for engaging in that activity thereby
causally sustaining the belief/desire pair in its role as a first-person reason.
Suppose Jim on that reason by continuing to dine. His continuing to dine
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may—and suppose it does—cause him to believe, of the activity, under A,
that it is occurring; and to desire, of it, under A, that it should occur for its
own sake. Thus, he continues to enjoy the activity. In addition, the
belief/desire pair may continue to serve—and suppose it does indeed serve—
as a first-person reason to dine. Assume he acts on that reason by
continuing to dine, and suppose that doing so causes him to believe, of it,
under A, that it is occurring; and to desire, of it, under A, that it should occur
for its own sake, where belief/desire pair may continue to serve as a firstperson reason to dine. Assume he acts on that reason by continuing to dine
. . . and so on—until the meal finally ends, or other factors or interests
intervene.
As the “assume’s” and “suppose’s” indicate, the feedback loop requires
not only that one act on the first-person reason, but that one’s doing so have
certain effects. One may not act. One may resist the desire to eat another
piece of chocolate, to continue to sail, or to continue to look at the attractive
person; or one may simply not have the relevant desires to continue. Or one
may act and the relevant effects may not occur after, for example, the tenth
piece of chocolate, the fifth hour of sailing, or the second the second
continuous minute of looking too long at the attractive person.4
Such feedback loops nonetheless play an important explanatory and
justificatory role, and it is the importance of this role that forms the final part
of the rationale for requiring that the enjoyed experience or activity cause
the first-person reason. The role in the context of enjoyment is just a special
4
Footnote about enjoying writing the last word, etc.
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case of a type of explanation and justification common in daily life. Consider
the following example.
A friend has invited you to go sailing. You accepted the invitation only
because you thought it would be impolite to refuse. You have been sailing
before and, while you did not find it unendurable, you found it difficult to see
what people find so attractive about wandering about a body of water at very
slow speeds. Your expressing this opinion of sailing to your friend is what
prompted the invitation. The friend had insisted that you give sailing another
try on his boat; “you might,” he said, “change your mind.” He was indeed
correct. The boat, an ultralight racer, moves with an ease and grace utterly
lacking in your early experiences; it is all different—the feel of the graceful
motion of the boat and its easy speed, the sense of being not at odds with
the wind and waves but in harmony with them. You express your surprise
and enthusiasm to your friend by identifying the features of the experience
for which you find yourself filled with desire. You are, as you realize enjoying
it. The belief involved in this enjoyment is the belief, of the activity, under
an array A that captures your new found sense of sailing, that it is occurring;
you desire, of the activity, under A, that is should occur for its own sake, and
the belief/desire pair serves as a first-person reason to sail. Your activity
causally sustains the pair as a first-person reason by causally sustaining your
belief that the pair provides a justification. It is this conviction that underlies
your enthusiastic specification the array of features your sailing activity has
revealed; the discovery of those features is the initial cause of the belief, and
their continued presence in your activity is a sustaining cause.
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Recall that the “φ” in an “of φ, under A” belief/desire pair is not a type
of experience or activity put a non-repeatable individual. It is the occurrence
of that individual that causes (or fails to cause) one to be willing to offer the
pair as a justification for φing. As Gouge, for example, explores his
homoerotic side, a wide range of experiences and activities will trigger (or fail
to trigger) his willingness to offer the associated “of φ, under A” belief/desire
pairs as justifications. In this way, he discovers what types of “of φ, under
A” belief/desire pairs play a justificatory role for him, and what types do not.
There are many of possibilities. The emerging pattern may, for example,
reveal the types of men to whom he is attracted, or, reflecting on the various
A’s in the “of φ, under A” pairs, Gouge may come to the conclusion that
gender matters less than certain personality traits that, as he now realizes,
he conceptualized as “male.” While the foregoing points stand out rather
clearly in examples of exploring new dimensions of one’s psyche, they hold
generally. Imagine that, after your excursion on your friend’s boat, you go
sailing regularly. Suppose that, for the most part at least, you first-personreason enjoy the activity. The pattern of particular “of φ, under A”
belief/desire pairs may reveal one or more significant patterns; you may
discover that you prefer sailing alone, or that “φ’s” and “A’s” involving high
winds and large waves do, or do not, yield belief/desire pairs you regard as
providing justifications. Similarly, when Ziva meets her husband for lunch,
or when Mason returns yet again to his beloved Warsaw, the experiences and
activities of each continue discontinuous sequences of similar experiences
and activities comprising evolving patterns; the patterns may be more or less
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stable, or more or less shifting. Each will respond or fail to respond with the
belief that associated “of φ, under A” belief/desire pairs justify φing. If Ziva
or Mason fails to respond in this way, that may signal a loss of interest, or
some other sort of change that explains the lack of response. Responding
with the belief on the other hand adds to the pattern which reveals what one
takes to provide justifications, and which confirms or disconfirms one’s
generalizations in that regard. This theme—causal responses that confirm or
disconfirm the relevant generalizations—plays an important role in firstperson-reason enjoyments, and it that role that motivates including in the
definition the requirement that the enjoyed experience or activity cause the
first-person reason.
This general pattern plays a prominent role in the context of firstperson-reason enjoyments. The previous example of Jim’s dining activity
illustrates confirmation, and a continuation of the example illustrates
disconfirmation. In previous example, Jim’s dining activity causes him to
believe that the relevant belief/desire pair justifies dining with the woman by
causing him to see the activity as a romantic rebellion in the name of
freedom, love, and passion. Imagine that Jim has dined with the woman
with increasing frequency over the last few months, and that his current
dining activity is part of a series of “of φ, under A” belief/desire pairs where
the “A’s” characterized “φ’s” in terms of romantic rebellion, freedom, love,
and passion. His current activity adds to the pattern and confirms his
conviction that such belief/desire pairs provide justifications.
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Compare a continuation of this example. In the continuation, the
causal relations collapse. To this end, imagine that Jim’s enjoyment—and
with it, the confirmation provided by the continuation of the series of
justifying belief/desire pairs—came as a surprise. He met the woman with
the intention of ending their incipient affair, and intention he abandons—but
only momentarily. As the meal progresses, his thought keeps returning to
Brangien’s outburst in Tristan and Isolde after she realizes Isolde and Tristan
have accidently drunk the love potion: “Iseult, my friend, and Tristan, you,
you have drunk death together.” He begins to see himself trapped in a
future of passion, ecstasy, lies, remorse, recrimination, and destruction. This
vision of the future grows stronger and more certain until he finally thinks, “I
must not do this,” and with this thought the dinning activity ceases to
causally sustain his conviction that the belief/desire pair provides a
justification; that belief is replaced by the certainty that the belief/desire pair
is an alien invader to be resisted. His romantic visions and his enjoyment
dissolve, leaving just the brute fact of the woman’s physical presence.
The two dining examples illustrate patterns of confirmation and
disconfirmation that figure prominently in one’s life—both inside and outside
one’s enjoyments. The importance of these patterns is the ultimate reason
for requiring, in the definition of first-person-reason enjoyment, that the
enjoyed experience or activity cause the relevant first-person reason.
III. Valuing and Enjoying
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We now turn to the characterizing a special subtype of first-personreason enjoyment, the type that plays a key role in our account of beauty.
Our definition employs the notion of valuing.
A. Valuing
Suppose you say "I value my daughter's playfulness." This is to
express a certain attitude both toward her having a capacity for playfulness
and toward realizations of that capacity. To characterize the attitude, let A
be an array of features whose instantiation realizes, or is an aid to realizing
your daughter’s capacity for playfulness. To value your daughter’s
playfulness is to regard it as providing, in and of itself, some degree of
justification for the realization of A. Suppose, for example, you were asked,
“Why do you indulge your five-year old daughter’s whims to the extent you
do?” Since you believe—let us assume—that indulging her whims promotes
playfulness, you regard, the answer, “Because it promotes playfulness,” as
on its own providing some degree of justification for the whims-indulged
state of affairs in which she has and displays a capacity for playfulness. Two
further points are in order.
First, if you value your daughter’s playfulness, you may also value its
realization in, for example, making a clever pun, or suddenly breaking out
into song even if you would not otherwise value the clever pun or the
breaking out in song.
Second, in some cases, what one values is one’s having a certain
experience or engaging in a certain activity. Suppose Victoria values being a
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parent of such-and-such a sort, and that she believes that a particular
experience or activity realizes, or is a means to realizing, being such a
parent. She will then typically value that experience or activity as a
realization of what she values.
To value it as an instantiation is to regard
the fact that the experience or activity realizes, or is an aid to realizing the
value, as in and of itself a justification for having the experience or engaging
in the activity. Examples abound. When one goes sailing in heavy weather
with the intention of displaying courage, teaches a class with the intention of
teaching well, dines romantically with one’s wife, or makes an intuitive
sacrifice of a knight in a game of chess, one may not only value not only
courage, good teaching, and good chess, we may also, to the extent one
believes one’s particular experiences and activities realize or aid the
realization of those values, value the experiences and activities themselves
as particular instances of what one values generally.
To connect to enjoyment, consider the following typical situation.
Suppose that Victoria values engaging in actions and having experiences that
realize the end of being a parent of such-and-such sort. Let A be an array of
features by virtue of which φ realize being a parent of such-and-such sort.
When she watches her daughter perform in the school play, she believes
that, of the experience, under an array of features A, that it is occurring, and
she also believes that, by virtue of the experience’s having A, the experience
realizes engaging in actions and having experiences that realize the end of
being a parent of such-and-such sort. In addition, she desires, of the
experience, under A, that it occur for its own sake. Indeed, in general, if one
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believes that, by virtue of having an array of features A, one’s φing realizes
an aspect of one’s action-experience conception of the good, then, typically
at least, one desires, of φ, under A, that it should occur for its own sake.
Suppose further that the relevant belief/desire pair functions as a first-person
reason under A to have the experience. Again, in general, if one believes
that, by virtue of having an array of features A, one’s φing realizes
something one values, then the related belief/desire pair will serve as a firstperson reason. Thus, Victoria fulfills these conditions:
(1) she has the experience of watching her daughter perform,
(2) (a) x believes, of that experience, under A, that it occurs; (b)
and has the desire, of the experience, under A, that it should occur
for its own sake;
(3) the belief/desire pair in (2) is a first-person reason, under A,
for x to φ.
(4) she also believes that she values the experience’s having A as an
instantiation of being a parent of such-and-such sort.
(1) – (3) conditions almost entail the definition of first-person-reason
enjoyment. Only three things are missing: φ’s causing (2) and (3); the
belief’s being occurrent; and, the desire’s being felt. In the next section, we
argue that the cases in which the missing conditions hold constitute a special
type of enjoyment, a type characterized by the presence of condition (4).
B. Value-Enjoyment
Consider the following definition:
x value-enjoys an experience or activity φ under A if and only if x
values a state of affairs S, and
(1) x φ’s, and x's φing causes (2) – (4):
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(2) (a) x occurrently believes, of φ, under A, that it occurs; (b) and
has the felt desire, of φ, under A, that it should occur for its own
sake;
(3) the belief/desire pair in (2) is a first-person reason, under A,
for x to φ;
(4) x occurrently believes that x values φ’s having A as an
instantiation of S.
This raises three questions. Why require (4)? Why require that the belief in
(4) be occurrent? And, why require that x’s φing cause (4)?
A continuation of the Victoria-daughter’s-play example answers the
first question. Suppose Victoria fulfills the above conditions with respect to
the experience of watching her daughter perform and the relevant array of
features A and being a parent of such-and-such sort. Why is it important
that Victoria believe that she values her experience’s having A as a
realization of being a parent of such-and-such sort? It is important to
Victoria. It is important to her that she realize what she values, and the
belief singles out her experience as one that does so.
Why also require that the belief be occurrent? It is important to
Victoria that the belief be occurrent. As we noted already, it is important to
Victoria that, not only that she attend to her daughter, but also that the
attention itself realize certain aspects of her conception of being a parent;
hence, it is important to her to monitor through an occurrent belief whether
she is achieving this goal. In addition, the occurrent belief adds to the
feeling of enjoyment. In general, the feeling of enjoyment consists in the
way the desire feels against the background of the occurrent belief that the
desire is fulfilled. In value-enjoyments, that background includes, not just
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the occurrent belief, of φ, under A, that it is occurring; it also includes
occurrent belief that one values φ having A as an instance of something one
values more generally, in Victoria’s case being a parent of such-and-such
sort. This gives Victoria’s feeling of enjoyment at watching her daughter a
depth and meaning it would otherwise lack.
Now, why require that the experience or activity cause the occurrent
belief? Our answer is that the causal relation adds to the explanation of the
power enjoyment can exercise. As also we noted earlier, the power of firstperson-reason enjoyments consists in invoking the authority of reason by
making us think, “This is justified.” To this, we now add that the experience
invokes the authority of reason by also making one occurrently think “This is
something I value.” This is to invoke the authority of reason because, as we
noted earlier, to value an experience or activity as an instantiation of
something else one values is to regard the fact that the experience or activity
realizes, or is an aid to realizing the value, as in and of itself a justification
for having the experience or engaging in the activity.
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