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 deepsea 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
1
We do not take these claims to commit us to any position in regard to the
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 feltaspect 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
“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.
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
518
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 deepsea 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.