Misplaced Pages

#59940

82-435: Pleasure is experience that feels good, that involves the enjoyment of something. It contrasts with pain or suffering , which are forms of feeling bad. It is closely related to value, desire and action: humans and other conscious animals find pleasure enjoyable, positive or worthy of seeking. A great variety of activities may be experienced as pleasurable, like eating, having sex, listening to music or playing games. Pleasure

164-490: A certain type of experience while well-being is about what is good for a person. Many philosophers agree that pleasure is good for a person and therefore is a form of well-being . But there may be other things besides or instead of pleasure that constitute well-being , like health, virtue, knowledge or the fulfillment of desires. On some conceptions, happiness is identified with "the individual's balance of pleasant over unpleasant experience". Life satisfaction theories , on

246-503: A clear distinction between joy, pleasure , and happiness : "I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for Joy", and "I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again... I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all

328-484: A cold jaded critic may still be a good judge of beauty due to her years of experience but lack the joy that initially accompanied her work. A further question for hedonists is how to explain the relation between beauty and pleasure. This problem is akin to the Euthyphro dilemma : is something beautiful because we enjoy it or do we enjoy it because it is beautiful? Identity theorists solve this problem by denying that there

410-427: A desire for things that are not enjoyable and we can enjoy things without desiring to do so. Dispositional theories try to account for pleasure in terms of dispositions , often by including insights from both the quality theories and the attitude theories. One way to combine these elements is to hold that pleasure consists in being disposed to desire an experience in virtue of the qualities of this experience. Some of

492-593: A dimension going from positive degrees through a neutral point to negative degrees. This assumption is important for the possibility of comparing and aggregating the degrees of pleasure of different experiences, for example, in order to perform the Utilitarian calculus . The concept of pleasure is similar but not identical to the concepts of well-being and of happiness . These terms are used in overlapping ways, but their meanings tend to come apart in technical contexts like philosophy or psychology. Pleasure refers to

574-599: A hedonic coldspot. In rats, microinjections of opioids , endocannabinoids , and orexin are capable of enhancing liking reactions in these hotspots. The hedonic hotspots located in the anterior OFC and posterior insula have been demonstrated to respond to orexin and opioids in rats, as has the overlapping hedonic coldspot in the anterior insula and posterior OFC. On the other hand, the parabrachial nucleus hotspot has only been demonstrated to respond to benzodiazepine receptor agonists. While all pleasurable stimuli can be seen as rewards, some rewards do not evoke pleasure. Based upon

656-409: A learned capacity to delay immediate gratification in order to take the real consequences of our actions into account. Freud also described the pleasure principle as a positive feedback mechanism that motivates the organism to recreate the situation it has just found pleasurable, and to avoid past situations that caused pain . A cognitive bias is a systematic tendency of thinking and judging in

738-407: A milkshake or of playing chess but not just pure or object-less enjoyment. According to this approach, pleasurable experiences differ in content (drinking a milkshake, playing chess) but agree in feeling or hedonic tone. Pleasure can be localized, but only to the extent that the impression it qualifies is localized. One objection to both the sensation theory and the felt-quality theory is that there

820-465: A result of a learned association with an intrinsic reward. In other words, extrinsic rewards function as motivational magnets that elicit "wanting", but not "liking" reactions once they have been acquired. The reward system contains pleasure centers  or hedonic hotspots – i.e., brain structures that mediate pleasure or "liking" reactions from intrinsic rewards. As of October 2017, hedonic hotspots have been identified in subcompartments within

902-455: A sensation but as an aspect qualifying sensations or other mental phenomena. As an aspect, pleasure is dependent on the mental phenomenon it qualifies, it cannot be present on its own. Since the link to the enjoyed phenomenon is already built into the pleasure, it solves the problem faced by sensation theories to explain how this link comes about. It also captures the intuition that pleasure is usually pleasure of something: enjoyment of drinking

SECTION 10

#1732771998060

984-404: A way that deviates from a normative criterion, especially from the demands of rationality . Cognitive biases in regard to pleasure include the peak–end rule , the focusing illusion , the nearness bias and the future bias . The peak–end rule affects how we remember the pleasantness or unpleasantness of experiences. It states that our overall impression of past events is determined for

1066-458: Is nautical twilight , between 6 and 12 degrees below the horizon. The third phase is astronomical twilight , which is the period when the Sun is between 12 and 18 degrees below the horizon. Dusk is at the very end of astronomical twilight, and is the darkest moment of twilight just before night . Finally, night occurs when the Sun reaches 18 degrees below the horizon and no longer illuminates

1148-477: Is a difference between beauty and pleasure: they identify beauty, or the appearance of it, with the experience of aesthetic pleasure. The ancient Cyrenaics posited pleasure as the universal aim for all people. Later, Epicurus defined the highest pleasure as aponia (the absence of pain), and pleasure as "freedom from pain in the body and freedom from turmoil in the soul". According to Cicero (or rather his character Torquatus) Epicurus also believed that pleasure

1230-402: Is activated by quite diverse pleasures, suggesting a common neural currency. Some commentators opine that our current understanding of how pleasure happens within us remains poor, but that scientific advance gives optimism for future progress. In the past, there has been debate as to whether pleasure is experienced by other animals rather than being an exclusive property of humankind; however, it

1312-402: Is also tightly bound to the present moment, whereas happiness presupposes an evaluative stance concerning one period of one's life or one's own life as a whole." The causes of joy have been ascribed to various sources. Ingrid Fetell Lee has studied the sources of joy. She wrote the book Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness , and gave a TED talk on

1394-479: Is by definition impossible." The 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer understood pleasure as a negative sensation, one that negates the usual existential condition of suffering. Pleasure is often regarded as a bipolar construct, meaning that the two ends of the spectrum from pleasure to suffering are mutually exclusive. That is part of the circumplex model of affect. Yet, some lines of research suggest that people do experience pleasure and suffering at

1476-406: Is called anhedonia . An active aversion to obtaining pleasure is called hedonophobia . The degree to which something or someone is experienced as pleasurable not only depends on its objective attributes (appearance, sound, taste, texture, etc.), but on beliefs about its history, about the circumstances of its creation, about its rarity, fame, or price, and on other non-intrinsic attributes, such as

1558-410: Is derived from the morpheme "ws" – meaning "up", and "chód" – signifying "move" (from the verb chodzić – meaning "walk, move"), due to the act of the Sun coming up from behind the horizon. The Polish word for west , zachód ( zakhud ), is similar but with the word "za" at the start, meaning "behind", from the act of the Sun going behind the horizon. In Russian , the word for west, запад ( zapad ),

1640-407: Is derived from the words за – meaning "behind", and пад – signifying "fall" (from the verb падать – padat' ), due to the act of the Sun falling behind the horizon. In Hebrew, the word for east is 'מזרח', which derives from the word for rising, and the word for west is 'מערב', which derives from the word for setting. The 16th-century astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus was the first to present to

1722-472: Is disinterested if it is indifferent to the existence of the beautiful object. For example, the joy of looking at a beautiful landscape would still be valuable if it turned out that this experience was an illusion, which would not be true if this joy was due to seeing the landscape as a valuable real estate opportunity. Opponents of aesthetic hedonism have pointed out that despite commonly occurring together, there are cases of beauty without pleasure. For example,

SECTION 20

#1732771998060

1804-411: Is essential to them. They are traditionally divided into quality theories and attitude theories. An alternative terminology refers to these theories as phenomenalism and intentionalism . Quality theories hold that pleasure is a quality of pleasurable experiences themselves while attitude theories state that pleasure is in some sense external to the experience since it depends on the subject's attitude to

1886-418: Is intimately connected to value as something that is desirable and worth seeking. According to axiological hedonism , it is the only thing that has intrinsic value or is good in itself . This position entails that things other than pleasure, like knowledge, virtue or money, only have instrumental value : they are valuable because or to the extent that they produce pleasure but lack value otherwise. Within

1968-459: Is less than one degree. The time of sunset varies throughout the year and is determined by the viewer's position on Earth, specified by latitude and longitude , altitude , and time zone . Small daily changes and noticeable semi-annual changes in the timing of sunsets are driven by the axial tilt of the Earth , daily rotation of the Earth, the planet's movement in its annual elliptical orbit around

2050-420: Is linked to experiences that fulfill a desire had by the experiencer. So the difference between the first and the second person in the example above is that only the first person has a corresponding desire directed at the taste of chocolate. One important argument against this version is that while it is often the case that we desire something first and then enjoy it, this cannot always be the case. In fact, often

2132-415: Is no one quality shared by all pleasure-experiences. The force of this objection comes from the intuition that the variety of pleasure-experiences is just too wide to point out one quality shared by all, for example, the quality shared by enjoying a milkshake and enjoying a chess game . One way for quality theorists to respond to this objection is by pointing out that the hedonic tone of pleasure-experiences

2214-410: Is not a regular quality but a higher-order quality. As an analogy, a vividly green thing and a vividly red thing do not share a regular color property but they share "vividness" as a higher-order property. Attitude theories propose to analyze pleasure in terms of attitudes to experiences. So to enjoy the taste of chocolate it is not sufficient to have the corresponding experience of the taste. Instead,

2296-461: Is not strongly wavelength-dependent. Mie scattering is responsible for the light scattered by clouds, and also for the daytime halo of white light around the Sun (forward scattering of white light). Sunset colors are typically more brilliant than sunrise colors, because the evening air contains more particles than morning air. Sometimes just before sunrise or after sunset a green flash can be seen. Ash from volcanic eruptions, trapped within

2378-499: Is now known that animals do experience pleasure, as measured by objective behavioral and neural hedonic responses to pleasurable stimuli. Enjoyment Joy is the state of being that allows one to experience feelings of intense, long-lasting happiness and contentment of life. It is closely related to, and often evoked by, well-being, success , or good fortune. Happiness, pleasure , and gratitude are closely related to joy but are not identical to it. C. S. Lewis saw

2460-408: Is often pleasurable. Pleasure is sometimes subdivided into fundamental pleasures that are closely related to survival (food, sex, and social belonging) and higher-order pleasures (e.g., viewing art and altruism). Bentham listed 14 kinds of pleasure; sense, wealth, skill, amity, a good name, power, piety, benevolence, malevolence, memory, imagination, expectation, pleasures dependent on association, and

2542-481: Is part of various other mental states such as ecstasy , euphoria and flow . Happiness and well-being are closely related to pleasure but not identical with it. There is no general agreement as to whether pleasure should be understood as a sensation, a quality of experiences, an attitude to experiences or otherwise. Pleasure plays a central role in the family of philosophical theories known as hedonism . "Pleasure" refers to experience that feels good, that involves

Pleasure - Misplaced Pages Continue

2624-453: Is pleasurable if the subject of the experience wants the experience to occur for its own sake while it is occurring. But this version faces a related problem akin to the Euthyphro dilemma : it seems that we usually desire things because they are enjoyable, not the other way round. So desire theories would be mistaken about the direction of explanation. Another argument against desire theories is that desire and pleasure can come apart: we can have

2706-457: Is remembered less negatively due to the reduced pain at the end. This even increases the likelihood for the patient to return for subsequent procedures. Daniel Kahneman explains this distortion in terms of the difference between two selves : the experiencing self , which is aware of pleasure and pain as they are happening, and the remembering self , which shows the aggregate pleasure and pain over an extended period of time. The distortions due to

2788-430: Is self-defeating in the sense that it leads to less actual pleasure than following other motives. Sigmund Freud formulated his pleasure principle in order to account for the effect pleasure has on our behavior. It states that there is a strong, inborn tendency of our mental life to seek immediate gratification whenever an opportunity presents itself. This tendency is opposed by the reality principle , which constitutes

2870-677: Is the thesis that all our actions aim at increasing pleasure and avoiding pain. Freud 's pleasure principle ties pleasure to motivation and action by holding that there is a strong psychological tendency to seek pleasure and to avoid pain. Classical utilitarianism connects pleasure to ethics in stating that whether an action is right depends on the pleasure it produces: it should maximize the sum-total of pleasure. Many pleasurable experiences are associated with satisfying basic biological drives, such as eating , exercise , hygiene , sleep , and sex . The appreciation of cultural artifacts and activities such as art , music , dancing , and literature

2952-459: Is usually not held in very high esteem. Utilitarianism , on the other hand, is a family of altruist theories that are more respectable in the philosophical community. Within this family, classical utilitarianism draws the closest connection between pleasure and right action by holding that the agent should maximize the sum-total of everyone's happiness. This sum-total includes the agent's pleasure as well, but only as one factor among many. Pleasure

3034-497: Is usually understood in combination with egoism , i.e. that each person only aims at her own happiness. Our actions rely on beliefs about what causes pleasure. False beliefs may mislead us and thus our actions may fail to result in pleasure, but even failed actions are motivated by considerations of pleasure, according to psychological hedonism . The paradox of hedonism states that pleasure-seeking behavior commonly fails also in another way. It asserts that being motivated by pleasure

3116-422: Is worth more than an experience of subtle pleasure of looking at fine art or of engaging in a stimulating intellectual conversation. Qualitative hedonists, following John Stuart Mill , object to this version on the grounds that it threatens to turn axiological hedonism into a "philosophy of swine". Instead, they argue that the quality is another factor relevant to the value of a pleasure-experience, for example, that

3198-506: The Southern Hemisphere , but with the respective dates reversed, with the earliest sunsets occurring some time before June 21 in winter, and the latest sunsets occurring some time after December 21 in summer, again depending on one's southern latitude. For a few weeks surrounding both solstices, both sunrise and sunset get slightly later each day. Even on the equator, sunrise and sunset shift several minutes back and forth through

3280-399: The azimuths of sunset on other dates are complex, but they can be estimated with reasonable accuracy by using the analemma. As sunrise and sunset are calculated from the leading and trailing edges of the Sun, respectively, and not the center, the duration of a daytime is slightly longer than nighttime (by about 10 minutes, as seen from temperate latitudes). Further, because the light from

3362-422: The incentive salience model of reward – the attractive and motivational property of a stimulus that induces approach behavior and consummatory behavior – an intrinsic reward has two components: a "wanting" or desire component that is reflected in approach behavior, and a "liking" or pleasure component that is reflected in consummatory behavior. Some research indicates that similar mesocorticolimbic circuitry

Pleasure - Misplaced Pages Continue

3444-404: The lower pleasures of the body are less valuable than the higher pleasures of the mind. A very common element in many conceptions of beauty is its relation to pleasure. Aesthetic hedonism makes this relation part of the definition of beauty by holding that there is a necessary connection between pleasure and beauty, e.g. that for an object to be beautiful is for it to cause pleasure or that

3526-409: The nucleus accumbens shell , ventral pallidum , parabrachial nucleus , orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), and insular cortex . The hotspot within the nucleus accumbens shell is located in the rostrodorsal quadrant of the medial shell, while the hedonic coldspot is located in a more posterior region. The posterior ventral pallidum also contains a hedonic hotspot, while the anterior ventral pallidum contains

3608-438: The peak–end rule happen on the level of the remembering self . Our tendency to rely on the remembering self can often lead us to pursue courses of action that are not in our best self-interest. A closely related bias is the focusing illusion . The "illusion" occurs when people consider the impact of one specific factor on their overall happiness. They tend to greatly exaggerate the importance of that factor, while overlooking

3690-495: The troposphere , tends to mute sunset and sunrise colors, while volcanic ejecta that is instead lofted into the stratosphere (as thin clouds of tiny sulfuric acid droplets), can yield beautiful post-sunset colors called afterglows and pre-sunrise glows. A number of eruptions, including those of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 and Krakatoa in 1883 , have produced sufficiently high stratus clouds containing sulfuric acid to yield remarkable sunset afterglows (and pre-sunrise glows) around

3772-497: The Earth's slower movement around the aphelion around July 4). Likewise, the earliest sunset does not occur on the winter solstice, but rather about two weeks earlier, again depending on the viewer's latitude. In the Northern Hemisphere, it occurs in early December or late November (influenced by the Earth's faster movement near its perihelion , which occurs around January 3). Likewise, the same phenomenon exists in

3854-479: The Sun does not rise or set for 24 hours or more, known as polar day and polar night . These phenomena occur due to Earth’s axial tilt , causing continuous sunlight or darkness at certain times of the year. Approximate locations of sunset on the horizon ( azimuth ) as described above can be found in Refs. The figure on the right is calculated using the solar geometry routine as follows: An interesting feature in

3936-408: The Sun is refracted as it passes through the Earth's atmosphere, the Sun is still visible after it is geometrically below the horizon. Refraction also affects the apparent shape of the Sun when it is very close to the horizon. It makes things appear higher in the sky than they really are. Light from the bottom edge of the Sun's disk is refracted more than light from the top, since refraction increases as

4018-536: The Sun, and the Earth and Moon's paired revolutions around each other. During winter and spring, the days get longer and sunsets occur later every day until the day of the latest sunset, which occurs after the summer solstice. In the Northern Hemisphere , the latest sunset occurs late in June or in early July, but not on the summer solstice of June 21. This date depends on the viewer's latitude (connected with

4100-502: The angle of elevation decreases. This raises the apparent position of the bottom edge more than the top, reducing the apparent height of the solar disk. Its width is unaltered, so the disk appears wider than it is high. (In reality, the Sun is almost exactly spherical.) The Sun also appears larger on the horizon, an optical illusion, similar to the moon illusion . Locations within the Arctic and Antarctic Circles experience periods where

4182-465: The chocolate. But this account cannot explain why the enjoyment is linked to the taste of the chocolate and not to the itch. Another problem is due to the fact that sensations are usually thought of as localized somewhere in the body. But considering the pleasure of seeing a beautiful sunset, there seems to be no specific region in the body at which we experience this pleasure. These problems can be avoided by felt-quality-theories, which see pleasure not as

SECTION 50

#1732771998060

4264-436: The compass bear names etymologically derived from words for sunrise and sunset. The English words " orient " and " occident ", meaning "east" and "west", respectively, are descended from Latin words meaning "sunrise" and "sunset". The word "levant", related e.g. to French " (se) lever " meaning "lift" or "rise" (and also to English "elevate"), is also used to describe the east. In Polish , the word for east wschód ( vskhud ),

4346-654: The direction of time. On the positive side, we prefer pleasurable experiences to be in the future rather than in the past. On the negative side, we prefer painful experiences to be in the past rather than in the future. Pleasure is a component of reward, but not all rewards are pleasurable (e.g., money does not elicit pleasure unless this response is conditioned). Stimuli that are naturally pleasurable, and therefore attractive, are known as intrinsic rewards , whereas stimuli that are attractive and motivate approach behavior, but are not inherently pleasurable, are termed extrinsic rewards . Extrinsic rewards (e.g., money) are rewarding as

4428-477: The enjoyment of something. The term is primarily used in association with sensory pleasures like the enjoyment of sex or food. But in its most general sense, it includes all types of positive or pleasant experiences including the enjoyment of sports, seeing a beautiful sunset or engaging in an intellectually satisfying activity. Pleasure contrasts with pain or suffering, which are forms of feeling bad. Both pleasure and pain come in degrees and have been thought of as

4510-443: The experience of beauty is always accompanied by pleasure. The pleasure due to beauty does not need to be pure , i.e. exclude all unpleasant elements. Instead, beauty can involve mixed pleasure, for example, in the case of a beautifully tragic story. We take pleasure from many things that are not beautiful, which is why beauty is usually defined in terms of a special type of pleasure: aesthetic or disinterested pleasure. A pleasure

4592-404: The experience. More recently, dispositional theories have been proposed that incorporate elements of both traditional approaches. In everyday language, the term "pleasure" is primarily associated with sensory pleasures like the enjoyment of food or sex. One traditionally important quality-theory closely follows this association by holding that pleasure is a sensation. On the simplest version of

4674-428: The field of ethics . Ethical hedonism takes the strongest position on this relation in stating that considerations of increasing pleasure and decreasing pain fully determine what we should do or which action is right. Ethical hedonist theories can be classified in relation to whose pleasure should be increased. According to the egoist version, each agent should only aim at maximizing her own pleasure. This position

4756-495: The figure on the right is apparent hemispheric symmetry in regions where daily sunrise and sunset actually occur. This symmetry becomes clear if the hemispheric relation in sunrise equation is applied to the x- and y-components of the solar vector presented in Ref. As a ray of white sunlight travels through the atmosphere to an observer, some of the colors are scattered out of the beam by air molecules and airborne particles , changing

4838-520: The final color of the beam the viewer sees. Because the shorter wavelength components, such as blue and green, scatter more strongly, these colors are preferentially removed from the beam. At sunrise and sunset, when the path through the atmosphere is longer, the blue and green components are removed almost completely, leaving the longer wavelength orange and red hues we see at those times. The remaining reddened sunlight can then be scattered by cloud droplets and other relatively large particles to light up

4920-452: The genetics of happiness, joy is known to be hereditary. Experience of joy is increased through healthy habits such as sharing food, physical activity, writing, and self-connection. Sunset The time of actual sunset is defined in astronomy as two minutes before the upper limb of the Sun disappears below the horizon. Near the horizon, atmospheric refraction causes sunlight rays to be distorted to such an extent that geometrically

5002-402: The horizon red and orange. The removal of the shorter wavelengths of light is due to Rayleigh scattering by air molecules and particles much smaller than the wavelength of visible light (less than 50 nm in diameter). The scattering by cloud droplets and other particles with diameters comparable to or larger than the sunlight's wavelengths (> 600 nm) is due to Mie scattering and

SECTION 60

#1732771998060

5084-422: The labels " present bias " or " temporal discounting ", refers to our tendency to violate temporal neutrality in regards to temporal distance from the present. On the positive side, we prefer pleasurable experiences to be near rather than distant. On the negative side, we prefer painful experiences to be distant rather than near. The future bias refers to our tendency to violate temporal neutrality in regards to

5166-402: The most part not by the total pleasure and suffering it contained but by how it felt at its peaks and at its end . For example, the memory of a painful colonoscopy is improved if the examination is extended by three minutes in which the scope is still inside but not moved anymore, resulting in a moderately uncomfortable sensation. This extended colonoscopy, despite involving more pain overall,

5248-437: The numerous other factors that would in most cases have a greater impact. The nearness bias and the future bias are two different forms of violating the principle of temporal neutrality . This principle states that the temporal location of a benefit or a harm is not important for its normative significance: a rational agent should care to the same extent about all parts of their life. The nearness bias , also discussed under

5330-439: The opposite seems to be true: we have to learn first that something is enjoyable before we start to desire it. This objection can be partially avoided by holding that it does not matter whether the desire was there before the experience but that it only matters what we desire while the experience is happening. This variant, originally held by Henry Sidgwick , has recently been defended by Chris Heathwood, who holds that an experience

5412-493: The other hand, hold that happiness involves having the right attitude towards one's life as a whole . Pleasure may have a role to play in this attitude, but it is not identical to happiness . Pleasure is closely related to value, desire, motivation and right action. There is broad agreement that pleasure is valuable in some sense. Axiological hedonists hold that pleasure is the only thing that has intrinsic value . Many desires are concerned with pleasure. Psychological hedonism

5494-407: The pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and Pleasure often is." Michela Summa says that the distinction between joy and happiness is that joy "accompanies the process through and through, whereas happiness seems to be more strictly tied to the moment of achievement of the process... joy is not only a direct emotional response to an event that is embedded in our life-concerns but

5576-424: The pleasures of relief. Some commentators see 'complex pleasures' including wit and sudden realisation, and some see a wide range of pleasurable feelings. Pleasure comes in various forms, for example, in the enjoyment of food, sex, sports, seeing a beautiful sunset or engaging in an intellectually satisfying activity. Theories of pleasure try to determine what all these pleasurable experiences have in common, what

5658-469: The problems of the regular desire theory can be avoided this way since the disposition does not need to be realized for there to be pleasure, thereby taking into account that desire and pleasure can come apart. Pleasure plays a central role in theories from various areas of philosophy . Such theories are usually grouped together under the label "hedonism". Pleasure is related not just to how we actually act, but also to how we ought to act, which belongs to

5740-463: The same time, giving rise to so-called mixed feelings. Pleasure is considered one of the core dimensions of emotion. It can be described as the positive evaluation that forms the basis for several more elaborate evaluations such as "agreeable" or "nice". As such, pleasure is an affect and not an emotion , as it forms one component of several different emotions. The clinical condition of being unable to experience pleasure from usually enjoyable activities

5822-474: The scope of axiological hedonism, there are two competing theories about the exact relation between pleasure and value: quantitative hedonism and qualitative hedonism . Quantitative hedonists, following Jeremy Bentham , hold that the specific content or quality of a pleasure-experience is not relevant to its value, which only depends on its quantitative features: intensity and duration. On this account, an experience of intense pleasure of indulging in food and sex

5904-401: The sensation theory, whenever we experience pleasure there is a distinctive pleasure-sensation present. So a pleasurable experience of eating chocolate involves a sensation of the taste of chocolate together with a pleasure-sensation. An obvious shortcoming of this theory is that many impressions may be present at the same time. For example, there may be an itching sensation as well while eating

5986-489: The size it does from Earth , due to the greater distance between Mars and the Sun. The colors are typically hues of blue, but some Martian sunsets last significantly longer and appear far redder than is typical on Earth. The colors of the Martian sunset differ from those on Earth. Mars has a thin atmosphere , lacking oxygen and nitrogen , so the light scattering is not dominated by a Rayleigh Scattering process. Instead,

6068-581: The sky. Locations further north than the Arctic Circle and further south than the Antarctic Circle experience no full sunset or sunrise on at least one day of the year, when the polar day or the polar night persists continuously for 24 hours. At latitudes greater than within half a degree of either pole, the sun cannot rise or set on the same date on any day of the year, since the sun's angular elevation between solar noon and midnight

6150-462: The social status or identity it conveys. For example, a sweater that has been worn by a celebrity is more desired than an otherwise identical sweater that has not, though considerably less so if it has been washed. Pleasure-seeking behavior is a common phenomenon and may indeed dominate our conduct at times. The thesis of psychological hedonism generalizes this insight by holding that all our actions aim at increasing pleasure and avoiding pain. This

6232-414: The solar disk is already about one diameter below the horizon when a sunset is observed. Sunset is distinct from twilight , which is divided into three stages. The first one is civil twilight , which begins once the Sun has disappeared below the horizon, and continues until it descends to 6 degrees below the horizon. The early to intermediate stages of twilight coincide with predusk . The second phase

6314-429: The subject has to have the right attitude to this taste for pleasure to arise. This approach captures the intuition that a second person may have exactly the same taste-experience but not enjoy it since the relevant attitude is lacking. Various attitudes have been proposed for the type of attitude responsible for pleasure, but historically the most influential version assigns this role to desires . On this account, pleasure

6396-417: The subject, titled "Where joy hides and how to find it." Joy is most commonly found through engagement, self-connection, and living in the moment. Joy improves health and well-being and brings psychological changes that improve a person's mood and well-being. Some people have a natural capacity for joy, meaning they experience joy more easily compared to others. While there is no conclusive evidence for

6478-486: The world a detailed and eventually widely accepted mathematical model supporting the premise that the Earth is moving and the Sun actually stays still, despite the impression from our point of view of a moving Sun. Sunsets on other planets appear different because of differences in the distance of the planet from the Sun and non-existent or differing atmospheric compositions. On Mars , the setting Sun appears about two-thirds

6560-442: The world. The high-altitude clouds serve to reflect strongly reddened sunlight still striking the stratosphere after sunset, down to the surface. Some of the most varied colors at sunset can be found in the opposite or eastern sky after the Sun has set during twilight. Depending on weather conditions and the types of clouds present, these colors have a wide spectrum, and can produce unusual results. In some languages, points of

6642-670: The year, along with solar noon. These effects are plotted by an analemma . Neglecting atmospheric refraction and the Sun's non-zero size, whenever and wherever sunset occurs, it is always in the northwest quadrant from the March equinox to the September equinox , and in the southwest quadrant from the September equinox to the March equinox. Sunsets occur almost exactly due west on the equinoxes for all viewers on Earth. Exact calculations of

6724-585: Was the chief good and pain the chief evil. The Pyrrhonist philosopher Aenesidemus claimed that following Pyrrhonism's prescriptions for philosophical skepticism produced pleasure. In the 12th century, Razi 's Treatise of the Self and the Spirit ( Kitab al Nafs Wa’l Ruh ) analyzed different types of pleasure- sensuous and intellectual , and explained their relations with one another. He concludes that human needs and desires are endless, and "their satisfaction

#59940