Pleasure can be taken in things that carry no pleasant sensation at all

The argument

A second argument for this account is that pleasure is reported in cases where there is no agreeable feeling to be found. Proponents of this account point to the pleasure of finishing a long and thoroughly unpleasant task, of being proved right in an argument, of learning something one had been curious about, or of seeing a rival fail. Something in each case is plainly pleasant, and yet none of it feels like warmth or sweetness. If the pleasure were a sensation, it should be possible to say where it is. The mechanism proponents offer unifies these cases. In each, something the person wanted has been obtained: the task finished, the point conceded, the curiosity met, the rival's advantage removed. Nothing else is common to them. The sensations differ wildly and in several cases are absent altogether, while the relation to desire holds in every instance. Proponents argue that an account should be built on the feature the cases share rather than on the one that varies. Proponents add that this is why pleasure can be so specific about its object. A sensation is a state a person is in, and it does not by itself point at anything. But pleasures are almost always pleasures at something, and the something is reliably whatever was wanted. A person is pleased that the work is done, not merely pleased while it is. On this account that structure is not a curiosity of language but the shape of the thing itself: pleasure is directed because desire is directed, and it takes its object from the desire it answers.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics argue that the absence of a locatable sensation shows only that some feelings are diffuse, not that there is no feeling at all. Relief at a finished task is a felt state even if it cannot be placed in a limb, and a theory that denies this has set the standard for sensation implausibly high. They add that pleasure at a rival's failure undercuts the account rather than supporting it, since what is enjoyed there is the contemplating, which continues long after the want has been met. Others argue that directedness is a feature of attention rather than of pleasure: a person attends to what pleases them, which is enough to explain why pleasures seem to be about things.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Critics argue the premise rests on a narrow idea of sensation. Relief, lightness and the easing of tension are felt states even when they cannot be located precisely, and the cases offered all carry one, so the absence claimed is an absence of vividness rather than of feeling. [Rejecting P2] The uniqueness claim is contested. The cases also share a change in the person's situation for the better as they see it, which is a second common feature, and nothing in the argument shows that desire rather than that change is the operative one. [Rejecting C] Critics hold the conclusion overreaches even if the premises stand. That some pleasures are not sensations would show only that the sensory account is incomplete, not that every pleasure is the satisfaction of a desire.