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This paper aims to map out the adaptive causal pathways of processes underlying capsaicin consumption and the desensitization process of the TRPV1 receptor as a feedback loop together with pain and pleasure perception. In order to map out these causal capsaicin pathways, adaptive causal network modeling was applied, which is a way of modeling biological, neural, mental and social processes from an adaptive causal modeling perspective.

The recent renaissance in research on psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy is showing great promise for the treatment of many psychiatric conditions. Interestingly, therapeutic outcomes for patients undergoing these treatments are predicted by the occurrence of a mystical experience—an experience characterised in part by a sense of profound meaning. This has led to hypotheses that psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy is therapeutic because it enhances perception of meaning, and consequently leads to a meaning response (a therapeutic mechanism that has been well described in the philosophical literature on the placebo effect). The putative mechanism of action of psychedelics as meaning enhancers raises normative ethical questions as to whether it can be justified to pharmacologically increase the perception of meaning in order to heal patients. Using the perspectives of hedonistic moral theories, this paper argues that if psychedelics operate as meaning enhancers, psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy can be ethically justified. An anti-hedonistic objection is presented by applying Robert Nozick’s Experience Machine thought experiment to the case of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. However, it is argued that this objection falls short for two reasons. First, even if pleasure and pain are not the only consequences which have moral value they are not morally irrelevant, therefore, therapeutic meaning enhancement can still be justified in cases of extreme suffering. Second, it is possible that psychedelic states of consciousness do not represent a false reality, hence their therapeutic meaning enhancement is not problematic according to Nozick’s standards.

This paper argues that the author’s preference for solitude in Bryce Andrew’s Badluck Way is essentially hedonistic in nature. Solitude constitutes human existence and experience. The concept of ‘pain and pleasure’ predicates hedonism. The intersectionality between experiential solitude and hedonism is unfortunately inconceivable despite a plethora of discourse including literature. In numerous literary texts, solitude has been the pivotal entry point to ascertain and expound both fictional and nonfictional characters’ actions and behaviours. The same can be said about hedonism. However, there is little to no literary studies conducted to explore the common linkage between solitude and hedonistic views. Fred Feldman’s (2004) Attitudinal Hedonism theory and his six Intrinsic Attitudinal Pleasure features underpinned the study. Findings disclosed that many pleasure taking aspects in solitude are inherently hedonistic. Selected excerpts revealed that hedonism and pleasure taking played a predominant role in asserting the author’s predilection for solitariness. This paper responds to the need for investigation of the singularisation of solitude-hedonism concept as a means of heightening interdisciplinary awareness and enabling inter-discourse studies of literary and philosophical scholarship alike.

Journeys play a vital role in the lives of African Americans insofar as their quest for home in America is concerned. These journeys substantially contribute to their understanding of the impact of slavery and racism on themselves and their ancestors without which they are not in a position to materialize their dream for a viable home and identity. ‘Memory’ and ‘re-memory help them to evoke traumas that their ancestors had undergone and compare the same with their firsthand traumas in the present. These journeys thus enable them to get matured and knowledgeable so that they can adapt themselves to the new condition. The paper is an attempt to explore in a better way Toni Morrison’s representation of pain and pleasure of such journeys in her novel Song of Solomon, which enable her black characters to reconstruct their identities and regain self-esteem so that they find themselves in a position to make home possible.

There are no undebated definitions of “creativity,” and any definition will reflect how this rich topic is treated. Nearly 20 years ago I discussed how behavior analysis might contribute—or not—to an understanding of creativity. I revisit this topic, expanding on some issues and reconsidering others. As before, my focus is on scientific and mathematical accomplishments, which, though tied closely to Weisberg’s placement of creative achievements in the domains of problem posing and problem solving, places emphasis on the extraordinary and productive giftedness of certain individuals. From the massive empirical, theoretical, and historical literature at least three essential and dynamically interlocking dimensions of their creative achievements emerge: talent, expertise, and motivation. I emphasize “interlocking” because the productive expression of each of these elements depends on the others. The role of behavior analysis in these elements is modest at best. It has nothing to say about talent—and even in some cases might deny its role altogether. As for expertise, with some notable exceptions, behavior analysis has had little to say about the acquisition of truly complex performances; this has been left to other fields. As for motivation, one must go well beyond naive “pleasure and pain” accounts to more elusive, yet more powerful behavior–consequence relations. Many challenges to understanding remain for all behavioral scientists.

This essay – written autobiographically as a confession – charts uncomfortably and reflexively salient experiences and emotions of a queer educator of color. It unveils and analyzes unresolved feel...

To what extent, if any, should the law protect sentient artificial intelligence (that is, AI that can feel pleasure or pain)? Here we surveyed United States adults (n= 1,061) on their views regarding granting 1) general legal protection, 2) legal personhood, and 3) standing to bring forth a lawsuit, with respect to sentient AI and eight other groups: humans in the jurisdiction, humans outside the jurisdiction, corporations, unions, non-human animals, the environment, humans living in the near future, and humans living in the far future. Roughly one-third of participants endorsed granting personhood and standing to sentient AI (assuming its existence) in at least some cases, the lowest of any group surveyed on, and rated the desired level of protection for sentient AI as lower than all groups other than corporations. We further investigated and observed political differences in responses; liberals were more likely to endorse legal protection and personhood for sentient AI than conservatives. Taken together, these results suggest that laypeople are not by-and-large in favor of granting legal protection to AI, and that the ordinary conception of legal status, similar to codified legal doctrine, is not based on a mere capacity to feel pleasure and pain. At the same time, the observed political differences suggest that previous literature regarding political differences in empathy and moral circle expansion apply to artificially intelligent systems and extend partially, though not entirely, to legal consideration, as well.

John Locke is best known for his theory of knowledge. However, this theory includes practical, social, moral issues, containing ethics and meta-ethics, the latter being interested in epistemological nature of moral judgments. In his most famous “Essay on Human Understanding” Locke analyzes the domain of morality, paying great attention to the dichotomy of pleasure and pain as the main axis round which this domain rotates. In this paper the accent is put on the “trichotomy” of Will, Desire, and Freedom, since people often act against their wishes but according to their own will. The conclusion is given, that control of one’s passions is the true progress on the path of freedom. In order our mind was free to explore any subject and make a judgment, we must educate our passions. Trained morality turns the unpleasant or indifferent in a pleasant and welcome, if only people do everything in their power. And Philosophical law is the measure of virtue and vice.

In earlier work I defended Intrinsic Attitudinal Hedonism—a view about what makes for individual personal welfare. On this view, a person’s level of welfare is entirely determined by the amounts of intrinsic attitudinal pleasure and pain he or she takes in things. The view seems to run into trouble in cases involving individuals who take their pleasure in disgusting, immoral things; and in cases involving individuals who take their pleasure in things that really don’t actually happen; and in cases involving individuals who enjoy pleasures but who lead meaningless lives; and in cases involving individuals whose lives fail to manifest an attractive narrative structure. After sharpening up the objections, I introduce a distinction between Pure Welfare Narrowly Conceived and Enriched Welfare Broadly Conceived. I go on to claim that if this distinction is recognized, we will be able to say that each of the objections rests on the fallacy of equivocation. If, years ago, I had been more sensitive to the distinction between Pure Welfare and Enriched Welfare I would have been able to respond to the objections in a more coherent and effective way. I present that response here. In an appendix, I compare my current view with a related view defended by Shelly Kagan in ‘Me and My Life’.

Na Musicoterapia, as sensações de prazer são proporcionadas pela experiência musical. Atualmente, é sabido que essas sensações de prazer são capazes de interferir no manejo da dor. Dessa forma, o objetivo do estudo foi analisar as sensações de prazer vivenciadas numa experiência musical estética e sua contribuição para o manejo da dor em atendimentos de Musicoterapia Hospitalar. Trata-se de uma revisão bibliográfica, com abordagem qualitativa dos dados. É um recorte do trabalho de conclusão de curso do Programa de Pós-graduação em Neurociências do Instituto de Psiquiatria da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (IPUB/UFRJ). Resultados: verificou-se que a eficácia da musicoterapia em pacientes hospitalizados relaciona-se à proximidade e integração dos circuitos neurais envolvidos na dor e no prazer, nos aspectos emocionais e cognitivos que são ativados em ambas as experiências e na interação dessas questões com o contexto atual. Conclusão: os principais aspectos positivos encontrados foram a redução da intensidade da dor, do consumo de analgésicos e dos sintomas fisiológicos.

The present study examines the embodied feelings of daily-life among a sample of Albanian college students. The specific methodology of 'body-diaries' used for such a purpose goes beyond a mere experimental writing, it fosters a creative and (un)comfortable way for making sense of bodies as subjects. Sharing intimacy and co-constructing pleasure and pain takes place in the unpopular, pre-web 2.0, textual format of a diary, lacking of the contemporary usual online audience. The innovative aspect, here, is the explicit focus on putting one's body into words in daily-life. Such a methodology stems from embodiment and critical sexuality studies and follows the idea that symbolic realms and abstraction are always already materially located and speaking. The complex relationships between language and body is elaborated with respect to systemic and individual communication strategies. How do we come to terms with sensations of pleasure in our everyday routine? How do students approach themselves and others when explicitly asked to focus on bodily issues in a rapidly changing society like Albania? A a particular emphasis will be given, then, to the ongoing transformations between public and private spheres and related affective reconfigurations.

Compassion relates well with tolerance in order to ‘keep life real’ in turbulent times when a spiritual bearing provides a way through suffering to a better place. This chapter explores the narrative of how kindness matters in our everyday awareness, as our sense of the world changes by events and ideas such as post-truth uncertainty, undertow, and the unknown. It also tells of our stories woven from experiences, where we connect with feelings in the ebb and flow of nature. This is compassion relating with tolerance in practice. There is an essential play between the limiting survival contained in pleasure and pain, and the more expansive temporal holding position; and examples drawn from literature, poetry, and spiritual traditions illustrate this play. We develop by actions that keep both part and whole in mind. In this way, the chapter arrives at a shape that fits the purpose of tolerance well, as an enabler of compassion.

Over recent years, academics and policy makers in several countries have been advocating for measures of utility and happiness to replace gross domestic product as indicators of development. Yet the notion of utility has a somewhat confused history, meaning different things to different people at different times. Hume, for instance, aligned utility with public usefulness, Bentham with hedonic feelings of pleasure and pain, and Mill and modern welfare economists with pretty much anything, and this confusion has not been absent from contemporary calls for utilitarianism to inform public policy design and intervention. A possible reason why there are many different meanings attached to the concept of utility is because many people, much of the time, are not driven to maximise utility at all, irrespective of how it is defined. That is, the pursuit of utility does not drive all desires, but rather desires are antecedent; in those circumstances, at most, some conception of utility is a possible consequence of achieving one’s desires. Desires are multifarious and vary across people. The policy maker’s role over the private realm of individual decision-making should not therefore be to strive to maximise utility, but rather to put in place conditions that facilitate people in the pursuit of their own conception of a desired life.

In this chapter we summarize how economists conceptualize beliefs. Moving both backward and forward in time, we review the way that mainstream economics currently deals with beliefs, as well as, briefly, the history of economists’ thinking about beliefs. Most importantly, we introduce the reader to a recent, transformational movement in economics that focuses on belief-based utility. This approach challenges the standard economic assumption that beliefs are only an input to decision making and examines implications of the intuitive idea that people derive pleasure and pain directly from their beliefs. We also address the question of when and why people care about what other people believe. We close with a discussion of the implications of these insights for contemporary social issues such as political polarization and fake news.

La filosofía de la educación no es una disciplina, sino una materia instalada en una biblioteca, en una serie de lecturas y textos que, en la enseñanza, entendida como un acto de transmisión, compone un curso, para dar a leer, para dar a pensar y escribir, para permitir una conversación. Pero es, también, educación: un encuentro entre generaciones en la filiación del tiempo. La filosofía (de la educación) tiene que ver con el amor, con una especie de aumento de más hambre que no desea satisfacerse plenamente, y con el deseo, con la casa del deseo. Deseo no de conocimiento, sino de sabiduría, una que nos produce placer y dolor, una que conduce una vida y le da una forma. Este es el punto de partida aquí; mi punto de partida como profesor para pensar una filosofía de la educación. No obstante, a pesar de ese dolor que a veces nos atraviesa, o que hunde al amigo o a la amiga en el abismo, hay un último sentido en el que la educación, pensada filosóficamente -quizá como una especie de poética y como una bellísima melodía-, nos recuerda, con insistencia, la más importante ley de la educación jamás escrita por los dioses: «No te preocupes», «No pasa nada», «Yo estoy contigo», «Todo está bien». En estas expresiones se encierra la esencia de la promesa pedagógica. Prometemos lo imposible; buscamos, deseamos lo imposible, porque la esperanza nunca muere y nos conecta con la vida, pues lo posible ya es. Y lo hacemos atravesados del Eros, que es dulce y amargo, que es salud y pobreza, y aprendemos, en el amor, a habitar la casa del deseo.

To what extent, if any, should the law protect sentient artificial intelligence (that is, AI that can feel pleasure or pain)? Here we surveyed United States adults (n=1061) on their views regarding granting (a) general legal protection, (b) legal personhood, and (c) standing to bring forth a lawsuit, with respect to sentient AI and eight other groups: humans in the jurisdiction, humans outside the jurisdiction, corporations, unions, non-human animals, the environment, humans living in the near future, and humans living in the far future. Roughly one-third of participants endorsed granting personhood and standing to sentient AI (assuming its existence) in at least some cases, the lowest of any group surveyed on, and rated the desired level of protection for sentient AI as lower than all groups other than corporations. We further investigated and observed political differences in responses; liberals were more likely to endorse legal protection and personhood for sentient AI than conservatives. Taken together, these results suggest that laypeople are not by-and-large in favor of granting legal protection to AI, and that the ordinary conception of legal status, similar to codified legal doctrine, is not based on a mere capacity to feel pleasure and pain. At the same time, the observed political differences suggest that previous literature regarding political differences in empathy and moral circle expansion apply to artificially intelligent systems and extend partially, though not entirely, to legal consideration, as well.

This chapter focuses on a little-noticed motif in the narratives of dolphins falling in love with humans found in Apion (quoted by Aulus Gellius), Pliny the Elder, Aelian, and Oppian: the dorsal fin appears either as a handle to grasp or as an improbably sharp object capable of piercing the flesh of the beloved, wounding or even killing him as he rides on his lover’s back. Observing the erotic charge of the language and imagery, Williams situates this motif in broader contexts: other narratives of animals in love with humans; Lucretian and Virgilian conceptualizations of erotic desire in terms of piercing and penetrating, pleasure and pain; the role of penetration in pederastic configurations of human desire. In a coda, two widely different texts on animals, humans, and physical intimacy—an epigram by Strato of Sardis and a scene from Jack London’s Call of the Wild—occasion some reflection on scratching, piercing, and shared pleasure.

Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. The interest of the community is one of the most general expressions that can occur in the phraseology of morals.

It is a very old conjecture that emotion governs human choice. Early philosophers like Epicurus (1993) and Aristippus of Cyrene [see Parry (2014)] appear to have held this assumption, often described as “psychological hedonism” [see Overskeid (2002)]. British thinkers of the 18th and 19th century were among the most important exponents of psychological hedonism. In a well-known dictum, Bentham (1823, p. 1) left little doubt as regards his own view: “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. … They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think …” Famously affirming that human rationality or reason could never on its own control behavior, Hume (1739) was equally clear. Indeed, he claimed (p. 413) that reason “can never oppose passion in the direction of the will.” Instead, said Hume (p. 415), “Reason is … the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” In the second half of the 20th century, psychologists and neuroscientists tended [with some exceptions, such as Toda (1980)] to stay away from the question of how reason and emotion interact to govern human conduct. Important in turning the tide, however, helping researchers see the role of emotions in thinking and decision making, were Damasio and his co-workers (e.g., Damasio, 1994; Bechara et al., 1997). Damasio (1994) argued convincingly that there is no necessary conflict between reason and emotion—indeed, that emotion can support rational thought, and often does. To describe how cognition and emotion can interact when people choose, Damasio developed the somatic marker hypothesis (SMH). Central to the SMH is the assumption that people often do not choose on the basis of intellectual analysis alone, but also based on emotions elicited as part of the decision-making process. Verweij and Damasio (2019, p. 2) explain: “[T]he elements in this process—such as the options before us or the anticipation of the consequences of selecting one or another option—trigger emotive responses and generate the corresponding feelings or the corresponding covert signals, which can bias decisions nonconsciously.” Though demonstrating that choice can be controlled by emotions, Damasio (1994) held that this is not always the case. He described several circumstances under which the somatic marker mechanism cannot, in his view, explain why people choose the way they do. On p. 173, he states, “Somatic markers may not be sufficient for normal human decision-making since a subsequent process of reasoning and final selection will still take place in many though not all instances.” He adds (p. 196) that “logical competence does come into play beyond somatic markers.” Furthermore, says Damasio (1994, p. 177): “Some sublime human achievements come from rejecting what biology or culture propels individuals to do” —though “freedom from biological and cultural constraints can also be a hallmark of madness and can nourish the ideas and acts of the insane.” These aspects of Damasio's hypothesis are worth discussing, since the SMH, though controversial, has been so influential—and the man behind the hypothesis has not changed his mind. A recent paper (Verweij and Damasio, 2019) repeats the claim that affect does not necessarily dictate our behavior. “On the basis of reasoning,” say Verweij and Damasio (2019, p. 3) “individuals are capable of making choices that are not in line with their emotive responses.”

There is a disproportionate focus on pain over pleasure in policy-relevant research on drugs. This is unfortunate because theories of and findings on drug-involved pleasure can be used to inform knowledge of drug-involved pain. The cross-fertilization of theories and findings is bolstered by the availability of a conceptual framework that links drug-involved pain and pleasure in a comprehensive, powerful, simple, and instrumental manner. This article proposes such a framework. It consists of four types of drug-involved pain and pleasure: drug-specific corporal, drug-related corporal, economic, and social. This quaternary scheme is illustrated with findings from four literatures, namely, those on methamphetamine use, alcohol-related sexual contact among college students, resource transfer among drug users and dealers, and relational and communal issues related to drugs. The article concludes with implications for the field.

Since the discovery of pain relieving and rewarding properties of opiates such as morphine or heroin, the human mu-opioid system has been a target for medical research on pain processing and addiction. Indeed, pain and pleasure act mutually inhibitory on each other and the mu-opioid system has been suggested as an underlying common neurobiological mechanism. Recently, research interest extended the role of the endogenous mu-opioid system beyond the hedonic value of pain and pleasure towards human social-emotional behavior. Here we propose a mu-opioid feedback model of social behavior. This model is based upon recent findings of opioid modulation of human social learning, bonding and empathy in relation to affiliative and protective tendencies. Fundamental to the model is that the mu-opioid system reinforces socially affiliative or protective behavior in response to positive and negative social experiences with long-term consequences for social behavior and health. The functional implications for stress, anxiety, depression and attachment behaviors are discussed.

National audience; Research in economics is anthropocentric. It only cares about the welfare of humans, and usually does not concern itself with animals. When it does, animals are treated as resources, biodiversity, or food. That is, animals only have instrumental value for humans. Yet unlike water, trees or vegetables, and like humans, most animals have a brain and a nervous system. They can feel pain and pleasure, and many argue that their welfare should matter. Some economic studies value animal welfare, but only indirectly through humans’ altruistic valuation. This overall position of economics is inconsistent with the utilitarian tradition and can be qualified as speciesist. We suggest that economics should directly value the welfare of sentient animals, at least sometimes. We briefly discuss some possible implications and challenges for (environmental) economics.

This study resulted in job completion course guided by psychologist Ms. Vera Lucia Vaccari. The acronym BDSM consists of: Bondage, Discipline, Domination, Submission, Sadism and Masochism. There are many views on this universe, arising from psychology and psychiatry, which, with greater or lesser emphasis, often consider the practice a pathological perspective. OBJECTIVES: Raise the concepts related to pleasure and pain in practitioners of sadomasochism. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The research adopted a qualitative approach, based on a literature review and a field of work which included the collection of testimonials BDSM practitioners, raising the particularities of respondents considering the opinions, beliefs and significant in the words of survey participants by content analysis. DISCUSSION: The results point to a difference between the psychological and psychiatric vision and practitioners, who do not see the MS in a pathologizing perspective, but as a subculture. CONCLUSIONS: The psychology, the work with diversity, has the role of listening to the subject, on the grounds that there is healthy relationship of practitioners to your wishes with emphasis on exploring the various modes of sexual expression.project shows the positive impact of university involvement in the sex education of adolescents in the community, by providing also the academics, the experience of this work as part of university educations.

This lecture argues for a theory of play that departs from the Freudian analysis of pleasure and pain that associates pleasure with the resolution of a psychic tension or anxiety rather than with play and its ambiguities. It advances the idea that poetry, the domain of the aesthetic, eroticism, as well as that of the sacred involve forms of play. Play is here conceptualized in its positive aspect as an experience beyond reflective consciousness or calculation and that relates instead to the improbable, the fascinating, the risky and thus to the death instinct. To that extent, the decisive part of play concerns the role of the unconscious in its elaboration. It is from such a perspective that it proposes the identity of pleasure and play.

This article assesses the queer world-making potentiality of the comics form as demonstrated in Alison Bechdel’s 2006 graphic memoir Fun Home. By deploying the temporal openings of the graphic form, Fun Home challenges the putative fixity of heteronormative family time and the temporality of kinship lines more broadly. Bechdel represents this queering of generation and kinship as a constituent part of the young Alison’s coming-of-age as a queer comics artist; this temporal reworking simultaneously makes possible a queer reparative web of affiliation. Building on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s model of reparative reading, I demonstrate how Fun Home’s form produces a version of reparation that emerges from a shared artistry and embraces ambivalent affective responses to the past. Ultimately, Bechdel produces a queer feminist reparative reading that understands futurity’s potential as complex and grounded in both the pain and pleasure of the queer body.

The so-called ‘Olympian’ proof in Plato's Republic contains one of the first explicit distinctions between the nature of intellectual and bodily pleasures. The argument for the superiority of the former rests on a) identifying pleasure and pain with certain kinds of filling and emptying (583b1–585a7), and b) differentiating between bodily and intellectual pleasures according to the kind of filling: (i)Bodily depletions differ from depletions of the soul in the kind of lack and, accordingly, in the kind of thing that fills the lack: hunger and thirst are bodily lacks which food and drink can cure, whereas ignorance and folly are cured by intelligence (585a8–b8).Thus, (ii), the kind of lack (belonging to the soul vs belonging to the body), together with the kind of filler (‘food’ for the soul vs food for the body), and derivatively the method of filling (eating vs learning) determine the kind of filling.(iii)Kinds of filling differ in truth: filling A is truer than filling B if and only if the kind of fillers used in A are more than the kind of fillers used in B and the kind of thing filled via A is more than the kind of thing filled via B (cf. 585d7–10).(iv)Fillers of the soul are more than bodily fillers (585b11–d4).(v)The soul is more than the body (585d5–6).Therefore, (vi), filling of the soul is truer than bodily filling, that is, filling of the soul is more really a filling (585d7–10).

Las emociones para Aristóteles son facultades emotivas en los seres humanos, que pueden llegar a generar susceptibilidad y causar en algún momento que se cambien los juicios y se generen otro tipo de impresiones; están acompañadas de placer y dolor, dependiendo de los estados de ánimo con los que se cuente, en el momento de sentir alguna emoción. En este artículo además de desarrollar una reflexión frente a las emociones desde el Estagirita, se describen algunas de ellas y sus contrarios, que son las más comunes en todos sus escritos como son: la ira y la calma; el amor y el odio; el temor y la confianza; la vergüenza y la desvergüenza; la compasión y la indignación y por último, la envidia y la emulación.

I argue that Plato, in the Timaeus, draws deep theoretical distinctions between sensation and affect, which comprises pleasure, pain, desire and emotion. Sensation (but not affect) is both ‘fine-grained’ (having orderly causal connections with its fundamental explanatory items) and ‘immediate’ (being provoked absent any mediating psychological state). Emotions, by contrast, are mediated and coarse-grained. Pleasure and pain are coarse-grained but, in a range of important cases, immediate. The Theaetetus assimilates affect to sensation in a way the Timaeus does not. Smell frustrates Timaeus because it is coarse-grained, although unlike pleasure and pain it is so by accident of physiology.

One way of orienting a genealogy of Asian American feminist media studies is through the dialectic of pain and pleasure that has come to dominate the way we understand images of Asian American sexuality. We can begin with Renee Tajima's 1989 article “Lotus Blossoms Don't Bleed: Images of Asian Women,” in which she describes how the mainstream media has caused Asian American women pain through its consistent portrayals of hypersexualized stereotypes, including lotus blossom babies, geishas, prostitutes, picture brides, mama-sans, concubines, China dolls, and dragon ladies.1 These simplistic figures are reduced to the availability of their sexual bodies and often serve as expendable mates for white male leads. Gina Marchetti notes that such representations have allowed white audiences to flirt with the titillating taboo of interracial sexual mixing without actually disrupting Western dominance.2 These various injustices are of course matched only by the general dearth of Asian women in film and television, and the pain of symbolic annihilation. While the preponderance of these representational harms within the mediated sphere has been one site of historical pain for Asian American women, another persistent site of exclusion and misunderstanding has been within the feminist movement itself. During its rise in the 1960s, many politicized and radicalized Asian American women started to come together within their own …

The young Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) had perused many of the Epicurean writings of the French Enlightenment. According to Carlyle, such ‘Epicureanism’ consisted primarily in an emphasis upon pleasure and pain as the springs of human action, and a positing of self-interest as the foundation of sociability. However, Carlyle soon came to reject such notions, seeking salvation in the writings of Kant and Schiller, who stressed the possibility of disinterested virtue, and the importance of free, moral activity. Indeed, the Epicureanism debate continued to resonate in Carlyle's subsequent political writings, and particularly his notorious polemics againstlaissez-faireand ‘public opinion’. Finally, in Carlyle's last major work,Frederick the Great, he found himself faced with the unenviable task of painting an Epicurean into a patina of heroic virtue. Despite his best efforts, however, Carlyle's biography remained haunted by the spectre of Epicureanism. Nonetheless, as Carlyle's contemporaries recognized, his writings had done much not only to discredit the Epicureanism of the French eighteenth century, but also to shape the moral and political ideals of the British nineteenth.

This article responds to a new objection, due to Ben Bramble, against attitudinal theories of sensory pleasure and pain: the objection from unconscious pleasures and pains. According to the objection, attitudinal theories are unable to accommodate the fact that sometimes we experience pleasures and pains of which we are, at the time, unaware. In response, I distinguish two kinds of unawareness and argue that the subjects in the examples that support the objection are unaware of their sensations in only a weak sense, and this weak sort of unawareness of a sensation does not preclude its being an object of one's attitudes.

Dialogar de educación implica un recorrido por la historia del pensamiento, de las ideas; un espacio donde los hombres han moldeado el concepto de formación entre ellos. Aristóteles por ejemplo, define "La educación consiste en dirigir los sentimientos de placer y dolor hacia el orden ético", así mismo, Kant menciona "La educación tiene por fin el desarrollo en el hombre de toda la perfección que su naturaleza lleva consigo"; la propuesta de trabajo se planteará en palabras de Bolívar (1989: 46) la educación como proceso social e histórico representa un conjunto de fenómenos, procesos, prácticas, que condicionan el desarrollo del sujeto actuante y pensante en el contexto de determinada realidad. Bajo el método de investigación documental. Partiendo de ello, la presente propuesta busca mostrar que, pensamiento y educación van de la mano, mostrando en el desarrollo de la disertación una serie de planteamientos, postulados, ideas, sueños y realidades desde diferentes partes del mundo hasta reencontrarse en las raíces del pensamiento educativo latinoamericano, desde su fibra más sensible y libertaria de las ideas del mundo; de allí que, la finalidad de este papel de trabajo sea dar a conocer los aportes teóricos del pensamiento educativo desde sus raíces hasta converger en Latinoamérica.

The term ‘displacement’ has a strong connection with diaspora literature that studies the experiences of pain and pleasure of the people in the diaspora. People in the diaspora do not have comfortable life. Since they are away from their homeland, it is not easy for them to get integrated into the new main stream society. Because of several variations such as language, culture, custom, religion, belief etc., they are to face difficulties in the host-land. They come across the feeling of displacement through alienation, homelessness, identity crisis etc. that are interconnected in the diaspora. Being a generation of indentured labor immigrant family, V. S. Naipaul himself has gone through such paining experiences that are indirectly expressed through the life experiences of the characters in his writing. While reading about Naipaul’s life story and of Mr. Biswas in the novel A House for Mr. Biswas, it can be understood that they sound similar strongly. In the novel, Naipaul shows how Mr. Biswas more importantly along with other people as the generation of indentured labour immigrant parents in Trinidad suffer from homelessness, displacement, alienation etc. This paper mainly focuses on the experiences of displacement along with homelessness, alienation etc. faced by Mr. Biswas and other characters as they are from Indian diasporic community.Crossing the Border: International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 5(2) 2017: 25-30

THE PRIMARY ARGUMENT OF DAVID BENATAR'S Better Never to Have Been is an argument for the claim that coming into existence is always harmful, because it is always worse for an individual to begin to exist than never to have existed (Benatar 2006: 30-49). Thus, it is always morally wrong to procreate. Several commentators have objected to this argument, including Persson (2009), Doyal (2007), McMahan (2009), Harman (2009) and Kaposy (2009). While each of these commentators raises important points, the most fundamental problem has not been identified. in what follows, I explain the argument and identify the problem. I. Benatar's Asymmetry Argument We will follow Benatar and suppose, for the purposes of this argument, that hedonism is true: pleasure and pain are the only basic intrinsic goods and evils. (1) Benatar asks us to compare a situation (A) in which an individual comes into existence, and thereafter experiences some pleasures and pains, with a situation (B) in which the person never comes into existence. Benatar argues that we should accept the following two claims concerning these two scenarios: (1) The absence of pain in (B) is intrinsically better than the presence of pain in (A). (2) The presence of pleasure in (A) is not intrinsically better than the absence of pleasure in (B) (2006: 41-2). Given these two claims, we can conclude that (B) is better than (A)--that is, it is better not to exist than to exist--since not existing is better in one way than existing, but existing is not better in any way than not existing. Thus, coming into existence is always harmful, and nobody should ever have children. The asymmetry between (1) and (2) is supposed to be justified by the explanatory work that it does. For one thing, it is supposed to explain why it is obligatory to fail to procreate when procreating would result in a bad life for the child, but it is not obligatory to procreate when the resulting child would have a good life. Having a bad life is a disadvantage relative to having no life, per (1), but having a good life is not an advantage relative to having no life, per (2). Furthermore, it would help solve Parfit's "non-identity problem" (Parfit 1984: 358); it would explain why it is impermissible to procreate knowingly in cases where (i) the resulting person would have a painful disease, (ii) the person would nevertheless have a life that is good overall, but (iii) the parents could have instead conceived a different child who would not have had the disease. The pains experienced by the child count against conception, per (1), but the pleasures do not count in favor, per (2); thus procreation is wrong in this case too. An important point of clarification: Benatar does not claim that pleasure is never better than its absence. it is better when there is a person who is deprived of the pleasure. When the person never exists, on the other hand, there is no deprivation. in such cases, pleasure is not better than its absence (2006: 41). This distinction is taken to be critical by Benatar but, as I will show in section III, it does not help Benatar's argument at all. II. The Logic of Betterness There are many ways in which one might wish to object to Benatar's argument. We might ask for whom the absence of pain is better. We might argue that we can better explain the difference in our claims about procreation by appealing to a distinction between positive and negative rights, or some other important distinction. But none of this is necessary, for the problem with Benatar's argument is very simple: (2) is incompatible with the meanings of "good" and "better." if pleasure is intrinsically good, and the absence of pleasure is not, then pleasure must be intrinsically better than the absence of pleasure. To claim otherwise is to wreak havoc with the logic of preferability or betterness. i suggest (uncharitably) that, despite the extensive discussion Benatar's asymmetry has generated, nobody in fact understands what Benatar is asserting with his asymmetry claim--for if they did, they would recognize that it is incoherent. …

WHY IS PAIN THE OPPOSITE OF PLEASURE? Several theories of pleasure and pain have substantial difficulty explaining this basic feature. Theories according to which pleasure and pain are individual sensations or features of sensations have particular difficulty, since it is difficult to understand how pairs of sensations could be opposites. Heath-wood nicely sums up the problem: "Many pairs of felt qualities (e.g., a sensation of middle C on a piano and a sensation of F# on a banjo) are in no way opposites. But if the felt quality theory is true, then some such pairs are opposites. How could that be? What could make one sensation the opposite of another sensation?" (1) Some pairs of sensation-types, such as hot and cold, or black and white, genuinely are opposites. Sensations of pleasure and pain, however, are too heterogeneous for their oppositeness to be analogously simple. Although painful sensations are often caused by processes that are harmful to the body, this is not always the case. For example, hay fever can cause a very painful itching in the eyes without any tissue damage or infection. So it seems that the underlying causes of pleasure and pain are ill-suited to explain their oppositeness. Heathwood attempts to solve the problem by proposing that pleasure and pain are fundamentally related to intrinsic desires. (2) "You have an intrinsic desire for something [at a time] when you just want it--when there is no reason you can give for wanting it, no further thing you want that you think it will bring you, no end for which it is a means." (3) We can introduce some definitions: S's desire for x is intrinsic at t =df S desires x at t, and S's desire for x at t does not depend on any further thing that x leads to or produces; S "just wants" x; S's desire for x has no explanation in terms of further desires, or further things S desires. S's desire for x is extrinsic at t =df; it is not the case that S's desire for x is intrinsic at t.4 S has an intrinsic aversion to p =df; S has an intrinsic desire for not-p. The desire theory says that a person, S, takes pleasure in p if and only if S has an intrinsic desire for p and S believes that p; S is pained by p if and only if S has an intrinsic aversion to p and S believes that p.5 On a typical version of the theory, a person, S, gets pleasure at t if and only if S has an intrinsic, de re desire that p at t, and p is true at t. A person, S, undergoes pain at t if and only if S has an intrinsic, de re aversion to p at t and not-p is true at t.6 The desire theory provides a clear solution to the oppositeness problem. Heathwood writes: On a complete [desire-based] theory ... the oppositeness of pleasure and pain is explained. Pleasure and pain are opposites because pleasure is explained in terms of desire, pain is explained in terms of aversion (or desiring not), and desire and aversion are opposites. And if aversion really is just desiring not ... then the oppositeness of desire and aversion is, in turn, explained in terms of the oppositeness of a proposition and its negation. (7) Desire and aversion are opposites in a clear and intuitive way--an aversion to p is a desire for not-p--and so it is our attitudes toward the sensations that are opposites, not the sensations themselves. Furthermore, the desire view is well-suited to explaining the heterogeneity of pleasure and pain in general, as well as the fact that some pleasures do not appear to be sensory in nature at all, such as the pleasure of making a philosophical discovery. (8) 1. Pain and Aversion This analysis of pleasure and pain in terms of desire and aversion does not do justice to the sense in which pleasure is the opposite of pain. Because sentences satisfying the schema are analyzable in terms of "desire" sentences satisfying the schema , to be averse to something is to desire its denial. …

This study aimed to describe (1) the concept of leadership in pituduh that fit into the category ketuhunan and (2) the concept of leadership in wewaler (Prohibition). This research is the study of literature. The method used in this study is a content analysis method. The object of this study is the concept of Suharto. The subjects were Unen-Unen (proverb). Data collected with a note reading techniques. The primary data source is selected by using purposive sampling method. The conclusions made by the formulation and the conclusion of the data that has been analyzed and interpreted with the use of the theory of Paul Ricoeur hermeneutics. The results of this study are as follows. First, the concept of leadership in pituduh (hint) that fit into the category of divinity has two leadership instructions: (1) be applicable authorities properly, (2) the truth of God into a basic truth of the ruler. The concept of leadership in pituduh (hint) that fit into the category of nationality include (1) a good leader is a dreamer fair, spirited noble, able to give jobs to the people, (2) A good leader is a leader who can reassure the people, (3 ) A good leader is willing and able to fix the flaws and vices, (4) leadership is a trust from God, (5) A good leader wary of praise, (6) a good leader wary of bad temper, (7) the leader of the evil is the leader dangerous, (8) Choosing a good leader is not an evil leader, (9) the evil leader will declare evil is goodness. Second, the concept of leadership in wewaler (Prohibition) includes two categories, namely humanity and nationality. Category prohibition in humanitarian terms include a ban on the leaders of banned arrogant leader. The prohibition in respect of nationality shows that good leaders leaned pleasure and sadness on the basis pleasure and pain the people, not on personal pleasure and pain.

Any use of substances to produce intoxication carries with it the potential for harm. However, intoxication is something that many people will experience in their lives, and for the majority, intoxication will carry with it both pleasure and pain: pleasure because intoxication can facilitate an enhanced sense of enjoyment, pain because often intoxication has ‘morning after’ impact where physical and emotional pain occurs. Harm, in these cases, is fleeting and relatively benign and is often outweighed by pleasure. However, there are people for whom intoxication is regular and is culpable in creating serious harms for the individual, their families and their communities. In those situations, many societies now offer services and interventions which are aimed at reducing substance-related harms. This chapter examines harm reduction, looking at the concept, development and focus of harm reduction from a number of perspectives. It looks at the manner in which harm reduction has evolved from a clinical intervention for intravenous drug users, branched out into advice on ‘safe use’ for recreational substance users and is increasingly being used as a political vehicle to begin to challenge some of the structural factors associated with problematic substance use at community level. It notes that increasingly harm reduction is in the vanguard of the decriminalisation and legalisation of formerly hitherto proscribed substances. It concludes by asking questions of how much further harm reduction will go in reshaping local, national and global drug policies.

Human cerebral organoids (HCOs) are miniature brains cultivated in a dish using pluripotent human cells that, thanks to advanced technologies, tend to reproduce the development path of the brain of an embryo in the mother’s uterus. Recent data from studies carried out in different laboratories have indicated that HCOs show complex electrical activity, are receptive to light stimuli, and can command a muscle connected to them. The presence of the main neuronal structures in them suggests that, despite currently lacking vascularization and sensory exchanges with the outside world, more developed HCOs could exhibit some rudimentary form of consciousness, specifically a minimal sentience with respect to the basic experiences of pain and pleasure. Faced with this possibility, which for many scientists is still a long way off, we have begun to reflect on how we could empirically investigate the presence of consciousness. If we were certain or had a reasonable belief that some types of HCOs are sentient, what kind of entity would we judge them to be? Would they have specific legal protection? Should they be attributed to a moral status? This article tries to give an initial answer to these two questions. On the one side, it seems that no special rights can be claimed for HCOs other than those relating to human biological material. On the other side, instead, a sentient HCO could aspire to having its moral status recognized. If this were the case, the law may have to adapt to this unprecedented situation.

Each new era brings with it new technologies and new challenges to civilization. The impetuous technological development is changing the economy and work more and more every day; to the point of making the passage from agrarian society to industrial society seem like a trifle. Nevertheless, if there is widespread awareness of the general issues of society, there is definitely less on the way in which anthropomorphic robots (increasingly in an emotional and cognitive relationship with human beings) are radically modifying intimate and exclusive spheres such as sexuality and love. An epochal passage is being announced from an organic sexuality (driven by desire and pleasure) to an inorganic, artificial sexuality, suspended in an abstract excitement, always at hand and disengaged from categories such as beauty, forms and age. In this paper, we will discuss the plausibility of an emotional relationship between robots and human beings and its ethical implications. It is probable, in fact, that soon there will be self-aware robots, capable of experiencing feelings such as love, joy, suffering, pain and pleasure. If this scenario is realized, will we continue to think that they are only machines, or will we recognize the moral relevance that they do not have today?

In this introduction, I attempt to map out what I have previously called ‘designer capitalism.’ The way media and technologies in a digitalized world structure existence in what Gilles Deleuze called ‘control societies’ and theorists like Bernard Stiegler continue to develop through an expansive theory of technics, more specifically through his two-volume work on Symbolic Misery. In many respects, this introduction is consonant with Gregory Ulmer’s theorization of ‘electracy,’ which crops up now and again throughout the chapters that follow. Ulmer develops his own ‘electorate transversal,’ a remarkable combination of Spinoza with Nietzsche where pain and pleasure (or sadness and joy) as experiences are theorized within this changed contemporary digitalized world. My emphasis, however, rests with Deleuze and Guattari who play a dominant position throughout this book. In this introduction, I review several important developments to grasp ‘designer capitalism,’ the most prominent being ‘the stack’ by Benjamin Bratton and ‘surveillance capitalism’ by Shoshana Zuboff. Both help us grasp the power of platform capitalism and the place of Big Data in it. This forms a backdrop to my own involvement with South Korean culture and my concerns with (art) pedagogy, technology, and visual media in the chapters that follow. The last part of this introduction offers a hint of what becomes more and more apparent as the book progresses: the questions that surround the Anthropocene, which is explored in the third part of this book, stated sensationally as ‘the end of the world’ as we know it.

An opinion held by the majority of Muslims scholars, such as Ibn Taymiyyah, supports the contention that each thing or act has an ethical value that can be comprehended through reason. Two different methodologies are used for applying reason onto morals. One is categorical moral reasoning that attempts to locate morality within actions and duties, while the other is consequential moral reasoning which concentrates on the consequences of an act. Jeremy Bentham adopted consequential moral reasoning and developed the concept of utilitarianism, which was further developed by John Stuart Mill. Through utilitarianism, a concept of utility was introduced, measuring the consequences of actions or things. The concept of utility has its roots in the idea of pain and pleasure. By way of comparison, Islam has its own theme for pain and pleasure, which originates from the paradox of maruf (known good) and munkar (known evil). Therefore, the paradigm of utility theory in an Islamic economic model is different to that offered by conventional economics and mainly a utilitarianism approach. In a desire to develop a paraxial economic system, modern Muslim scholarship has spent the last forty years attempting to reconcile and compare the philosophical grounds of conventional political economic ideas. During this process, scholars attempted to develop an understanding of utility within the context of Islamic political economy, however, varied views arose on the relevance of utility within an Islamic economic framework. Some scholars outrightly rejected the idea of utility and considered it incompatible with the spirit of Islam, while others (such as Umar Chapra) tried to reinterpret it in relation to taqwa (piousness). This study attempts to objectively explore the philosophical grounds for incorporating a concept of utility within an Islamic framework by examining maqasid al shariah (the purpose of law); the concepts of development and social justice in Islam; and comparing them with a hermeneutic understanding of tawhidi methodology along with the ontological nature of al-ruh al-tabiiyya (natural forces) and quwwa bahimiyya (animalistic forces). Through this examination, this study attempts to develop foundational arguments for applying an Islamic concept of utility and analyses the relevance of this concept within theories of Islamic political economy.

Experientialist accounts of wellbeing are those accounts of wellbeing that subscribe to the experience requirement. Typically, these accounts are hedonistic. In this article I present the claim that hedonism is not the most plausible experientialist account of wellbeing. The value of experience should not be understood as being limited to pleasure, and as such, the most plausible experientialist account of wellbeing is pluralistic, not hedonistic. In support of this claim, I argue first that pleasure should not be understood as a broad term to describe valuable experiences generally. I then analyze responses to the main argument against a monistic view on the value of experience: the philosophy of swine objection. I argue that such responses deviate from the central hedonistic view that only pleasure and pain matter for wellbeing. I then argue that the argument can be avoided on a pluralistic account, and formulate a plausible candidate for an account of pluralistic experientialism, in which, besides pleasure, non-hedonic aspects of experience like novelty, compassion, and aesthetic value also contribute to wellbeing.