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The significance of the physiological connection between sexuality and birth is widely overlooked and understated within maternity care. Despite some researchers acknowledging the possibility of orgasmic birth, most literature on the topic is anecdotal. Qualitative research surrounding women who report having ecstatic and orgasmic births demonstrates the positive effect engaging with the psychosexual elements of birth has on the maternal birthing experience. A private environment, careful choice of analgesia, sex-positive birth attendants and effective antenatal education are all suggested as key contributing factors towards its possibility. By recognising the sexual dimensions of birth, midwives are able to facilitate sensitive, empowering environments, encourage healthy sexual relationships and break down cultural stigma to increase the likelihood of pleasurable birth. The evidence highlights a need for the incorporation of the relationship between sexuality and birth into midwifery education, as well as within antenatal education for prospective parents.

Sensory matters have crossed paths with cultural scholarship for more than two centuries and have, during the past two decades, received renewed attention in ethnological fields and various publishing ventures. The working of the senses in tandem with cognition facilitates the experience of pleasure and pain, fear and elation – but to what extent can (or should) this realm, situated between individual experience and social coding, be accessible to cultural research? The paper probes a number of examples and methodological issues in grasping experiences and sites of interaction where sensations are expressed in a culturally shared fashion and explores which areas of research may profit particularly from an expanded ethnographic sensibility. As questões sensoriais têm vindo a cruzar-se com os estudos culturais por mais de dois séculos e, durante as duas últimas décadas, receberam atenção renovada por parte dos campos etnológicos e em vários projetos editoriais. É o funcionamento dos sentidos em conjunção com a cognição que permite a experiência do prazer e da dor, do medo e da exaltação – mas até que ponto pode (ou deve) aceder-se a este campo, situado entre a experiência individual e a codificação social, a partir da pesquisa cultural? Este artigo acompanha uma série de exemplos e questões metodológicas explorando experiências e locais de interação onde as sensações são expressas de forma culturalmente partilhada, procurando áreas de pesquisa específicas que possam beneficiar com uma sensibilidade etnográfica expandida.

Pain and Pleasure are the two psychological terms, used in English language and literature to show or describe the state of human mind with the perception of occurring incidents in their lives. In the relation of meaning, both of the terms are adversative adjectives to each other but both have the most important elements in the existence of human beings in the absence of each other. Pain describes the dark side of life or mental the state of human sufferings while pleasure is expressed during the mental state of joy and entertainment or light side of the life. Both of the terms have been well expressed in the autobiographical work of Kamala Das, My Story published in February 1973. This paper is going to explore the human state of mind in the most autobiographical work of Kamala Das, the female Keats and Lawrence of Indian English literature.

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.

The increasing social visibility of Bondage/Domination, Discipline/submission and Sadism/Masochism (BDSM) within Western society has placed pressure on the criminal law to account for why consensual BDSM activities continue to be criminalised where they involve the infliction of even minor injuries on participants. With moralistic and paternalistic justifications for criminalisation falling out of favour, one key justification that is gaining traction within international commentary on BDSM is the “bogus BDSM argument”. The bogus BDSM argument contends that BDSM activities should be criminalised because otherwise false claims of BDSM will be used by defendants to excuse or minimise their criminal liability for nonconsensual abuse. This article refutes this argument by showing how it relies on premises that are unjustifiable, illogical and irrelevant. This article concludes that the decriminalisation of BDSM would not permit nonconsensual abuse so long as legal officials were equipped with sufficient knowledge about the norms and conventions of BDSM culture.

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.

Anal sex has been the object of unprecedented recent media visibility; however, media discourses of anal sex are still largely unstudied. This study explores the representations of anal sex in Cosmopolitan, available online on the magazine's website. Anal sex, mostly equated with heterosexual anal intercourse, is presented as trendy and popular, as well as potentially pleasurable and intimate. The articles pervasively characterise anal sex as a sexual activity that demands preparation, providing women with tips and techniques allegedly indispensable for a safe and pleasurable (or at least painless) practice of anal sex. The discourses offered are deeply gendered, however, picturing anal sex as a male obsession, and sometimes an expression of power and male conquest. Women's own experiences are portrayed in a more nuanced and heterogeneous way, combining narratives of pleasure and pain, personal initiative and coercion. Although women's individual right to refuse anal sex is often stressed, male pressure is naturalised, and certain dimensions of constraint in heterosexual interaction are normalised.

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...

Our research consisted of two studies focusing on the probability of humans being able to perceive the difference between faces expressing pain versus pleasure. As controls, we included: smile, neutral facial expression, and expression of fear. The first study was online and was conducted using a large sample (n=902) of respondents. The second study was conducted in a laboratory setting and involved a stress induction procedure. For both, the task was to categorize whether the facial expression was rated positive, neutral or negative. Stimuli were faces extracted from freely downloadable online videos. Each rating participant (rater) was presented with five facial expressions (stimuli) of five females and five males. All raters were presented with the stimuli twice so as to evaluate the consistency of the ratings. Beforehand, we tested for stimuli differences using specialized software and found decisive differences. Using a Bayesian statistical approach, we could test for consistencies and due-to-chance probabilities. The results support the expectation that the results are not repeatable but indeed solely due to chance, diminishing the communication value of the expressions of pain and pleasure. The expression of fear was also rated due to chance, but not neutral and smile. Stress induction did have an impact on the perception of pleasure.

Includes bibliography. Number of sources in the bibliography: 311. Thesis (Ph. D.) -- University of Cyprus, Faculty of Social Sciences and Education, Department of Education, 2021. The University of Cyprus Library holds the printed form of the thesis. Η διατριβή αναλύει τις εμπειρίες πρώην φυλακισμένων και επαγγελματιών στις Κεντρικές Φυλακές Κύπρου μέσα από τις έννοιες της εξουσίας/τιμωρίας, της επιτέλεσης φύλου, της ικανοποίησης και της ενόρμησης θανάτου. Οι οντολογικές, επιστημολογικές και μεθοδολογικές βάσεις της έρευνας στηρίζονται πάνω στην queer/κουήρ θεωρία, την ψυχανάλυση και την μεταδομιστική φεμινιστική έρευνα ενώ τοποθετούνται γενικότερα στο κοινωνικό κουνστρουκτιβιστικό παράδειγμα σε συνδυασμό με στοιχεία από την φεμινιστική κριτική μεθοδολογία. Η ανάλυση εμπειριών των 20 συμμετεχόντων (16 πρώην φυλακισμένων και 4 επαγγελματιών) βασίζεται στην προσέγγιση του «σκέφτομαι με τη θεωρία» (“thinking with theory”), την φιλοσοφία του «μαθαίνω από την φυλακή» (“learning from prisons”) και την πεντάχρονη επαγγελματική εμπειρία της ερευνήτριας στις Κεντρικές Φυλακές. Η Εισαγωγή τοποθετεί τα πλαίσια γύρω από την έρευνα, το συγκείμενο και την ερευνήτρια της διατριβής. Στο Κεφάλαιο 1 παρουσιάζεται το θεωρητικό και μεθοδολογικό υπόβαθρο της έρευνας, δηλαδή μια σύνοψη της queer/κουήρ θεωρίας και της ψυχανάλυσης και στο δεύτερο μέρος παρουσιάζεται το οντολογικό και μεθοδολογικό υπόβαθρο της ερευνάς καθώς η μέθοδός μέσα από την οποία συλλέχθηκε και αναλύθηκε το υλικό. Το Κεφαλαίο 2 (εξουσία/τιμωρία) περιγράφεται ο παραγωγικός και αμφίσημος χαρακτήρας της τιμωρίας και πώς η φυλάκιση και η τιμωρία διαχέονται σε διάφορους θεσμούς στην κοινωνία (κρατητήρια, κέντρα θεραπείας/αποτοξίνωσης) και επιτελούνται μέσα από λόγους και πρακτικές που συχνά διακρίνονται για την παραδοξότητα και την αυθαιρεσία τους. Στο Κεφαλαίο 3 (επιτέλεση φύλου) αναλύονται οι έμφυλες και σεξουαλικές διαστάσεις της καθημερινότητας στην φυλακή. Η ανάλυση καταπιάνεται με το πώς άντρες και γυναίκες αντιμετωπίζουν την αναγκαστική ομοκοινωνικότητα με διαφορετικά μέσα. Στους άντρες η ομοκοινωνικότητα βασίζεται σε ένα αποκλεισμό της θηλυκότητας ως αδυναμία σ’ένα περιβάλλον γενικότερης ανασφάλειας ενώ στις γυναίκες η ομοκοινωνίκοτητα είναι ένα συνεχές που αναγνωρίζει και συνδιαλέγεται ευκολότερα με την σεξουαλική και ομοερωτική επιθυμία. Tο Κεφάλαιο 4 εξερευνά την έννοια της ικανοποίησης στη φυλακή μέσα από τη συσχέτησή της με τον πόνο, την σεξουαλικότητα και την αντίσταση σε συνθήκες εγκλεισμού. Οι μέχρι τώρα θεωρητικοποιήσεις της έννοιας του πόνου στην φυλακή δεν λάμβαναν υπόψιν την έννοια της ικανοποίησης σε ένα ευρύτερο φάσμα εμπειριών αλλά παραμένουν σε ένα ζεύγος αντιθέσεων όπου το ένα αποκλείει το άλλο. Το Κεφάλαιο 5 επιχειρεί μια ανάλυση των πρακτικών και λόγων αυτοκαταστροφής που επικρατούν στην φυλακή συνδέοντάς την έννοια της ικανοποίησης και της ενόρμησης θανάτου. Το κεφάλαιο υποστηρίζει ένα μη παθολογικό πλαίσιο ανάλυσης της αυτοκαταστροφής που λαμβάνει υπόψιν την κανονικοποίησή της σ’ένα περιβάλλον τιμωρίας και εγκλεισμού, και την αναδυόμενη ικανοποίηση. Η βασική συνεισφορά της διατριβής είναι το επιχείρημα ότι ο πόνος και η ικανοποίηση σε συνθήκες εγκλεισμού και τιμωρίας μπορούν να εννοιολογηθούν ως φάσμα παρά ως ένα δίπολο. Η διατριβή συμβάλλει στο πεδίο Σπουδών Φύλου μέσα από μια διπλή προοπτική στην πολιτική διάσταση της τιμωρίας και του φύλου/σεξουαλικότητας: αναγνωρίζει ότι η queer/κουήαρ θεωρία από τη μια υπερασπίζεται τα ΛΟΑΤΚΙ+ δικαιώματα αλλά από την άλλη ασκεί κριτική για τον τρόπο με τον οποίο η ΛΟΑΤΚΙ+ λόγοι/discourses στηρίζονται στην τιμωρητικότητα για να διεκδικήσουν τα δικαιώματα αυτά. Προτείνει, επιπλέον, ένα ερευνητικό πλαίσιο για θέματα φύλου και σεξουαλικότητας που δεν στηρίζεται σε δυικές κατανοήσεις του ομοφυλόφιλου και ετεροφυλόφιλου ατόμου και δεν εστιάζει στην περιθωριοποίηση των σεξουαλικών μειονοτήτων αλλά στη σεξουαλικότητα των περιθωριοποιημένων ατόμων και του τρόπους με τους οποίους επαναπροσδιορίζουν τις έννοιες του φύλου, εξουσίας, αντίστασης και ικανοποίησης. This thesis, which draws on the author’s five year professional experience at the Nicosia Central Prison (NCP), analyzes the experiences of 16 ex-prisoners and 4 prison professionals at the NCP through the analytical concepts of power/punishment, gender performativity, pleasure, and the death drive. The ontological, epistemological, and methodological foundations of this project draw on queer theory, psychoanalysis, and post structural feminist methodology, and are situated within a social constructivist research paradigm that draws on elements from feminist critical methodologies. The introduction presents the research, the context, and the author of this dissertation, while Chapter One lays out the theoretical and methodological foundations of the study. Each of the following four chapters responds to a research question, presenting the analysis of the data through the lens of a queer or psychoanalytic concept: power/punishment, gender performativity, pleasure, or the death drive. The analysis is based on data from interviews with ex-prisoners and NCP professionals, and from the author’s personal documents,compiled over a period of five years. Supplementary material includes texts from the Colonial Archive Collection in Cyprus, reports by the European Commission for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT), and media accounts. Chapter Two (on power/punishment) highlights the paradoxes of the prison as an institution which aims at reformation through punishment, and argues that prison punishment is both productive and ambiguous. Chapter Three (on gender performativity) explores how gender and sexuality issues are part of everyday life of prison. It argues that in a sex-segregated space such as the prison, the gender binary becomes a safe and predictable structure of meaning-making for prisoners. The chapter describes how women prisoners view homosocial and homoerotic acts on a continuum, while for men, the male homosocial desire excludes femininity but not homosexual acts. Chapter Four (on pleasure) explores the issue of pleasure in prison settings through a nexus of relations including power, resistance, sexuality, and pain. Finally, Chapter Five (on the death drive) analyzes discourses and practices of self harm in prison, including suicide, through the concepts of the death drive and futurity. It argues that self-harm behavior by prisoners is an embodied act of resistance against the mandate of futurity. This frame of analysis offers the possibility of understanding self-destructive behaviors and discourses in prison settings as a “normal” reaction to an irrational context. The main contribution of the thesis is the argument that pleasure and pain in conditions of imprisonment and punishment need to be understood on a spectrum, not as a binary. It proposes that this conceptualization leads to a non-pathologizing frame that facilitates anunderstanding of the paradoxes of the prevalence, normalization, and repetition of self destructive acts in prison settings. I maintain that a queer lens provides the possibility of a more complex understanding of the interplay between power and resistance in prison settings, especially an understanding of how one can understand the failure of reformation and therapy. The thesis contributes to gender studies by adopting a two-sided critical perspective towards the politics of punishment and the politics of sexuality and gender: on the one hand it engages with queer scholarship that defends LGBTQI+ rights, but on the other hand it is critical of the ways in which LGBTQI+ discourses rely on punishment and the carceral state to assert those rights.

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.

Contemporary mainstream economics cannot be seen as disconnected from philosophical concerns. On the contrary, it should be understood as a defence for a specific philosophy, namely, crude quantitative hedonism where money would measure pleasure and pain. Disguised among a great mathematical apparatus involving utility functions, supply, and demand, lies a specific hedonist philosophy that every year is lectured to thousands of economic and business students around the world. This hedonist philosophy is much less sophisticated than that in ancient hedonist philosophers as Epicurus or Lucretius. Furthermore, it does not solve any of the systematic difficulties regularly faced by hedonist philosophy. However, the argument that economics is detached from philosophy works as a rhetorical artifice to protect its dominant underlying philosophy: Philosophical disputes would have to be addressed within the biased mathematical apparatus of quantitative hedonism. Economists and business students must learn to identify the underlying philosophy in mainstream economics and alternative philosophical systems.

Body mapping methods are used in sexual and reproductive health studies to encourage candid discussion of sex and sexuality, pleasure and pain, sickness and health, and to understand individuals’ perceptions of their bodies. VOICE-D, a qualitative follow-up study to the VOICE trial, developed and used a body map tool in the context of individual in-depth interviews with women in South Africa, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. The tool showed the outline of a nude female figure from the front and back perspective. We asked women to identify, label, and discuss genitalia and other body parts associated with sexual behaviors, pain, and pleasure. Respondents could indicate body parts without having to verbalize potentially embarrassing anatomical terms, enabling interviewers to clarify ambiguous terminology that may have otherwise been open to misinterpretation. Body maps provided women with a non-intimidating way of discussing and disclosing their sexual practices, and minimized miscommunication of anatomical and behavioral terminology.

Diffuse is a good way to describe the messiness of diaspora. Spread out, tentacular, scattered, dispersed. Diffuse, from the Latin diffus- “poured out”, from the verb diffundere, from dis- “away” +...

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’.

Attention is shaped by our prior experiences with stimuli, and in particular by learning about their relationship with motivationally significant events: rewards and punishments. While it is typically adaptive to prioritize detection of signals of reward and punishment, recent evidence suggests that attentional prioritization of motivationally relevant information can be involuntary and inflexible, which can be counterproductive when circumstances change, and these signals are no longer the focus of a person’s goals. We review this literature, which suggests that attentional capture is promoted by learning about both rewards and punishments, though further research is required to probe for differences in the temporal dynamics of these processes. We also highlight the clinical relevance of interactions between appetitive and aversive motivation and perceptual-cognitive processes.

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.

The evil God challenge argues that for every theodicy that justifies the existence of an omnibenevolent God in the face of evil, there is a mirror theodicy that can defend the existence of an omnimalevolent God in the face of good. People who invoke the evil God challenge further argue that because we find evil God theodicies to be implausible, we should find good God theodicies to be equally implausible. This article argues that in fact evil God theodicies are more reasonable than good God theodicies by expanding upon arguments offered by David Benatar regarding the nature of existence, and David Hume regarding the asymmetry in our sensations of pain and pleasure.

Contemporary philosopher David Benatar has advanced the self-evidently controversial claim that “coming into existence is always a harm.” Benatar’s argument turns on the basic asymmetry between pleasure and pain, an asymmetry he seeks to explain by the principle that those who never exist cannot be deprived. Benatar’s import is almost incredible: humans should cease to procreate immediately, thereby engendering the extinction of the species—a view known as “anti-natalism.” According to many of his readers, the ancient Hebrew sage Qoheleth expresses a pessimistic nihilism that runs as thick as Benatar’s.Prima faciegrounding for this assertion is that Qoheleth, like Benatar, raises the issue of whether coming into existence may be a harm—and gives an affirmative answer. In two passages, Eccl 6:1–6 and 4:1–3, Qoheleth declares that an unborn hypothetical person is “better off” than their existent counterpart. Yet the meaning and implication of these words is far from obvious. Does Qoheleth imply that the non-exister’s state, and non-existence in general, is universally superior to existence? Or is he instead speaking exceptionally, of particular persons in rare circumstances? By examining the two “better”-statements in their literary context, I will argue that Qoheleth intends these examples as exceptions. He does not go so far as to make the supremely nihilistic claim that coming into existence is always, or even generally, a net harm; yet, he does concede that in certain cases, it can be. Beyond this, I will explore how the two thinkers’ divergent conclusions can be traced to a deeper difference of philosophical method. This question concerning non-existence opens a window to Qoheleth’s broader scheme of values and therefore serves as a surprisingly useful entry point by which to engage his philosophy. The paper utilizes the methodology Jaco Gericke has recently termed “philosophical criticism,” but specifically applied to Qoheleth.