Simon Knutsson
Work in progress
First published 2 September 2022; last updated 3 June 2023
Comments are very welcome to, for example, simonknutsson@gmail.com
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Abstract
I reply to an objection to the idea that undisturbedness is the hedonic ceiling. Versions of this idea can be found in the literature on Epicureanism and 19^th-century German philosophy, for example, although I try to defend the most plausible version of the idea rather than historical versions. The objection I deal with, namely that of potential counterexamples, is perhaps the most common objection to such ideas. I argue that this objection does not have as much force as it has been taken to have.

 

1        Introduction

I defend the idea that undisturbedness is the hedonic ceiling. In other words, I defend the idea that there is no experience with a higher hedonic level than an undisturbed experience. I take undisturbed experiences to be completely free from a long list of disturbances including feelings of ache, annoyance, boredom, discomfort, discontentment, insecurity, loneliness, and regret. My aim in this paper is not to settle the question of whether undisturbedness is the hedonic ceiling. My ambition is more modest—to try to show that it is an idea that is not so easily refuted. My defence of the idea is mainly indirect in the sense that I mainly reply to an objection to the idea.

A similar idea can be found in the literature on Epicureanism. Epicurus’ writings are mostly lost and the main source is a 3^rd-century CE work by Diogenes Laertius. It presents Epicurus’ Chief Maxims, one of which begins: “The limit of pleasure is reached with the removal of all pain” (Miller 2018, 538). Another important source on Epicureanism is Cicero. In Cicero’s work from 45 BCE, the spokesperson for Epicureanism says about a state of no pain that it is “indeed the greatest pleasure, the very greatest possible”, and: “All who are free from pain have pleasure, and I claim that this is the summit of pleasure” (Cicero 2001, 29, 31).[1] It has been said that Epicurus held that pleasure consists in the absence of pain or painless affection (Striker 1993, 14).[2] And the literature on Epicureanism talks about the absence of other things besides pain such as anxiety, distress, fear, irritation, regret, trouble, turmoil, and worry, and about undisturbed affection (Annas 1993, 336; Striker 1993, 16; O’Keefe 2009, 117, 120, 123). For example, Striker (1993, 16) talks about “the claim that pleasure is constituted by undisturbed affection”.[3]

The view I defend and the aforementioned ideas in the literature on Epicureanism are similar in that freedom from disturbances is held to be the summit of pleasure or hedonic level. I speak about hedonic level instead of pleasure partly for clarity as there are many notions of pleasure (e.g., Massin 2008) and partly because I want to leave it open, at least in the main claim I defend, whether the experiences at the hedonic ceiling are pleasant. I also don’t make any claims about what pleasure consists in. I will list more disturbances than I have seen in the literature on Epicureanism, but Epicureans might agree and the term ‘pain’ can be used so broadly that it covers all the things I take undisturbed experiences to be free from.[4] I take undisturbed experiences to be free from so many things because I want to state and defend the most plausible version of the historical idea.

There are also traditions such as 19^th-century German philosophy where one can find similar ideas. For example, Fernández (2006, 648) says that “Schopenhauer construes pleasure as the absence of pain”. And according to Fox (forthcoming, 1):

Throughout his work, Schopenhauer repeatedly claims that all pleasure is negative in character. The ordinary assumption that human beings can exist in three meaningfully distinct hedonic states—pleasure, pain, and hedonic neutrality—is incorrect. Rather, pleasure is just a particular way of interpreting the neutral state: the neutral state feels much better than a painful state, and this sometimes leads us to confuse it with a state that feels positively good. At bottom, pleasure is a mere contrast feeling, nothing more than relief at the removal of pain.

These comments on Schopenhauer seem congruent with the idea that there is no pleasure above the absence or removal of pain.

Elsewhere in the literature on 19^th-century German philosophy, we can read about similar ideas. For example, Beiser (2016, 268) writes the following about Julius Bahnsen: “We are told right away that there is nothing real but pain … there is no such thing as pure joy or pleasure…. Bahnsen argues that the satisfaction of a need is never a plus, because it only returns us to normal, whereas the frustration of a need is always a minus, because it takes us below normal”.[5]

My concern in this paper is not what Epicureans and the above-mentioned 19^th-century German philosophers thought or could have replied to objections given their other beliefs. I am concerned, instead, with a view with similarities to their views, and a certain objection to this view.

I will focus on the perhaps most common objection to such ideas, namely that of counterexamples. For instance, old counterexamples can be found in Cicero’s criticism of Epicurus’ notion of pleasure (Cicero 2001, 31), and Simmons (2021, 124) uses counterexamples to object to an argument for Schopenhauer’s pessimism.[6] Historically, the objector tends to briefly describe real-life situations or mental states that we are supposed to be familiar with—the counterexamples often concern eating or drinking. And there seems to be some reliance on introspection. For example, Mitsis (1988, 33) writes: “many have objected that it seems hardly conceivable that anyone could have made the elementary error of treating a neutral state of sensation as the most pleasant state possible. Not surprisingly, it has been suggested that Epicurus very easily could have refuted for himself this denial of a neutral state by a simple test of introspection.” An illustration of this kind of critical reasoning by counterexample is provided by O’Keefe (2009, 122) related to Epicureanism:[7]

Imagine that I am enjoying the state of being hydrated, full and warm. Then somebody offers me a small chocolate bon-bon, and I greatly enjoy the delicious taste of the dark chocolate. Why am I not experiencing more pleasure now than I was before…?

But refuting the idea that undisturbedness is the hedonic ceiling does not seem to be as simple as pointing to examples of experiences, or so I will argue in this paper. In other words, putative counterexamples are not as convincing as they have been thought to be. There is enough reasonable doubt about putative counterexamples to leave the idea that undisturbedness is the hedonic ceiling as a reasonable contender.

Although my focus in this paper is on putative counterexamples, I will now briefly give some reasons why one might find it appealing to hold that undisturbedness is the hedonic ceiling. The purpose of giving these reasons is to give a sense of why the idea that undisturbedness is the hedonic ceiling is worth exploring, besides the historical importance of the idea.

First, it seems to me that hedonic level corresponds to the extent of experienced disturbances and that all variation in hedonic level can be accounted for by variation in experienced disturbances. For example, one feels hedonically better when one feels less bored. And if we list enough disturbances, as I will try to do, it seems one can account for all variation in hedonic level, including experiences that are thought of as hedonically positive and intensely pleasurable.

Second, there seems to be nothing as a matter of phenomenology that would make experiences have a higher hedonic level than completely undisturbed experiences. For example, there seems to be nothing positive about them.

One source of support for these two points is my introspection and memories, but I am not alone.[8] I will mention problems with introspection and recall, but that doesn’t mean that they are useless.

The third reason in support of that undisturbedness is the hedonic ceiling is that behaviour seems to be explainable without assuming that there are experiences with a higher hedonic level than undisturbed experiences. For example, some might say we seek out positive hedonic experiences beyond undisturbedness, but an alternative explanation is that we tend to choose options that reduce disturbances such as boredom, frustration, unpleasant wants, and the like.[9]

Fourth, I find it understandable how an experience can have hedonic disturbances, flaws, imperfections, or problems. An example is the experience one has when one is sick. But I find it unintelligible what it would be for an experience to have a positive hedonic level or to be above or on the positive side of a neutral or undisturbed level.

Fifth, that there would be three states: pleasure, pain, and an intermediate state; or hedonically positive, negative, and neutral experiences, seems to be a bloated (less sparse) ontology compared to holding that there are merely disturbances or no disturbances (see Vinding 2022a).

Even though many would find these five reasons unconvincing, it still seems challenging to present convincing reasons for the competing thesis that there are experiences with a higher hedonic level than undisturbed experiences. It is easy to picture how the matter would remain unsettled. And even if it remains an open question whether undisturbedness is the hedonic ceiling, the acknowledgement that undisturbedness might be the hedonic ceiling and that the jury is still out would still be a significant shift in the debate, it seems.

In section 2, I spell out what I take undisturbed experiences to be. In section 3, I state and explain the claim I defend—the claim that there are no experiences with a higher hedonic level than undisturbed experiences. Section 4 describes the above-mentioned objection to the claim, namely that of potential counterexamples. In section 5, I reply to the objection. Section 6 is about the relevance of the argumentation in this paper and therefore section 6 deals briefly with other possible objections to the claim. Section 7 concludes.

2        Undisturbed experiences

This section contains my explanation of what I take undisturbed experiences to be (section 2.1) along with a closer look at two of the many items that undisturbed experiences are free from, namely discontentment and dissatisfaction (section 2.2).

2.1       The general description of undisturbed experiences

I will list many things that undisturbed experiences are entirely free from. The things I have already mentioned from the literature on Epicureanism—distress, irritation, pain, trouble, turmoil, and worry—seem useful as an introduction, but merely mentioning these may not convey how many different things undisturbed experiences are free from.[10]

When I will mention things such as anger that undisturbed experiences are free from, I will have in mind freedom from the feeling of anger; the feeling one has when one is angry. What matters for our purposes about all the things I list in this section is what it is like to experience them (their phenomenology). What matters about them is that there is, from a hedonic perspective, something phenomenologically unpleasant, bothersome, aversive, or problematic about them.

Some of the things I will list are plausibly always unpleasant and bothersome, for example, suffering. For other things, it is more debatable whether they are always unpleasant. In such cases, I have in mind that undisturbed experiences are free from unpleasant or bothersome instances of those feelings. For example, I will say that undisturbed experiences are free from feelings of effort. It seems that feelings of effort are at least often unpleasant. Bermúdez (2022, 2) says that “feelings of effort are by default aversive. They are negatively-valenced affective experiences” (emphasis omitted). But even if they are by default aversive, someone might hold that they are not always aversive. I do not take a stance on whether all of the feelings I will mention in this section are always unpleasant. I am merely saying that undisturbed experiences are free from feelings of effort and so on that are disturbing, unpleasant, or bothersome.

A useful starting point for spelling out what undisturbed experiences are, besides the literature already mentioned, is Moore’s (2019) encyclopedia entry “Hedonism”. A part of my notion of undisturbed experiences is that they are entirely free from all of the 52 items (ache, agitation, agony, etc.) that Moore lists in the following passage:

Pain or displeasure too is understood broadly below, as including or as included in all unpleasant experience or feeling: ache, agitation, agony, angst, anguish, annoyance, anxiety, apprehensiveness, boredom, chagrin, dejection, depression, desolation, despair, desperation, despondency, discomfort, discombobulation, discontentment, disgruntlement, disgust, dislike, dismay, disorientation, dissatisfaction, distress, dread, enmity, ennui, fear, gloominess, grief, guilt, hatred, horror, hurting, irritation, loathing, melancholia, nausea, queasiness, remorse, resentment, sadness, shame, sorrow, suffering, sullenness, throb, terror, unease, vexation, and so on.

Next, to get a more comprehensive list, I add more items to my notion of undisturbed experiences. That is, undisturbed experiences are also entirely free from disturbing, unpleasant, or bothersome versions of the following: alienation, anger, compression, confusion, contempt, disappointment, embarrassment, envy, frustration, heartbreak, hopelessness, humiliation, impatience, indignation, insecurity, jealousy, loneliness, longing, loss, malaise, nervousness, pain, panic, regret, rejection, restlessness, stress, tension, tiredness, trouble, unsafety, want, weariness, Weltschmerz, worry, and yearning.[11]

In addition, undisturbed experiences are entirely free from the following feelings: Feelings of being or having been betrayed, disliked, exploited, harmed, let down, neglected, treated badly, underappreciated, unloved, unwanted, or used. Feelings of being or having been a burden on, bad for, or harmful to others. Feelings of meaninglessness. Feelings of effort, resistance, and struggle.[12] Feeling burdened, constrained, lack of control, overworked, stuck, threatened, unfortunate, unfree, unlucky, or weak. Feeling damaged, decaying, declining, defective, ignorant, ill, incompetent, like a bad person, like a failure, like an impostor, low self-esteem, stupid, ugly (or that part of oneself is ugly), unclean, unhealthy, worthless, or of low worth.

That concludes my list of things that undisturbed experiences are entirely free from.[13]

2.2       Discontentment and dissatisfaction

In this section, I look closer at two of the many aforementioned items that undisturbed experiences are free from, namely discontentment and dissatisfaction. There are three reasons for taking such a closer look: First, discontentment and dissatisfaction are important because we arguably often or always feel discontent or dissatisfied with something. Second, delving into at least a couple of the items in the long list helps to illustrate how much goes into the notion of undisturbed experiences. We could similarly dive deeper into discomfort, unpleasant wants, and so on, including what they are and what counts as discomfort. Third, saying more about a couple of the items that undisturbed experiences are free from makes the description of undisturbed experiences in the previous section 2.1 at least somewhat clearer.

Discontentment and dissatisfaction are similar to each other. An English-Swedish dictionary translates both discontentment and dissatisfaction as only one Swedish word: missnöje (WordFinder 2020).[14] And the entry on missnöje in a leading Swedish dictionary mainly says “feeling of that something ought to be better”.[15] Thinking of discontentment and dissatisfaction as a feeling that something ought to be better is close to what I have in mind as being absent in my notion of undisturbed experiences.[16]

In the philosophical literature, there seems to be more written about contentment and satisfaction than discontentment and dissatisfaction. The following is an interesting passage by Feldman (2007, 440):

First let me say a word or two about contentment and satisfaction. As I understand contentment, it is the state one is in when one has no complaints about his circumstances; when one does not want more than he already has; when one is willing to stick with what he’s got. Satisfaction is similar. One is satisfied with one’s situation when one accepts it and says (in effect) “OK. This is fine. Things are as I want them to be.”

Three remarks seem worth making in relation to Feldman’s passage. First, in this passage, Feldman does not mention feelings, but I am concerned with the feelings of discontentment and dissatisfaction; the feelings one has when one is discontent or dissatisfied.

Second, I think discontentment and dissatisfaction are not limited to one’s circumstances or situation and what one has. It seems one can be discontent or dissatisfied with almost anything; for example, with the state of the world or an aspect of it.

Third, there seem to be two types of phrasings in Feldman’s passage: One is about a completely untroubled state, as indicated by the phrases “the state one is in when one has no complaints” and “Things are as I want them to be”. The other is about things being acceptable, as indicated in the passage: “one is willing to stick with what he’s got…. one accepts [one’s situation] and says … OK. This is fine”. Out of these two, I think the first is the more accurate description of complete contentment. Correspondingly, complete freedom from discontent would include freedom from feelings of any complaints about anything and freedom from any feelings of things not being as one wants them to be. On the contrary, merely feeling that things are okay does not seem to imply that one feels absolutely no discontentment with anything.

To wrap up, for an experience to be free of any feelings of discontentment and dissatisfaction, it seemingly needs to at least be free of any feelings that something ought to be better or that something is not as one wants it to be, and it likewise needs to be free of feelings of having complaints.

3        My claim about undisturbed experiences

I focus on the following claim (hereafter ‘the Claim’):

The Claim: For any undisturbed experience x, there is no experience that is at a higher hedonic level than x.

In other words, the Claim is that for any undisturbed experience x, there is no experience above x, that is more pleasant than x,[17] that has a higher hedonic tone than x, or that is on the positive side of x (in terms of how it feels).[18] Alternatively, no experience feels better than x, with the qualification that I here do not refer to ‘better’ in terms of axiology or the subject’s opinion.

I intend the Claim to be about how experiences feel; their quality; their phenomenology; what it is like to have them. I do not intend the claim to be about wanting to feel something (Heathwood 2007) or taking pleasure or pain in something (Feldman 2004, chap. 4). And the Claim is not meant to be axiological in the sense of claiming that for any undisturbed experiences x, there is no experience that is better than x.

To be clear, the Claim does not contain any of the following ideas, although I agree with them: there is no positive experience, no experience on the positive side of a neutral point, no pleasure, no hedonically positive quality, and no positive hedonic tone or level.[19]

To clarify even more, I leave it open whether undisturbed experiences have a particular feel, and I do not claim that they constitute pleasure or the highest pleasure, that they are pleasant, or that they are hedonically neutral.[20]

4        Putative counterexamples

Because this is seemingly the first time the Claim has been put forth in that exact formulation, there are no published counterexamples as objections to it. Still, I expect that apparent real-life counterexamples would be a common and perhaps provide the most common objection to it for the following three reasons: First, the prevalence of such counterexamples to similar ideas in the literatures on Epicureanism and Schopenhauer (see section 1). Second, reactions from people in response to earlier drafts of this paper and earlier discussions of related topics. Third, because the Claim denies the existence of a kind of thing the most straightforward objection to it tries to provide an example of that kind.

The following is the structure of a straightforward counterexample to the claim:[21]

The structure of a counterexample to the Claim: a is an undisturbed experience and b is an experience that is at a higher hedonic level than a.

Of course, there are many ways to attempt to present a concrete counterexample. Any two experiences will do as long as one is thought to be undisturbed and the other is thought to be at a higher hedonic level. To present a convincing counterexample is harder. Which experience could convincingly be pointed to as the purportedly undisturbed experience a? We will talk much more about this in section 5.1, but here is some illustration. The aforementioned state of being hydrated, full and warm is underdescribed because one can be in that state and still experience all sorts of disturbances. In Cicero’s old criticism of Epicurus’ notion of pleasure, Cicero says that “there are three natural states: first, to feel pleasure; second, to be in pain; and the third, in which I am currently, and I take it you are as well, is to be in neither state” (Cicero 2001, 31). The text is in dialogue form, so Cicero seems to be saying that when being in this conversation, the participants feel neither pleasure nor pain. But are the experiences one has in conversations usually or ever undisturbed? Cicero (2001, 31) also talks about mixing a drink for another when one is not thirsty oneself and contrasts this with the pleasure felt by the thirsty person who drinks it. Perhaps the experience one has in this situation when mixing a drink can be claimed to be undisturbed. In a different context, Labukt (2012, 183) writes: “When I stare at a white wall, I usually experience a hedonically neutral state.” If staring at a wall is all it takes to reach a completely undisturbed experience, then it seems undisturbedness is easy to achieve. But there are reasons to doubt that undisturbedness comes so easily. Again, we will talk more about such matters in section 5.1.

As a part of a convincing counterexample to the Claim, we would also need to find an experience b with a higher hedonic level than a. (This is the topic of section 5.2.) Examples of pleasure that are supposed to be above painlessness often concern eating or drinking. For instance, Cicero (2001, 31) says: “One feels pleasure when dining well”. Simmons (2021, 124) objects to an argument for Schopenhauer’s pessimism by saying that we can directly experience certain pleasures. In support of this, Simmons gives examples: eating a delicious meal, reflecting upon past accomplishments, and anticipating future events.[22] In section 5.2, we will consider which, if any, experiences are at a higher hedonic level than an undisturbed experience.[23]

5        Replies to counterexamples to the Claim

My aim in this section is merely to argue that there is reasonable doubt about putative counterexamples, enough to leave the Claim as a reasonable contender.

As the structure of the general counterexample described in the previous section has two parts separated by ‘and’, we can note three broad ways to reply to it: (1) Object to the first part of the counterexample: ‘a is an undisturbed experience’. (2) Object to the second part of the counterexample: ‘b is an experience that is at a higher hedonic level than a’. (3) Argue that if one of these two parts of the counterexample is true, then the other part is not true.

In the rest of this paper, I will focus on (1) and (2) in sections 5.1 and 5.2, respectively. I will set (3) aside, yet the following is an example of what a reply of kind (3) can look like. If b is an experience with a higher hedonic level than a, then a is not an undisturbed experience. An argument for this ‘if …, then’ statement could go as follows: For an experience to have a higher hedonic level than another, there must be something lacking in the lesser experience. Otherwise, it could not be improved upon (in terms of how it feels). There must be something dissatisfactory about it. Hence, the lesser experience is not an undisturbed experience. Obviously, this sort of argument would have to be defended in detail. I set that task aside here, as I will focus on the two other kinds of replies that can be given to putative counterexamples.

5.1       Replies to the first part of the counterexample

This section is about replies to the first part of a proposed counterexample: ‘a is an undisturbed experience’.

The point of this section is to argue that it is a challenge to find real-life examples of completely undisturbed experiences. Maybe there are none.[24] A result of this is that it is harder than one might have thought to provide a convincing counterexample to the Claim.

I aim to cover both experiences that we pay attention to when having them and experiences that we do not pay attention to when having them, and to cover both when we notice and do not notice disturbances. More specifically, the following is the structure of this section, roughly speaking: First, I suggest that if one pays attention to one’s current experience, it is to a greater extent than one might have thought the case that one can notice disturbance. Second, I briefly talk about when a person pays attention to their current experience and it seems to them like there is disturbance there. I leave open the possibility that they are mistaken and that there is no disturbance there. That said, it seems plausible, in general, that there is disturbance there. In other words, the person plausibly does not mistakenly think they experience disturbance when they don’t. Be that as it may, my focus is not on situations in which we notice disturbance. One could argue more in-depth about if and when we mistakenly think we experience disturbance when we do not. But the more dialectically important topic related to putative counterexamples seems to be when people do not notice any disturbance. That’s the third, most important, and longest part of this section. Some say that when they pay attention to their experience, they sometimes do not notice any disturbance. I will argue that it is feasible that there is nevertheless disturbance there but that the person fails to realise it. Fourth, I argue that it is dubious to point to an experience that the person did not pay attention to when having it as an example of a purportedly undisturbed experience.

To be more precise, this section will deal with the following four questions, which correspond to the four just-mentioned matters:

(i) When a person pays attention to their current experience, does it seem to them like there is disturbance there?

(ii) When a person pays attention to their current experience and it seems to them like there is disturbance there, is there disturbance there?

(iii) When a person pays attention to their current experience and it seems to them like there is no disturbance there, is there nevertheless disturbance there?

(iv) When a person does not pay attention to their current experience, is there disturbance there?

Several of the questions contain the word ‘seems’ and that makes them open to different readings, so I will try to clarify now. At least two senses of ‘seems’ (or ‘appears’) have been distinguished: an epistemic and a phenomenal sense (Schwitzgebel 2008, 262–63; Langland-Hassan 2017, 248). The epistemic sense concerns belief or judgment and the phenomenal sense concerns experience or phenomenology. For example, two lines can seem to be equally long (in the epistemic sense of ‘seem’) based on one’s evidence such as measurements of the lines while they visually seem to be of different lengths (in the phenomenal sense of ‘seem’). Both senses are relevant for our purposes, I think, and I intend the questions to cover both senses. For example, question (i) is both about whether the person believes or judges that there is disturbance there and whether it seems (in the phenomenal sense of ‘seems’) to them like they feel, say, unpleasantness. That said, let’s start with the first question (i) and then go through the remaining questions in order.

(i) When a person pays attention to their current experience, does it seem to them like there is disturbance there? Some bodily disturbances seem ubiquitous such as (unpleasant) feelings of pressure, stiffness, tension, tightness, itches, tiredness, hunger, thirst, or feeling too full, cold, or hot. Here are two fairly trivial examples: One’s foot might feel too warm in one’s shoe. And when I stand and pay attention to my experience, I feel the soles of my feet pressing against the floor, which is somewhat discomfortable.

Mental disturbances that are plausibly especially common include boredom, discontentment, effort, resistance, trouble, and want. The just-mentioned bodily and mental disturbances might be the most common, but we should remember disturbances that might vary more from person to person such as ache, frustration, grief, regret, and worry.

I will bring up two kinds of evidence regarding whether it seems to us that there is disturbance when we pay attention to our current experience. The first kind is what seems to me to be the case when I pay attention to my current experiences, and the other kind is reports by others.

Whenever I pay attention to my current experience, it always seems to me like there is disturbance there. For example, it always seems to me like there is at least some bodily disturbance such as a feeling of discomfort or pressure. In addition, it always seems to me like there is at least some mental disturbance such as boredom, resistance, or trouble. The disturbances seem to me not merely subtle but substantial, for example, a serious feeling of discontentment about some aspect of the world.

Let’s consider reports by others with backgrounds in philosophy who are familiar with the topic of this paper.[25] Their reports vary. One person says that when he pays attention to his current experience, he always notices some disturbance (see Knutsson 2023). Some others sound less confident but think that they can always notice some disturbance. They mention disturbances such as some form of ever-present bodily tension, uncomfortable pressure and tightness, a pressing sense of needing to get back to work and handle practical things, and perhaps mild worry or restlessness. On the contrary, another person reports sometimes not noticing any disturbance when he pays attention to his experience and mentions standard meditation as an example.[26]

I don’t mean that a few reports show that much. Still, it is interesting that some people report always being able to notice disturbance and that the reports vary as they do. When discussing questions (ii) and (iii) below, we will touch on whether people are mistaken in their assertion or denial of experienced disturbance and whether the different reports are explainable simply by that some always experience disturbance when they pay attention to their experience while others don’t.

(ii) When a person pays attention to their current experience and it seems to them like there is disturbance there, is there disturbance there? As I mentioned above, I leave open the possibility that they are mistaken and that there is no disturbance there. But there are also reasons to believe that they are correct and that there is disturbance there.

It seems very plausible that for the most introspectively prominent disturbances such as severe nausea and intense pain, people are correct when it seems to they like they are currently experiencing such disturbances (see, e.g., Schwitzgebel 2008, 259–60). So let us instead talk about cases where it is more plausible that it seems to the person like there is disturbance when there is none. For example, perhaps it can seem to a person like they experience mildly unpleasant bodily pressure and somewhat unpleasant want but the pressure and want they experience is not unpleasant.

The perhaps most plausible explanation of why people would repeatedly make such mistakes is the effects of expectations, theories, or opinions (Haybron 2007, sec. 2.6; Schwitzgebel 2021). More specifically, the most plausible candidate source of such mistakes seems to be one’s theory or notion of unpleasantness or disturbance. For example, even if two persons pay attention to their experiences and have as similar experiences as two persons can have, one of them might think ‘this does not strike me as unpleasant; this does not seem to be a disturbance’ while the other thinks ‘this seems unpleasant; it seems to be a disturbance’.

There is literature on whether it can seem to someone like they are in pain when they are not (e.g., C. S. Hill 2012; Park 2017, 207–8; Andreotta 2017, 63–64). For example, Block (2005, 138) writes that “we do not acknowledge pain hallucinations, cases where it seems that I have a pain when in fact there is no pain”. And, according to Reuter (2011, 97), “people who feel pain are said to be both incorrigible and authoritative about their pain.” Anyway, one can debate such ideas, we are interested in many disturbances besides pain, and, right now, we are trying to get at mistakes concerning potentially elusive unpleasantness rather than typical pain. I am not aware of any literature on it seeming to you like you are experiencing such disturbances or unpleasantness when in fact you are not. Still, taking inspiration from parts of the literature on pain, one could hold that one’s judgment that one is experiencing disturbance or unpleasantness is, to some extent, authoritative.

We can also take a step back and speak more generally about the reliability of affirmation versus denial of experience. According to Hill (2011, 29), affirmations of experience should be given much more weight than denials of experience.[27]

All in all, how plausible is it that a person pays attention to their current experience and it seems to them like there is disturbance when there is none? Again, I do not rule out such mistakes. Still, when a person pays attention to their current experience and it seems to them like there is disturbance there, that seems to be reasonable support for that they are experiencing disturbance. Especially if the person consistently makes this judgment over and over again at different times in similar situations, and if the situation is just a part of regular life and not, for example, like the special case with a blindfold and an ice cube in the literature (see, e.g., Andreotta 2017, 63). And the more numerous and severe disturbances it seems to someone that they are experiencing when they pay attention to their experience, the less plausible it seems to be that they are free from disturbance.

With those tentative remarks made, let us turn to the most important topic in this section, namely question (iii).

(iii) When a person pays attention to their current experience and it seems to them like there is no disturbance there, is there nevertheless disturbance there?

Let me begin with a clarification. It might sound strange that when one pays attention to one’s current experience, there can be feelings that one is in a sense unaware of. I do not mean that there are unfelt feelings (e.g., Tullmann 2020). I mean that one has feelings (disturbances) that one does not realise are there even though one feels them. I find Dretske’s (2010, 204–5) talk about awareness of things versus awareness of facts useful as an explanation of the possibility of how there could be feelings that one is in a sense unaware of:

One can be aware of an armadillo, a thing, without being aware of the fact that it is an armadillo, without knowing or believing it is an armadillo—without, in fact, knowing what an armadillo is. There is a sensory, a phenomenal, form of awareness—experiencing armadillos (seeing or smelling them)—and a conceptual form of awareness—knowing that they are armadillos. We use the word ‘awareness’ (or ‘consciousness’) for both. We are aware of objects (and their properties) on the one hand, and we are aware that certain things are so on the other. If one fails to distinguish these two forms of awareness, awareness of x with awareness that it is x, one will mistakenly infer that simply being in pain (requiring, as I am assuming, awareness of the pain) requires awareness of the fact that one is in pain and, therefore, knowledge. Not so. I am assuming that if it really hurts, you must feel the pain—yes, and feeling pain is awareness of it; but this is the kind of awareness (thing-awareness) one can have without fact-awareness of what it is that one is aware of—that is, that it is pain, or that one is aware of it.… You can feel hungry without knowing that it is hunger you feel, or that you are feeling it.

Another preliminary remark is that someone’s denial of experienced disturbance arguably has some authority. I mean when people introspect and assert or deny that they are feeling something, that first-person judgment or impression presumably has some weight. Still, there seems to be plenty of reasons why there might be disturbance there even if the person pays attention to their experience and it seems to them like there is no experience. We will now spend some time on such reasons.

My remaining discussion of question (iii) will have two parts: The first part is about reasons to think there are disturbances there. The second part is about reasons why one might fail to detect existing disturbances.

Let us start with the first part, in which I present six reasons why there might be disturbances there even if a person pays attention to their experience and it seems to them like there is no disturbance there. These reasons seem inconclusive and rather like suggestive reasons for why one might think that there is disturbance there.

Here is the first reason for thinking that there are nevertheless disturbances there: As mentioned above, when someone pays attention to their current experience and it seems to them like there is disturbance there, that seems to be reasonable support for that they are experiencing disturbance. As also mentioned above some people like me report that whenever we pay attention to our current experiences, we notice disturbance. It seems implausible that people who are so similar in terms of background, biology, circumstances, apparent introspective ability, and the like would be so different that some always experience disturbances while others are in plenty of situations when they do not experience any disturbance.[28] Even if we only consider bodily disturbances as an example. It would be puzzling to me if, say, another philosopher with similar life circumstances and background to mine could not detect any of the bodily disturbances I think I can detect. I am not aware of having any ailment that would result in the kind of ubiquitous bodily disturbances that I think I notice. And similarly with the seemingly most common mental disturbances such as boredom, discontentment, effort, resistance, trouble, and want. Sure, people plausibly experience such things to different degrees, but I cannot think of any experience in my entire life that was completely free from disturbances, and I seem to have had a normal life. And Thisdell classifies himself as someone who has exceptionally high well-being (Thisdell 2021a at 14:23) and he thinks that he is “suffering way less than most people” and that his average hedonic level is higher than most people’s (Knutsson 2023). Given all this, it sounds dubious that Thisdell, who reports that he always notices disturbance when he pays attention to his experiences, would be so different from others that others don’t experience disturbances to nearly the same extent.

The following is the second reason in support of that there is disturbance there even when a person pays attention to their current experience and it seems to them like there is no disturbance there: The feelings are warranted in the following sense: There are, for example, tons of things to be discontent and troubled about. Regarding unsafety and worry, everyone always faces risks to their life, welfare, interests, and beings and things they care about.

The third reason is conditional: If experience is abundant, then it seems more likely that we experience at least some disturbance on any given occasion. Schwitzgebel (2011, 91) explains the difference between abundant and sparse views of experience as follows:[29]

Do you have constant tactile experience of your feet in your shoes? Constant auditory experience of the hum of traffic in the background? Constant visual experience of the frames of your eyeglasses? Or, when you aren’t attending to such matters, do they drop out of consciousness, so that they are in no way part of your stream of experience, your phenomenology? Is consciousness abundant, the stream of experience bristling with phenomenology in a wide variety of modalities simultaneously (visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, imagistic, proprioceptive, emotional), or is it sparse, limited to one or a few things at a time?

There are too many arguments for and against abundance versus sparsity to assess here. But in my opinion, experience is plausibly abundant. If the abundant view of experience is correct, that seems to lend some support to the idea that at least one of the many things we experience is a disturbance.

The fourth reason is an appeal to evolutionary considerations. For example, one can imagine how discontentment and frustration might lead to striving for things that tend to result in evolutionary success. Another example is that beings who face threats to their survival and interests might benefit from moment-to-moment monitoring of their environment and potential threats.[30] So perhaps it is advantageous to generally feel insecurity, trouble, or worry. Someone might object that it is evolutionarily costly to be, say, anxious. But that objection would need to be argued for, of course. Related to the function of anxiety, Haybron (2007, 399–400) writes:

anxiety may serve in hostile circumstances to make us vigilant and primed to respond to threats. For this purpose it is not essential that anxiety command our attention. On the contrary: its very point is to keep our attention available to focus on whatever problems may arise, wherever they occur.

Let me take this a step further and suggest why we might expect the chronically anxious to seem like, and think, they’re happy. The reason is that anxiety may be able to do its job of making us more vigilant and so forth without rational processes being aware of it at all—indeed, with the agent thinking everything’s just fine. If so, then it may be adaptive in many situations to be anxious while believing that one is happy, and more generally presenting oneself as happy. For overt displays of anxiety project weakness and vulnerability, whereas displays of happiness send the opposite message. It isn’t hard to see the advantage, in many circumstances, of being highly prepared to deal with threats while projecting a relaxed and confident demeanor. (Perhaps Americans are experts at this.) Similar remarks may apply to a variety of other elusive states, like being stressed, or depression or compression, and perhaps mood in general.

There are presumably plenty of evolutionary considerations for or against feeling various disturbances, and I will not try to settle the matter here. I suspect that the totality of evolutionary considerations will be inconclusive. For our purposes, I merely note (partly to improve comprehensiveness) that one can see how disturbances can be evolutionarily beneficial. Again, my attempt here is to make plausible that certain considerations leave the Claim as a reasonable contender.

Fifth, another type of consideration is the broader issue of the existence of neutral affect. If there is no hedonically neutral experience, then it might not be strange that we always feel some disturbance. There is literature on whether hedonic indifference exists, whether there are experiences that are neither pleasant nor unpleasant (Massin 2014, sec. 3.2), and whether neutral affect exists (Gasper 2018, 256; Gasper, Spencer, and Hu 2019). It seems to me like there is no neutral affect, but again, I briefly mention this big topic here as a consideration that can potentially support that there is disturbance there even if a person doesn’t notice any.

Sixth, there are so many disturbances that humans have catalogued (see section 2.1). That makes it more reasonable that we would at least experience one of them at a given point in time.

Let us turn to the second part of our discussion of question (iii); essentially, reasons why we might fail to realise that a disturbance is there. There seem to be plenty of reasons, such as the following, why one might, in general, fail to detect disturbance even when one tries to pay attention to one’s current experience:

1. Diffuse or elusive feelings. Affect might be diaphanous, diffuse, or elusive (Haybron 2007, sec. 2.1). What might be especially common disturbances might have these properties; for example, boredom, discontentment, tension, trouble, unease, and want.
2. Adaptation to persistent affect. One might get used to affect so that one does not realise it is there (Haybron 2007, sec. 2.2; Warren 2008, 24).
3. Being inattentive, undiscerning, or unskilled at introspection. For example, failing to attend sufficiently well to one’s experience or being inept at discerning one’s disturbances when paying attention (Haybron 2007, sec. 2.3). In the context of why we are such bad introspectors, Schwitzgebel (2021) says: “Introspective attention to experience is hardly a habitual practice for most, perhaps any, of us, except maybe a few dedicated meditators of a certain sort.” He continues by saying that the skill of introspection is uncultivated in most people and that we have limited concepts and categories to characterise experience.
4. Positive bias. Haybron (2007, 406) describes an example person whose judgments tend to exhibit a positive bias: “despite his gruff demeanor, he has little patience for whining or complaining and tends to look on the positive side of things more than the negative. As a result, many of the negative affects that he experienced are simply overlooked.”[31]
5. Effects of expectations, theories, and opinions about experiences. These can be about how one is likely to feel or how one should feel (Haybron 2007, sec. 2.6). Schwitzgebel (2021) writes: “reports of experience are apt to be considerably influenced, and distorted, by pre-existing theories, opinions, and biases, both cultural and personal, as well as situational demands. The gravity of this problem is difficult to estimate, but in my opinion it is extreme”.
6. Misidentification. The individual notices the feeling but misidentifies it. Haybron (2007, 397) talks about “misidentification, where subjects are fully aware of their affects and their phenomenal qualities but classify them incorrectly (say by misapplying the concept upset to a case of anger)”.
7. Different notions of disturbance or unpleasantness. This point is related to the two just-mentioned ones about theories and misidentification. For example, one can imagine that someone has an unpleasant experience in the sense that I am concerned with, namely in the sense of how the experience feels, its quality, its phenomenology, and what it is like to have it. But the person has a different notion of unpleasantness. For example, the person conceives of unpleasantness as impeded activity, perception of a negative value, taking pain in something, or disliking a sensation (see Massin 2008, 8–10). The person might say: “Yes, it feels as you say. But unpleasantness does not consist in that quality of the experience. The feeling is not unpleasant, bothersome, or the like, so it is not a disturbance.” Even within the framework of thinking of disturbances and unpleasantness only in terms of the experience’s quality, how it feels, and what it is like to have it, people can seemingly disagree about whether a quality of an experience is unpleasant, bothersome, aversive, a disturbance, etc. For example, one person says “This feeling has an aversive bothersome, unpleasant, or hedonically negative phenomenology or quality; it is a disturbance.” Another person says “Not it doesn’t and not it isn’t.” I can’t argue here that my conception of disturbance or unpleasantness is correct, or that the feeling that I call aversive really has that quality. All we can say here is perhaps that different notions of disturbance, unpleasantness, or hedonically negative or bothersome phenomenology are possible sources of failing to realise that one is experiencing a disturbance. I think they are important and likely sources of failing to realise that one is experiencing a disturbance, but, again, it seems I cannot make that case here.
8. Self-deception. We might deceive ourselves about how badly we feel. For example, it might be psychologically challenging to accept the idea that one experiences so many and so substantial disturbances, or it might be evolutionarily beneficial to conceal from oneself the extent of disturbance one feels.[32]
9. Affect-type bias. According to Haybron (2007, sec. 2.5): “The idea is that some types of affect are more likely to be considered than others when judging the quality of our experience…. One possibility worth taking seriously is that such biases frequently cause self-reports to overlook states, like anxiety and stress, that are crucial to the experienced quality of our lives—even if we are aware of them while they are happening, and even if we are reporting on our immediate experience.”
10. There are many disturbances to potentially fail to detect. It seems challenging to introspectively confirm that one’s experience is entirely free from the over one hundred distrubances listed in section 1.

Those were reasons in general why one might fail to detect disturbance even when one tries to pay attention to one’s ongoing experience. Let’s turn to more concrete experiences that someone might likely point to in a putative example of undisturbed experience. In section 4, I mentioned that Cicero seems to be saying that when being in this conversation, the participants feel neither pleasure nor pain, and that Cicero talks about mixing a drink for another when one is not thirsty oneself. These are probably not the most convincing examples of cases in which one is paying attention to one’s experience and in which it seems to the individual like there is no disturbance there. Perhaps because if one would start paying attention to one’s experience, one somewhat leaves the engagement in a normal conversation and the task of mixing a drink. An example that has been brought up in correspondence is meditating in stillness while paying attention to one’s experience. Why think that there is disturbance in this case that one fails to detect? Well, the first part of the discussion above contains reasons to think there is disturbance there. For example, it seems implausible that there would be so large impersonal differences. For instance, I have already mentioned Thisdell. He is a meditation teacher who reports that all of his experiences during meditation contain disturbance (Knutsson 2023). It sounds dubious that so many others who meditate, and who might typically be less experienced meditators, simply have undisturbed experiences when meditating. And there are the reasons listed above why one might fail to detect disturbance such as not being skilled enough at introspection, elusive feelings, adaptation to persistent affect, and so on.

(iv) When a person does not pay attention to their current experience, is there disturbance there? This question is relevant because someone might try to present an example of an undisturbed experience by pointing to an experience that the individual is not paying attention to when having it. More specifically, someone might say that if there is disturbance there when we pay attention to our experience, that is because we are paying attention.[33] This is related to the refrigerator-light problem that, according to Schwitzgebel (2011, 98), is “so named after the mistaken impression a child might have that the refrigerator light is always on because it is on whenever he checks it”.

I think it is not especially convincing to use experiences that we did not pay attention to at the time in a putative counterexample. I have two reasons for saying this.

The first reason is simply the potential unreliability of recall including errors of omission (Haybron 2007, sec. 3; Schwitzgebel 2011, 105–12). For example, Schwitzgebel (2011, 111–12) writes the following about remembering past experiences:

the experience and reflection still aren’t simultaneous (they can’t be, if we are to avoid the refrigerator-light error), and that non-simultaneity may be enough to guarantee the forgetting of substantial portions of experience that are never recorded even in short-term memory…. And the concern about short-term memory seems to me absolutely intractable if we take its possibility seriously: How could anyone introspectively discern whether an experience, however recently past, never occurred, or whether, instead, it occurred but was never encoded into memory?

And the problems with introspection listed above such as elusive feelings and adaptation to persistent affect seem to also apply to the recollection of experiences.

The second reason concerns the idea that paying attention causes disturbance. I assumed that this was the motivation behind pointing to past rather than current experiences. In other words, the motivation was that paying attention to one’s current experience might give rise to disturbances that were not there before or that would not have been there had one not paid attention. So, the idea is to point to a past experience that was undisturbed that one did not pay attention to at the time and that was thereby unsullied by the subject paying attention to it when having it. Sure, a general question is whether and how paying attention to one’s experience changes it. But attention merely altering one’s experience is not enough for our purposes. The question is rather whether paying attention to one’s current experience changes it so much that the number and degree of disturbances go from zero to the number and degree of disturbances one notices when one pays attention to one’s current experience. And it seems like a tall order to make a convincing case that paying attention to one’s current experience has that kind of negative effect on one’s experience. The more and the stronger disturbances we notice when we pay attention to our current experience, the less plausible it seems that the unattended experience is completely undisturbed.

All in all, it seems difficult for anyone to point to a past experience that one did not pay attention to at the time and know that one did not feel any disturbance at all at the time.

5.2       Replies to the second part of the counterexample

This section is about replies to the second part of the counterexample: ‘b is an experience that is at a higher hedonic level than a’ (where a is claimed to be an undisturbed experience). I sort the replies into four groups. The first group is about straightforwardly denying that b is at a higher hedonic level than a by appealing to, for example, introspection or recall. The second group concerns how to determine whether b is on a higher hedonic level than a. The third group consists of explanations of why one might mistakenly believe that b is on a higher hedonic level than a. The fourth group is about the nature of b states.

Before we turn to the groups of replies, I will now make a couple of brief remarks. If a is a merely hypothetical experience that no humans have, then we are no longer in the realm of counterexamples based on introspection or recall. Challenges for such a hypothetical counterexample include that it is unclear how we could determine whether b is on a higher hedonic level than the hypothetical a, since we have no experience of a. It might even be hard to imagine what a would be like. So let’s focus, as we have done, on real-life counterexamples and set merely hypothetical counterexamples aside.

Which concrete experiences are supposed to be b states? It might depend on which concrete experience is claimed to be the undisturbed a state. For example, when I think of relatively strong candidates for undisturbed experiences, two categories of experiences come to mind: the first is about tranquillity and stillness (e.g., successful meditation), while the second is about being engaged in something so that one, among other things, is stimulated and forgets one’s troubles. But, as we touched on above, someone might hold that simply staring at a wall often involves having an undisturbed experience. Here we seemingly run into a trade-off. If the purportedly undisturbed experiences are rare and perhaps only experienced by a small minority of humans, it becomes harder to point to an experience for which it is convincing that is at a higher hedonic level than the purportedly undisturbed experience. And if the purportedly undisturbed experience is less demanding such as that of a regular adult staring at a wall, then it is less convincing that it is an undisturbed experience, but it is easier to find an experience that is at a higher hedonic level than it. That said, let us move on to the group of replies

The first group is about straightforwardly denying that b is at a higher hedonic level than a by appealing to, for example, introspection or recall. Suppose someone says that an experience during meditation is undisturbed (experience a) and that the experience of taking certain drugs (experience b) is at a higher hedonic level. I will again refer to Thisdell as a counterpoint here. He seemingly has much experience meditating (e.g., Thisdell 2022). He has also tried the drug 5-MeO-DMT. According to him, “they say 5-MeO-DMT …, if you have a good trip, gives you some of the highest valence state possible that we know of in human experience” (Thisdell 2021a at 11:06). Hedonically speaking, he would say that using this drug doesn’t feel better than the closest he has gotten to undisturbedness (Knutsson 2023).[34] Similarly, if someone pointed to two experiences that I have had, one of them (experience a) being the closest I have gotten to undisturbedness and the other (experience b) being any other experience I have had, I would report (if I would rely on introspection or recall) that the other experience is not at a higher hedonic level. This direct denial of that b is at a higer hedonic level than a is our first kind of reply. Of course, I have only mentioned reports by two persons and one can question whether this is the case for everyone and how reliable these reports are.

Let us turn to the second group of replies—those that concern how to determine whether b is on a higher hedonic level than a. The situation now is more complex than in the previous section. In the previous section, we talked about what we feel when having one single experience. Now we are faced with relating two experiences. They are supposed to be at different hedonic levels, so they need to be two distinct experiences, and so not simultaneous (assuming as I do, that an experience is a subject’s total experience; I assume one cannot have an undisturbed experience and at the same time another experience that is at a different hedonic level). Hence, first-person familiarity with at least one of the experiences would need to be based on recall. In other words, we need to either recall two experiences and compare them, or recall one and compare it to the one we are currently having. It is plausible that we can determine that one experience felt better than another in unusually clear cases. For example, when first having had stomach flu and then recovering, one can seemingly reliably conclude that the experience one has when being well again is at a higher hedonic level (assuming that one can hedonically feel better or worse at all). Why? One can vividly recall, for example, feelings of intense nausea and debilitating fever that are no longer there. But when comparing purportedly undisturbed states with those that purportedly are at a higher hedonic level, we seemingly run into more severe comparison challenges. One challenge is due to the potential unreliability of recall (Haybron 2007, sec. 3; Schwitzgebel 2011, 105–12). Another challenge is that when comparing an experience that is a decent candidate for being undisturbed with an experience that is supposedly at a higher hedonic level, we might need to compare two fairly rare experiences that both feel much better than most of our daily-life experience.

Let us move on to the third group of replies—the explanations of why one might mistakenly believe that b is on a higher hedonic level than a. The first such explanation is that the stimuli or experience in question normally reduces or crowds out disturbances and so increases one’s hedonic level (cf. Sherman 2017; Gloor 2017, sec. 2.1). So one might think of that kind of stimuli or experience as something that typically amounts to an increase in one’s default or comparison hedonic level. But in the rare case when the comparison level is a state of undisturbedness, the other experience is not at a higher level, although it would be natural to think that it would be because it almost always amounts to an increase in one’s hedonic level. Other explanations concern self-deception and the effects of expectations, theories, or opinions, as mentioned in section 5.1. For example, traditions, norms, expectations, and marketing related to which experiences are supposed to be pleasant, positive, or more pleasant than a “neutral” experience.

Now we turn to the fourth and final group of replies to the second part of the counterexample—the group of replies concerning the nature of b states. I will present two such replies: one about whether there is something phenomenological about b states that would place them on a higher hedonic level than undisturbed states, and one about accounting for b states in terms of the absence of disturbance.

When it comes to the phenomenology of b states, I guess that some people would say that various things feel good; that they have a hedonically positive ingredient or quality. Somewhat relatedly, O’Keefe (2009, 121) talks about a sweet sensation: ‘Cicero … claims that the lack of pain is not properly called a pleasure. We all understand pleasure to involve some sort of “sweet sensation”.’ And Smuts (2011, 255) writes that “we might say that the locus of the pleasurable sensation glows; we feel a warm feeling; the good feeling hums like the vibration of a tuning fork. Something about pleasurable experiences just feels good. The experience overall has this quality, this tone or hue…. My suggestion is that pleasurable experiences—whether of eating a peach or solving a puzzle—all have this, pick your metaphor, warm hum.” To be clear, I do not deny that one can feel awe, gratitude, excitement, and the like, and undisturbed experiences might feel like something (they need not be the absence of feelings). And perhaps one can feel sweet sensations and a warm hum. But I question whether there is something hedonically positive about any proposed b state. For example, even if we can feel a sweet sensation and a warm hum, that doesn’t seem to make the experience have a positive hedonic level (even if the sweet sensation and the warm hum is all that one feels). Based on my inspection, there seems to me to be nothing as a matter of phenomenology that makes experiences be at a higher hedonic level than undisturbed experiences or a neutral hedonic level. As far as I can tell, there is nothing positive about them; nothing that would put them hedonically above or on the positive side of undisturbedness. (See also Vinding 2022a; Knutsson 2023.)

The final reply is that b is merely an undisturbed experience or an experience that approaches an undisturbed experience. For example, one might think that listening to music, dancing, eating, engaging in a fascinating activity, or being at a spa results in experiences with a higher hedonic level than undisturbed experiences. But, according to this reply, these experiences can be accounted for in terms of freedom from disturbance (e.g., complete freedom from disturbance or less disturbance than other experiences).[35] In other words, an accurate description of such experiences is that they are, for example, comfortable (there is no discomfort), relaxing (there is absence of restlessness, stress, tension, or the like), satisfying (not dissatisfying), stimulating and interesting (not boring), or effortless (free of unpleasant effort, resistance, and struggle). This amounts to a potential account of why b is not on a higher hedonic level than a but at most at the same level as a.

6        Relevance and other objections to the Claim

This section is about the relevance of my argumentation. I have so far talked about one single kind of objection to the Claim, namely potential counterexamples. The relevance of discussing one objection to the Claim might be thought to depend partly on what independent reasons there are for the Claim and what other objections there are to the Claim. I listed reasons for the Claim in section 1, and this section is about other objections to the Claim.

I have found it challenging to find other published objections that directly concern the idea that the absence of disturbances or pain is the hedonic ceiling or the limit of pleasure. The most direct published objection to the idea seems to be the one I have been talking about: real-life counterexamples. The second most direct published kind of objection might be the idea that pleasure involves elation, sweet arousal, or the like (Cicero 2001, 30). But that seems to be more directed against the idea that pleasure is the absence of disturbance or pain. The Claim says nothing about what pleasure is. And as far as the Claim goes, undisturbed experiences might have various feels such as feeling delightful (which might not mean positive in the sense of above neutral.) That’s compatible with the Claim.

There are objections in the literature to aspects of, for example, Epicurus’ and Schopenhauer’s notions or broader accounts of pleasure. But the Claim does not include those specific ideas.

Besides looking for other published objections, there are at least two avenues left: The first avenue is to consider objections someone might make, even though I am not aware of that anyone has made them. The second avenue is to consider unpublished objections that have been made (I am aware of two such objections from personal correspondence). Let’s treat these two avenues in order.

As for other objections that someone might make but that I am not aware of anyone having made, perhaps appeal to evolution, biology, or explanations of behaviour could be tried. An evolutionary objection could be that beings need to have experiences with a higher hedonic level than undisturbedness for the experiences to sufficiently guide their behaviour. For example, eating food that increases evolutionary success needs to give a positively pleasant experience above undisturbedness. But why would it not be enough that eating the food results in a hedonically higher level than eating no food and eating less adaptive food?[36] It seems the evolutionary objection would need to be made in detail and that it would remain inconclusive. Similarly with relying on explanations of behaviour. And the situation seems similar concerning objections based on biology such as appeals to biological phenomena that purportedly correspond to positive experiences above undisturbedness. Even if, say, various events in the brain or body correspond to feeling better (hedonically speaking) or to self-reports of feelings that are reported as being at a higher hedonic level than undisturbed experiences, that need not mean that the experiences are at a higher hedonic level than undisturbedness.

Let’s turn to the second avenue and the two unpublished objections I am aware of. The first such objection, which has been brought up in correspondence,[37] goes as follows: Suppose two experiences have the same disturbance and no other disturbances. One of the experiences also has the taste of a pleasant dessert. The experience with the taste of the dessert is presumably at a higher hedonic level, the objection goes. Hypothetically remove the disturbance from both experiences. Again, the experience with the taste of the dessert is still presumably at a higher hedonic level now when none of the experiences has any disturbances. So an experience can be at a higher hedonic level than an undisturbed experience, the objection goes.

My reply is that when both experiences have the same disturbance, the experience with the taste of the dessert might not be at a higher level than the one without the taste. In support of this, we can consider the explanations of why one might mistakenly believe that an experience is at a higher hedonic level than an undisturbed experience, the lack of a hedonically positive phenomenology, and how one can try to account for experiences in terms of the absence of disturbance (all of these are mentioned in section 5.2). For example, normally, the taste of a dessert might reduce disturbances such as boredom, discontentment, dissatisfaction, gloominess, sadness, want, and unpleasant feelings of hunger. Stipulating that the taste does not reduce any disturbance makes the case special. So, what happens when a taste occurs and there was no dissatisfaction, want, or the like that the taste can reduce? Plausibly, the taste does not increase the hedonic level even though the taste of dessert might typically do that in real life.

The second kind of objection has been raised independently by two persons in correspondence.[38] The remainder of this section will be about this objection to the Claim. It also involves pointing to real-life experiences, but the objection is not as cleanly a counterexample as what we have talked about so far. This objection goes as follows: Even if undisturbed experiences are rare or nonexistent and we fail to detect subtle disturbances even when introspecting thoroughly, the following still speaks for that there are experiences that are at a higher hedonic level than undisturbed experiences: The disturbances that we fail to detect when introspecting plausibly do not lower our hedonic level that much. In other words, when we introspect and do not detect any disturbances, we are plausibly close to the hedonic level that undisturbed experiences are at. And there are experiences thought of as hedonically positive that seem to be at a substantially higher hedonic level than the experiences we have when we cannot detect disturbance. So, since the seemingly undisturbed experiences are only at a somewhat lower hedonic level than undisturbed experiences, and the seemingly positive experiences are at a much higher hedonic level, they should be at a higher hedonic level than undisturbedness.

Here’s the objection stated more succinctly: There is an experience that is at a higher hedonic level than the experience one has when one cannot detect any disturbance, and the difference in hedonic level between these two experiences is greater than the difference in hedonic level between an undisturbed experience and the experience one has when one cannot detect any disturbance. So, there is an experience that is at a higher hedonic level than an undisturbed experience.

I will mention three possible replies to this objection:

The first reply is that this objection is more demanding from a measurement-theoretic or quantity perspective.[39] The Claim and the objection discussed in sections 4–5 only talk about a higher hedonic level, while this other objection requires a comparison of the size of two differences in hedonic level. One can dispute that degree of measurability or quantification.

The second reply is that the disturbances that one might plausibly still have even if one does not detect any disturbance are not merely minor or subtle disturbances. Rather, they might be substantial lacks and wants, boredom, compression, discontent, disappointment, hopelessness, hurt, insecurity, etc. Things in the background that colours one’s phenomenology (cf. Haybron 2007) even though it might be hard to know that these are the specific things that lower one’s hedonic level. Or at least, how could we know that the disturbances one fails to detect are merely slightly below the undisturbed hedonic level? Especially assuming, as this objection kind of takes as its starting point, that we might never have experienced undisturbedness.

Third, if one really gets to undisturbedness or close to it, one might deny that there are other experiences that feel substantially better. Some who claim to have experienced complete undisturbedness or the closest they think they have gotten to undisturbedness might judge it to be their hedonic peak experience; see, for example, Thisdell’s comments in Knutsson (2023). Also, according to Tsouna (2020, 162), Epicurus and his followers appear to believe that freedom from pain  “feels quite wonderful”. If ‘wonderful’ is used for comparison with other real-life experiences, perhaps undisturbedness feels much better than daily life experiences. So that even if, say, dancing or partying feels much better than most other daily life experiences, so does undisturbedness.

7        Concluding remarks

Putative counterexamples do not seem to be as convincing of an objection to the idea that undisturbedness is the hedonic ceiling as they have been taken to be. There is reasonable doubt about putative counterexamples, enough to leave the Claim as a reasonable contender.[40]

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Notes

[1] Recent literature on Epicureanism that mentions the idea that the absence of pain is the limit of pleasure includes O’Keefe (2009, 120), Sherman (2017, 103), Long (2020, 753–55), and Tsouna (2020, 175).

[2] In addition, for example, Epicurus’ letter to Menoeceus says: “By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of torment in the soul” (Miller 2018, 535).

[3] There is also the relevant idea in Epicureanism of pleasure and pain as the only two categories of experience, instead of thinking in terms of the three categories pleasure, pain, and an intermediate state (Long 2020, 753–54; Tsouna 2020, 156). I do not take a stand on that issue in this paper, but if my points in this paper are granted, it would be natural to think in terms of two categories rather than three.

[4] On broad usages of the terms ‘pleasure’ and ‘pain’, see, e.g., Katz (2016) and Moore (2019).

[5] It seems the German philosophers Eduard von Hartmann and Philipp Mainlӓnder had similar views around the time (Beiser 2016, 154, 208). For other background, see also Massin (2008, 10; 2011, 301–2; 2014, 18) on no-pain theories of pleasure, and William James: “Happiness, I have lately discovered, is no positive feeling, but a negative condition of freedom from a number of restrictive sensations of which our organism usually seems to be the seat. When they are wiped out, the clearness and cleanness of the contrast is happiness” (W. James 1920, 2:158). Roger Thisdell recently said the following about numbers and hedonic levels: “I would use a negative scale {0, -1, -2, … , -n} with zero as the upper limit, and representing complete undisturbedness, because it seems to me there is a hedonic ceiling, but potentially no hedonic floor” (Knutsson 2023).

[6] See also Sherman (2017, 105–7) and the sources in Simmons (2021, n. 8), such as Janaway (1999, 333), Reginster (2009, 117–18), Soll (2012, 308), and Smith (2014, 26).

[7] I do not mean that O’Keefe takes this to be a strong objection to Epicureanism. O’Keefe’s book is an introduction to Epicureanism. It is merely that one can take from O’Keefe’s passage an illustrative, concise formulation of the kind of objection my paper is about.

[8] For example, Magnus Vinding says he is inclined to agree and probably agrees with the two points, respectively (e-mails to the author, January 6 and 7, 2023). See also Vinding (2022a). Sherman (2017, sec. 13) speaks similarly. Thisdell says, for example, “there is no pleasure” (Thisdell 2021a, 14:39). According to Prest and Thisdell (2022): “Positive valence — Only positive compared to one’s average valence, which tends to be highly negative. Maximum positive valence is simply full neutrality and equates to non-experience (cessation/nibbana).” See also Thisdell (2021b) and the historical sources above such as W. James (1920, 2:158).

[9] The following is a relevant historical passage in Epicurus’ letter to Menoeceus: “For we do everything for the sake of being free of pain and fear” (Miller 2018, 535). And Striker (1993, 14) says: “Even the profligates are ultimately seeking freedom from pain and trouble, according to Epicurus; they just have the wrong idea about how this is to be achieved.”

[10] Related to the diversity of unpleasant or bothersome experiences, see the heterogeneity problem when it comes to pleasure (e.g., Broi forthcoming).

[11] Haybron (2007) mentions compression, malaise, and tension.

[12] According to Bermúdez (2022, 13) “different efforts … are unified by the fact that they all feel like a struggle against a resistance.” See also Massin (2017). When I talk about resistance, I have in mind the feeling of resistance one can have when there is something to be done such as getting out of bed. One might think that one needs to and should get out of bed and one might want to, but it still feels like a hurdle that one needs to overcome. Other daily-life activities like these can include working, exercising, cooking, and taking care of others.

[13] One could think about adding unconventional things to the list. I won’t rely on the following, but I mention it as an option. Sensation or perception could be added to the list. It has been said that for the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras (5^th century BCE) all sensation or perception is, involves, or is accompanied by discomfort, distress, pain, or suffering (Merlan 1960, 9; Baltussen 2000, 170; Curd 2019). Warren (2008, 27) says that “according to Anaxagoras we always feel pain”. Another option is cognition and thinking. For example, if cognition has a phenomenology (e.g., Lennon 2021), perhaps it is sometimes or always unpleasant.

[14] Although otillfredställelse is perhaps a sensible translation of dissatisfaction.

[15] My translation. The original phrase in Swedish is “känsla av att något borde vara bättre” and the dictionary is Svenska Akademien (2021).

[16] For notions of contentment and discontentment somewhat different from mine, cf. Calhoun (2017).

[17] Pleasant in the sense of how it feels. Note that the Claim does not imply that x is pleasant.

[18] E.g., Massin (2014, 20) uses the phrase “on the positive side of”, Tännsjö (2007, 86) says “a high hedonic level”, and Labukt (2012) talks about “positive hedonic tone”.

[19] When I say that there is no positive experience and no pleasure, I do not mean that there are no feelings of, for example, awe, excitement, gratitude, pride, or relief. I mean that there are no experiences above hedonically neutral experiences.

[20] I am not fond of the categorical notions positive, negative, and neutral. If one wants to use some of them, then it makes sense to call the undisturbed states ‘neutral’. And to say that there is no pleasure below or above them; pleasure can neither be increased nor decreased from that point. But I would probably use some other terms. Anyway, I don’t defend those ideas here.

[21] The Claim is comparative because it says ‘is at a higher hedonic level than’, which is a two-place relation that relates two things. So, a counterexample involves two experiences where one is purportedly at a higher hedonic level than the other. To perhaps make this clearer, note that the Claim can be stated with two variables as follows: For any undisturbed experience x, there is no experience y such that y is at a higher hedonic level than x. If someone says that counterexamples can have a different structure, then, even if that is the case, this paper focuses on counterexamples with this structure.

[22] See Woods (2022, sec. 3.1) for a discussion of Simmons’ counterexamples.

[23] I will not deal with counterexamples that merely aim to show that something is missing from the list in the description of undisturbed experiences. That is, counterexamples that seek to show that an experience would have a higher hedonic level if it were also free of, say, fatigue. If such a counterexample is convincing, we can just add freedom from fatigue to the description of an undisturbed experience.

[24] E.g., Thisdell (2022) writes that “any iota of conscious experience brings with it negative valance/suffering”. Magnus Vinding: “I can’t really say whether I have ever had a completely undisturbed experience” (e-mail to the author, January 6, 2023). On whether Bengt Brülde ever has completely undisturbed experiences, he writes, among other things, that it is hard to determine whether all disturbances are absent (e-mails to the author, January 28 and March 14, 2023).

[25] These reports were made in personal correspondence, unless I list a publicly available source.

[26] In addition, Benatar (2017, 71) argues that “Even in good health, much of every day is spent in discomfort.” Benatar (2017, 71–73) brings up hunger, thirst, distended bladders and bowels, thermal discomfort, tiredness, itches, allergies, menstrual pains, and hot flashes. Benatar (2017, 72–73) talks about how common disappointment, dissatisfaction, frustration, irritation, and unfulfilled aspirations are. Although it is not clear to me to what extent these claims are based on Benatar paying attention to his current experiences.

[27] Hurlburt and Schwitzgebel (2011, 235, 239–42) discuss Hill’s view.

[28] Schwitzgebel (2008, 263–64) provides a similar reasoning in a different context.

[29] And similarly in Schwitzgebel (2007, 6) with different wording.

[30] Thanks to Magnus Vinding for bringing up essentially this point.

[31] Metzinger (2017, 221) mentions optimism bias.

[32] Haybron (2007, 397) mentions self-deception. And in a section titled “Narrative self-deception”, Metzinger (2017, 221) writes: ‘If, on the finest introspective level of phenomenological granularity that is functionally available to it, a self­conscious system would discover too many negatively valenced moments, then this discovery might paralyse it and prevent it from procreating. If the human organism would not repeat most individual conscious moments if it had any choice, then the logic of psychological evolution mandates concealment of the fact from the self­modelling system caught on the hedonic treadmill. It would be an advantage if insights into the deep structure of its own mind, insights of the type just sketched, were not reflected in its conscious self­model too strongly, and if it suffered from a robust version of optimism bias. Perhaps it is exactly the main function of the human self­model’s higher levels to drive the organism continuously forward, to generate a functionally adequate form of self­deception glossing over everyday life’s ugly details by developing a grandiose and unrealistically optimistic inner story – a “narrative self-model” with which we can identify?’

[33] For historical background, see, e.g., Palmer (1975).

[34] See also the passage about bliss trips, MDMA, laughing, etc. in Gómez-Emilsson (2021).

[35] Knutsson (2019) makes a similar point about listening to or playing music, gardening, having interesting conversations, reading, and so on. And Thisdell (2021a around 6:50-9:40, 11:38).

[36] See also Vinding (2022b, sec. Are reproductive gains tracked by pleasures as “intrinsic positives”?).

[37] Thanks to Eric Schwitzgebel for bringing up this objection. I do not mean to say that he endorses the objection. I have rephrased the objection somewhat for readability.

[38] First Magnus Vinding (who does not agree with the objection) and then Gunnar Björnsson.

[39] Roberts (1985) on measurement theory. Relevant is perhaps Mendola’s (1990) ordinal modification of classical utilitarianism.

[40] I am grateful to Gustaf Arrhenius, Gunnar Björnsson, Krister Bykvist, Eric Schwitzgebel, and Magnus Vinding for comments on earlier versions of this paper, and to Phillip Mitsis and Roger Thisdell for helpful correspondence.