Editing Pleasure (section)

=== Motivation and behavior ===
Pleasure-seeking ''behavior'' is a common phenomenon and may indeed dominate our conduct at times. The thesis of [[psychological hedonism]] generalizes this insight by holding that all our actions aim at increasing pleasure and avoiding pain.<ref name="Craig">{{cite book |last1=Craig |first1=Edward |title=Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy |date=1996 |publisher=Routledge |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/BEAREO |chapter=Hedonism}}</ref><ref name="Borchert2"/> This is usually understood in combination with [[egoism]], i.e. that each person only aims at her own happiness.<ref name="Britannica"/> Our actions rely on beliefs about what causes pleasure. False beliefs may mislead us and thus our actions may fail to result in pleasure, but even failed actions are ''motivated'' by considerations of pleasure, according to ''psychological hedonism''.<ref name="Moore">{{cite web |last1=Moore |first1=Andrew |title=Hedonism |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hedonism/ |website=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |access-date=29 January 2021 |date=2019}}</ref> The [[paradox of hedonism]] states that pleasure-seeking behavior commonly fails also in another way. It asserts that being motivated by pleasure is self-defeating in the sense that it leads to less actual pleasure than following other motives.<ref name="Moore"/><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Dietz |first1=Alexander |title=Explaining the Paradox of Hedonism |journal=Australasian Journal of Philosophy |date=2019 |volume=97 |issue=3 |pages=497–510 |doi=10.1080/00048402.2018.1483409 |s2cid=171459875 |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/DIEETP}}</ref>

[[Sigmund Freud]] formulated his [[Pleasure principle (psychology)|pleasure principle]] in order to account for the effect pleasure has on our behavior. It states that there is a strong, inborn tendency of our mental life to seek immediate gratification whenever an opportunity presents itself.<ref name="Lopez"/> This tendency is opposed by the [[reality principle]], which constitutes a learned capacity to delay immediate gratification in order to take the real consequences of our actions into account.<ref>{{cite book |last1=De Mijolla |first1=Alain |title=International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis |date=2005 |publisher=Macmillan Reference USA |chapter=pleasure/unpleasure principle}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=De Mijolla |first1=Alain |title=International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis |date=2005 |publisher=Macmillan Reference USA |chapter=reality principle}}</ref> Freud also described the ''pleasure principle'' as a [[positive feedback]] mechanism that motivates the organism to recreate the situation it has just found pleasurable, and to avoid past situations that caused [[suffering|pain]].<ref>{{cite book|last1=Freud|first1=Siegmund|title=Beyond the pleasure principle|year=1950|publisher=Liveright|location=New York}}</ref>