Editing Pleasure (section)

=== Attitude theories ===
''Attitude theories'' propose to analyze pleasure in terms of attitudes to experiences.<ref name="Smuts"/><ref name="Katz"/> So to enjoy the taste of chocolate it is not sufficient to have the corresponding experience of the taste. Instead, the subject has to have the right attitude to this taste for pleasure to arise.<ref name="Borchert"/> This approach captures the intuition that a second person may have exactly the same taste-experience but not enjoy it since the relevant attitude is lacking. Various attitudes have been proposed for the type of attitude responsible for pleasure, but historically the most influential version assigns this role to [[desire]]s.<ref name="Pallies"/> On this account, pleasure is linked to experiences that fulfill a desire had by the experiencer.<ref name="Borchert"/><ref name="Pallies"/> So the difference between the first and the second person in the example above is that only the first person has a corresponding desire directed at the taste of chocolate.

One important argument against this version is that while it is often the case that we desire something first and then enjoy it, this cannot always be the case. In fact, often the opposite seems to be true: we have to learn first that something is enjoyable before we start to desire it.<ref name="Borchert"/><ref name="Pallies"/> This objection can be partially avoided by holding that it does not matter whether the desire was there before the experience but that it only matters what we desire while the experience is happening. This variant, originally held by [[Henry Sidgwick]], has recently been defended by Chris Heathwood, who holds that an experience is pleasurable if the subject of the experience wants the experience to occur for its own sake while it is occurring.<ref name="Heathwood">{{cite journal |last1=Heathwood |first1=Chris |title=The Reduction of Sensory Pleasure to Desire |journal=Philosophical Studies |date=2007 |volume=133 |issue=1 |pages=23–44 |doi=10.1007/s11098-006-9004-9 |s2cid=170419589 |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/HEATRO}}</ref><ref name="Bramble"/> But this version faces a related problem akin to the [[Euthyphro dilemma]]: it seems that we usually desire things because they are enjoyable, not the other way round.<ref name="Smuts"/><ref name="Katz"/> So desire theories would be mistaken about the direction of explanation. Another argument against desire theories is that desire and pleasure can come apart: we can have a desire for things that are not enjoyable and we can enjoy things without desiring to do so.<ref name="Borchert"/><ref name="Pallies"/>