Feelings Versus Representations of Value

Abstract

Abstract This chapter compares and contrasts two competing accounts of the nature of valence. One sees pleasure and displeasure as intrinsic feelings that attach to our experiences, resulting from evaluative appraisals of the contents of the latter. These feelings can then be thought to motivate choice directly. The upshot is motivational hedonism. The other account sees pleasure and displeasure as representations of value. Pleasure represents the event or activity that occasions it as good (but representing goodness in a nonconceptual and quasi-perceptual manner), and displeasure represents it as bad. Goodness and badness can then be cashed out in terms of inclusive fitness, because this is what valence carries information about, and it is the fact of carrying that information that explains the role of valence in decision-making. The chapter presents a number of arguments in favor of the value-representing view, the upshot of which is motivational pluralism and a vindication of altruism. It follows from the account provided, however, that some pleasures falsely represent their objects as good, and that some displeasures represent their objects incorrectly as bad.