CHAPTER III. Empirical Hedonism (_continued_)

EMPIRICAL HEDONISM (continued)

1. To get a clearer view of this method, let us consider objections tending to show its inherent impracticability: as, first, that “pleasure as feeling cannot be conceived,” and that a “sum of pleasures is intrinsically unmeaning”: 131-134

2. that transient pleasures cannot satisfy; and that the predominance of self-love tends to defeat its own end: 134-138

3. that the habit of introspectively comparing pleasures is unfavourable to pleasure: 138-140

4. that any quantitative comparison of pleasures and pains is vague and uncertain, even in the case of our own past experiences: 140-144

5. that it also tends to be different at different times: especially through variations in the present state of the person performing the comparison: 144-146

6. that, in fact, the supposed definite commensurability of pleasures is an unverifiable assumption: 146-147

7. that there is a similar liability to error in appropriating the experience of others; and in inferring future pleasures from past. 147-150