ryle pleasure

Symposium: PleasureAuthor(s): Gilbert Ryle and W. B. GallieReviewed work(s):Source: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, Vol. 28, Belief andWill (1954), pp. 135-164Published by: Wiley on behalf of The Aristotelian SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4106596 .

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SYMPOSIUM: " PLEASURE."

PROFESSOR GILBERT RYLE AND PROFESSOR W. B. GALLIE.

l.-By GILBERT RYLE.

WHAT sort of a difference is the difference between taking a walk which one enjoys and taking a walk to which one is indifferent ? (1) It might be suggested that it is, in genus if not in species, the sort of difference that there is between walking with a headache and walking without one; and that somewhat as one walker may recollect afterwards not only the ordinary acts and incidents of his walk, but also the steady or intermittent pains that he had had in his head while walking, so another walker who has enjoyed his walk might recall both the ordinary acts and incidents of his walk and also the steady pleasure or the intermittent pleasures that had been concomitant with the walk. It might even be suggested that as one walker may recollect that his headache had become specially acute just as he reached the canal, so another might recollect that his pleasure had become specially acute just as he reached the canal.

A person who made such a suggestion need not hold that to enjoy a walk is itself to have a special bodily sensation or series of bodily sensations concurrent with the walking. He might admit that while we can ask in which arm an agreeable or disagreeable tingle had been felt, we could not ask in which arm the agreeableness or disagreeableness of it had been felt. He might admit, too, that in the way in which pains yield to local or general anaesthetics, enjoyment and distaste are not the sorts of states or conditions for which anaesthetics are appropriate. But he might still suggest that pleasure is a non-bodily feeling, in supposedly the same generic sense of " feeling " as pain is a bodily feeling. If sophisticated enough, he might suggest that pleasure is a specific, introspectible Erlebnis, where a headache is a



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specific bodily Erlebnis. Now a sensation or Erlebnis, like a tingle, may be agreeable, disagreeable or neutral. If enjoying and disliking were correctly co-classified with such Erlebnisse or feelings, one would expect, by analogy, that one could similarly ask whether a person who had had the supposed pleasure-feeling or dislike-Erlebnis had liked or disliked having it. Enjoying or disliking a tingle would be, on this showing, having one bodily feeling plus one non- bodily feeling. Either, then, this non-bodily feeling is, in its turn, something that can be pleasant or unpleasant, which would require yet another, non-bodily feeling,... .; .or the way or sense, if any, in which pleasure and distress are feelings is not in analogy with the way or sense in which tingles are feelings.

There are other places where the suggested analogy between pleasure and tingles collapses. If you report having a tingle in your arm, I can ask you to describe it. Is it rather like having an electric shock ? Does it mount and subside like waves ? Is it going on at this moment ? But when you tell me how much you are enjoying the smell of peat smoke in my room, you cannot even construe the parallel questions about your enjoyment. Nor is your inability to answer due merely to the very important fact that in order to attend to my questions you have to stop attending to the smell, and so cannot still be enjoying it. You cannot answer my questions even in retrospect. There is no phenomenon to describe, except the smell of the peat smoke.

(2) The enjoyment of a walk might, however, be co- classified by some, not with feelings like tingles, but with feelings like wrath, amusement, alarm and disappointment- which is a very different use of " feeling." It could be urged that though the walker would not naturally say that he had felt pleased all the time or had kept on feeling pleased, still he could quite naturally say such things as that he had felt as if he were walking on air, or that he had felt that he could go on for ever. These dicta, which would certainly suggest that he had enjoyed his walk, should, on this second view, be construed as reporting a passion or emotion, in that



" PLEASURE." 137

sense of those words in which a person who is scared, thrilled, tickled or surprised is in the grip of a more or less violent passion or emotion.

This second assimilation too collapses. The walker may enjoy his walk very much, but he is not, thereby, assailed or overcome by anything. A man may be too angry or surprised to think straight, but he cannot enjoy his walk too much to think straight. He can be perfectly calm while enjoying himself very much.

Panic, fury and mirth can be transports, convulsions or fits, but the enjoyment of the smell of peat smoke is not a paroxysm like these-not because it is very mild, where they are violent, but because it is not the sort of thing that can be resisted, whether successfully or unsuccessfully. It cannot be given way to either. It is not a gale or a squall, but nor is it even a capful of wind. There is no conquering it or being conquered by it, though there is certainly such a thing as conquering or being conquered by the habit of indulging in something or the temptation to indulge in it.

(3) There is the third, though surely not the last use of " feeling " in which moods or frames of mind like depression, cheerfulness, irritability and insouciance are often called " feelings." Typically, though not universally, a mood lasts some hours or even a day or two, like the weather. But the mood of irritability is unlike the emotion or passion of anger, not only in its typical duration and not only in being more like squally weather than like a squall, but also in not having a particular object. A man is angry with his dog or his tie, but his irritability has no particular object, except, what comes to the same thing, The Scheme of Things in General. To be irritable is to be predisposed to lose one's temper with no matter which particular object. A person in a cheerful or energetic mood is predisposed to enjoy, inter alia, any walk that he may take ; but what he enjoys is this particular walk. His enjoyment of it is not the fact that he is predisposed to enjoy any occupations or activities. Moreover he enjoys his walk only while taking it, but he had felt cheerful or energetic, perhaps, ever since he got out of bed. So



138 GILBERT RYLE.

enjoying something is not the same sort of thing as being or feeling cheerful. On the contrary, the notion of being cheerful has to be explained in terms of the notion of pleasure, since to be cheerful is to be easy to please.

Sensations, emotional states and moods can, in principle, all be clocked. We can often say roughly how long a tingle or a headache lasted, very roughly how long a fit of rage or amusement lasted, and extremely roughly how long a mood of depression or cheerfulness lasted. But pleasure does not lend itself to such clockings. The walker can, indeed, say that he enjoyed his walk until it began to rain, two hours after he started out ; or the diner can say that he enjoyed, though decreasingly, every bite of Stilton Cheese that he took until satiety set in with the penultimate bite, and that this series of bites took about six minutes. But he cannot clock the duration of his enjoyment against the duration of the thing he enjoyed. He can, at best, divide the duration of the walk or meal into the parts which he enjoyed and the parts which he did not enjoy. The enjoyment of a walk is not a concomitant, e.g. an introspectible effect of the walking, such that there might be two histories, one the history of the walk, the other the history of its agreeableness to the walker. In particular there would be a glaring absurdity in the suggestion that the enjoyment of a walk- might outlast the walk-unless all that was intended was that the walker enjoyed the walk and then enjoyed some after-effects or memories of the walk; or that the walk had made him cheerful for some time afterwards.

Psychologists nowadays often avoid idioms which suggest that enjoying a walk is having a special feeling while one walks, by speaking instead of the " hedonic tone " of the walker. This new idiom, apart from performing its one antiseptic function, does not by itself advance very much our conceptual enquiry. It does not make clear what sort of a thing pleasure is. Is the hedonic tone the sort of thing that could, conceivably, be induced by drugs or hypnosis- as Dutch courage and somnolence can be induced ? Could a person be qualified by hedonic tone, without his doing or having anything in particular to enjoy doing or



SC PLEASURE." 139

having ? So let us try to make a more positive move of our own.

Sometimes I enjoy a smell, sometimes I dislike it, and very often I am quite indifferent to it. But I could not enjoy it, dislike it or be indifferent to it if I were totally oblivious or unaware of it. I cannot say, in retrospect, that I liked the smell but did not notice it. I could, of course, enjoy a complex of smells, views, cool air and running water without paying special heed to any one of them. But I could not have enjoyed just that complex, while being totally oblivious of any one of those components of it. This " could not " is not a causal " could not." To say that a person had enjoyed the music, though too preoccupied to listen to it even as a background noise, would be to say something silly, not to report a lusus naturae. Unnoticed things, like ozone in the air, may certainly cause us to feel vigorous or cheerful. There may well be such an unnoticed cause of our being predisposed to enjoy, inter alia, the food and the music. But then we do not enjoy the ozone, but the food and the music ; and of these we cannot be both oblivious and appreciative.

Similarly, when a person temporarily forgets his headache or tickle, he must cease, for that period, to be distressed by it. Being distressed by it entails not being oblivious of it. But just what is this connection between enjoying and attending, or between being oblivious and being undistressed ? What, to begin with, is there to be said about the notions of attention and oblivion themselves ?

When we consider the notion of attending, a subject which we consider far too seldom, we are apt to fancy that we have to do with some nuclear, one-piece notion ; as if, for example, all attending were comparable with just switching on and

aiming a torch in order to see what is there whether we see it or not. But in real life we use a wide variety of idioms for attending, most of which will not quite or even nearly do duty for one another. Some of these idioms correspond not too

badly with the model of the torch-beam; others do not correspond with it at all.

For example, if at the prompting of someone else I come



140 GILBERT RYLE.

to notice a previously unnoticed smell, the way I become alive to the smell has some kinship with the way the hedge- hog comes to be seen when the torch-beam is directed upon it. But then the way in which a strong smell so forces itself on my attention that I cannot not notice it is much more like a piece of barbed wire catching me than like an object being picked out by my exploring torch-beam.

When we describe someone as writing or driving carefully, we are describing him as attending to his task. But he is not, save per accidens, taking note of the things he is doing, since he is playing not an observer's part, but an agent's part. He is taking pains to avoid, among other things, ambiguities or collisions, where noticing a strong smell does not involve taking pains at all.

Consider some other differences between the functions of such idioms as those of noticing, heed, being careful, being vigilant, concentrating, taking interest, being absorbed, giving one's mind to something, and thinking what one is doing. When excited or bored, I may not think what I am saying; but to say this is to say less than that I am talking recklessly. I may be interested in something when it would be too severe to say that I am concentrating on it ; and I may concentrate on something which fails to capture my interest. Attention is sometimes attracted, sometimes lent, sometimes paid and sometimes exacted.

Philosophers and psychologists sometimes speak of " acts " of attention. This idiom too is partially appropriate to certain contexts and quite inappropriate to others. When a person is actually bidden by someone else or by himself to attend, there is something which with some effort or reluctance he does. Where his attention had been wandering, it now settles ; where he had been half-asleep, he is now wide awake ; and this change he may bring about with a wrench. But the spectator at an exciting football match does not have to try to fasten or canalise his attention. To the question " How many acts of attention did you perform ?," his proper answer would be " None." For no wrenches had occurred. His attention was fixed on the game but he went through no operations of fixing it. The



" PLEASURE." 141

same man, listening to a lecture, might perform a hundred operations of fixing his attention and still fail to keep his mind on what was being said. Acts of attending occur when attending is difficult. But sometimes attending is easy; and sometimes it is difficult, sometimes impossible not to attend.

Even where it is appropriate to speak of acts of attention, the word " act " carries very little of its ordinary luggage. In ordinary contexts we apply very multifarious criteria in determining what constitutes one act. Perhaps making one move in chess is performing one act ; perhaps doing enough to warrant prosecution is performing one act ; and perhaps getting from the beginning to the end of a speech without being side-tracked is one act. But a person who has, say, hummed a tune from beginning to end, not absent-mindedly but on purpose and with some application, has not performed two acts or accomplished two tasks, one of humming plus one of giving his mind to reproducing the tune ; or, at any rate, he has not performed two acts in that sense of " two acts " in which it would make sense to say that he might have done the second but omitted the first. Giving his mind to reproducing the tune is not doing something else, in the way in which a person sawing wood while humming is doing something else besides humming. We should say, rather, that a person who hums a tune with some concentration is humming in a different way from the way in which he hums automatically, for all that the difference might make no audible difference. It makes his humming a different sort of action, not a concomitance of separately performable actions.

I suggest that explicit talk about such things as heed, concentration, paying attention, care and so on occurs most commonly in instruction-situations and in accusation-situations, both of which are relatively small, though important sections of discourse. Elsewhere, even when talking about human beings, we tend to make relatively few explicit mentions of these things, not because it would be irrelevant, but because it would be redundant to do so. The notions are already built into the meanings of lots of the biographical



142 GILBERT RYLE.

and critical expressions which we use in talking to people and about them. In partly the same way we do not often need to make explicit mention of the special functions of particular utensils and instruments ; not because they have not got functions, but because the names of these utensils and instruments themselves generally tell us their functions. The gunsmith does not advertise "Guns to shoot with."

When, in our philosophising, we do remember how notions of care, vigilance, interest and the like are built into the meanings of lots of our biographical and critical expressions, we may still be tempted to assimilate all of these notions to the two special notions that are cardinal for pedagogues and disciplinarians, of studying and conforming. We then find that our resultant account of the spectator's interest in an exciting game has a smell of unreality about it. For he is not taking pains to improve his wits, or dutifully abiding by any rules. He is attending, but not in either of these special modes of attention. Being excited or interested is not being sedulous; it is, more nearly, not-having-to-be- sedulous.

The general point that I am trying to make is that the notion of attending or giving one's mind to is a polymorphous notion. The special point that I am trying to make is that the notion of enjoying is one variety in this genus, or one member of this clan, i.e. that the reason why I cannot, in logic, enjoy what I am oblivious of is the same as the reason why I cannot, in logic, spray my currant-bushes without gardening.

Let us consider again the moderately specific notion of interest. To be, at a particular moment, interested in something is certainly to be giving one's mind to it, though one can give one's mind to a task, without being interested in it. The notions of being fascinated, carried away, being wrapped up in, excited, absorbed, puzzled, intrigued, and many congeners, clearly tie up closely, though in different ways, with the notion of interest. Now to say that someone has been enjoying a smell or a walk at least suggests and maybe even implies that he has been interested in the smell or in the



" PLEASURE." 143

exercise and the incidents of the walk-not that he gave his mind to them in e.g., the sedulous way, but rather that his mind was taken up by them in a spontaneous way. This is, of course, not enough. Alarming, disgusting and surprising things capture my attention without my having to fix my attention on them. So do pains and tickles.

I should like, at this stage to be able to answer these questions :-What is it, in general, to give one's mind to something ? What, more specifically, is it to give one's mind to something in the mode of being interested in it ? What, finally, is it to give one's mind to something in that special dimension of interest which constitutes enjoyment ? I cannot do this, but will throw out a few unscholastic remarks.

It will not, I think, be suggested that interest is either a separable process or activity or a peculiar feeling. Even if there are acts of attention, there are not acts of interest, or pangs of it either. En passant, it is just worth mentioning that a person might be, for a spell, wholly taken up with something, like a smell or a taste, though he would not claim that the smell or taste had been interesting-or of course boring either. We tend to reserve the adjective " interesting " for what provokes hypotheses or even for what would provoke hypotheses in the best people. A connoisseur might find a wine interesting ; the ordinary diner might describe it as piquant or attractive or just nice.

Think of the partly metaphorical force of the expressions " absorbed " and " occupied" When the blotting-paper absorbs the ink, we picture the ink as unresisting and the blotting-paper as having the power. It thirstily imbibes every drop of the docile ink and will not give it up again. Somewhat similarly, when a child is absorbed in his game, he-every drop of him-is sucked up into the business of manipulating his clockwork trains. All his thoughts, all his talk, all his controllable muscular actions are those of his engine-drivers, signalmen and station-masters. His game is, for the moment, his whole world. He does not coerce or marshal himself into playing, as, maybe, his conscripted father does. Else there would be some drop of him which



144 GILBERT RYLE.

was recalcitrant to the blotting-paper. Yet when we say that he is wholly absorbed in his game, we do not accept the entire parallel of the ink and the blotting-paper. For the blotting-paper had been one thing and the ink-blot another. But the game which absorbs the child is nothing but the child himself, playing trains. He, the player, has, for the moment, sucked up, without resistance, every drop of himself that might have been on other businesses, or on no business at all.

Or think of the notion of occupation. Victorious troops occupy a city ; its police, administration, communications and commerce are managed according to the policy or the whims of the victors. The citizens' public and private doings are subject to the permission and perhaps to the direction of their new masters. Yet there are different kinds of occupation. The city may be managed tyrannically, stiffly, amicably, paternally or fraternally ; and while the citizens may feel like slaves or helots or infants, they might feel like adolescents who are being shown how to be free ; how to manage themselves. Somewhat so a person who is occupied in reading may feel oppressed; but he may feel merely shepherded, or advised, or partnered, or trusted, or left to his own devices. But here again, the parallel is only fragmentary, since here both the citizens and the occupying troops are the reader himself. He is under the control and he is the controller. It is his policy or his whim that directs and permits those doings of his own which, if he were unoccupied, would otherwise be without these directions and permissions-and therefore be quite different doings.

There is an important objection which could be made against both of these attempted illustrations. It could be said that I have in fact been sketching an elucidation of the notions of absorption and occupation which fails for the reasons for which a circulus in definiendo ruins an attempted definition. To say that the child who is totally absorbed in a game has all his thoughts, conversation and controllable muscular movements sucked up into the one activity of playing trains would be simply to say that being absorbed in A involves not being absorbed in B, C or D. To say that a person who



" PLEASURE." 145

is occupied in reading brings and keeps all his doings under a unified control is only a long-winded way of saying that while he is engaged in reading, he is not engaged in bicycling or conversing ; and these are truisms. I hope that I mean something less nugatory than this. A man who is not employed by one employer may not be employed by any other. He may be employable, but unemployed. Or he may be unemployable. Somewhat similarly, a person who is not taking an interest in A, need not be taking an interest in anything else. He may be inert, i.e. asleep or half-asleep. But he may not be inert and yet not be taking an interest in anything at all. He may be the victim of ennui, in which case he actively yawns, fidgets, wriggles, scratches, paces up and down and whistles ; yet he may do all of these things absent-mindedly or mechanically. He is restless but not employed ; energetic but not occupied. He does plenty of things, but not on purpose, carefully with zeal or enjoyment. He is accomplishing nothing, for he is essaying nothing. He is merely responding to stimuli. The right thing to say would perhaps be that the child's game sucks up not all his thoughts, conversation and controllable muscular movements but rather all his energies. These energies, when so sucked up, become the thinking, conversing and manipulating that constitute his playing. But this notion of energies seems a rather suspicious character.

What is the point of pressing analogies or even plays upon words like these ? One point is this. Where, as here, unpicturesque discourse still eludes us, the harm done by subjugation to one picture is partly repaired by deliberately ringing the changes on two or three. If they are appropriate at all, they are likely to be appropriate in different ways and therefore to keep us reminded of features which otherwise we might forget. The analogy of the blotting- paper may remind us of what the analogy of the torch-beam would, by itself, shut out of our heads, namely the facts- the conceptual facts-that there can be attending where there is no switching on of attention, and that there can be attending where there is no question of exploring or dis- cerning. The analogy of the military occupation of a city

L



146 GILBERT RYLE.

may keep us in mind of the conceptual facts, which the other analogies do not bring out, that giving one's mind to something may but not need involve mutinousness, reluctance or even dull acquiescence. One's mind may be given readily and it may be given with zest. Not all control is

oppression. Sometimes it is release. Both the analogy of the blotting paper and the analogy of the fraternal military occupation are meant to indicate, in a very unprofessional way, the conceptual region in which pleasure is located. But, at best, the real work remains to do.



II.-By W. B. GALLIE.

Professor Ryle's positive thesis, p. 142 is that "the notion of attending or giving one's mind to is a polymorphous notion" and that " the notion of enjoying is one variety in this genus, or one member of this clan. . .. " By so interpreting what he takes to be our more elementary and less misleading statements about our pleasures and displeasures, Ryle succeeds in bringing a number of traditional questions about Pleasure into a much sharpened focus. But it might be objected that this simplification is obtained at the price of ignoring the complexity of the facts.

Ryle's thesis rests on his rejection of the natural if naive view that at least some parts of our " pleasure/displeasure " vocabulary can be used to stand for describable experiences or episodes, or for intrinsic qualities of such episodes. To reject this view means, in effect, to assert some form of " relational property " view of pleasure and displeasure- such a view as was stated by Professor Broad when he wrote: " Is it not possible that the statement: 'This experience of mine is pleasant' just means: 'I like this experience for its non-hedonic qualities' ? "1 More generally, we could say that on this view the pleasantness or un- pleasantness of any experience lies in the way it is related to other interests, preferences and activities of the person who has it. Now this view, which Ryle sharpens in the course of his discussion, seems to be important: but I doubt whether it is wholly acceptable, and I am more than doubtful about some of the arguments which Ryle puts forward, or presupposes, in his defence of it.

Ryle argues, or perhaps takes for granted, that no part of our pleasure/displeasure vocabulary can ever be used to stand for some roughly clockable and locatable bodily sensation in the way that certain uses of the word " pain " can be. But this is by no means obviously true of certain

1 Five Types of Ethical Theory, p. 237.

L2



148 W. B. GALLIE

uses of the word " pleasure "-and still more of the words

(;SovnI), voluptas, lust, plaisir-which would seem to refer directly to certain feelings and sensations, particularly sexual ones: think of the phrases " to pleasure", " to take

onIe's pleasure", etc. and recall in this connection how Epicurus gave pride of place to the " pleasures of the stomach". Nor are these uses to be found only in connection with elementary organic gratifications. Think of such instances as the following: at the end of the closed season a man feels again a rifle or a cricket-bat in his hands: a woman takes an infant into her arms: chilled through and through, we put our feet on a hot-water-bottle. Are not such pleasures anyhow roughly clockable and locatable? Is it not both natural and, for our purposes, significant that we should speak of these pleasures as felt in the hands, or at the breast, or in the tingling toes ?

To this line of criticism Ryle might reasonably reply: Agreed that these uses of our pleasure/displeasure vocabulary seem to resist the " relational property " interpretation; yet this non-conformity is simply a consequence of certain logically accidental features of certain English idioms. Closer inspection shows that these apparently resistant instances are really on all fours with our uses of other parts of our pleasure/displeasure vocabulary; for it is, theoretically, always possible to ask, of any of the sensations or feelings we have instanced, did someone enjoy it or-for some reason or cause or other-dislike it?

But to this retort I have two further rejoinders: (1) If the relational-property interpretation is to be pressed upon what I will call " ostensibly locatable bodily pleasures", should it not be pressed upon all our uses of the word

" pain " also? I do not say this would be unreasonable or wrong; one could quite easily devise a theory to the effect that any painful sensation should be broken down into two factors (a) the having or cognizing of a locatable bodily experience possessing characteristic non-hedonic qualities, and, (b) very intimately connected within the above, a characteristic felt reaction, perhaps of our body as a whole, against or away from this experience. But this would be



" PLEASURE. " 149

theory with a vengeance: theory requiring experimental evidence to support it, or, at the very least, theory to be recommended only after judicious revision of the whole conceptual apparatus within which our investigation of pain was proceeding. Certainly it is not a theory that could be derived simply from an examination of our ordinary uses of the word " pain". And might we not, with some show of reason, say the same of Ryle's treatment-or really rather his neglect-of " ostensibly locatable bodily pleasures"? (2) No doubt it is always possible (i.e., not necessarily contradictory or absurd) to ask with regard to someone's having this or that sensation: did he or did he not enjoy it ? But in some contexts we should expect the answer to be synthetic or genuinely informative, whereas in others it would be analytic, so that our question would be shown to have been queer-perhaps a philosopher's question, but perhaps also sinister or simply gauche. If, for instance, we imagine a brutally clever Don Juan asking his regretful mistress to deny that she enjoys pleasure, we know that he is not seeking information-not even sadiste psychological information. Or, to take a happier example, wouldn't it be absurd to ask a colonel whose whisky had " gone down his throat like a torch-light procession", whether he had enjoyed his drink? Now the fact that to the general form of question: " Did X enjoy such and such a sensation or not ? " we can get answers of either kind, synthetic or analytic, might well seem to indicate a radical division in our uses of our pleasure/displeasure vocabulary, or at least to indicate an important complexity in our uses of it. More positively, I would say that the existence of " ostensibly locatable bodily pleasures " is something which no adequate dis- dussion of our pleasure/displeasure vocabulary can ignore, even though it should turn out that there is no need to make a radical division between these pleasures and, to employ a usefully contrasting compendious term, our enjoyments.

But now, having opened up this line of criticism, I

propose to leave it for the moment; for, in the first place, I believe that the relational property view of pleasure and



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displeasure can be stated in a form that takes account of the complexity I have mentioned; and secondly, I agree with Ryle that we can go some way towards elucidating the concept of enjoyment without even mentioning the question of ostensibly locatable bodily pleasures. But before embark- ing on this task I must halt a little before this tiresome, nagging, neurotic-seeming question: What sort of elucidation of the concept of enjoyment is Ryle hoping for and trying to give ?

II.

On p. 143 Ryle writes: "I should like at this stage to be able to answer these questions: What is it in general, to give one's mind to something? What, more specifically, is it to give one's mind to something in the mode of being interested in it ? What, finally, is it to give one's mind to something in that special dimension of interest which constitutes enjoyment ? "

Let us concentrate on the last of these questions. What kind of answer is it intended to produce ? In philosophy it would most naturally be taken for a request for a rule or set of rules governing our uses of the concept of enjoyment or our standard uses of certain parts of our pleasure/displeasure vocabulary. But such a rule, if it were offered to us, would almost certainly prove misleading. Why is this ? We might say with Ryle that it is because in this field " unpicturesque discourse still eludes us", i.e., the concept of enjoyment is too vague, too loosely and too variously knit with its collaterals or fellow clan-members, to admit of formalization of any kind. To be more specific, the question " What constitutes enjoyment? " might be taken as a request for a definition of enjoyment capable of functioning within a causal or dynamic theory of mental states and activities. But the trouble is that such a theory, even if it could be consistently elaborated and fruitfully applied to a number of problems, would leave the " logic " of most of our everyday uses of the concept of enjoyment entirely unexplained-much as physical theories of light, heat and sound, leave unexplained



" PLEASURE." 151

most of our everyday pre-scientific uses of these words-and this, for the fairly obvious reason that the concept of enjoyment, like most mental concepts, has many uses which are not in any sense causal at all. Alternatively, the question " What constitutes enjoyment ? " might be taken as a request for a definition of a less ambitious kind, i.e., one which locates enjoyment within a fairly fixed classificatory scheme of our various mental states and activities. But here again the trouble is that so-called mental states and activities- or the different sorts of fact that our different kinds of mental words are used to refer to-cannot be pressed into a single inventory or classificatory scheme: to attempt to do this is rather like listing as parts of the inside of a house not only stoves and baths and cupboards, but south views, convenient accesses to bathrooms, etc.

Nevertheless it is not difficult to find, or at least move towards, more limited or departmental rules governing our uses of the concept of enjoyment. Such rules will naturally be of two sorts, (a) restrictive, i.e., of the type " nothing to count as an enjoyment unless . . ." and, (b) permissive, i.e., of the type " whenever such and such conditions, then (at least conceivably or non-absurdly) such and such may count as an enjoyment ". Now the main logical burden of Ryle's paper seems to me to be this: that while we can provide a single adequate rule of the former restrictive type for our uses of the concept of enjoyment, yet we cannot provide a single rule, or a systematic set of rules, of the second permissive type. Let me try to elaborate this point a little.

Enjoyment, Ryle claims, is a variety of the genus attention, so that one cannot in logic enjoy what one is oblivious of. This, Ryle seems to suggest, is the one all-important (and in its own way sufficient) rule of restrictive type we need in order to guide and control our uses of the concept enjoyment. But of course, in another sense, this rule is very far from sufficient, as Ryle explicitly recognizes; for it leaves untouched the question, what marks off our enjoyments from e.g., our disgusts, fascinations, terrors, and so on. Can we then do anything else but list all the other varieties



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of attention which the concept of enjoyment excludes? Even if this were feasible, it would still not be enough for our purpose; for it would still be requisite to consider other possible varieties of attention which enjoyment does not exclude-varieties with which enjoyment may overlap or with which, perhaps, it must 'in logic' be blended. Here the need for a rule or set of rules of permissive character becomes obvious.

The nearest Ryle comes to suggesting a rule of this latter type is towards the end of his discussion of the relevant metaphorical forces of the words " absorbed " and "occupied " (see p. 152 above). Describing the child playing trains, he writes: " The right thing to say would, perhaps, be that the child's game sucks up not all his thoughts, con- varsation, and controllable muscular movements, but rather all his energies. These energies, when so sucked up, become the thinking, conversing, and manipulating that constitute his playing." Here we seem very close to a rule which might be formulated as follows: " whenever a child's energies are altogether sucked up into his playing so that he can be said to be absorbed in it, we can expect him to be enjoying his play." And in support of this rule we might recall or devise various maxims about how to keep children happy, e.g., "never let a child get bored", "never torment a child by offering distracting alternatives " and so on.

Now when we speak like this we might be taken to be speaking in causal terms: to be claiming to be able to induce or maintain enjoyment in this, that or the other child by suitably employing his " energies". But, of course, there is something unacceptable, not to say monstrous, by scientific standards, about this apparent claim to causal knowledge: small wonder that Ryle regards " energies " in this context as of a rather suspicious character. (What are these energies ? How are they measured? Into what else can they be transformed ?) But it would be pedantic to press this objection too far; for what we have here, in a possibly misleading causal guise, is nothing but a loose or tentative permissive rule, indicating one kind of situation in which a



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child could properly (i.e., quite non-absurdly) be expected to be, or be described as, enjoying himself.

Even if we were to use this loose permissive rule to predict "Well now, Johnny will be absorbed and therefore happy for the next half hour", we should evidently be using our rule in combination with a great many others and in connection with some quite particular factual conditions which we do not bother to specify. Otherwise it would be

impossible for a child to be absorbed-as alas he can be- by perplexities or doubts or irritations as well as by the zest of play. Absorption is not sufficient, then, to ensure enjoyment. But neither, obviously, is it necessary to it: a child can enjoy himself " doing nothing", (i.e., in fact vaguely and intermittently attending to his own sensations), or

wandering around in a state half of perception half of dream, " at his sky blue trades".

Now if this is the logical situation regarding the word "absorbed " when used as a metaphor for " enjoying", something very like it can be expected to hold of such

phrases as " stimulated by", " tempted by", " drawn to", " at ease with", " au fait with", " content with", etc., when used with similar metaphorical purposes. Hence the general conclusion, that while we possess what would appear to be an adequate restrictive rule governing our uses of the word or concept enjoyment, we have at best a congeries of permissive rules that are relevant to its use, ranging from weak pre- dictive rules to mere statements of the compatibility of

enjoyment with this, that or the other mental state or attitude (and perhaps also with certain bodily states or

attitudes). There is nothing surprising about this situation: it is

just the way things have grown. Certain parts of our in- herited vocabulary and conceptual apparatus have a

logical character that can be assimilated to a child's picture- book in which the same characters recur, though never in

quite the same circumstances, in different pictures. (The knight reappears every three pages at least and always in his armour, but only sometimes with his lady, or with his shield, or with his dog; and although the child knows the



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knight will reappear every three pages and in his armour, he has no rule for deciding whether the knight will appear, say, on page 12, where he knows that the dog does appear.) This loosely ordered part of our vocabulary, which comprises most of our " mental words", is very much our inheritance from that " poetic speech and wisdom " of which Vico wrote so presciently. In marked contrast to it stand those parts of our vocabulary and conceptual apparatus which are almost perfectly cross-referencing: those parts in which definitions interlock and inferential procedures can be formalized: the region of Descartes' dream come true. Our thoughts move uneasily between Vico Street and Cartesian Square. Always losing our bearings in familiar but higgledy- piggledy, un-numbered, cork-screwing Vico Street, we think enviously of the open vistas, the symmetry, the clear number- plates of Cartesian Square. But from no view-point in that spacious and well-co-ordinated region can we get a bearing on the Vico Street church, or palais, or school, or playground where we want to be.

If, then, we look in vain for a statement of the constituent conditions of any instance of enjoyment, how can we, as philosophers, elucidate-or say anything helpful about- our uses of this concept? It is sometimes suggested that here, as in the case of any other group or congeries of non- scientific concepts, the job of philosophy is simply to display, and to insist upon, the looseness of our conceptual apparatus, i.e., its unsuitability for theorizing of any kind. Philosophers on this view are watch-dogs, set to warn off premature Cartesian theorizers. It is perhaps hardly necessary to point to the dangers in this view of the philosopher's task: after all, theorizing is the only means we possess of intellectual advancement, and it is strange to find the philosopher billed -even if only in this one field-as a defender of the inherent rights of our intellectual inadequacies. It is perhaps more pertinent to point out that to theorize does not mean simply to apply sets of standard definitions and inferential procedures to a given subject-matter, or to modify these definitions and procedures here a little, there a little, whenever they too obviously fail to square with the facts. To theorize also



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means to set oneself, or to get oneself orientated, or more simply to revise one's ideas, with a view to obtaining more adequate definitions, or suggesting more appropriate procedures, so as to obtain more accurate and comprehensive deductions in the future.

In saying this I have no wish to belittle the services which philosophical watch-dogs have recently performed in connection with concepts of the kind we are considering. If earlier thinkers have narrowed or distorted or simply smudged our concept of pleasure and displeasure in their efforts to theorize, then no effort should be spared to show just where and how and how often their mistakes have occurred. But what is the positive purpose of such criticism ? Surely it is not to sanctify our standard-i.e., our more readily recognizable and classifiable-uses of the concept we are examining? This leads me to attempt, at the risk of pomposity, a quite general answer to the question: what is the philospher's task in the face of the kind of " conceptual problem " that Ryle has raised ?

In the light of the foregoing discussion, it would seem natural to break this task into two parts. In the first place we should try to tighten up such restrictive rules as, we can readily agree, govern our uses of the concept to be examined. But how is this to be done ? Our uses of it are what they are, and can be found only by examining the usages that express them; and once our uses of them are displayed what more can we ask for? I answer: we can ask and hope for the removal of some of the vaguenesses and confusions with which our familiar uses of the concept-e.g., of the concept of enjoyment in much ethical discussion-are notoriously bedevilled. In order to remove these we may have to introduce new concepts, i.e., to name and give rules for the use of certain combinations of properties which, for all that a sense of their possibility and importance may often guide our thinking and choice of words, yet cannot be expressed in-and therefore cannot be acknowledged through- any rules we formulate simply in terms of our everyday expressions. I shall try to show the need and the justifica- tion of this procedure in the section which follows.



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This first task is pre-eminently, if not exclusively, philosophical. The second task one in which the philosopher's contribution shades into, if it is not entirely subordinate to, the psychologist's; it amounts to supplementing, ordering, and if possible unifying our various loose permissive rules relating to e.g., the concept of enjoyment with a view to establishing conditions sufficient to ensure, anyhow in a number of well defined cases, that enjoyment will occur. Perhaps here the philosopher's task comes suspiciously near to telling psychologists how to do their business: but in the case of our present problem I do not see that psychologists have any reason to object to that.

I shall now make a few suggestions as to how each of these jobs might be begun.

III.

I believe that the logical character I have attributed to the concept of enjoyment is typical of all, or almost all, our mental concepts: we find it fairly easy to supply for these concepts adequate restrictive rules of the pattern " Nothing shall count as an instance of enjoyment unless it is an instance of the genus attention'". Thus, for example, we can provide a restrictive rule for an important class of our uses of the concept of attention by reference to the concept of following, for in many cases we can be said to attend only if we are trying to follow--or cotton on to, or get the hang of- something. Similarly we can give a restrictive rule for most of our uses of the concept of following by reference to the concept of accepting or rejecting, for we follow or seek to understand something usually with a view to (in some relevant sense) accepting or rejecting it. It is rules such as these, whether we explicitly formulate them or not, that enable us to attach meaning to such abstract expressions as " the unity of consciousness ", " an exercise of intelligence", " an act of rational choice " and the like: expressions which, on the other hand, possess no scientific value, since there are no systematically ordered permissive rules to determine their uses.



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How can such restrictive rules be rendered more systematic without the assistance of new experimental knowledge ? Well, we can begin by correcting mistakes. Ryle makes one, I feel, when he suggests that enjoyment stands for a certain dimension of interest, although he proceeds to point out in the immediately following paragraph the sort of facts which encourage us to deny this. He gives the example of a smell or taste which might wholly occupy someone's attention for a spell, although not in the way we would characterize as interesting him2. But now consider the experience of enjoying this or that person's company. In some cases we would account for this by saying that we find his or her conversation (or behaviour) interesting, but very often we enjoy the company of those whose behaviour (in particular) we can take absolutely for granted. More- over, in this latter kind of case, we can enjoy someone's company-for an hour, a week, or a year-without attending to him for the whole or even for a considerable part of the time he is with us: in some cases indeed we would only recognize or confess to our enjoyment of his company retrospectively. This makes it clear, I think, that the kind of attention which is necessary to enjoyment differs very markedly from the kind which is necessary to, or which sustains, interest of any sort.

To consolidate this correction, and to move forward a little from it, I suggest it would be useful to classify different acts or states of attention by reference to their characteristic developments and outcomes, in the way of followings, appreciatings, acceptings or rejectings, and so on. Thus we might speak of attention as primarily inquisitive, when we attend to something, e.g. an argument or a machine, chiefly with a view to accepting its characteristic conclusion or product as one that is always obtainable in this kind of way. And we might speak of attention as primarily practical when we attend to something, e.g. an instruction,

2 See typescript, p. 13.



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chiefly with a view to locating or recognizing some particular thing, or performing an action to satisfy some need. And we might speak of attention as primarily appraisive when our attention to something (e.g. a story, or a state of bodily feeling, or what we know of somebody's character), is such as either to contain or to be suited to develop into an evaluation or appraisal of it3.

These divisions are not intended to be mutally exclusive; for whilst it is possible, as I shall maintain, to find relatively " pure " instances of each, the chances are that any instance of, say, inquisitive attention will be coloured by--or will show a possibility of development into-either practical or appraisive attention, following and so on. Thus, we most commonly attend to an argument or proof because we are interested in some particular problem which calls for immediate practical solution. Again, we can appreciate the timeliness or kindliness of an instruction in the very moment at which-and perhaps in the very way in which- we apply it in practice. Yet again, we set ourselves to attend appraisively to something, e.g. a book review in the magazine we find in the doctor's surgery, with the simple practical aim of banishing ennui or anxiety. Nevertheless it is the relatively pure instances of my three kinds of attention, and in particular one such instance of appraisive attention, which are most relevant to the present discussion.

But at this point I must pause to deal with an obvious difficulty. It will be asked: Is this proposed classification a psychological one? How this should be answered depends upon how widely we want to use the term " psychological". If the question means: Can I point to clear introspectable differences between the three kinds of attention, then the answer is No. On the other hand the criteria by which I

3 I here use the word "appraisal" in a very broad way, to stand for any attitude that can be described as "pro-", "anti-", or "neutral to" a given state of affairs. I should not wish my use of the word to commit me to either-or any--side in recent ethico-logico-syntactical discussions of it.



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distinguish them are, in a broad sense, behavioural: I would say that someone attends inquisitively, i.e. in a manner that is appropriate to a theoretical question or discussion, only if his subsequent words and actions are of a sort that would make a qualified person say that he was following, or cottoning on to, the problem in hand. This point is illustrated whenever we meet people, including highly gifted though one-sided people, who find it almost impossible to attend to certain sorts of situations in the appropriate way: thus gifted artists very often make a poor showing with intelligence and practical aptitude tests; and academics, according to popular belief, often shown an absurdly misplaced intellectualism when they are given quite simple practical instructions. I should therefore reject the charge that my three-fold classification is simply a hypostatization of the fact that very often a given act or state of attention can be described from three different standpoints or in three different ways. To bring out the positive force of this, consider the following partly analogous case. A bowler might be described as having in one spell (a) found his length, (b) perplexed the batsman, (c) taken five wickets. Suppose it is said that he has in fact done " only one thing", i.e. has bowled a succession of balls each of which can be described in terms of its observable effects; and that our three different descriptions simply amount to three selections from within this primary or master-description. To this the reply is that our three subordinate descriptions may well stand for three relatively independent things. The bowler might have done (a) but not (b) and (c); or (a) and (b) but not (c); or (c) but not either (a) or (b). In a somewhat similar way, a man might attend practically to, and proceed to apply, an instruction " X", and at the same time be attending to it inquisitively and appreciatively-witness, his intelligent questions and his expression of thanks, etc.; but equally well he might attend to and proceed to apply or act on "X" without giving a single thought to its appraisable or intellectually interesting aspects. I should therefore be inclined to say that, anyhow in setting oneself to attend to, e.g. a practical



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instruction, one is doing something different from-and perhaps even something introspectably distinguishable from-what one does in setting oneself to attend to something appraisively or inquisitively.

I can now proceed to my main positive suggestion. I suggest that we could usefully re-write Ryle's proposed restrictive rule in the first place as follows: " Nothing shall count as an instance of enjoyment unless it is an instance of a certain sub-species of appraisive attention." Now in suggesting that, if only in the context of this restrictive rule, our enjoyments are to be bracketed with our other appraisals, I know that I am setting the concept of enjoyment among some rather unexpected yoke-fellows. What is the sub- species of appraisive attention which all enjoyment requires ? And how can it be shown to possess the characteristics which we would all agree are necessary to other (generally named and acknowledged) forms of appraisal?

What are the characteristics in question? I think we would all agree to the following three propositions: (I) An act of appraisal may be either positive (pro-), negative (anti-), or neutral. (II) Some acts of appraisal are simply pro- (or simply anti-), others are relatively pro- or relatively anti-: i.e. appraisal may nor may not involve comparison, grading, preferences, etc. (We can ask of a description or of an instruction: is it adequate or not?-Just that. Or we can ask: is it more (or less) adequate than another that we might mention?) (III) Sometimes we appraise an object or an activity directly, without any ulterior purpose or reason, i.e. for what it is in itself; at other times we appraise it in view of its consequences, its affinities, its associations, etc.

I do not claim that these propositions define the general notion of appraisal; but they provide a sufficient reminder of its "logical location", and I propose to use them in order to re-write my previous suggestion for our restrictive rule as follows: " Nothing shall count as an instance of enjoyment unless it is an instance of such appraisive attention as is (i) positive (pro-), (ii) simple, i.e. non-comparative, (iii) direct, i.e. directed on to an object or activity regarded



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as a unit per se, and not in virtue of its consequences, etc."4

With regard to condition (i) no problems arise. Condi- tion (ii) carries the following implication. Although in many cases our use of the word " enjoy " may include a suggestion of grading or preference, yet it seems perfectly reasonable to say that such cases are not elementary or "pure"; for it is quite possible to enjoy something without grading it and even without comparing it with anything else, whereas, it might well be argued, one cannot grade anything on the positive end of an appraisal scale without, in an elementary sense, enjoying it. Very similar remarks apply in connection with condition (iii) to those states of affairs which we enjoy because of, or in view of, their consequences, associations, etc.

If now I were asked to characterize this kind of attention in plain language, I would be inclined to say: it is the kind of attention that is induced by and held by something, rather than given to something or sustained as a result of conscious effort. It is the kind of attention that might well be labelled " appreciative " or " aesthetic", although not in any technical or high-falutin' sense of the latter word. If space permitted I would like to illustrate how pervasive in all our mental life this sub-species or sub-mode of appraisive attention is, so that in certain contexts one might be inclined to answer the question " What is it to enjoy something?" by saying simply "It is to be human ".

Turning now to the permissive rules that relate to the concept of enjoyment, I have only one point to make. To introduce it, I must revert to what I said earlier about

4 For the purpose of this rule, so long as an object or activity is attended to as a unit, we need set no limit to its internal complexity. Hence, the emphasis placed on the " unifying power of the imagination " in many accounts of aesthetic appraisal and enjoyment.

M



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ostensibly locatable bodily pleasures, and in particular to my claim that to say one enjoys any such pleasure would not usually be taken to be a synthetic or informative statement. In fact, we have in these uses of the word " pleasure " instances of the way in which the concept of enjoyment is, in the phrase which Ryle has used of the concept of attention, " built in " to what we say. Hence the occurrence of certain ostensibly locatable bodily pleasures is often an absolutely sure sign of immediate enjoyment; for all that, of course, such immediate enjoyment may be less preferred than some other, or may even be rejected as wrong. Now it seems to me worth considering whether this position does not obtain with regard to a great many more bodily sensations than we would at first be inclined to admit; or, in other words, whether psychological investigation might not greatly enlarge the range of the concept of locatable (though now not necessarily easily locatable) bodily pleasures.

Various factors, it seems to me, conspire to blind us to this possibility. (I) Whilst in early childhood we are encouraged to locate our bodily pains with some accuracy, no such encouragement is extended in the case of our bodily pleasures. On the. contrary we are soon led to realize, even if we are not explicitly told, that the details of our own bodily pleasures are about as boring to most of our fellow-humans as are the details of our dreams. (II) At a more sophisticated level, I suspect that any interest we might have in advancing or describing our different bodily pleasures, has been discouraged by the discovery that, whereas pain-spots are closely spread pretty well all over the surface of the body, obvious pleasure-spots or even pleasure-zones are not. But to admit that there is no clear parallelism between bodily pains and bodily pleasures need not commit us to closing the list of locatable bodily pleasures after mentioning three or four or five. (III) Finally, at the level of psychological theory, the Freudian emphasis on the so-called erogenous zones has no doubt exercised a similar effect, besides, incidentally, reinforcing the quite unjustified idea that all locatable bodily pleasures



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arise only in the pursuit of selfish or " other-excluding" gratifications.

Let me then give some examples, in addition to those which I discussed in Section I above, of bodily sensations which, anyhow for certain easily defined groups of human beings, would seem to be both locatable and intrinsically or necessarily enjoyable. I cite: the kind of sensation we get (chiefly in the head) when travelling in a fairly straight line at a fairly high speed; the kind of sensation we get (chiefly in the back) from going down a (not too violent) switch-back; the sensation we get (all over the skin) from moving freely through water; the sensation we get from breathing in freely after being penned up or bent up (say over a desk) for a long stretch of time; the sensation we get in expelling air from the lungs with unusual vigour, as e.g. when singing in the bath. Most of these sensations would commonly be described by reference to certain movements rather than to certain locatable parts of the body, but this does not mean that a fairly accurate location for them might not be found; and I think it is quite clear that, anyhow for certain easily defined groups of human beings, under fairly easily specifiable conditions, they are all sure signs of the occurrence of immediate enjoyment. Moreover if this can be granted in the case of locatable bodily pleasures, it might surely also be granted for certain other specifiable qualities, not only of locatable bodily sensations, but of our visual and auditory sensations also. The intensification of certain features of a characteristic visual field, and the diminution or dispersal of others, might well be found to be as sure a sign of immediate enjoyment as are any of the bodily sensations I have mentioned.

Here, then via the concept of localizability is a possible line of investigation which might help to systematize the permissive rules governing our uses of our pleasure/displeasure vocabulary. But no matter what successes we thus achieved, we could never hope to arrive, by this line of approach alone, at an all-purpose definition of pleasure, or at a formula enabling us to determine the constituent

M2



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conditions of this, that or the other instance of pleasure. For nothing is pleasure but what pleases or is enjoyed, and to enjoy, as we have seen, is to exercise a kind of appraisive attention, which is something of an entirely different order from the having of any bodily sensation.



ryle pleasure

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