Enjoyment and Reasons

Enjoyment consists in causal harmony between three elements: the

enjoyed experience or activity φ; the occurrent belief, of φ, under A, that it is

occurring; and the felt desire, of φ under A, that it should occur for its own

sake. The focal point of this chapter is the claim that the “of φ, under A”

belief/desire pair is typically a reason for one to have the experience or

engage in the activity. The “typically” matters. One can enjoy φing when the

relevant belief/desire pair does constitute such a reason. The distinction

between the two cases is crucial to the aim of this chapter: an account,

adequate for our purposes, of the explanatory-justificatory role of enjoyment.

We provide the account by canvassing important cases in which the “of φ,

under A” pair is a reason to φ. This may seem odd. Why not begin with the

fact that the prospect of enjoyment is a reason for action? We do not do so

because that is not what we need. A key building block of our account of

beauty is the definition of a particular type of enjoyment characterized by the

fact that the of “φ, under A” belief/desire pairs reasons to φ. We do not,

however, rely merely on the needs of our account of beauty to motivate

focusing on this type of enjoyment. We argue that it plays a central role in

our lives.

An essential preliminary is clarifying the notion of a reason for action.

I. First-person reasons

Talk of “reasons for action” is ambiguous in least two ways. One may

mean considerations that motivate one to act and which one regards as

justifying the action (at least to some degree); or, one may mean

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considerations that should play a motivational-justificatory role whether or

not they do so. To illustrate, suppose Robert is a prominent wine critic. His

doctor informs him he has severe and chronic gout, and must, on pain of

destroying his health and ultimately his life, stop drinking the French wines in

which he delights. Robert persists nonetheless; he thinks of himself as a

badly injured warrior who, although doomed to defeat, defiantly refuses to

cease fighting for his ideal, the ideal being the refinement of taste as a

source of pleasure. His friends try to change his mind, but their arguments

fall on deaf ears. The problem is not that Robert fails to believe that ceasing

his gourmet pursuits would preserve his health, nor is it that does not desire

to remain healthy; the difficulty is that the belief/desire pair fails to play the

motivational-justificatory role of a reason. It simply fails to motivate Robert

to alter his habits, and he denies the pair any justificatory role in dinning

decisions; as he says with regard to his health, “I am just not paying any

attention to that now.” Robert’s friends think the belief/desire pair is

nonetheless a reason for Robert to abandon his gourmet pursuits. The

friends realize that the pair does not play the motivational-justificatory role of

a reason; their position is that it should. Some of them—the hardliners—

insist that it should play a decisive role leading to the abandonment of his

gourmet pursuits; the softliners merely think the pair should play some,

possibly non-decisive role. Both groups, however, agree that the pair is a

reason in the “should play” sense.

We will focus on reasons for action as considerations that do (or would

in appropriate circumstances) play a motivational-justificatory role in guiding

and evaluating thought and action. We will call such reasons first-person

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reasons for action. The “first-person” label contrasts such reasons with

“third-person” reasons, reasons in friends’ “should play” sense. Third-person

reasons raise important and interesting questions; however, given our

purposes, we will put all such issues aside. First-person reasons comprise our

exclusive concern. We take first-person reasons to consist of appropriate

belief/desire pairs. We first identify the general motivational-justificatory role

such pairs play when they serve as first-person reasons and then turn to the

“of φ under A” belief/desire pairs that comprise our primary concern. An

essential preliminary is addressing an objection to the assumption that first-

person reasons are belief/desire pairs.

A. “Humeans” Versus “Kantians”

The objection is that we are taking sides in the long-standing debate

about what sort of psychological state is required to explain the motivational

dimension of reasons. Some—crudely, “Humeans”—insist beliefs alone are

never sufficient to motivate action; they must always be supplemented by a

separate motivational state—a desire, hope, aspiration, an allegiance to an

ideal, or some such thing. Others—crudely, “Kantians”—insist that a

separate motivational state is not always required; beliefs may, in

appropriate circumstances, motivate on their own. Our answer to the

objection is that these crude extremes are untenable. Plausible Humeans

must interpret “desire” broadly to include such diverse sources of motivation

as values, ideals, needs, commitments, persona loyalties, and patterns of

emotional reaction. Plausible Kantians must refer to such sources of

motivation to explain why the same belief may motivate one person but not

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another. We use “desire” to refer to the items in that broad and variegated

range of motivating factors that both Humeans and Kantians must recognize.

Desires in this broad sense are particularly responsive to beliefs, which

can play a central role in creating, eliminating, and modifying desires. We

complete our gloss on our use of “desire” by offering examples of creation,

elimination, and modification. Take elimination first. Suppose that, by the

time your hosts take you to dinner after your arrival in Beijing, you are utterly

famished. The first dish that arrives looks appealing, and you immediately

form the desire to eat some; as you serve yourself, you ask what it is. The

answer, “Stomach lining,” eliminates your desire to eat. Two more examples:

In Cyrano de Bergerac, Roxane is in love with the author of the love letters,

whom she mistakenly believes to be Christian; when she finally realizes that

Cyrano is the author, she ceases to desire Christian. When Charles discovers

that Jim thinks him a buffoon, Charles is unable to put the disrespect aside

and his desire to vote in Jim’s favor for tenure disappears.

Beliefs can also create desires. Hungry only for steak, you do not

desire to eat the meat before you, which you have mistakenly identified as

pork; when I point out that it is steak, you immediately form the desire to eat

it. To take a more elaborate example, imagine a lawyer’s client, a victim of

years of spousal abuse, killed her husband with a shotgun blast as he walked

in the door of their home. The lawyer argues for acquittal not merely by

arguing that, as legally required for self-defense, the husband posed

immediate threat of grievous bodily harm, but also by portraying the woman

as an innocent, long-suffering victim, trying for the sake of the children to

hold the marriage together. The lawyer presents a picture of ever-increasing

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brutal physical and psychological domination that made the shotgun blast the

only real route to save, not only herself, but also to salvage any reasonable

life for the children. If the picture works as the lawyer hopes, it generates a

desire to acquit.

Changes in belief can work changes in desire. Suppose you desire to

be kind to your spouse, grow roses, and teach philosophy effectively. Over

time, you acquire a variety of interrelated beliefs about what counts as being

kind, about the pros and cons of rose-growing strategies, and about what

philosophy is and how you can most effectively teach it. Your beliefs about

what counts as kind focus your original desires on the types of activities

those beliefs pick out; your beliefs about the pros and cons of rose-growing

strategies lead you to desire to grow roses in this way or that; your insights

into the nature of philosophy and how to teach it lead you to desire to teach

in particular ways.

B. The Motivational-Justificatory Role

A first-person reason for one to perform some action A is a belief/desire

pair that plays, or in appropriate circumstances would play, a certain

motivational-justificatory role to do A.1 An example: Smith devotes

considerable time to chess; he studies the game, analyzes his past games,

seeks out chess partners, browses in the chess section of bookstores, and so

on. When asked why he engages in these activities, he explains that a well-

played game displays the beauty of forces in dynamic tension and reveals

creativity, courage, and practical judgment in an exercise of intuition and

1 Comparison to agent-relative reasons.

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calculation akin to both mathematics and art. This belief combines with

various desires to motivate him to engage in a variety of actions, and the

belief/desire pairs serve as at least part of the justification for performing the

actions, a justification that he offers to himself and, if fully truthful, to others.

The chess example involves the explicit articulation of reasons, and

this may suggest the implausibly rationalistic view that a reason always plays

its motivational-justificatory role through explicit reasoning. Worse yet in the

context of our discussion of beauty, it may associate reasons for action with

dispassionate reflection. This is not to deny the obvious fact that reasons

sometimes do operate explicitly and dispassionately. For example, reflecting

on his need to improve his ability to blend strategy and tactics, Smith may—

explicitly and dispassionately—reason his way to the conclusion that he

should study former world champion Mikhail Tal’s games. The same reasons,

however, could operate implicitly and in the presence of passion. Imagine

that Smith, without prior reasoning, accidentally happens on a collection of

Tal’s games while wandering around a bookstore to kill time. The collection

catches his eye; the conviction, “I need this!” takes hold of him, and

straightaway he decides to buy the book. The conviction and the decision

occur against the background of an emotion-laden memory of a recent bitter

defeat caused by his lack of skill in blending strategy and tactics. Despite the

passion and lack of explicit reasoning, the same belief/desire pair that figures

in the explicit reasoning may also operate in this case. If Smith were later

asked why he bought the book, it would hardly be odd for him to say, “I

wanted to improve my ability to blend strategy and tactics, and I realize that

realized I needed to study Tal’s games to do so.” In offering this answer, he

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would not only be justifying his choice, he would be identifying a motive.

While on occasion we treat such after the fact rationalizations skeptically, as

the likely products of self-deception or fabrication, on the whole they are part

and parcel of the routine conduct of everyday life, and we generally accept

them unless we have specific grounds for doubt.2 We take it to be clear that

belief/desire pairs can play a distinctive motivational-justificatory role in

guiding and evaluating thought and action. Neither the motive nor the

justification need be decisive. All that is required is that the belief/desire pair

provide some, possibly overridden, motivation and justification.

For our purposes, it sufficient to note that there is a distinctive

motivational-justificatory role; we need not describe that role in any detail—

with one exception. We take it to be clear that a first-person reason plays its

motivational-justificatory role at least in part through one’s belief that the

relevant belief/desire pair justifies action. One is not blindly driven along by

one’s first-person reasons; rather, one guides one’s conduct by the light of

the justifications one takes them to provide. In support, recall Smith. He

desires to improve his ability to lend strategy and tactics, and he believes

that he can do so by studying Tal’s games. To see this belief/desire pair as

first-person reason for Smith to buy the collection of Tal’s games is, in part, to

see Smith as prepared, to the extent he has sufficient self-knowledge and is

truthful with himself and others, to offer the pair as a justification for buying

the book. One cannot be prepared, at the time one acts, to truthfully identify

the belief/desire pair as a reason unless one believes, at that time, that it is. 2 See the excellent account of after-the-fact attribution of reasons in Paul Grice, Aspects of Reason (Oxford University Press, 2001); see also the related discussion of “deeming” in the attribution of intentions in Paul Grice, “Meaning Revisited,” in Paul Grice, Studies in the Ways of Words (Harvard University Press, 1969).

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The belief need not, of course, be present to one’s mind; Smith may buy the

book with little or no self-conscious thought at all. We assume therefore that

the following necessary condition holds: a belief/desire pair is a first-person

reason for one to perform an action A only if one believes it provides (at least

some degree of) justification for doing A.

II. First-Person-Reason Enjoyments

Enjoyments in which the “of φ, under A” belief/desire pair functions as

first-person reason to φ comprise an important type of enjoyment. Call

enjoyments of this type, first-person-reason enjoyments. We will define such

enjoyments shortly. We would, of course, be wrong to single out such

enjoyments as a special type if the relevant “of φ, under A” belief/desire pair

involved an enjoyment was always a first-person reason to φ. We begin with

examples that show that this is clearly not the case.

A. Enjoyments That Lack the Relevant First-Person Reason

Imagine that Thomas Gouge’s intensely religious upbringing instilled in

him the conviction that a man should not feel erotic desire for another man.

The adolescent Gouge nonetheless enjoys looking at his best friend under an

array of features A that includes several features indicative of his sexual

attraction. Thus, he believes, of his experience of looking at his friend, under

A, that it is occurring, and he desires, of the experience, under A, that it

should occur for its own sake. Gouge’s religious convictions, however, lead

him to conclude that the belief/desire pair does not provide even the most

miniscule degree of justification for looking in a sexual way at his friend; he

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sees the desire as an alien invader to be resisted and destroyed, not a citizen

of the realm of desires capable of providing him with a justification for action.

Even though the relevant belief/desire pair does not serve as a first-person

reason for Gouge, he does enjoy looking at his friend in a sexual way. He

regards the enjoyment as a temptation Satan has placed in his path, but he

enjoys it nonetheless.

Such examples abound. Suppose Sarah is eating a desert she

mistakenly thought contained no chocolate. She suddenly finds herself

occurrently believing, of her taste experience, under tasting chocolate, that it

is occurring; and having the felt desire, of the experience, under tasting

chocolate, that it should occur for its own sake. She reacts with disgust.

Until recently, she suffered from an uncontrollable urge to eat to chocolate.

Her inability to resist the urge diminished her self-respect and caused her to

gain weight. Finally, she rebelled against the addiction by banning chocolate

entirely from her diet and by coming to view the desire for chocolate as an

alien invader to be resisted and destroyed, not a citizen of the realm of

justification-providing desires. Sarah does not waver from these convictions;

she spits out the desert and attacks the desire by recalling vivid memories of

her loss of self-respect and her weight gain. She does not regard the

belief/desire pair as providing any degree of justification for tasting the

chocolate.

There may appear to be another class of examples. Suppose you

having scotch in the lobby bar after a transatlantic flight; the combination of

jet lag and alcohol has unexpected produced a detached, hazy self-

consciousness from which bemusedly observe the bar. You enjoy the

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experience. Unlike Gouge and Sarah, you do not believe that the associated

“of φ, under A” belief/desire does not provide any justification to have the

experience. Must you then believe of the associated “of φ, under A”

belief/desire that it provides at least some justification for having the

experience? Couldn’t you just enjoy in the absence of that belief? The

argument that the answer is “no” begins with the observation that you allow

the enjoyment of the experience to continue; you do not attempt to end it,

nor do you in any other way oppose your enjoyment of the experience. The

question is whether it follows from this that you believe the belief/desire pair

provides some justification for having the experience. There is no need for us

to settle this question, so we will simply leave it unanswered.

B. The Definition, and the Feedback Loop

The enjoyments which consistently occupy center stage in one’s life

are typically those in which the associated “φ, under A” belief/desire pair

does qualify as a first-person reason. Imagine Victoria is watching her eight–

year old daughter perform in the school play put on by her daughters’ fourth

grade class. She enjoys the experience of watching the performance under

an array A that includes, among a variety of other features, watching my

daughter perform in the school play, watching her daughter do what many

other children have done but do it in her particular way as something new to

her. She believes, of her experience, under A, that it is occurring, and she

desires, of that experience, under A, that it should occur for its own sake.

The belief/desire pair functions as a first-person reason. She regards the pair

as providing (at least a partial) justification for watching her daughter

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perform, a justification she would readily, indeed passionately, offer to

others. If she were to offer the pair to others as a justification, she would

describe some or all of the features in A, intending thereby to specify the

features she believes watching her daughter exemplifies, and the features

with regard to which she is filled with desire.

Victoria’s enjoyment is a first-person reason first-person-reason

enjoyments. To formulate a definition, we need to adopt a canonical way of

describing first-person reasons. To see why, suppose that someone asks

Victoria why her attention is so intently focused on one child in particular.

She might well answer simply, “That’s my daughter,” but if she were inclined

to elaborate, she could describe the features in A. Part of her point would be

that she believes her experience realizes these features, and desires, under

those features, to have the experience. We clearly under-describe such

reasons when we generalize from such cases by describing the relevant of

“φ, under A” belief/desire pair merely as a reason to φ. Victoria’s

belief/desire pair is not merely a first-person reason to watch her daughter

perform; it is a reason to have that experience as exemplifying the features

in A. We will express this by saying that an “of φ, under A” pair is a first-

person reason, under A, for one to φ. This allows us to offer the following

definition of first-person-reason enjoyment:

x first-person-reason enjoys an experience or activity φ under A if and only if

(1) x φ’s, and x's φing causes (2) – (3):

(2) (a) x occurrently believes, of φ, under A, that it occurs; (b) and has the felt desire, of φ, under A, that it should occur for its own sake;

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(3) the belief/desire pair in (2) is a first-person reason, under A, for x to φ.

Note that the first-person reason consists of an occurrent belief and a felt

desire, the same belief and desire that are components of the feeling of

enjoyment. In this way, the first-person-reason affirmation of φing is manifest

in the feeling of enjoyment. One may rightly object that it is not manifest

that the belief/desire pair is a first-person reason; it is just the components of

that reason, the belief and desire that are present to consciousness.

However, if one has sufficient self-knowledge and is sufficiently reflective,

one may be able to readily identify the belief and desire that are present

before one’s mind as a first-person reason.

Why single first-person-reason enjoyments as a particularly important

type of enjoyment? This question divides into two. What is the rationale for

condition (3)? And, what is what the rationale for including the condition that

φ causes (3)? Our answer in both cases is the same: first-person-reason

enjoyments so defined play an important descriptive and explanatory role. It

is, however, convenient to consider the questions separately, beginning with

the rationale for requiring (3).

Compare two enjoyments. The first is Gouge’s enjoyment of looking at

his best friend under an array of features A that includes several features

indicative of his sexual attraction. Imagine Gouge cannot tear his gaze away

from his friend. He is held in the causal grip of the gazing, which makes him

believe, of it, under the relevant array of features A, that it is occurring, and

to desire, of it, under A, that it should occur for its own sake. This

belief/desire pair does not, however, function as a first-person reason to gaze

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at his friend in a sexual way. Far from providing some degree of justification

for his gazing, he sees in the pair the work of Satan.

The second enjoyment is Victoria’s enjoyment of watching her daughter

perforsm. When she enjoys watching her daughter perform under an array A

that includes, among a variety of other features, watching my daughter

perform in the school play, watching her daughter do what many other

children have done but do it in her particular way as something new to her.

Like Gouge, her experience holds her in its causal grip by making her

believe of it, under A, that it is occurring, and to desire, of it, under A,

that it should occur. Unlike Gouge, however, Victoria finds in the

belief/desire pair a justification for having the experience.

One consequence is that her enjoyment self-preserving in a way

Gouge’s is not. Victoria may continue her enjoyment by acting on her first-

person reason to have the experience of watching her daughter perform; no

such possibility exists for Gouge since the corresponding reason does not

exist. Suppose Victoria does acts on the reason by continuing to watch her

daughter perform. Her continuing to watch may—as we will suppose it does

—cause her to believe, of the experience, under A, that it is occurring; and to

desire, of it, under A, that it should occur for its own sake. She may, that is,

continue to enjoy watching her daughter perform; moreover, the belief/desire

pair may continue to serve—and let us suppose it does serve—as a first-

person reason to watch her daughter perform. Assume she acts on that

reason by continuing to watch her daughter perform. Suppose that she

continue to enjoy the experience; that is, it causes her to believe, of it, under

A, that it is occurring; and to desire, of it, under A, that it should occur for its

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own sake. Assume the belief/desire pair may continues to serve as a first-

person reason to watch her daughter perform, and assume she acts on that

reason by continuing to watch her daughter perform . . . and so on—until

other factors or interests intervene, leading one to curtail one’s enjoyment, or

simply causing it to fade.

As the “assumes” and “supposes” in the foregoing passage indicate,

the feedback loop requires not only that one act on the first-person reason,

but that one’s so acting have certain effects. One may resist the desire to

eat another piece of chocolate, to continue to sail, or to continue to look at

the attractive person; or one may simply not have the relevant desires to

continue. One’s enjoyment as one eats the tenth piece of chocolate (sails for

the fifth hour, looks at the attractive person for the second continuous

minute) may include simply the desire that the experience or activity occur,

not that it continue. It is nonetheless an important fact about enjoyment that

it can capture one in such feedback loops. It explains in part the power

enjoyment can exercise over one. It explains in part why one eats another

piece of chocolate or has another glass of wine, why one goes sailing for

hours on end, and why, although the annoyance of one’s dinner companion is

visibly increasing, one cannot stop gazing at the attractive person at the

other table.

One may object that there first-person-reason enjoyments which

cannot exhibit the feedback loop—for example, enjoying writing the last word

of an essay, for example, or the sudden whiff of a perfume which one realizes

would be cloying if one were to smell more of it. Once one has written it, one

cannot continue to write the last word of the essay, and one does not want to

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continue to smell the perfume. Such cases nonetheless share one important

feature with the feedback loop cases: in both the function of the belief/desire

pair as a first-person reason reveals the experience or activity as something

one regards as justified (at least to some extent), as something one is for, not

against. This distinguishes both cases from the enjoyments in which a

relevant first-person reason is not present, such as Gouge’s enjoyment of his

friend’s looks, recovering-chocolate-addict-Sarah’s enjoyment of chocolate.

The presence of a first-person reason also distinguishes such enjoyments

from your enjoyment of the detached, self-consciousness in the lobby bar

(assuming no relevant first-person reason is present). Unlike Gouge and

Sarah, you do not regard the enjoyment as one you should resist; on the

other hand, the relevant belief/desire pair does not reveal the experience as

justified (at least to some degree), and no first-person-reason-mediated

feedback loop operates.

C. Causation

We repeat the definition for convenience:

x first-person-reason enjoys an experience or activity φ under A if and only if

(1) x φ’s, and x's φing causes (2) – (3):

(2) (a) x occurrently believes, of φ, under A, that it occurs; (b) and has the felt desire, of φ, under A, that it should occur for its own sake;

(3) the belief/desire pair in (2) is a first-person reason, under A, for x to φ.

What is what the rationale for including the condition that φ causes (3)?

Answering this question requires answering another first. What do we mean

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by saying that φ causes (3)? Compare the claim that φ causes the belief and

desire in (2). We gave content to that claim through a number of examples,

beginning with the deep-sea fishing example. The examples characterize the

sorts of situations in which, in our pragmatic, context-driven everyday use of

“cause,” we are willing to see an experience or activity as causing the

relevant belief and desire. We need in the same way to give content to the

claim that φ causes (3). The foundation on which we will build the examples

consists of two claims. First, as we argued earlier, a belief/desire pair

functions as a first-person reason only if one believes it provides some

justification for action; second, the enjoyed experience or activity causes or

causally sustains the belief/desire pair in its first-person-reason role by

causally sustaining the belief that the pair provides a justification.

We begin with the general and uncontroversial observation that

experiences and activities can play a causal role in generating beliefs;

indeed, we sometimes require that a belief have a particular causal source.

For example, Gouge knows by sight that the person before him is a young

man only if his belief is appropriately caused by seeing the person, and

Victoria remembers watching her daughter perform only if that past activity

appropriately causes her present belief. One may, however, balk at the idea

of experiences and activities causing the belief that a particular belief/desire

pair provides a justification for action. This may happen of course, but what

important role does that play our lives? We address this question and then

turn to the specific issue of why we require such a causal relation in the

definition of first-person-reason enjoyment.

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Consider the following example. A friend has invited you to go sailing.

You accepted the invitation only because you thought it would be impolite to

refuse. You have been sailing before and, while you did not find it

unendurable, you found it difficult to see what people find so attractive about

wandering about a body of water at very slow speeds. Your expressing this

opinion of sailing to your friend is what prompted the invitation. The friend

had insisted that you give sailing another try on his boat; “you might,” he

said, “change your mind.” He was indeed correct. The boat, an ultralight

racing boat, moves with an ease and grace utterly lacking in your early

experiences; it is all different—the feel of the graceful motion of the boat and

its easy speed, the sense of being not at odds with the wind and waves but in

harmony with them. You express your surprise and enthusiasm to your friend

by identifying the features of the experience for which you find yourself filled

with desire. You are, as you realize enjoying it. The belief involved in this

enjoyment is the belief, of the activity, under an array A that captures your

new found sense of sailing, that it is occurring; you desire, of the activity,

under A, that is should occur for its own sake, and the belief/desire pair

serves as a first-person reason to sail. Your activity causally sustains the pair

as a first-person reason by causally sustaining your belief that the pair

provides a justification. It is this conviction that underlies your enthusiastic

specification the array of features your sailing activity has revealed; the

discovery of those features is the initial cause of the belief, and their

continued presence in your activity is a sustaining cause.

Recall that the “φ” in an “of φ, under A” belief/desire pair is not a type

of experience or activity put a non-repeatable individual. It is the occurrence

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of that individual that causes (or fails to cause) one to be willing to offer the

pair as a justification for φing. As Gouge, for example, explores his

homoerotic side, a wide range of experiences and activities will trigger (or fail

to trigger) his willingness to offer the associated “of φ, under A” belief/desire

pairs as justifications. In this way, he discovers what types of “of φ, under A”

belief/desire pairs play a justificatory role for him, and what types do not.

There are many of possibilities. The emerging pattern may, for example,

reveal the types of men to whom he is attracted, or, reflecting on the various

A’s in the “of φ, under A” pairs, Gouge may come to the conclusion that

gender matters less than certain first-personity traits that, as he now realizes,

he conceptualized as “male.” While the foregoing points stand out rather

clearly in examples of exploring new dimensions of one’s psyche, they hold

generally. Imagine that, after your excursion on your friend’s boat, you go

sailing regularly. Suppose that, for the most part at least, you first-person-

reason enjoy the activity. The pattern of particular “of φ, under A”

belief/desire pairs may reveal one or more interesting patterns; you may

discover that you prefer sailing alone, or that “φ’s” and “A’s” involving high

winds and large waves do, or not, yield belief/desire pairs you regard as

providing justifications. Similarly, when Ziva meets her husband for lunch, or

when Mason returns yet again to his beloved Warsaw, the experiences and

activities of each continue discontinuous sequences of similar experiences

and activities comprising an evolving patterns; the patterns may be more or

less stable, or more or less shifting. Each will respond or fail to respond with

the belief that associated “of φ, under A” belief/desire pairs justify φing. If

Ziva or Mason fails to respond in this way, that may signal a loss of interest,

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or some other sort of change that explains the lack of response. Responding

with the belief on the other hand adds to the pattern which reveals what one

takes to provide justifications, and which confirms or disconfirms one’s

generalizations in that regard.

We take the above examples to be sufficient to indicate how one is to

understand the claim that the experience or activity φ cause or causally

sustain the relevant “if φ, under A” belief/desire pair in its role as a first-

person reason. We now turn to the question of why, in the definition of first-

person-reason enjoyment, we require that the enjoyed experience or activity

causally sustain the first-person reason.

Our answer is that such causal relations play an important explanatory

role. By way of illustration, compare the following two enjoyments. In the

first case, Jim, who is married, is dinning with a much younger woman, whom

he knows is eager to begin a sexual and romantic relationship with him. The

activity of dinning with her causes him to believe, of that activity, that it is

occurring, and to desire, of the activity, under an appropriate array A, that it

should occur for its own sake. The belief/desire pair serves as a first-person

reason to engage in the activity, and Jim’s conception of the dinning activity

as having the features in A causally sustains the pair in that role. It does so

because the array A includes features which depict a vision Jim finds

compelling. He sees the dinning activity as romantic rebellion in the name of

freedom, love, and passion in the face of social mores that require fidelity

even in a marriage from which ardor has been absent for years. Seeing the

activity as a realization of the value he places on romantic rebellion, freedom,

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love, and passion causally sustains Jim’s willingness to offer the belief/desire

pair as a justification.

Compare the enjoyment in this continuation of the example. As he

dines with the woman, his thought keeps returning to these lines from Tristan

and Isolde, uttered by Brangien after she realizes Isolde and Tristan have

accidently drunk the love potion: “Iseult, my friend, and Tristan, you, you

have drunk death together.” He begins to see himself trapped in a future of

passion, ecstasy, lies, remorse, recrimination, and destruction. This vision of

the future grows stronger and more certain until he finally thinks, “I must not

do this,” and with this thought the dinning activity ceases to causally sustain

his conviction that the belief/desire pair provides a justification; that belief is

replaced by the certainty that the belief/desire pair is an alien invader to be

resisted. His romantic visions and his enjoyment dissolve, leaving just the

brute fact of the woman’s physical presence.

The undercutting of the causal relation by Jim’s changed conception of

his dinning activity breaks the hold his enjoyment had on him and causes it

to disappear, and the initial existence of that relation explains the power his

enjoyment initially had over him. His initial enjoyment held him in a feedback

loop. The belief/desire pair was first-person-reason whose occurrent or active

belief and felt or active desire components were manifest to Jim’s

consciousness, and he readily occurrently or actively recognized them as

constituting a first-person reason to dine. He also occurrently or actively

realized that dinning was a realization of various things he valued, and that

realization and that realization causally sustained the belief/desire pair’s

serving as a first-person reason. Acting on that reason, he continued to dine,

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and that activity causally sustained the occurrent or active belief/felt desire

pair, which continued to serve as an first-person reason, causally sustained in

that role by his continued occurrent or active realization that dinning was a

realization of various things he valued. Acting on that reason, he continued

to dine . . . and so on—until other factors or interests intervene, leading one

to curtail one’s enjoyment, or simply causing the enjoyment to fade.

As the example illustrates, the causal requirement adds an element to

the feedback loop as initially characterized. In our initial characterization,

one’s φing causes the “φ, under A” belief/desire pair; the pair serves as a

first-person reason under A to φ, and, assuming one acts on the reason, one

may continue to φ. The addition is one’s φing also causally sustains the

reason. The Jim example shows the importance of this addition. Where the

feedback loop operates, it explains the power enjoyment can exercise over

us.

III. Valuing and Enjoying

One could distinguish various types of first-person-reason enjoyment

for a variety of different explanatory purposes. In this section, we lay the

groundwork for distinguishing the type that will play a key role in our account

of beauty. We define the type in question by appeal to one’s conception of

what it is good for one to do and experience. This is a part of one’s

conception of the good in general, a conception that may refer to things

other than one’s own activities and experiences.

A. Valuing

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Suppose you say "I value my daughter's playfulness." This is to

express a certain attitude both toward her having a capacity for playfulness

and toward realizations of that capacity. To characterize the attitude, let A

be an array of features whose realization ensures that your daughter has and

displays a capacity for playfulness. To value your daughter’s playfulness is to

regard it as providing, in and of itself, some degree of justification the

realization of A. Suppose, for example, you were asked, “Why do you indulge

your five-year old daughter’s whims to the extent you do?” Since you believe

—let us assume—that indulging her whims promotes playfulness, you regard,

the answer, “Because it promotes playfulness,” as on its own providing some

degree of justification for the whims-indulged state of affairs in which she has

and displays a capacity for playfulness. Two further points are in order.

First, if you value your daughter’s playfulness, you may also value its

realization in, for example, making a clever pun, or suddenly breaking out

into song even if you would not otherwise value the clever pun or the

breaking out in song.

Second, in some cases, what one values one’s having a certain

experience or engaging in a certain activity. Suppose Victoria values being a

parent of such-and-such a sort; further, she she also values having certain

experiences and engaging in certain activities in regard to her daughter,

experiences and activities comprise a portrait of herself the relevant kind of

parent. We take this to be just one illustration of a common pattern. When,

in the course of realizing one’s action-experience conception of the good, one

goes sailing in heavy weather with the intention of displaying courage,

teaches a class with the intention of teaching well, dines romantically with

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one’s wife, or makes an intuitive sacrifice of a knight in a game of chess, one

may value not only courage, good teaching, and good chess, only may also

value the experiences and activities through which one realizes what one

values. One may value an particular experience or activity φ’s having A as an

instantiation of state of affairs S which one values. In such a case, we will say

that x values φ’s having A as an instantiation of S.

To connect to enjoyment, consider the following typical situation.

Suppose that Victoria values engaging in actions and having experiences that

realize the end of being a parent of such-and-such sort. Let A be an array of

features by virtue of which φ realize being a parent of such-and-such sort.

When she watches her daughter perform in the school play, she believes

that, of the experience, under an array of features A, that it is occurring, and

she also believes that, by virtue of the experience’s having A, the experience

realizes engaging in actions and having experiences that realize the end of

being a parent of such-and-such sort. In addition, she desires, of the

experience, under A, that it occur for its own sake. Indeed, in general, if one

believes that, by virtue of having an array of features A, one’s φing realizes

an aspect of one’s action-experience conception of the good, then, typically

at least, one desires, of φ, under A, that it should occur for its own sake.

Suppose further that the relevant belief/desire pair functions as a first-person

reason under A to have the experience. Again, in general, if one believes

that, by virtue of having an array of features A, one’s φing realizes something

one values, then the related belief/desire pair will serve as a first-person

reason. Thus, Victoria fulfills these conditions:

(1) she has the experience of watching her daughter perform,

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(2) (a) x believes, of that experience, under A, that it occurs; (b) and has the desire, of the experience, under A, that it should occur for its own sake;

(3) the belief/desire pair in (2) is a first-person reason, under A, for x to φ.

(4) she also believes that she values the experience’s having A as an instantiation of being a parent of such-and-such sort.

(1) – (3) conditions almost entail the definition of first-person-reason

enjoyment. Only three things are missing: φ’s causing (2) and (3); the

belief’s being occurrent; and, the desire’s being felt. In the next section, we

argue that the cases in which the missing conditions hold constitute a special

type of enjoyment, a type characterized by the presence of condition (4).

B. Value-Enjoyment

Consider the following definition:

x value-enjoys an experience or activity φ under A if and only if x values as state of affairs S, and

(1) x φ’s, and x's φing causes (2) – (4):

(2) (a) x occurrently believes, of φ, under A, that it occurs; (b) and has the felt desire, of φ, under A, that it should occur for its own sake;

(3) the belief/desire pair in (2) is a first-person reason, under A, for x to φ;

(4) x occurently believes that x values φ’s having A as an instantiation of S.

This raises three questions. Why require (4)? Why require that x’s φing

cause (4)? And, why require that the belief in (4) be occurrent?

A continuation of the Victoria-daughter’s-play example answers the

first question. Suppose Victoria fulfills the above conditions with respect to

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the experience of watching her daughter perform and the relevant array of

features A and being a parent of such-and-such sort. Why is it important that

Victoria believe that, by virtue of the experience’s having A, the experience

realizes being a parent of such-and-such sort? It is important to Victoria. It is

important to her that she realize what she values, and the belief singles out

her experience as one that does so.

Why require that the experience or activity cause the belief? The

answer is essentially the same as the explanation for requiring that the

experience or activity cause the belief/desire pair to function as a first-person

reason: it explains the power enjoyment can exercise over us. To see how,

recall Victoria’s enjoyment of watching her daughter perform. She thinks

that, all things considered, the pair should be a first-person reason to watch

her daughter perform. As we noted, she would hardly have expressed her

conviction in this way. She would think something like, “Yes, this is the way I

should be!”, where “this” is the manifest to consciousness presence of the

first-person reason. This thought would certainly typically be a causal factor

in ensuring that she would continue to act on the belief/desire pair that is her

first-person reason to watch her daughter. In this way, the thought

contributes the enjoyments feedback loop. If the feedback loop is to operate,

three things must happen. (1) Her continuing to watch must cause her to

believe, of the experience, under A, that it is occurring; and to desire, of it,

under A, that it should occur for its own sake. (2) The belief/desire pair must

continue to serve as a first-person reason to watch her daughter perform. (3)

She must act on that reason by continuing to watch her daughter perform

and, as a result, continue to enjoy the experience. As we noted earlier,

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where φing realizes what one values, the relevant “of φ, under A”

belief/desire pair functions as a first-person reason to φ. Thus when φ causes

Victoria to believe the experience’s having A as an instantiation of being a

parent of such-and-such sort, φ makes a causal contribution to the

occurrence of the feedback loop.

Now why also require that the belief be occurrent? It is important to

Victoria that the belief be occurrent. As we noted already, it is important to

Victoria that, not only that she attend to her daughter, but also that the

attention itself realize certain aspects of her conception of being a parent;

hence, it is important to her to monitor through an occurrent belief whether

she is achieving this goal. In addition, the occurrent belief adds to the feeling

of enjoyment. In general, the feeling of enjoyment consists in the way the

desire feels against the background of the occurrent belief that the desire is

fulfilled. In self-realization enjoyments, that background includes, not just the

occurrent belief, of φ, under A, that it is occurring; it also includes occurrent

belief, of φ, under A, that it realizes a self-concept to which one is committed

(and thus contributes to the realization of one’s conception of the good). This

gives Victoria’s feeling of enjoyment at watching her daughter a depth and

meaning it would otherwise lack.

Notes on b-enjoyment

I am going see if the following definition will work:

Where φ is the experience of z’s appearing to have A,

x b-enjoys φ under A if and only if, for some group G,

(1) x φ’s, and x’s φing causes (2) – (4):

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(2) (a) x occurrently believes, of φ, that it occurs; (b) and has the

felt desire, of φ, under A, that it should occur for its own sake;

(3) the belief/desire pair in (2) is a first-person reason, under A, for x to φ;

(4) x occurrently believes that x values φ as an instantiation of A.

x occurrently believes that, of φ, under A, that it G-universally realizes A

if and only if x believes that there is a group G of relevantly similar others,

and collection K of relevant similar arrays A’ of features, such that, for any

member y of G, there is some array A’ in K such that, were z to appear to y to

have A, y would, other things being equal, occurrently believe x values z’s

appearing to realize A’ as an instantiation of A’.

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