Pleasure is bound by value-tracking norms, b'zatch!

So there are several philosophical threads on which I'd like to blog for the near future. One thread will consist in follow-ups to the Hughes Program. Another, as represented in the parable of the dog, has to do with a collection of worries about our grip on value. I'd like to say a little bit more about this right now. (Sooner or later, I'd like to also do some writing on the topic of my dissertation -- i.e. how particulars are revealed in experience.)

Eventually, I'd like to say more explicitly about the Parable of the Dog, but let me begin with some background. The upshot of the Parable of the Dog, I take it, is that some class of mental states are defective in a way that parallels the way in which belief that falls short of knowledge is defective. So let me say something to indicate the kinds of mental states I'm gunning for.

Sometimes we value things -- that is, we treat things as having some kind of value. Our valuing is typically a matter of being in particular kinds of mental states. One example of such a mental state is the belief that something is good. I am more interested in states other than belief. Some examples: being pleased, being afraid of something, loving, respecting, aspiring, wanting, being prepared to pay particular amounts of money for something, preferring one thing to another, being hungry, etc.

Actually, there are many interesting differences between these states (for example: some are propositional, others not; some have a mind-to-world direction of fit and others have a world-to-mind direction of fit, some are characteristically fundamental and others derivative), but I think they are all alike in constituting ways of treating things as valuable. In what follows I'll refer to these things as evaluative states.

Let me focus on pleasure: Some folks take pleasure to be itself a source of value. That I am pleased is itself a good. This may be true (though I am not convinced), but there is something funny about extending this point to suggest that an explanation of value in a situation bottoms out in the pleasure that occurs in it. There are at least two ways in which the funniness might be brought out.

First, it is my guess that pleasure is bound by norms of goodness-tracking. That is: pleasure ought to be a response to something that is good. (Though, of course, the ought here is not a very strong one. It is not so very bad to find pleasure in, for example, watching figure skating.) If this is right, then pleasure is regulated by the norm of goodness like belief is regulated by the norm of truth.

You might run with the analogy between belief and pleasure as follows: not only is pleasure regulated by some kind of goodness-tracking norm, but, more strongly, its being so bound is constitutive of pleasure.

I think reflection on the experience of pleasure supports something along the above lines. I experience my own pleasure as a response to a value that exists independently of my being pleased. And so, in being pleased, I am in a state that represents as good that about which I seem to be pleased. So it would not be surprising that pleasure should be bound by a value-tracking norm. It is bound by a value-tracking norm because it, as it were, purports to track value. As with any purporting, responsibilities are incurred.

Post Script 1: How does pleasure represent as good?

(Difficult speculation: It is hard to say exactly how this goodness-representing occurs. It need not be that the pleasure, so to speak, says that such-and-such is good -- like a belief might. It representation is more like implicature than assertion. [see below for a wee bit more on implicature] Being pleased represents that about which I seem to be pleased as good only insofar as it is experienced as a response to goodness. So this aspect of its representational character is derivative. It depends on the pleasure having a representational character of its own.)

Post Script 2: Implicature explained for grandma

Example of Implicature: Imagine the following dialogue:

It's pouring rain, you're two hours late already, and the car gets a flat tire.
You say: "This is a fine state of affairs!"
In some sense, it is as if you had said something like "This is a terrible state of affairs!"

Though of course, what your words meant -- what let's say you strictly speaking asserted -- was that this is a fine state of affairs. Implicatures are meanings that go beyond what is strictly speaking asserted. But their doing so is (typically?) parasitic on something having been strictly speaking asserted. You have asserted that things are fine and thereby, in the obviously sucky context, implicated that things really are not fine.

Note that implicatures need not be ironic -- taking back what was asserted. What it takes to be an implicature is to be a kind of meaning that goes beyond what is asserted. Question: "Will Sally be at the meeting?" Answer: "Her car broke down." Note that the answer given does not make an assertion that answers the question, though it plausibly makes an implicature that does.