One reason why we get into such circles is that we don’t have good ways to describe any feelings. To be sure, we find it rather easy to say how weak or strong a feeling feels—but when we are asked for more details, we usually cannot describe the feeling itself, but can only resort to analogies like, “That pain was as piercing as a knife.”
However, this should lead us next to ask what could make something so hard to describe. It seems to me that this is likely to happen when we fail to find a way to divide that thing—be it an object or mental a condition—into several separate parts (or layers, or phases, or processes). This is because a thing that we cannot split into parts gives us nothing to use as pieces of explanation! In particular, it is a popular view that pleasure is “elemental” in the sense that it cannot be explained in terms of anything else, and that the quest for pleasure or satisfaction is a “basic” human drive. Here is a parody of that idea:
Product Promoter: Happiness is the ultimate goal of all human beings, and all of us constantly aim toward this, whether through leisure, career, wealth, relationships or whatever. Our secure online ordering system offers a line of carefully chosen products to help you replace discomfort with pleasure.
However, this section will argue that what we call pleasure is indeed a suitcase-name for quite a few different processes that involve activities that we don’t often recognize. For example, we usually see Pleasure as positive, but one can see it as negative—because of how it tends to suppress other competing activities. Indeed, to accomplish any major goal, one must suppress others that might compete with it, as in, “I don’t feel like doing anything else.” Discussing this is important because, it seems to me, the assumption that pleasure is simple or ‘elemental’ has been an obstacle to understanding our psychology. To see what is wrong with that idea, we’ll catalog some of the feelings and activities that make this subject so difficult.
Satisfaction. A species of pleasure called ‘satisfaction’ comes when an ambition has been achieved.
Exploration. We may also feel pleasure during a quest—and not only at the end of it. So it is not only a matter of being rewarded for achieving a goal.
Relief. A species of pleasure called “relief” may come when a problem has been solved—if that goal was represented as an irritation or agitation.
Joy and Bliss. Sometimes, when you enter a pleasant state you feel, if only transiently, as though all of your problems had been solved!
Critic-Suppression. “I know this could be bad for me, but I like it so much that I’ll do it anyway.”
Credit Assignment and Learning. Perhaps the most important aspects of pleasure are its connections with learning and memory.
Success can also fill you with pleasure and pride—and may also motivate you to show other persons what you have done. But the pleasure of success soon fades (at least for ambitious intellects) because, shortly after we put one problem to rest, another one quickly replaces it. For few of our problems stand by themselves, but are only parts of larger ones.
Also, after you’ve solved a difficult problem, you may feel relieved and satisfied, and sometimes may also feel a need to arrange for some sort of inner or outer celebration. Why might we have such rituals? Perhaps there’s a special kind of relief that comes when one can dismiss a goal and release of resources that it engaged—along with the stresses that came with them. Clearing out one’s mental house may help to make other things easier—just as the ‘closure’ of a funeral can help to assuage a person’s grief.
But what if the problem you’re facing persists? You can sometimes regard your present distress as a benefit, as in “I’m certainly learning a lot from this,” or “Others may learn from my mistakes.” And everyone knows this magical trick for turning all failures into success: one can always tell oneself “The true reward is the journey itself.”
So instead of trying to say what Pleasure is, we’ll need to develop more ideas about what processes might be involved in what we often describe in simple terms such as “feeling good.” In particular, it seems to me that we often use words like pleasure and satisfaction refer to an extensive network of processes that we do not yet understand—and when anything seems so complex that we can’t grasp it all at once, then we tend to treat it as though it were single and indivisible.
The Pleasure of Exploration
“Pleasure pursues objects that are beautiful, melodious, fragrant, savory, soft. But curiosity, seeking new experiences, will even seek out the contrary of these, not to experience the discomfort that may come with them, but from a passion for experimenting and knowledge.”
Understanding a new and difficult subject—or exploring an unfamiliar terrain—can lead to a lot of pain and stress. Then how can we keep this from holding us back from learning new ways to accomplish things? One antidote for this is Adventurousness.
“Why do children enjoy the rides in amusement parks, knowing that they will be scared, even sick? Why do explorers endure discomfort and pain—knowing that their very purpose will disperse once they arrive? And what makes people work for years at jobs they hate, so that someday they will be able to—they seem to have forgotten what! It is the same for solving difficult problems, or climbing freezing mountain peaks, or playing pipe organs with one’s feet: some parts of the mind find these horrible, while other parts enjoy forcing those first parts to work for them.”
Most of our everyday learning involves only minor adjustments to skills that we already know how to use. One can do this by using ‘trial and error; one makes a small change, and if that results in a pleasant reward (such as being pleased with an improved performance) then that change will become more permanent.[201] This fact has led many teachers to recommend that ‘learning environments’ should mainly consist of situations in which pupils get frequent rewards for success. To promote this, then, one should help the students to progress through a sequence of small, easy steps.
However, this strategy won’t work well in unfamiliar realms because, when we learn a substantially new technique, this will involve more work with less frequent rewards, while enduring the additional stress of being confused and disoriented. It also may require us to abandon older techniques and representations that previously have served us well—and this might even arouse a sense of loss that brings “negative” feelings akin to grief. Such periods of awkwardness and ineptitude would usually cause a person to quit.
201
Generally, if a certain reaction leads to a reward, then that response will become more likely later. Psychologists attribute this” Law of Effect’ to the American psychologist Edward Thorndike (1874-1949).