PHIL20401 Lecture Notes - Lecture 28: Prolonged Grief Disorder, Chocolate Cake
Document Summary
According to rational egoists, we only have reasons to promote our own. According to utilitarians, we have reasons to promote well-being of. According to commonsense morality, however, we have reasons of both kinds prudential reasons to promote our own well-being, as well as moral ones to promote the well-being of others. On this view, our reasons to promote well-being are reasons to make people feel as good as possible, and to feel least bad. I will call these hedonic reasons: our hedonic reasons instruct us to generate as much pleasure as we can, and diminish pain to the minimum possible. They instruct us, for example, to take pain-killers whenever possible, and to do things we will enjoy. This might be because strong emotions can disturb the operation of reason. They can make it hard for us to properly respond to our reasons. However, even strong emotions are within the scope of reason.
