Anthony Meyers

According to a theory of well-being known as attitudinal hedonism, our lives go well to the extent that they contain attitudinal pleasure. Despite the plausibility and attractions of the view, it suffers from a major flaw: it is unable to account for the fact that we can be non-instrumentally benefited by experiences of painful art, and by painful experiences in general. In order to address this problem, attitudinal hedonism should be replaced with a view I call attitudinal experientialism, according to which our lives go well, not only to the extent that they contain attitudinal pleasure, but also to the extent that they contain attitudinal meaningfulness, which is a mental state that is distinguished from attitudinal pleasure by the kind of pro-attitudes that partly ground it. Attitudinal experientialism escapes the problem of painful yet beneficial experiences and accommodates the intuition that there is more to well-being than just pleasure.