Clearing our Minds for Hedonic Phenomenalism

What constitutes the nature of pleasure? According to hedonic phenomenalism, pleasant experiences are pleasant in virtue of some phenomenological features. According to hedonic attitudinalism, pleasure involves an attitude—a class of mental states that necessarily have an object. Consequently, pleasures are always about something. We argue that hedonic attitudinalism is not able to accommodate pleasant moods. We first consider this argument more generally, and then consider what we call the globalist strategy response to the possible objectless of moods, namely that pleasant moods have general, or undetermined, objects. We then discuss the case of blissful meditative states, and argue that the globalist strategy is not able to accommodate all pleasant states.