I.

The executioner comes to the door.

"Look, you've got two options. Either I can behead you now, or the torture crew gets to work you over for a half hour, then I behead you. Which would you prefer?"

Is there anyone who would choose option two? Of course it's preferable to have a quick, clean, relatively painless death. No point enduring pain and suffering for a half hour to end up in the same place.

This thought experiment teaches us that there's nothing intrinsically valuable about 'time of life' itself. We'd prefer to die sooner if we know pain awaits us. Where's the cut off? Would you prefer to live another week if you knew you'd spend 24 hours at the end being tortured? A year for a week of torture? Would you spend 40 years in a stable job that you hate only to die of cancer at 65?

Time is not valuable - we value what we experience during that time.

II.

Happiness and pleasure are distinct concepts. Happiness is a feeling of general satisfaction with where our life is. Do I feel financially secure? Do I have a support system that cares for me? Am I optimistic about the future? Am I satisfied with the values my actions reflect?

But happiness is tied to very strong baselines. There's some variation during your life, sure - but by and large happy people are happy, and unhappy people are unhappy. This isn't conjecture - the Hedonic Treadmill is as well settled as any modern psychology can be.

Pleasure is about the present moment. How satisfied am I with the environment, the people, the scene, the action that I find myself in? Am I being tortured, or am I eating a delicious meal?

Pursuing happiness is the wrong motive. It's ultimately not up to us whether we are happy or not. Our baseline is determined in large part by our genetics, and our life circumstances are determined in large part by the chaotic and random universe. Pursuing happiness is believing in a sense of control that does not exist.

Pleasure, however, is well within our grasp. It is about recognizing that which pleases you, and actively taking steps to achieve it. Experiment with your textures - do I prefer cashmere to cotton? A trial and error adaptive process, free from the typical guilt and shame that has pervaded Christian society, to find that which makes us comfortable.

This is not to be confused with a pure hedonism that lusts for a Dionysian party. Some pleasures can only be attained with sacrifice and effort. Think of a beautiful and toned body, or a well-furnished luxury apartment.

But both ends of the spectrum must be taken care of - it feels incredible to have a fit body, but it feels incredible to devour molten chocolate cake. Do not be so rabid for the body that you forget the other pleasures - after all, we have diminishing returns to each 'sector of pleasure', as it were.

III.

Are aesthetic pleasure and sensual pleasure the same thing? Is there any pleasure but sensual pleasure? What am I even describing here?

Not all pleasure is sensual, but the vast, vast majority is.

Consider the math professor who elected for his brain to be put in a vat and kept on life support. The brain is blind and deaf, with no sense of touch, smell, balance, etc... And yet, the brain can think. The professor (more accurately, the professor's brain), spends all day thinking about his theorems and equations. It's hard work without his blackboard, but he manages. Eventually he solves a rather difficult problem, and feels an intense rush of pleasure.

This is a triumph of the mind, and a form of pleasure found by mathematicians, philosophers, and general intellectuals who take pleasure in the world of ideas. If it is a pleasure that can be experienced by a brain in a vat, it is no sensual pleasure at all.

And yet, this form of pleasure is much more rare than any other. The vast majority of our pleasure is, in fact, sensual. The feeling of a soft blanket on your skin. The sound of your lover's voice. The view of beautiful architecture. We only perceive through our senses, after all.

Open question: Can a brain in a vat feel a triumph of the mind if it was placed there from birth with no empirical sensory experience? I would conjecture not.

This is getting long, so I refrain from describing the relationship between aesthetic and sensual pleasure for now, besides stating that I believe aesthetic pleasure is in some sense both a combination of sensual pleasures that in itself is sensually pleasing. You can have sensual pleasure without aesthetic pleasure, but not vice versa.