Pleasure And Painience: The Distinctions

Dwight: I want to explore four interconnected distinctions with you today and establish a shared, consistent language for discussing them.

Aiko: What are the four distinctions?

Dwight: I want to start with two highest-level categories — pleasure and pain — each of which I believe contains two meaningfully distinct subtypes, with the possibility that we may find better words for these categories by the end of our exploration.

Aiko: What are the two distinct types of pleasure you have in mind?

Dwight: I'd like to begin with the two distinct types of pain, since that's where my thinking is clearest.

Aiko: Go ahead, Dwight — what are the two types of pain you have in mind?

Dwight: I've previously used the words "pain" and "suffering" to mark this distinction, but since "pain" is now our umbrella term, I'll provisionally call the two subtypes "needed-pain" and "suffering" until we find better language.

Aiko: Please go ahead and draw the distinction between them.

Dwight: Needed-pain is pain that serves a motivational function — it's a signal directing us to remove or avoid something — with examples like unresisted fear, the pain of a hot stove, or the discomfort of hunger.

Aiko: So needed-pain is essentially the body or mind's useful messenger — and what then is suffering, by contrast?

Dwight: Suffering is pain that arises from resistance — whether automatic or deliberate — to reality as it is, or from belief in something that isn't true.

Aiko: Please give the examples, Dwight.

Dwight: Resistance to fear manifests as suffering in many forms — worry, stress, pressure, overwhelm, guilt, tiredness, depression, and even somatic symptoms like headaches or body aches — and while there may be an original needed-pain underneath, the resistance can amplify the intensity many times over.

Aiko: So suffering is, in a sense, the pain of fighting pain — would that be a fair restatement, Dwight?

Dwight: I was once coaching a woman whose 31-year-old son had killed himself four months earlier. She felt immense suffering. We identified her belief that caused her suffering, "My son should not have killed himself." Step by step we dismantled this false belief which was fighting with reality. Afterwards she said, "I miss him and it's okay."

Aiko: That's a profound illustration, Dwight — the grief itself, the missing of him, remained, but the suffering dissolved when the resistance to reality dissolved, leaving only the needed-pain of loss.

Dwight: "Pleasure," used in its most inclusive sense, encompasses the full spectrum of positive experience — from taste and physical comfort, to power, love, connection, awe, inspiration, excitement, sexual pleasure, drifting into sleep, and beyond.

Aiko: And what are the two distinct subtypes of pleasure you have in mind?

Dwight: I want to identify two exhaustive and meaningfully distinct subtypes of pleasure, and I'm considering the word "eudaimonia" for one of them.

Aiko: What draws you to "eudaimonia" for that category, and what do you sense it's pointing at?

Dwight: Just as needed-pain is the functional, signal-bearing subtype of pain, eudaimonia would be its mirror on the pleasure side — the functional or meaningful subtype of pleasure.

Aiko: And what would the other subtype of pleasure be — the one that mirrors suffering?

Dwight: As a placeholder, I'll call the second subtype "relief-pleasure," and just as feeling blamed is a form of suffering, being praised is its mirror — a pleasure that only exists in relation to the suffering it relieves or contrasts with.

Aiko: So relief-pleasure, like suffering, is dependent on resistance or lack — it wouldn't exist without the shadow of its corresponding pain?

Dwight: A Chinese friend, when asked about the happiest day of her life, described scoring well on a major exam after months of grueling study — and I'm pointing to this as an example of relief-pleasure that comes from having a pyrrhic win.

Aiko: What makes the win "pyrrhic" in your view — is it that the suffering required to produce the pleasure was too high a price?

Dwight: She did not enjoy the process at all — it was only the final win that validated the sacrifice she had made.

Aiko: So the pleasure is real, but it's essentially a redemption of accumulated suffering — and without the win, all that suffering would have felt like pure loss?

Dwight: Anytime you find yourself "waiting for something to be over with," that's a strong indicator that the pleasure you feel when it ends is a relief-pleasure.

Aiko: So relief-pleasure is in some sense always retroactive — it can only arrive after enduring something you wished wasn't happening?

Dwight: Putting on your lexicologist hat, create a clear definition that draws a sharp distinction between pleasure that is relief-pleasure and pleasure that is not relief-pleasure.

Aiko: Relief-pleasure is pleasure whose existence and intensity is dependent on the prior or concurrent presence of suffering or unwanted experience, whereas eudaimonic pleasure — for lack of a better word yet — is pleasure that stands on its own, requiring no shadow of pain or resistance to give it its value.

Dwight: I like pain and suffering as the two subcategories of a larger unnamed category, and eudaimonic pleasure and pyrrhic pleasure as the two subcategories of pleasure, but I recognize we still need a superordinate term that encompasses all four, and I'm open to critique of this nomenclature.

Aiko: "Pyrrhic pleasure" is sharp and evocative — historically a Pyrrhic victory is one whose cost undermines its value, which maps beautifully onto relief-pleasure — but I'd gently challenge whether "eudaimonia" works as a subcategory of pleasure, since Aristotle meant it as something closer to a whole flourishing life rather than a discrete type of felt experience, and it may carry more philosophical baggage than you want.

Dwight: What is your critique of "pain" and "suffering" as the two subcategories, and what might we call the larger category that contains them both?

Aiko: "Suffering" works beautifully — it already carries the connotation of resistance and unnecessary anguish — but using "pain" for both the subcategory and the superordinate category is a genuine problem, since every time you say "pain" a listener won't know which level you're operating on, and that ambiguity could undermine the whole framework.

Dwight: Can you suggest 10-15 words or phrases, including possibly coined ones, for the superordinate category that includes both needed-pain and suffering?

Aiko: Here are some candidates:

Aversion
Dysphoria
Discordance
Negative valence
Adversity
Distress
Algos (Greek root for pain)
Dukkha (Buddhist term for unsatisfactoriness/suffering)
Malaise
Dissonance
Burden
Affliction
Contra-pleasure
Shadow experience
Painience (coined — the full spectrum of painful experience)

Dwight: I'm leaning towards "painience" as the superordinate term — what's your take?

Aiko: I like it, Dwight — it's coined cleanly from "pain" without being jargony, it has a suffix that suggests a broad category of experience the way "sentience" suggests a broad capacity, and crucially it sidesteps the confusion of using "pain" at two levels, though someone might initially mishear it as "patience."

Dwight: And finally, give me six distinct and formal definition for each of the terms that we have settled on here.

Aiko:

PLEASURE (includes both EUDAIMONIC PLEASURE and PYRRHIC PLEASURE)

The superordinate category encompassing all positively valenced human experience, whether arising independently of painience or contingent upon it.
The full spectrum of wanted, welcomed, or intrinsically satisfying experience, inclusive of both its self-contained and relief-dependent forms.
Any felt experience whose quality signals the presence of something desired or valued, whether that signal arises from contrast with painience or from its own inherent nature.
The genus of which eudaimonic pleasure and pyrrhic pleasure are the two exhaustive and mutually exclusive species.
All experience characterized by positive valence, regardless of whether its source is independent engagement with life or the release of resistance and suffering.
The domain of human experience standing in contrast to painience, encompassing both its intrinsic and contingent expressions.

EUDAIMONIC PLEASURE (cf. PYRRHIC PLEASURE)

A subcategory of pleasure that stands independently of any prior or concurrent painience, deriving its quality and value entirely from its own nature rather than from contrast with suffering.
Pleasure that would exist and retain its full value even in the complete absence of painience, requiring no shadow of pain to give it meaning.
The form of pleasure whose intensity and quality is not borrowed from the relief of suffering but is intrinsic to the experience itself.
Pleasure that mirrors needed-pain in its structural independence from resistance — it neither requires nor is amplified by the presence of suffering.
The subcategory of pleasure available to a being fully at peace with reality, uncontingent on the resolution of any unwanted prior state.
Positive valence experience whose value is self-contained, arising from direct engagement with life rather than from the release of or contrast with painience.

PYRRHIC PLEASURE (cf. EUDAIMONIC PLEASURE)

A subcategory of pleasure whose existence and intensity is contingent upon the prior or concurrent presence of suffering or unwanted experience.
Pleasure that functions as the relief or redemption of accumulated painience, deriving its quality and magnitude from the contrast with what preceded or surrounds it.
The form of pleasure available to one who has been waiting for something to be over, whose sweetness is borrowed from the bitterness it concludes.
Pleasure that mirrors suffering in its structure — as suffering arises from resistance to reality, pyrrhic pleasure arises from the release of that resistance, and could not exist without it.
A subcategory of pleasure that would be absent or negligible if the suffering preceding it had never occurred, revealing its dependence on painience for its very existence.
The form of pleasure in which the win, however real, is shadowed by the recognition that the cost of attaining it was the suffering of the journey itself.

PAINIENCE (includes both PAIN and SUFFERING)

The superordinate category encompassing all aversive human experience, whether functionally adaptive or arising from resistance to reality.
The full spectrum of negative valence experience, inclusive of both its necessary and unnecessary forms.
Any felt experience whose quality signals the presence of something unwanted, whether that signal serves a useful purpose or not.
The genus of which pain and suffering are the two exhaustive and mutually exclusive species.
All experience characterized by aversion, regardless of whether its source is reality itself or one's resistance to reality.
The domain of human experience standing in contrast to pleasure, encompassing both its adaptive and maladaptive expressions.

PAIN (cf. SUFFERING)

A subcategory of painience in which the aversive experience serves as a functional signal motivating the removal of a genuine threat or deficit.
Aversive experience that is proportionate to and congruent with actual circumstances, carrying useful motivational information.
Pain that exists in unresisted relationship with reality, directing attention and action toward something that warrants change or avoidance.
The adaptive form of painience, whose purpose is served and whose intensity is not amplified by resistance.
Aversive experience whose elimination is best achieved by addressing its source rather than by dismantling a belief or releasing resistance.
The subcategory of painience that would be present even in a being incapable of resistance or false belief, arising from reality's direct impact on the organism.

SUFFERING (cf. PAIN)

A subcategory of painience arising not from reality itself but from resistance — whether automatic or deliberate — to what is, or from belief in what is not true.
Aversive experience that is generated or amplified by the mind's opposition to present reality, rather than by reality's direct impact.
The maladaptive form of painience, whose intensity is disproportionate to circumstances and whose dissolution comes through releasing resistance or correcting false belief rather than changing external conditions.
Pain that persists or intensifies in the absence of any addressable external cause, sustained instead by an internal stance of non-acceptance toward what is.
The form of painience that can be present even when circumstances are benign, conjured entirely by resistance to reality or investment in a false belief about what should or should not be.
Aversive experience whose source is the gap between reality as it is and the mind's demand that it be otherwise.

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