Pleasure

Pleasure is commonly conceptualized as a positive experience related to happiness, entertainment, enjoyment, ecstasy, and euphoria.

Activities

Pleasure can be brought about in different ways, depending on how every individual senses the feeling of pleasure.

People commonly feel this phenomenon through exercise, sexuality, music, usage of drugs, writing, accomplishment, recognition, service, and any other imaginable activity; even pain (known by its medical terminology masochism). It also refers to "enjoyment" related to certain physical, sensual, emotional or mental experience.^{[citation needed]}

Philosophy

Pleasure may also be defined, at least in some contexts, as being the reduction or absence of pain. Epicurus and his followers defined pleasure as the absence of pain.^{[citation needed]}

The 19th Century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer understood pleasure as a negative sensation, as it negates the usual existential condition, that of suffering.^{[citation needed]}Utilitarianism and New Hedonism philosophies both attempt to increase to the maximum the amount of pleasure and minimize the amount of pain.^{[citation needed]}

Neurology

The Pleasure center is the set of brain structures, predominantly the nucleus accumbens, theorized to produce great pleasure when stimulated electrically. Some references state that the septum pellucidium is generally considered to be the pleasure center (1991) The Science of Love – Understanding Love and its Effects on Mind and Body. Prometheus Books. ISBN 0-87975-648-9.  while others mention the hypothalamus when referring to pleasure center for intracranial stimulation.Kandel ER, Schwartz JH, Jessell TM. Principles of Neural Science, 4th ed. McGraw-Hill, New York (2000). ISBN 0-8385-7701-6. Certain chemicals are know to stimulate the pleasure centers of the brain. These include dopamine and various endorphins.

Psychology

• Sexuality
• Flow (psychology)

See also

• Paradox of hedonism
• Gratification

Footnotes

References

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