  Phenomenal arguments for hedonism move from some aspect of the felt character of pleasure or pain to a thesis about the value of pleasure or pain.Some argue that pain or pleasure or both have felt character or felt quality that generates reason to avoid or alleviate or minimize the former and seek the latter (e.g., Nagel 1986: 156–162). It might be thought that such phenomenal considerations can be deployed also in an argument for some form of ethical hedonism. One overall point is that the most such phenomenal arguments can show is the sufficiency of pleasure for value, and/or of pain for disvalue. Even if the relevant phenomenal character is unique to pleasure and pain, this can establish at most that pleasure is necessary to phenomenal arguments for value, and that pain is necessary to phenomenal arguments for disvalue. It cannot show that pleasure and pain alone have non-instrumental value. Phenomenal arguments also need to avoid appeal to any equivocation on ‘quality’. From the mere fact that pain or pleasure has a certain felt quality in the sense of ‘felt character’, it does not immediately follow that it has any felt quality in the sense of ‘value’ or ‘disvalue’.