therefore, that all rational activity is pleasure directed.
For Gosling, then, clearly rational, ethical behavior must start with the deep desire of the person. This is the point at which the motives and definitions of the philosopher become relevant. For example, process theologians often contend that people should operate from their deepest desires, because these are God-given. However, the question of locating one's deepest desires, rather than superficial ones, is an important one.
It is those full cases that Gosling is particularly concerned with, though. He discussed a number of cases of partial wanting, such as "wanting" to go to the dentist, which really means that we want to avoid toothache or other problems as not really that we are operating from pleasure. The true case of hedonistic behavior exists when pleasure is the only motive and this leads to the condition of free rational choice.
For a society, then, to operate according to principles of hedonism, individuals within that society would have to possess sufficient knowledge to identify their real desires and the pleasures that motivate them, and have the freedom to make rational choices based on those desires. According to Gosling, this is the only rational, free, and ethical stance in some systems of philosophy. It is a system in which society is viewed as the natural outcome of relationships between individuals who are able to choose freely for their own good. Any society which results from a collection of individuals all operating for their own pleasure is presumed to be a more free, healthy, and productive society.
There are a number of objections to this theory, many of which have been described in class in relationship to the materialist ethical egoist stance of Ayn Rand and others. Gosling himself mentioned a number of these difficulties, indicating that the predominant one is that the conceptualization of hedonism is not itself coherent.