cautioned that one should choose pleasures that are less intense because they give longterm benefits (Vitrano, 2014) For example, an individual should save money rather than buy lottery tickets Mill, another hedonistic utilitarian like Bentham (Pawelski & Gupta, 2009), also associated happiness to pleasures but held that all pleasures are not equal Mill believed pleasures are intrinsically different Some pleasures, like doing philosophy, playing a musical instrument, or creating a work of art, are higher pleasures; whereas pleasures, like the ones occurring from bodily sensations, are lower pleasures (Carson, 1978) Mill asserted that only human beings can appreciate higher level pleasures, whereas animals cannot Therefore, humans should cultivate faculties of mind related to higher pleasures to appreciate the endless world of enjoyments (Mill, 1863) Contemporary hedonism Although the hedonic view is falling out of favor among many modern happiness thinkers (Vitrano, 2014), Davis (1981), a modern hedonic philosopher, defended the view that happiness and pleasure are identical He claimed a happy life is one that entails the most pleasant experiences Davis classified happiness as occurrent or dispositional Occurrent happiness occurs when an individual experience a happy feeling in the present moment Dispositional happiness occurs when a person experiences a happy feeling more often in an occurrent sense Davis said a person with dispositional happiness is living a happy life Although the central hedonist thesis is that all pleasures contribute to happiness and all pains distract people from happiness (Carson, 1978), modern theorists (Haybron, 2008; Vitrano, 2014) object to this view They argued that all pleasures not lead to 13