ABSTRACT
The practice of certain martial arts-specifically, those that entail regular injury to their practitioners, which from here onward this chapter refers to as high-contact martial arts-indicates that people do indeed prefer some injuries to other injuries based not on the severity of the injury but rather on its origin. This phenomenon suggests that there are in fact qualitative differences in experiences of suffering as well as in experiences of satisfaction. Some philosophers Jeremy Bentham and Immanuel Kant being the most notable -hold that satisfaction cannot be experienced qualitatively, but only quantitatively. According to Kant, quality is a matter of reason, not of the senses. But Kant's fundamental assumption here is problematic. First, the utilitarian's hedonic calculus is founded upon the ability to make at least one crucial distinction of quality: namely, the ability to prefer satisfaction to suffering. Every quantum of satisfaction or suffering has its respective quality, and vice versa.
