Michel Cabanac (1992), Journal of Theoretical Biology 155(2):173–200 — DOI-10.1016/s0022-5193(05)80594-6
Key takeaways
Registered, not read. From the PubMed abstract only, checked verbatim against the PubMed record. As physiologists, “we have no common currency that allows us to equate the strength of the motivational drive that accompanies each regulatory need”. The organism must nonetheless rank its needs when they conflict (after McFarland and Sibly 1975). “A theory is proposed here according to which pleasure is this common currency.” Pleasure is measured “by choice behavior (in the case of animals), or by the rating of the intensity of pleasure or displeasure (in the case of humans)”, and “The tradeoffs between various motivations would thus be accomplished by simple maximization of pleasure.” The abstract promises a review and the author’s recent experiments. The thermal-discomfort trade-offs with joint hedonic ratings, and the treatment of alliesthesia, are not described in it and were not seen.
Standing in the record
Filed on 2026-10-23 for the record’s account of valence as potential (CLAIM-440). Its part 2 recasts a common currency as the negotiation admitting an ordering, and Cabanac is the thesis it recasts, alongside Veit (THEORY-101). One point is visible from the abstract alone. For animals, Cabanac measures pleasure by choice. That merges the record’s layer (1), potential from conflicts won, with layer (2), a hedonic marker independent of choice. For animals, the paper cannot test whether the two agree. Only the human joint-rating experiments could, and they are what a reading should check first.