Posts by Godfrey

Quote from Little Rocker

pleasure isn't required to produce anything to justify itself. And if you think it does have to produce something, then the pleasure might lose a touch of its luster.

Not only lose some luster, but veer into the realm of virtue/duty ethics!

This doesn't relate to the House of the Bicentenary but to Pompei in general.

Archaeologists Uncover Rare Blue Frescoes of an Ancient Sanctuary and Servant Quarters in Pompeii — Colossal (thisiscolossal.com) The link has some impressive photos and two short videos worth a look, for those interested.

Quote from Don

If those things "washed away the mind's fears about astronomical phenomena and death and suffering, and furthermore if they taught us the limits of our pains and desires" *then* we'd have no problem with them. But those *things* don't wash away the fears. They're pleasurable activities, and Epicurus never denies that. But those things alone won't get us down the road to dispelling fears. It seems to me he's saying you have get the fears dispelled first... then you can enjoy various "delights" unencumbered by those fears.

Another point of view, which I may have expressed sometime since 2020, is that it's possible for pleasures of the prodigal to teach us some of these things. I presume that many of us have stories of pursuing excessive pleasures in our youth, only to begin to discover the limits of our pains and desires in the process. Or for them to teach us about death, or our place in the world pertaining to astronomical phenomena (perhaps a stupidly near-death experience, or staring at the night sky while in a state of inebriation).

To me this can be a description of learning by experience and book learning. As psychological hedonists, this is how we learn (sorry, I couldn't resist tossing that out there 😉). So I don't read this as literally as Don , but I also don't read it as an endorsement of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. More as a description of the way things are. And with the caveat that I'm limited to reading it in English....

Some (most?) of us, for better or for worse, need to make mistakes before we get to a place where the fears are dispelled and replaced with understanding.

Might one also contest the evolutionary biology approach by pointing out that evolution occurs over such a large span of time as to be meaningless for practical human ethics?

"Survival and reproduction" is, of course, an extremely cynical conclusion to reach regarding the value of pain and pleasure: a sledgehammer approach lacking any nuance. And anyone who seriously studies the ethics of pleasure and pain can point out that much of the value is in the nuance.

Perhaps MP's approach could also be analyzed in terms of scale, in this case the scale of time and of numbers. A physical analogy could be the scale of the universe, of man, of atoms. An understanding of the various scales is useful, but it's necessary to have a correct understanding of how the various scales apply to the scale of a human life physically, temporally and numerically in order to make use of the understanding.

The Monk and Robot series of two books by Becky Chambers is an interesting read in terms of having empathy for a robot, and the robot having a kind of empathy for humans. It's a charming sci-fi meditation.

Don I like how you slipped "reject" in there in place of "avoid." Your choice of rejection is growing on me...

We can also choose or reject specific desires in addition to the actions related to them. Not all desires though!

For example, years ago I stopped drinking sodas. I desired to stop drinking them, chose the actions involved in not drinking them and thereby, over time eliminated the desire to drink them.

Quote from Julia

(At times like this, it still feels wild how I myself have been blind to this simple truth for so long; how that was even possible despite all the reading and reflection, despite knowing in my gut that “something isn't right”; how completely I was entrenched in what is wrong so obviously.)

You're not alone in feeling that! You've described well what I too have often felt.

No apologies necessary: congratulations for showing up!

Quote

Hedonism, philosophically speaking, is “the ethical theory that pleasure (in the sense of the satisfaction of desires) is the highest good and proper aim of human life.” (Apple Dictionary)

A case can be made that Epicurus was a psychological hedonist. That might negate MP's entire argument, although he seems to be equating that with his evolutionary angle.

Where he is completely missing the boat (at least in the portion up to the pay wall) is by separating pleasure/pain from sensations and anticipations. Epicurus presented these three as a unified group of faculties with which we make decisions, supplemented by reason. By ignoring this fact he's taking the Ciceronian path of argument by omission.

Oops, I thought it was all the same thing

I've downloaded the paper, although I'm not sure when I'll get to it as I've got more pleasurable endeavors lined up.

Alycia LaGuardia-LoBianco and Paul Bloomfeld appear to be the authors, not Pigliucci.

Just spouting off here, but this seems to me to be an example of people with completely different mindsets talking past each other. Committed Stoics seem to be wired to try to live rationally, which to them means to set aside feelings in making choices and avoidances. Whereas committed Epicureans realize that feelings underlie rationality: ignoring them is like swimming upstream with only one arm and one leg.

Quote from Bryan

Living beings that are able to preseve themselves in the manner similar to a god -- but struggle or fail to do so -- no longer fit our anticipation of gods (and therefore are not properly considered to be gods).

I find this statement quite illuminating. We can't exactly preserve ourselves in the manner of gods, but we do have access to remarkable medical advances and a plethora of lifestyle advice (diet, exercise, sleep, stress...) I ofte struggle to maintain a "healthy" lifestyle which perhaps, beyond a certain point, can be counterproductive. Every so often someone dies relatively young, and their friends say "but they were so health conscious!"

So this quote is valuable to think about so that I/we don't lose sight of the proper goal as spelled out by Epicurus. And it's similarly valuable in thinking about our choices and avoidances.

"Won't Get Fooled Again"...

Random thoughts:

Quote from Don

I don't think we can be aware of ourselves without something external to us.

We do have interoception, an awareness of our internal sensations. But of course there's always something external to us. And we can't exist without something external to us (food, water, air).

Someone, somewhere (who I believe was worth quoting) said that awareness is awareness of something, not a state of being aware.

Amen! By Zeus

Quote from Cassius

but at the very least you won't be in the position of having to say to yourself "I didn't even try" and if the activity involved is important enough to you

Somewhere I read that this is one of the common deathbed regrets. The key being "if the activity involved is important enough to you."

Happy Twentieth one and all!

There's an interesting paper "The Polytheism of the Epicureans" by Paul Terrence Matthias Jackson which may also be relevant here.

My guess is that Epicurus' take on the gods wasn't primarily negative, but equally positive in his redirected way of thinking about them. But we've moved so far from the Greek ideas of the gods that his ideas on the subject may seem irrelevant to us. So a further question is whether it makes sense for us to attempt to apply the Epicurean ideas of the gods to our modern lives, or is doing so a form of historical reenactment?

Thank you; as are yours! The variety of colors in the various auroras is quite impressive!

From our trip to Alaska a couple of weeks ago: