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TauPhi
November 8, 2024 at 8:47 PM Replied to the thread Why Do We Consider The Absence of Pain To Be Pleasure?.Post[…]
I will try to answer Cassius's initial question by showing that pain is not the only path towards pleasure. Julia Please don't take what follows as a criticism of your position. I think hedonic calculus is not only subjective but strictly personal… -
Julia
November 8, 2024 at 1:11 PM Replied to the thread Why Do We Consider The Absence of Pain To Be Pleasure?.Post[…]
To agree and expand: When seeking ever more pleasurable activities, the range of experience gets increasingly narrow. It is common knowledge that with drugs, increased doses are needed to elicit the same sensation; however, the same basic principle… -
Kalosyni
November 8, 2024 at 12:41 PM Replied to the thread Why Do We Consider The Absence of Pain To Be Pleasure?.Post[…]
When pain is absent from the body, the appreciation of that experience is mentally enjoyable.
***
And here is a full list of pleasures:
- enjoyable and pleasant bodily sensations (sights, sounds, tastes, touch, smell, etc.)
- the cessation of pain in the… -
Kalosyni
November 8, 2024 at 12:14 PM Replied to the thread Why Do We Consider The Absence of Pain To Be Pleasure?.Post[…]
Instead of "short-livedness" and as long as the pleasure didn't cause unwanted/painful consequences, then one would simply feel a sense of gratitude and appreciation to life for having been able to experience that particular short-lived pleasure.
As… -
Matteng
November 8, 2024 at 11:55 AM Has received the trophy Frequent Contributor.TrophyRecognition of Members Who Have Contributed More Than Thirty Posts On The Forum -
Matteng
November 8, 2024 at 11:53 AM Replied to the thread Why Do We Consider The Absence of Pain To Be Pleasure?.PostWhat is perhaps missing (Cicero/Cyrenaics/many peoples opinion):
What speaks against the idea that intense sensual pleasures go beyond the limit of absence of pain? (my ideas: short-livedness, negative consequences of maintaining these pleasures e.g.… -
Cassius
November 8, 2024 at 10:23 AM Replied to the thread Episode One Hundred Forty - The Letter to Menoeceus 07 - Completion of the Letter.Post[…]
That's an interesting analogy. Could be. -
Julia
November 8, 2024 at 10:00 AM Replied to the thread Episode One Hundred Forty - The Letter to Menoeceus 07 - Completion of the Letter.Post[…]
And you yourself always say that one has to keep in mind the entirety of the sources; when the evidence is insufficient, that doubt may well be expressed, eg in the form of multiple possible explanations. Again, this is more like maths, where there… -
Julia
November 8, 2024 at 9:53 AM Replied to the thread Episode One Hundred Forty - The Letter to Menoeceus 07 - Completion of the Letter.Post[…]
It is; however (and I will use "dogmatic" in the modern sense here):
1. It's one thing to say "Nature shows that…" and another thing to say "I command that…".
2. Epicurus was was not dogmatic such as to shut down any discussion; nor was he dogmatically… -
Cassius
November 8, 2024 at 9:24 AM Replied to the thread Episode One Hundred Forty - The Letter to Menoeceus 07 - Completion of the Letter.PostI agree with the thrust of post 15 but for the sake of breaking part of this down:
[…]
Is that ("finding the truth and saying it is xyz") not exactly what Epicurus does when he says things like:
Death is nothing to us ....
Pleasure is the absence of pain...… -
Cassius
November 8, 2024 at 9:15 AM Replied to the thread Why Do We Consider The Absence of Pain To Be Pleasure?.PostThis is a good discussion both at the detail and summary level.
As we pursue it I would like to prod, pursue, embrace, welcome, etc others to suggest their own versions of how you'd respond to the question. Don's post 5 is a good example but I am sure… -
Julia
November 8, 2024 at 7:44 AM Replied to the thread Why Do We Consider The Absence of Pain To Be Pleasure?.Post[…]
That's not what I say. I don't say "I don't care about the presence or absence of pleasure". I say "I welcome its presence," and I mean that in the same way as Don has just explained perfectly the meaning of "to welcome sth": the arrival of pleasure… -
Julia
November 8, 2024 at 7:17 AM Replied to the thread Episode One Hundred Forty - The Letter to Menoeceus 07 - Completion of the Letter.Post(1) Every set of ideas, by being coalesced into an ideology, will have a power structure, because it is the defining nature of an ideology to no longer have free discourse amongst equals; an ideology says of itself: "We found the truth, and it is xyz."
… -
Cassius
November 8, 2024 at 6:50 AM Replied to the thread Episode One Hundred Forty - The Letter to Menoeceus 07 - Completion of the Letter.PostSo you're saying that the quoted sentence would be better as:
Nonetheless, it seems like [the structure of] supernatural religion lends itself to misinterpretation.
?
Or do you think that both the structure and ideology of supernatural religion lends itself… -
Don
November 8, 2024 at 6:49 AM Replied to the thread Why Do We Consider The Absence of Pain To Be Pleasure?.Post[…]
As always, I think the original text brings even greater nuance to this. Living is not just desirable, it is to be welcomed! The word used there is:
ἀσπαστός (aspastós) = welcome (whose arrival is a cause of joy), a thing for which to be grateful
PS. It… -
Cassius
November 8, 2024 at 6:33 AM Replied to the thread Why Do We Consider The Absence of Pain To Be Pleasure?.PostI crossposted with Julia but have one comment on post 8:
[…]
I'm not sure about that last sentence, and taken out of context I suspect it doesn't quite ring right. "I merely need to welcome it" could be read as a kind of muted Stoic-sounding indifference.… -
Cassius
November 8, 2024 at 6:23 AM Replied to the thread Why Do We Consider The Absence of Pain To Be Pleasure?.PostYes I think that (post #5) is exactly the right direction! There's a pretty much infinite way to say the same thing in different ways, but the best of them are going to be high-level simple like that.
And it seems to me that it is important to convey… -
Julia
November 8, 2024 at 6:21 AM Replied to the thread Why Do We Consider The Absence of Pain To Be Pleasure?.Post[…]
I think here it depends quite a bit on one's subjective understanding of what "to embrace" means: In my understanding of the words, I willingly embrace some calculated pain (eg physical exercise), because I keep the results firmly in mind. If I were… -
Don
November 8, 2024 at 5:33 AM Replied to the thread Why Do We Consider The Absence of Pain To Be Pleasure?.PostAn addendum I'd add to my post #5 above is:
Positive feelings (ie, pleasure) can be categorized as "positive" because they are conducive, favorable, helpful, or beneficial to life or living.
Negative feelings (ie, pain) can be categorized as "negative"… -
Julia
November 8, 2024 at 4:13 AM Replied to the thread Episode One Hundred Forty - The Letter to Menoeceus 07 - Completion of the Letter.Post[…]
Please be aware that phrasing it like this can be misleading with regards to cause and effect.
I posit that, because human nature is constant, it is a group's structure, which will dictate its behaviour in the long run. This implies that supernatural… -
Julia
November 8, 2024 at 3:28 AM Replied to the thread Why Do We Consider The Absence of Pain To Be Pleasure?.PostExactly what Don just said. I completely agree. -
Eikadistes
November 8, 2024 at 1:12 AM Replied to the thread Episode One Hundred Forty - The Letter to Menoeceus 07 - Completion of the Letter.Post[…]
We learned that the leaders of a local Nichiren Buddhist community were unanimously engaged in discouraging the target of spousal abuse from seeking legal support when they showed the leaders the bruises on their body. There is nothing noble about… -
Don
November 7, 2024 at 10:34 PM Replied to the thread Why Do We Consider The Absence of Pain To Be Pleasure?.PostHere's my take:- You are alive.
- As an alive being, you *will* have a reaction to every stimulus that interacts with you. You can't not have a reaction. You can't not *feel* something.
- Those reactions or feelings will be either positive or negative. Positive
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Cassius
November 7, 2024 at 7:15 PM Replied to the thread Why Do We Consider The Absence of Pain To Be Pleasure?.PostRemember this from On Ends Book Two, 9, as an example of how clear the equivalence is supposed to be:
Cicero: “…[B]ut unless you are extraordinarily obstinate you are bound to admit that 'freedom from pain' does not mean the same thing as 'pleasure.'"
… -
Cassius
November 7, 2024 at 3:34 PM Replied to the thread Why Do We Consider The Absence of Pain To Be Pleasure?.PostThanks for the link, but let's practice how we ourselves would answer the question in a couple of sentences in a non-technical-language way.
In other words, I think the answer to this question has to become so second nature to us that we should be… -
Julia
November 7, 2024 at 2:50 PM Replied to the thread Why Do We Consider The Absence of Pain To Be Pleasure?.PostThis article offers a bit of a roundabout answer to your question, especially towards the end; and even though it is about the Cynics, I found the example of their extremes helpful to see my own views more clearly and solidify them. As a matter of fact,… -
Cassius
November 7, 2024 at 2:16 PM Posted the thread Why Do We Consider The Absence of Pain To Be Pleasure?.Thread[…]
The framing of a recent post by Julia, combined with some other thoughts (the title of the book "Living for Pleasure") has revived today in my mind an old question. I think the discussions in this forum have come a long way in the last year, and I'd… -
Julia
November 7, 2024 at 10:01 AM Replied to the thread Episode One Hundred Forty - The Letter to Menoeceus 07 - Completion of the Letter.Post[…]
In my opinion, calling suicide "a choice" is simultaneously true and false, similar to how saying that addicts "choose" to pursue their drug is simultaneously true and false, because it glosses over the distinction between the inside-view of the… -
Kalosyni
November 7, 2024 at 9:20 AM Replied to the thread Episode One Hundred Forty - The Letter to Menoeceus 07 - Completion of the Letter.Post[…]
Julia thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I think that there are people on both sides of this saying that suicide is a choice and those that say suicide is not a choice because it seen as the only option.
When I attended a Buddhist group, there were… -
Julia
November 7, 2024 at 9:10 AM Replied to the thread Guide to resuming / sustaining activity after being frozen / stuck.PostThe Embrace of Challenges
Upon committing to pleasure as the guide to life, it becomes apparent that a calculated embrace of certain pains is a necessary evil. (For example: The mind requires a recurrent experience of discomfort to derive pleasure from… -
kochiekoch
November 6, 2024 at 9:07 PM Posted the thread All AI Radio!.ThreadThe future has arrived! 🤖 (And departed).
Radio Station's Attempt to Replace Hosts With AI Ends in Absolute Disaster -
Cassius
November 6, 2024 at 4:57 PM Replied to the thread Nothing Ain't Worth Nothing.....PostWe've linked to this Dawkins debate before -
youtu.be/YUe0_4rdj0U
Join critically-acclaimed author and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and world-renowned theoretical physicist and author Lawrence Krauss as they discuss biology, cosmology,… -
Cassius
November 6, 2024 at 3:16 PM Replied to the thread Nothing Ain't Worth Nothing.....Post[…]
As you say there, the isue is "natural" causes. I know I am being legalistic here in the framing of the words, but in the philosophical context I think that's important. I gather from Frances Wright's chapter 15 that she was concerned about a… -
kochiekoch
November 6, 2024 at 1:12 PM Replied to the thread Nothing Ain't Worth Nothing.....Post[…]
They'd have to be quantum cows to do that! Good point! -
kochiekoch
November 6, 2024 at 1:09 PM Replied to the thread Nothing Ain't Worth Nothing.....Post[…]
LOL!!! Popping in and out of existence is a figure of speech I've read in regard to this phenomenon. You have a point. They borrow the energy of the quantum vacuum and then return it. So, popping in and out of existence isn't exactly true. -
kochiekoch
November 6, 2024 at 1:00 PM Replied to the thread Nothing Ain't Worth Nothing.....Post[…]
Nope, the plenum would be a black hole. Infinite density and energy. You can't make much out of that.
The atoms, produced out of the energy of the Big Bang, would never be "nothing" as nothing doesn't seem to exist. There is the vacuum of… -
Kalosyni
November 6, 2024 at 12:40 PM Replied to the thread Nothing Ain't Worth Nothing.....Post"Nothing comes from nothing" = there are causes for what exists and there are conditions (natural laws) that everything is conditioned and governed by...cows don't pop out of thin air, because they depend on causes and conditions of the material world of… -
Cassius
November 6, 2024 at 12:33 PM Replied to the thread Nothing Ain't Worth Nothing.....PostI would push back against the idea of "popping in and out of existence"..... Changing from one *form* to another however is certainly plausible, like ice to water. But the word *existence* is probably exactly what "cannot" happen. -
kochiekoch
November 6, 2024 at 12:11 PM Replied to the thread Nothing Ain't Worth Nothing.....Post[…]
It's there, it's just filled with virtual particles that pop in and out of existence, borrowing the energy of that empty space. All this in addition to the atoms that fly though them.
What is Quantum Fluctuation?|| scienceshorts||
So even a vacuum isn't… -
Joshua
November 6, 2024 at 12:06 PM Replied to the thread Nothing Ain't Worth Nothing.....PostThe Pythoclean alternative of proposing one or more plausible explanations solves one aspect of the problem. We don't have to know everything to know something rather than nothing! -
Cassius
November 6, 2024 at 9:51 AM Replied to the thread Nothing Ain't Worth Nothing.....PostI raise that last question because of a part of a discussion we had I think in a recent Zoom:
How tightly is "Nothing comes from Nothing" tied to "Atomism?"
"Atomism" seems to postulate that the way the universe works with regularity is that there are… -
Cassius
November 6, 2024 at 9:10 AM Replied to the thread Nothing Ain't Worth Nothing.....PostSo what position are you guys taking as to whether "empty space" exists? -
Kalosyni
November 6, 2024 at 8:36 AM Replied to the thread Nothing Ain't Worth Nothing.....PostThis would be better as a cartoon, but here it goes anyway...lol.
Person A: "I'm trying to find my big heavy winter coat and I just looked inside the guest room closet where I thought I put it at the end of last winter...but there was nothing in the… -
kochiekoch
November 5, 2024 at 8:00 PM Replied to the thread Ancient Wine.PostAncient drinking water sources left much to be desired. 😝 Not only the sanitation problem, which the alcohol in the wine would address, but the taste problem.
Adding wine to the water would make drinking water more palatable and drinkable.
Why did the… -
Don
November 5, 2024 at 6:49 PM Replied to the thread Ancient Wine.PostI am literally in the middle of going through the fragments and texts and putting together a list of all the foods that the Epicureans were said to "limit" themselves. Lentil stew, anyone?
The reason I post here is the word Οἰνίδιον "small wine,… -
Cassius
PostNovember 5, 2024 at 6:46 PM Lucretius Today Episode 253 is now available: "How The Riddle of Epicurus Fits Into The Epicurean View Of The Gods"
spreaker.com/episode/62630139 -
Cassius
PostNovember 5, 2024 at 4:21 PM Episode 253 will be released later today. As I complete editing I am struck by Joshua's summation on a subject that isn't expressed in the episode title but which I am increasingly convinced is the heart of Epicurean philosophy: it's not Epicurus'… -
Pacatus
November 5, 2024 at 3:54 PM Posted the thread Ancient Wine.ThreadI had recently read some claims that one of the reasons the ancients watered their wine was because of its high alcoholic content, compared with our (unfortified) wines today. This appears to be false. (My wife, who made wonderful, dry country wines,… -
kochiekoch
November 5, 2024 at 1:34 PM Replied to the thread Nothing Ain't Worth Nothing.....Post[…]
Not at all. It's stating that there is actual experimental evidence, the Casimir effect that demonstrates it does. -
Don
November 5, 2024 at 12:08 PM Replied to the thread Nothing Ain't Worth Nothing.....Post[…]
That's been my perspective all along. There is never nothing. There's always something - in the widest sense - out of which things - in the widest sense - arise.