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(Quote from Godfrey) This paper is generally...not great (especially with chestnuts like this, implying that the ideal state of a hedonist would be maximum, activated bliss all the time - wearing me out literally just reading the sentence..."For instance, going from a painful experience to a neutral one probably feels like an improvement, whereas going from a joyous state to a neutral one might be experienced as a decline." emphasis mine) But it does offer a nice overview and lots of links to ot…

Another thought: I think it’s freaking WILD that valence is so clearly thought of as the only axis by which we measure emotion. That emotion can only be judged by how strongly negative and positive it is, plotting horror and sorrow on the same point, while joy and contentedness are half the spectrum apart just because content is calm and joy is not. I know there are some researchers trying to find better models for emotion, but I think the absolute simplest would need at least separate axes for …

(Quote from Cassius) Thanks! I’ve been lurking and learning and absorbing 😊

(Quote from Nate) I agree with all this, but it seems to me that the same people who elevate "katastematic" pleasure DO usually elevate certain "simple pleasures" which are themselves only physical sensations (ie, stop and smell the roses), but there's a certain judgment about clean sensory pleasures and dirty sensory pleasures. Smelling a flower, feeling the sun on your face or a breeze in your hair, eating certain "healthy" foods are clean, natural, simple pleasures that you can and should app…

I've noticed- definitively as of this morning- that in-person social engagements give me migraines 100% of the time these days. Spending time with friends is obviously something almost anyone would consider a "clean" pleasure, yet it disrupts my mental tranquility (by interrupting aponia) so what does that mean? Should I ignore my own physical pain and essentially gaslight myself because other people told me that friendship is a moral good? Should I partake in social engagements only occasionall…

(Quote from Cassius) Yeah I agree that it's worth questioning how much usefulness there is in talking about different kinds of pleasure to non-Epicureans. There's a lot of talk about Epicurus "dividing" pleasure into two categories, but from the discussion here so far, it looks like the wrong math term is being used. It seems more accurate to say that he ADDED to the earlier understanding of pleasure. So perhaps it is not that he wanted to separate pleasure into two parts, but that he wanted to …

(Quote from Godfrey) "Epicurus thought pleasure to be a unified phenomenon. He claimed that it takes on two aspects (i.e. katastematic and kinetic) nonetheless, he thought both these aspects species of the same genus." I just got this from this paper and like... YES this is what I mean! ETA: related to that paper, I've recently become interested in the ancient Druids, who left no written record so almost all information about them comes through the lens of biased Roman accounts. I'm starting to …