I have the impression that Epicurus was right when he said : The removal of pain is an unsurpassed joy i.e. pleasure.
if we read medical articles on molecules of bliss and happiness we realize that. So, when you have free time please read again the work that was done by Elayne who is a doctor ! On Pain, Pleasure, and Happiness (Version 2)
I do not actually reject such fact that the removal of pain produces pleasure. In fact, my comment on this emphasizes it:
"The production of pleasure by the removal of pain is not my personal opinion. It is how I understand what Torquatus said in the second paragraph of part XL of the Book 1 of On Ends. He said "For, as when hunger and thirst are driven away by meat and drink, the very removal of the annoyance brings with it the attainment of pleasure, so in every case, the removal of pain PRODUCES the succession of pleasure. And therefore Epicurus would not admit that there was any intermediate state between pleasure and pain;"
As I understand it, painlessness does not necessarily mean pleasure because painlessness is the end process of the removal of pain that produces pleasure. Therefore, there is only either pain and pleasure (not either pain or the absence of pain)
My point is that the absence or removal of pain does not define pleasure so it would be strange if I say that pleasure is the removal of pain. It says here that there is pleasure after the removal of pain. The process of removing pain is not a state but a process that turns pain into pleasure nor a state of painlessness that defines pleasure."
My point is that painlessness does not necessarily mean pleasure. It is part or the end process of removing pain. What comes next is pleasure. What I'd like us to seek definition is for "pleasure" itself the way we can define "pain."
As far as I understand, the removal of pain defines the highest pleasure, not pleasure alone.
Like what I also commented previously:
"The removal of pain comes in the way only because Torquatus describes the highest pleasure. He describes it by saying "when a man is free from every sort of pain, is not only pleasure, but the highest sort of pleasure." Therefore, let us not forget that what we define here is pleasure, not the highest pleasure."
Because if we literally hold on to the very premise "That the removal of pain is pleasure," the idea would become abstract. It would mean that death, which removes all sorts of pain, is or produces pleasure.
And of course, we do not define pain as "something that is removed in order to become pleasure. We define pain as annoyance, disturbance, and the like. That's also what I'd like us to define pleasure if there is any appropriate reference to it.
Nevertheless, in the end I am convinced that the basic issue is no more complicated than that pleasure is the ultimate guide that nature gave all living things to live by, rather than gods, or abstract logic creating its own goals, or idealism giving us goals set in another dimension. As for the debate on reaching that conclusion, yes it can get confusing, but in the end it's really not a matter to be proved by "debate" or logic anyway - it is a matte of observation and feeling:
