Episode 195 - Cicero's On Ends - Book Two - Part 05

While I am sure that there is a rational explanation that makes all this clear, as I said in the podcast I have to agree with Cicero that there is something going on here with the terminology which is not obvious and requires an explanation. We need to complete the circuit by incorporating duration intensity and location just as you are trying to do in order to complete the "General Theory of Epicurean Pleasure."

Godfrey I don't recall that you commented on "why accept the minimum when more us possible" and I suspect that is key to completing this analysis. There is some aspect to "Intensity" that fits into this puzzle. More intensity has to be obviously desirable just like it is obvious that you want the most duration and locations.

The phrase from the letter to Meoceus that we don't want the longest life but the "most pleasurable" certainly is relevant, but something has to show that it isn't sufficient to fill 100% of our locations and durations with sitting in a cave staring at the wall. That intuitively is not sufficient but if accepted would make intensity irrelevant - just as expanding any one of the three exclusively would make the other two irrelevant.

Duration, location, and intensity must have some kind of natural status of importance that requires consideration of all three.

My first suggestion would be consideration of the opening of Lucretius - Pleasure is not just a "reaction to events" but is a guiding and leading and motivating force that is programmed not randomly but in an evolutionary way to improve, and not to accept a minimum when more can be obtained. Else pleasure would never have led living things down the path of evolution to where we are today.

Is a constant drive to greater duration, location and intensity inherent in pleasure itself?

To repeat myself, it must be true that greater duration, location, AND intensity of pleasure are inherently desirable.

The precise apportionment between the three might be a matter of personal preference but the three still have some kind of priority status in the analysis over other considerations.

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PD09. If every pleasure could be intensified so that it lasted, and influenced the whole organism or the most essential parts of our nature, pleasures would never differ from one another"

Is it possible that one inference to take from this is that variety in pleasures IS desirable, and that we should not seek to let any of the three factors take over exclusively, even though variety does not take the amount of pleasure past its theoretical limit?

With the final unstated clause not being "but they do" but being instead "and you should not want them to or try to make them."

We seem to presume that Epicurus would disagree with "Variety is the spice of life" but maybe he *would* agree with that, and this PD is embracing variety because Epicurus sees the advantage in all three aspects?

Quote from Godfrey

There is only the feeling of pleasure/pain, it is a two-way switch, and it varies in magnitude only through location and duration.

At least at the moment I would definitely resist that interpretation. There's no doubt some interesting terminology going on here, and maybe that's one possibility, but it seems intuitive to me that when Epicurus talks about not wanting the longest but "the most pleasant" he is talking about more than "location."

Quote from Godfrey

t would appear that there's no sliding scale of intensity, other than through location and duration, by definition. At least That's what I'm thinking right here, right now. That may change.

Me too as to out for a while. But before I go:

Dropping back for a moment, if there are only two of a thing being discussed, then the presence of one = absence of the other and he highest possible absence of one is the highest possible presence of the other, full stop. That's all you need to know to say that in any such situation that if one is totally absent, the other is totally present. You don't need any information whatsoever about duration, location, or intensity whatsoever if you are told a person is "without pain" to know that he is in "total pleasure." So that intellectual formulation can't be violated and you are going to stick with it with the tenacity of Torquatus and you are never going to admit an exception, because of the way you have defined the terms and held that there are only two possibilities.

At the same time, in real life, no matter what your intellectual classification scheme, the senses are able to pick up differences of duration, location, and intensity of sensation.

Recall that Epicurus himself notes that some feelings are more acute than others in PD04: Pain does not last continuously in the flesh, but the acutest pain is there for a very short time, and even that which just exceeds the pleasure in the flesh does not continue for many days at once. But chronic illnesses permit a predominance of pleasure over pain in the flesh.

You're not going to abandon your classification scheme, in which every experience is deemed pleasurable unless it is painful. But you also aren't going to ignore the different sensory information that the senses are providing. When you are dying with very great kidney pain you aren't going to offset that pain with thinking about how you trimmed your fingernails this morning, but only with a very great pleasure.

So you have to be able to incorporate both levels of perspective in a general theory of pleasure and pain if you're going to be persuasive that your theory has validity.

To consult DeWitt's perspective on this if we choose to, we are probably talking about the section entitled "Unity of Pleasure" starting page 232, which includes this below, which incorporates the k/k distinction as a reference to "intensity." Dewitt seems to be suggesting that the same type of feeling of pleasure or pain is being considered acute / intense / kinetic if experienced over a short time and is being considered less acute / less intense / katastematic if experienced over a longer time:

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To substantiate this drift of reasoning it is not impossible to quote a text: "The stable condition of well·being in the flesh and the confident hope of its continuance means the most exquisite and infallible of joys for those who are capable of figuring the problem out."'

This passage marks a distinct increase of precision in the analysis of pleasure. Its import will become clear if the line of reasoning already adumbrated be properly extended: let it be granted that the escape from a violent death is the greatest of joys and the inference must follow that the possession of life at other times cannot rank greatly lower.

Similarly, if the recovery from a dangerous illness be a cause for joy, manifestly the possession of health ought to be a joy at other times. Nevertheless the two pleasures differ from one another and it was in recognition of the difference that Epicurus instituted the distinction between kinetic and static pleasures. The difference is one of intensity or, as Epicurus would have said, of condensation. At one time the pleasure is condensed, at another, extended. In other words the same pleasure may be either kinetic or static. If condensed, it is kinetic; if extended, it is static.

There is a catch to this reasoning, however; it holds good only "for those who are capable of figuring the problem out:' This marks Epicurus as a pragmatist, insisting upon the control of experience, including thought. His reasoning about kinetic and static pleasures is sound, but human beings do not automatically reason after this fashion; they fail to reason about the matter at all. Although they would spontaneously admit the keenest joy at recovery from wounds or disease. they forget about the blessing of health at other times. Hence it is that Epicurus insists upon the necessity of being able to reason in this way. Moreover. this reasoning must be confirmed by habituation. The same rule applies here as in the case of "Death is nothing to us:' It is not enough to master the reasons for so believing; it is also necessary to habituate one's self to so believe. This is pragmatism.

Under this view it looks to me like you are definitely acknowledging differences in intensity of pleasures and pains, so you are not being unrealistic and acting as if that difference is not there, but you are mentally conditioning yourself to view them as similar in nature because this mental perspective allows you to appreciate whichever you have under a particular circumstance.

"And since pleasure is the first good and natural to us, for this very reason we do not choose every pleasure, but sometimes we pass over many pleasures, when greater discomfort accrues to us as the result of them: and similarly we think many pains better than pleasures, since a greater pleasure comes to us when we have endured pains for a long time. Every pleasure then because of its natural kinship to us is good, yet not every pleasure is to be chosen: even as every pain also is an evil, yet not all are always of a nature to be avoided.

[130] Yet by a scale of comparison and by the consideration of advantages and disadvantages we must form our judgment on all these matters. For the good on certain occasions we treat as bad, and conversely the bad as good. And again independence of desire we think a great good — not that we may at all times enjoy but a few things, but that, if we do not possess many, we may enjoy the few in the genuine persuasion that those have the sweetest pleasure in luxury who least need it, and that all that is natural is easy to be obtained, but that which is superfluous is hard. And so plain savours bring us a pleasure equal to a luxurious diet, when all the pain due to want is removed; and bread and water produce the highest pleasure, when one who needs them puts them to his lips.

[131] To grow accustomed therefore to simple and not luxurious diet gives us health to the full, and makes a man alert for the needful employments of life, and when after long intervals we approach luxuries disposes us better towards them, and fits us to be fearless of fortune."

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So of course you are going to engage in "sex, drugs, and rocknroll" when you can do so without experiencing more pain than pleasure, but if for any reason you are not able to engage in them without causing yourself more pain than pleasure, you are going to have no reason to regret your choice to decline because you can make up for that declined pleasure by finding compensating pleasure in other activities. The focus of your decisionmaking is always on maximizing the predominance of pleasure over pain in total, and you aren't inherently favoring intense over non-intense or non-intense over intense. You're just picking a mix between the two that under your circumstances will produce the greatest pleasure.

Time for some Gosling & Taylor. I think this is consistent with most all of what we have said in this thread so far:

Page 347

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18.1.4 In other words, the experience of pleasure is experience of its goodness. Indeed for consistency with his theory of knowledge Epieurus must be able to give a perceptual basis for judgments of value if he is to claim that they can be known. This is sometimes construed as though pleasure were a feeling attached to a perception. The word ‘pathos’ which Epicurus uses to categorize pleasure and pain, means, rather, a way of being affected.

Thus according to Diogenes '(X.34), the Epicureans say that there are two pathe that occur with every living thing, pleasure and pain. One might be tempted to think that there are also others, e.g. a Platonic neutral state. But Epicurus allows of no midway between the two: pleasure is defined as the absence of pain. Not, of course, that any absence of pain (e.g. death) is pleasure, but any painless conscious life is a pleasure, where, we must remember, life would not consist simply in being alive, but in living the kind of life characteristic of the species. So with sentient beings there are just two ways in which in their sentient activity they can be affected: painfully or pleasurably, the first being aversive, the second appetitive.

So every perception involves being affected in one or other of these ways and in such perception a sentient being grasps the value or disvalue of being so affected, a grasp that is, at a pre-logical level, constituted by acceptance or aversion. Clearly the whole bias of this way of thinking will be to make the goodness of each particular pleasure obvious in each perception. There will be no temptation to make the value of pleasure maximization over a life obvious to perception.

Nor will any need be felt to appeal to Eudoxan observations as to how human beings argue about the worth of things, what questions they do or do not ask, still less to argue from premisses that suppose that there are other goods than pleasure. If a judgment of worth can be known to be true then it must be possible to refer to some value given in perception to substantiate it, and the only answer can be that it contains pleasures, for anything else can only be judged good in so far as it yields this. If now we are to compare lives it can only be by some comparison of pleasantness, and anyone who makes a judgment about the worth of a life is making ajudgment that can only be substantiated by reference to its pleasantness, which can only be judged in the last resort by the person who lives it. There is room for argument as to what form of life is pleasantest, but no room at all for discussion as to what makes something good.

This sentence, i think, helps with the question of why not sit in the dark staring at a candle: "

"Not, of course, that any absence of pain (e.g. death) is pleasure, but any painless conscious life is a pleasure, where, we must remember, life would not consist simply in being alive, but in living the kind of life characteristic of the species."

Here Gosling and Taylor introduce katastematic and kinetic, which they then devote a separate chapter later to explaining why they are both pleasure and katastematic is not the ultimate goal. But for now:

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18.1.5. When it comes to assessing various degrees of pleasantness, Epicurus seems to have thought that pleasures are of two sorts, those of change (kinetic) and those of stable condition (katastematic) and perhaps that either sort could be primarily bodily or mental. (DL X.136, 144). Those associated with motion seem to be those which accompany a change from pain to its removal, whereas those of a stable state are those of conditions where pain is absent, and with it any cause of change (DL X.128-9). Quite generally, pleasures cannot increase in degree beyond the point of removal of pain (PD 3; DL X.139). With bodily pleasures this limit is reached when the need that is causing pain is removed. Mental pain is largely caused by such things as grief and fear, and so is only to be removed by reflections on the sources of these emotions (PD 18; DL X.144). In either case there is no possibility of increase past the point of the removal of pain, only of variation. There is no need, therefore, to get into complexities of comparative intensities or other methods of assessing the comparative pleasantness of different activities. A life free from pain ipso facto wins over one not so free.

Always good to bring in a comparison with the Cyreniacs (also Gosling & Taylor):

18.3.6. (iii) But this brings us to the third problem. For Epicurus should not be prepared to allow that one unmixed pleasure can be greater than another. The ‘greater than’ relation can only hold between pairs of pleasures at least one of which is mixed, it cannot hold between two unmixed ones. So this at least looks like a fairly blatant inconsistency.

18.3.7. The only hope here is to query the testimony of Diogenes, but it clearly will not do simply to dismiss it because it is awkward. Two things are, however, worth noting: first, although Diogenes (DL X.136, 137) sounds as though he is reporting an explicit set of disagreements with the Cyrenaics, he is probably only working out divergencies, and secondly, when the point at present under discussion is introduced the dispute is over whether physical or mental pains are worse; it is only after an explanation of why Epicurus thought mental ones were worse that Diogenes adds that for the same sort of reason he thought that mental pleasure were greater.

Now the Cyrenaics dismissed the idea of calculating the effects of actions and advocated pursuing the immediately available pleasure. So far as immediately available pleasures were concerned they considered bodily ones to be the greater, presumably judging degrees of pleasure on a scale of intensity. Since pleasure is the only good, and this does not mean pleasure maximization over a life, they are obviously going to think that bodily pains are worst and bodily pleasures best just because most painful and pleasurable respectively. One would not, however, expect Epicurus to settle the question of which were better in these terms (DL X.129-30). He would not deny, perhaps, that some bodily pains are very intense, and even more intense than any mental ones, but he thought that intense bodily pain was always short-lived and that therefore one should not make much fuss about it (PD 4; DL X.140). For, in such pain the body has only to cope with the present disorder, which is only of brief duration. The mind, by contrast, dwells on not only present evils but past and future ones as well, and so its pain endures as long as the memory and expectation of evil. These are also typically fertile of pain. The memory of past failure leads to fear of future ones in turn aggravated by memories of past ones. So the body’s limitation to its present condition in contrast to the mind’s wandering over past, present, and future would make one, on Epicurean grounds, consider the pains of the mind to be worse, and this is precisely the ground cited by Diogenes in X.137.

But this is, note, a ground for considering them worse, not in any ordinary sense as more painful. Epicurus’ disagreement with the Cyrenaics would be precisely on the point of equating what is more painful with what is worse. It is only after his reports of the Epicurean grounds for thinking mental pains to be worse that Diogenes comments that ‘so in this way he holds that the pleasures of the mind are also greater’. But ‘this way’ has given no grounds for supposing them greater in the sense of more intense, nor pleasanter in any sense found elsewhere in Epicurus. At most it gives grounds for supposing them more enduring and more productive of pleasure. It is simplest in fact, either to suppose that ‘greater’ does not mean ‘more pleasant’, or to suppose that this has slipped in because of carelessness on the part of Diogenes who was constructing a dispute in which Epicurus’ ‘opponents’ were using ‘greater’ as equivalent of ‘more pleasant’ and taking greater pleasures as ipso facto better. Either way Epicurus is not committed to saying that mental pleasures are pleasanter than bodily ones, though he will doubtless say that unmixed mental ones are pleasanter than mixed bodily ones. So the probability is that the basis of Diogenes’ report is quite consistent with Epicurus’ remarks elsewhere on degrees of pleasure.

Underlining added by me:

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18.3.17 - Once again, living a life free of disturbance is not just a matter of staying alive and not being disturbed, as with a person under heavy sedation, but living the sort of life specific to the being in question. Epicurus could concede to Plato that there are states of living things which are neither pleasant nor painful, as for instance, states of unconsciousness, but he would not concede to the subtlers of the Philebus that once the process of coming-to-be had finished the pleasure was over. Faced with the problem which it was suggested faced Plato after the Republic (cf. 6.8) Epicurus refused to make a choice. Granted we have a conscious living thing, then he seems to have thought, if it is living its specific form of life that life will be pleasant except to the extent that the proper balance is disturbed. In pleasures of restoration the condition of the organism is not entirely disrupted. To the extent that it approximates to proper balance there will be pleasure, (for to that extent some of the imbalance will have been removed and some balance restored), but the pleasure will be perfect only when the balance is. Having a physicalist view of the constitution of man he will be very inclined to some view of the good state as consisting in a physical balance of the organism, but he has no inclination to follow Plato or Aristotle in their views of the exquisite pleasure of philosophy. There is nothing special about the mind in this respect and indeed, un-Platonically, its main value is not in the divine glory of the intellect, nor its special pleasantness, but in its contribution to the general stability of the system. In some ways this has an Aristotelian ring: if one is living according to one’s nature then one is enjoying one’s life, and failure of enjoyment is a function of disrupted nature. But Epicurus’ physicalism makes him stick firmly by physical balance, and this in turn makes him less interested in individual activities and their enjoyments, which gets Aristotle embroiled with external goods (cf. 13.4.3-4), and more in a condition of the individual which ensures him balance independently of external circumstance.

Quote from Don

Yours actually adds new content. I'm not quite sure what you're getting at with "and you should not want them to or try to make them." Is that commentary directed at those who elevate tranquility?

Not necessarily taking aim at tranquility at this point, just trying to focus on whether it might be important to get a better fix on "variety." Is "variety" in pleasure the reason we find it is desirable to get out of bed tomorrow? Or is the reason just that we didn't succeed in making "pure pleasure" today so that we try again tomorrow?

There's something going on that explains better why we both (1) don't need infinite time, and yet (2) find it desirable to live another day tomorrow. Yes "life is desirable" is a statement that we can refer to, but there's also some intellectual connection between why pure pleasure (should we attain it) cannot be improved, and yet we do want to live again tomorrow if there is more pleasure and pain that comes from it.

There needs to be a simple way to state the reason other than "Epicurus said life is desirable."

Here's two things I think are pretty simple once you get with the terminology issue:

(1) It's pretty simple to see that when you talk about the whole organism (and I think that probably includes time as a component, but maybe not) being "full" of pleasure / without any pain / experiencing pure pleasure" is a height which cannot be exceeded no matter how much additional time is added.

(2) And it's pretty easy to understand that if there are only two labels for feelings, then any particular feeling could be called either "pleasure" or "absence of pain" if it feels good, or "pain" or "absence of pleasure" if it feels bad.

I would think there must be an equally simple way of dealing with a question such as: "If your view of the goal is (1), and you reach it one day, why do you want to live another day?"

It's one thing to say that (1) is the "ideal" and we just do the best we can to approximate it every day, and not worry about it further. That may be the complete answer, and we think of (1) as something the gods can attain but we cannot, because what we can attain is a preponderance of pleasure over pain all the time.

But lots of people seem to ask what Epicurus says about "How long should you want to live?" combined with "Why not settle for the least active life you can so as to minimize pain?" and it would be desirable to answer that as clearly and concisely as possible.

Perhaps some of the Gosling and Taylor commentary about "living the sort of life specific to the being in question" helps in that direction. But whether it does or not it's a question you'll be asked as soon as you start taking questions from your local Epicurean Meetup Group so it's good to plan ahead.