The Axiology of Pain and Pleasure (are they intrinsic good/bad ? )

Thank you for posting this! I read up to the point where a free subscription was needed, and I looked at the PDF of the academic paper.

Pigliucci is, of course, the Stoic's Stoic (in the modernsense). In light of that, I wouldn't expect him to be any more charitable to Epicurus than Epictetus was.

My take on the general direction of the article and the paper is that Epicurus addresses many if not all) of their concerns. For example, the conclusion of the paper begins:

Quote

Consider how broad the scope of moral choice is which involves choosing between two good options, or choosing the lesser of two evils, or any consequentialist trade-offs between what is intrinsically good and bad. Now, consider how many of these choices are made while thinking that pleasures automatically count as good and pains automatically count as bad. If we started denying the goodness of pleasure per se and the badness of pain per se, if we started thinking of these merely as (un)pleasant but without intrinsic value, the effects on our choices would be enormous. If we taught ourselves the proper functions of pain, if we cease to be fooled by the supposed “intrinsic disvalue” of it, so that we do not automatically think that experiencing pain is experiencing something bad, then we would not be fooled into avoiding pains which we know are not harmful by telling ourselves that the pain itself justifies us in avoiding it.

I'm intentionally highlighting that last section because I feel that is precisely Epicurus's position.

Pigliucci makes the error in his article about Epicurus's "freedom from pain" into an all or nothing proposition:

Quote

Epicureanism still counts as a hedonistic school, though, in part because Epicurus identified lack of pain as the highest possible pleasure.

And, yes, Epicurus did... But not for the reasons you appear to be making, Massimo. We've had extensive and on-going discussions on this forum about what that "highest pleasure = absence of pain" means, and I think we're going in the right direction. It's easy to caricature; more difficult to understand.

So, in the end , my reaction is that both the article and the paper rehash old arguments in "new wineskins" so to speak. I'll be interested to read others' takes.

I'll also add in reference to the pain/bad - pleasure/good notion that the article and paper discuss. It appears to me that Epicurus made the pain/bad - pleasure/good argument precisely on the grounds that those parameters are really the only parameters on which you can claim why something is "good" or "bad." I don't think he was necessarily making moral or ethical arguments. He was literally using the parameters of whether something led to more pain or more pleasure in the end. Living justly, nobly, and prudently is "good" because it allows is to live pleasurably, and vice versa. Living that way isn't "good" because it's decreed from On High or because it's "virtuous" from some external definition. The authors of the paper seemed to tie themselves in knots only to conclude where Epicurus starts from.

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 Godfrey

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

Pigliucci is the author of the article pointing to the paper:

Why Epicureans and Utilitarians are wrong: on the axiology of pain and pleasure

Moral philosophers are beginning to incorporate insights from evolutionary biology

open.substack.com

Oops, I thought it was all the same thing

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.

Pain is biologically advantageous but only up to a point. The skin->spinal cord->muscle reflex arc protects us from hot stoves and sharp objects, internal pain is symptomatic of injury or disease, and mental suffering may indicate that a change in lifestyle is needed.

But of what use is that pain that comes from vain ambition, fear of mortality, desire for limitless wealth, and terror in conceptualizing the gods? The irony of his position is that his argument is consequentialist. 'Pain is useful, therefore pain cannot be bad'.

Thought experiment; as it is, computers throw error messages when something goes wrong. If we could design a computer that feels pain and screams when something goes wrong, would that be an ethically neutral decision? No; pain is bad.

Quote

-Morally bad Pleasure ? => When it would destroy friendship or the justice to others it would destroy our values, securities, good feelings/pleasures with others, chances of reciprocy advantages, bring great disturbances and destroys our kastastematic Pleasure, so an Epicurean would avoid it. Nature gave us for that feelings like compassion, empathy and good feelings(Pleasure) by helping others.

I've been trying to take a more careful approach to the language that we use when we talk about pleasure and pain, and a crucial distinction needs to be made here between 'pleasure', which is a feeling, and 'actions or choices that produce pleasure'. The feeling of pleasure is always intrinsically good; behaviors and decisions that produce pleasure may or may not be instrumentally good.

When we say that some pleasures should be chosen and some avoided, what we are really saying is that the actions we take to pursue the intrinsic good of pleasure are sometimes more likely to produce the intrinsic bad of pain. And the reverse is true is well; choosing to endure for a time the intrinsic bad of pain can often lead to greater pleasure.

These points are no less true for the masochist; if he tells me that enduring pain can be psychologically pleasureable, and that the psychological pleasure is greater than the physical pain, then he, too, is practicing choice and avoidance.

But I agree with most of what you say! I wouldn't want to lose the capacity to feel pain entirely while I still lived.

Quote from Joshua

When we say that some pleasures should be chosen and some avoided, what we are really saying is that the actions we take to pursue the intrinsic good of pleasure are sometimes more likely to produce the intrinsic bad of pain. And the reverse is true is well; choosing to endure for a time the intrinsic bad of pain can often lead to greater pleasure.

Well said, Joshua !! Expanding on your post, I'd say it's our learning to choose or reject "the actions we take to pursue" the desire for certain pleasurable feelings that lead to more pain than pleasure that is important.

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 Godfrey

Your choice of rejection is growing on me...

That gives me pleasure.

My reason, for those who haven't encountered my affinity for "rejection" over "avoidance," the Greek word used in those phrases literally means "to flee, run off, go a certain direction with haste (often with prepositions); to flee, escape, avoid, get away from (danger or trouble)." But "avoid" conveys to me something like "stepping around a puddle." The original word conveys, again, to me, something much stronger than that idea. To my ear, rejection implies more agency than simply avoidance.

Hi guys, I share my point of view:

In philosophy there's something called the "naturalistic fallacy" which consists in affirming that you can't derive a normative proposition from factual ones. Naturalistic fallacy establishes a categorical distinction between the Good and how the world is. All platonic, stoic and kantian positions need this distinction to establish that the Form of the Good, Virtue or Duty are intrinsic values.

All naturalistic projects (including Utilitarianism, Epicureanism and other hedonisms) are the object of accusations of naturalistic fallacy. Now, curiosly, Pigliucci is committing a form of the fallacy by trying to reject ethical (normative) hedonism by using evolutionary biology arguments.
Let me say it clearly: science can falsify Epicurus' psychological hedonism, but not his ethical hedonism. The arguments against ethical hedonism must be philosophical (presumably ethical and metaethical).

Epicurus thought that ethical hedonism can be derived form psychological hedonism (and I consider that this is more or less clear in Torquatus' reasonings in On Ends). How well this works is an open question. A better argument for Pigliucci's position would be to attack this derivation, but even if it works, ethical hedonism can have more arguments on its base.

I tried to read (briefly, admittedly quick reviews of PDF papers and Wikipedia) about the "naturalistic fallacy," but I am failing to see how it is a "fallacy." I get the idea, I think. For example, from the first line of the Wikipedia article:

In philosophical ethics, the naturalistic fallacy is the claim that it is possible to define good in terms of natural entities, or properties such as pleasant or desirable. The term was introduced by British philosopher G. E. Moore in his 1903 book Principia Ethica.

From my perspective, the only real meaning of "good" is in relation to "feeling positive" either physically or psychologically. I'll call that "good/positive feeling" "pleasant" or say that it is "pleasurable" for lack of any better term. If someone wants to go off on morals, that's up to them. The moral sense of good, The Good, etc., ultimately, it seems to me to have no other referent than that positive feeling. To remove it from that original sense is painting oneself into a corner, being trapped in a puzzle of one's own making.

Diogenes Laertius says that "[Epicurean] ethics (ἠθικὸν)... deals with things to be chosen and rejected (αἱρετῶν καὶ φευκτῶν haireton & pheukton), with the manner of living a human life (βίων bion), and with the end-goal. (τέλους telous.)" Ethics then applies how to actualize that positive feeling in one's life. That's it. Walking around, talking about "the good" in an abstract way is pointless. Ethics, it seems to me, in the Epicurean sense is simply how to make one's actions align with arriving at that positive physical and psychological feeling.

Hi, Don!

Just in order to clarify why it is considered a fallacy, think about this exaggerated example. Imagine that, in a community, people believe that men should work and women should stay at home. They might say: "for generations things have been like this, it's the natural order, it must be like this". Philosophers say that this reasoning is wrong, because they are infering a normative proposition from factual propositions. They're infering an ought from an is.

Curiously, the recognition of this kind of problematic reasonings is found first in David Hume. Moore took it and developed it in order to defend his idealistic theory of the Good.

Now, for more clarification, the paragraph you quote form Wikipedia takes the metaethical sense of the naturalistic fallacy. The basic idea is that in a naturalistic ethical project (like the Epicurean one, for example), holding that pleasure (or any other natural entity) is good, implies that there's something in pleasure that makes it good. The question is, which property is that and why pleasure has it? For them, it implies that pleasure is a privileged entity, because it has the property of being ethically good. Here, people like Pigliucci may say that pleasure has an evolutionary and instrumental origin, so it can't have the privilege of being the entity with the property of THE Good.

As you may see, this approach looks suspicious, because is taking the naturalistic Epicurean theory in a kind of platonic terms. And then, for surprise of no one, falsify it.

Great post Onenski

Quote from Onenski

Now, for more clarification, the paragraph you quote form Wikipedia takes the metaethical sense of the naturalistic fallacy. The basic idea is that in a naturalistic ethical project (like the Epicurean one, for example), holding that pleasure (or any other natural entity) is good, implies that there's something in pleasure that makes it good. The question is, which property is that and why pleasure has it? For them, it implies that pleasure is a privileged entity, because it has the property of being ethically good. Here, people like Pigliucci may say that pleasure has an evolutionary and instrumental origin, so it can't have the privilege of being the entity with the property of THE Good.

As you may see, this approach looks suspicious, because is taking the naturalistic Epicurean theory in a kind of platonic terms. And then, for surprise of no one, falsify it.

For most of my life if I had read a paragraph like that - even your explanation of it, and not just someone like Pigliucci asserting it - I would have cursed under my breath and walked away convinced that such a person had nothing worthwhile to say whatsoever.

Nowadays my attitude is very different. I see that the word games involved are leaving probably 98% of the people of the world totally defenseless against the arguments of supernatural religion, nihilism, and all sorts of other depressing perspectives. And given that that is my firm conclusion that those arguments cause great practical harm, I don't think "cursing under my breach and walking away"is the appropriate response at all.

The proper response involves (1) recognizing that it doesn't matter whether the arguments are prompted maliciously by fraud or innocently in error, and (2) working appropriately to clearly state an articulate response.

That's where Epicurus comes in.

I appreciate the additional information and perspective, Onenski ! I have some reactions:

Quote from Onenski

think about this exaggerated example. Imagine that, in a community, people believe that men should work and women should stay at home. They might say: "for generations things have been like this, it's the natural order, it must be like this". Philosophers say that this reasoning is wrong, because they are infering a normative proposition from factual propositions. They're infering an ought from an is.

From that example, my reaction is that that is a culturally-dependent example, not a "naturally occurring" one. The "fact" is merely built on cultural and societal norms. The feeling of pleasure - or the aversion to pain and the attraction to positive stimuli - is biological.

Quote from Onenski

The basic idea is that in a naturalistic ethical project (like the Epicurean one, for example), holding that pleasure (or any other natural entity) is good, implies that there's something in pleasure that makes it good. The question is, which property is that and why pleasure has it?

I still think the idea of "good/bad" - although Epicurus clearly uses good (agathos) and bad (kakos) - is a function of the language we have available to us. "Good" can mean "morally/ethical 'good'" but to I still maintain that it is built on a fundamental meaning of positive feeling. Pleasure - according to Epicurus - is fundamentally agathos, by pleasure's nature. If we take agathos at its most basic meaning, it is something that is useful for a purpose, and from that springs all other meanings. I'm not a big fan of extrapolating from etymologies, but in this case, I'll make an exception. Pleasure is generally useful in one's life to steer toward something positive. Can pleasure's usefulness be short-circuited? Of course. An easy example is drinking too much alcohol, although some alcohol seems to have societal and personal benefits (Check out this episode of The Next Big Idea). Extrapolating this to a "moral" or "ethical" "good" isn't necessarily necessary.

Quote from Onenski

As you may see, this approach looks suspicious, because is taking the naturalistic Epicurean theory in a kind of platonic terms

Exactly, and well put! It seems like they're saying, "We're not going to play by your rules. We reject your rules, and replace them with our own!" ... sigh...

Sorry to blunder into this late and quite possibly confuse things further, but here's a quote from the original Pigliucci piece:

Quote

Evolutionarily speaking, for instance, pain is there to alert us to injuries that, if unattended, could cause long-term disability or death. Pleasure is there to entice us to do things we otherwise might not do, like engaging in the biologically all-important activities of courtship and sex (which are otherwise expensive in terms of time and resources). Put this way, it is clear what the only ultimate goods that nature set for us (and for all living organisms) are: survival and reproduction.

I'm taking this to be at least one of the reasons the naturalistic fallacy occurred to Onenski because Pigliucci is offering what might appear to be a textbook case.

So maybe another example would capture the relevant worry: Imagine an evolutionary biologist says, ‘Men are naturally prone to infidelity because it’s not evolutionarily advantageous for them to be monogamous. Men are just cheaters, and that's a good thing from the perspective of survival and reproduction, which are the ends nature sets for us. So we should just expect men to cheat.’ That leaves a person who contends that men should aim for fidelity two options--show that cheating is not actually adaptive (i.e. challenge the scientist's empirical claim) or decide that what is good for us/right for us is not governed by what is evolutionarily advantageous.

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.