Comparing The Pleasure of A Great Physicist Making A Discovery To The Pleasure of A Lion Eating A Lamb

In today's Sunday Zoom a question to the effect stated in the title of this thread was posed by Raphael Raul.

In response, TauPhi disagreed that the pleasure of the one might be evaluated as "greater" than the pleasure of the other.

We'll continue this discussion next week as part our next Sunday Zoom, but I'm setting up this thread to allow for further discussion in the meantime.

My summary of the issues is doubtlessly superficial but hopefully this is enough to preserve the sense of the discussion.

TauPhi is this ok?

Quote from Cassius

In response, TauPhi disagreed that the pleasure of the one might be evaluated as "greater" than the pleasure of the other.

Quote from Martin

"Engaging In Discovery" should be changed to "Making a Discovery" or similar because the path to a discovery is more or less painful, as expressed in quotes attributed to Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein on the ratio of inspiration to perspiration. We can skip the "Great" because the pleasure I had with my small discoveries was certainly not less than the great physicists had with their great ones, in analogy to the "Great Physicist" and the lion.

Martin --

I've changed "Engaging" to "Making," However at the moment I've left the "great" because I suspect that Raphael considered it a significant part of the hypothetical that the person making the discovery was Albert Einstein as opposed to a generic physicist.

However as in the discussion of all hypothetical questions, pinning down the key presumptions is important, so it may well be that the identity of the physicist is an important part of the question Raphael is posing, and that's part of what should be discussed.

@Raphael can you comment on this, because this is not the way I understood your question:

Quote from kochiekoch

Old debate. Does push-pin give equal pleasure to poetry? It's similar to the debate here with the lion eating his/her prey and the scientist making the great discovery.

Jeremy Bentham supposedly said that push pin was the equal of poetry even though that's a misrepresentation from John Steward Mill, with Mill arguing the quality of the pleasure mattered. Poetry creating a superior pleasure to a children's table game in Mill's view.

Push-pin (game) - Wikipedia

My take on the debate on the thread here is that pleasure is pleasure and the two are of equal value in the moment, but the scientist with his great discovery has the greatest pleasure over time. He gets to enjoy the accolade's as his discovery is confirmed and also gets pleasure from contemplating his discovery. He can use it as well as a springboard for future discoveries and pleasures from that. All consistent with the Epicurean perspective of mental pleasures being superior because they can be enjoyed in the present, past and future.

Focusing on this sentence in particular:

My take on the debate on the thread here is that pleasure is pleasure and the two are of equal value in the moment, but the scientist with his great discovery has the greatest pleasure over time.

As for me, the pleasure I get from a great poem is not at all the same as the pleasure I get from push-pin. I can certainly differentiate the two and prefer one to the other, so I would not agree with the underlined section if the question is how "I" value them to me. The two are not of equal value to me no matter how long the experience.

I'd still like to find the Bentham citation directly to see what is being referenced.

My understanding of the dispute was that Bentham and/or others were considering whether pleasure could be reduced to units of some kind, in which context it would make senses to consider the greatest good for the greatest number by adding up all the pleasure units to see in which configuration the number is largest.

My further understanding of the situation is that this is impossible - or an invalid approach - because there is no objective standard by which we can compare pleasure units between individuals, which is exactly the issue with comparing pleasure between lions and humans. From the point of view of the lion the eating of the prey is an extreme pleasure, while from the point of view of the physicist the discovery is an extreme pleasure, but there is no "objective" way to measure the units of pleasure being created so as to say that one generated more "pleasure" than the other.

Are we are not trying to focus on the issues involved in comparing the pleasure of a lion to the pleasure of a physicist in order to dramatize the question of whether pleasure can be "objectively" measured? If not, then I don't even know what the discussion is about!

This appears to be Steve's citation but I need a PDF or link to Gutenberg for more context:

"Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music and poetry. If the game of push-pin furnish more pleasure, it is more valuable than either."

This quote is found in Book III, Chapter I of The Rationale of Reward.

Quote from NewWorldEncyclopedia

Bentham's hedonism

Jeremy Bentham

Bentham believed any particular pleasure or pain had a determinate value, which could be measured and compared. He attempted to construct a scale of comparison and measurement of pain and pleasure. He called this scale the felicific calculus. He claimed that the value of a pleasure was to be determined by such factors as its duration and its intensity. Bentham’s hedonism may be labeled quantitative hedonism, since all pleasures and pains appear on the same scale, being measured according to the same set of criteria (such as duration and intensity).

This assumption—all pleasures and pains can, in principle, be subjected to the same such measurement—entails that all pleasures are ultimately of the same sort, and that no pleasure is by its very nature superior to any other. Bentham argues, "The utility of all these arts and sciences, …the value which they possess, is exactly in proportion to the pleasure they yield. Every other species of preeminence which may be attempted to be established among them is altogether fanciful. Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music and poetry. If the game of push-pin furnish more pleasure, it is more valuable than either."^[2] Bentham’s assumption that all pleasures and pains can, in principle, be subjected to such measurement entails that "push-pin may be better than as poetry." Pushpin was a simple child’s game played at the time, perhaps comparable to tiddlywinks. It all depends on the amount of pleasure one actually gains from the activity.

We've discussed issues like this in the past such as whether we can construct a Calculus of Pleasure spreadsheet to help us plan our choices in life.

I recall my conclusion to have been that such an exercise is of definite value to ME, or would be for any other individual, but that it would be absolutely invalid to transfer or apply the results of my calculation to another person, because each person answers these problems differently.

So while the lion and the physicist both have their own scales and reports of pleasure experiences, by which they definitely do rank their choices and pleasures, I would say it is simply invalid to compare the pleasure of the lion to that of a physicist, or between ANY two individuals no matter how you dramatize their "value to the world," because there is no agreed objective standard by which to compare.

Past spreadsheet posts are below. I don't use anything like this on a regular basis, and I don't think it's practical to try to do so. However if I were faced with a big decision or evaluation at a particular point in time I do think something like this would be useful. And I am sure that others could design a better implementation as a spreadsheet or using other paradigms. The activities listed on the draft are far too general but were put there just as fillers. Despite the difficulties, I've always thought that it was too extreme to assert that calculations such as this are impossible or totally useless for an individual. Seems to me that the raw format is pretty much exactly how our minds work in evaluating choices, to the extent that we do use our minds to make decisions in a particular case.

Post

RE: A Draft Epicurean Pleasure Maximization Worksheet

I have attached to the original post in this thread an xls / Libreoffice Calc version of the spreadsheet which should be usable in any spreadsheet software. I prepared it in the free Libreoffice format so that it would be accessible to the most people. I will see about uploading this back to Google docs as well.

This should be the same document, in Google Sheets - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…dit?usp=sharing

Cassius

July 13, 2019 at 2:13 PM

Post

RE: The Normal Curve of Pleasure

Anybody coming across this thread and getting motivated to plot some bell curves might want to also consult the earlier thread in which a "spreadsheet" was discussed:

epicureanfriends.com/thread/?postID=3781#post3781 Even though pictoral and mathematical representations are limited, and cannot possibly capture the "feelings" that are involved in pleasure and pain, I continue to think that the process of working through them is useful, especially in that trying to formulate them emphasizes *how*…

Cassius

July 23, 2024 at 11:15 AM

Another general comment about why I think topics like this are so helpful.

To me, when you drill down and realize that for an individual some pleasures are much "greater" than others in terms of intensity, duration, and parts of the body affected, you see clearly that some specific pleasures are much more desirable to you than others. All pleasure is pleasure because it is desirable, but all pleasures are not the same in every respect to all people at all times, or even to the same person at different times, and therefore as to specific characteristics, some pleasurable experiences can be more pleasurable (more intense, longer lasting, or affecting more parts of the body) than others.

This observations exposes as absolute B.S. the ascetic interpretation: that we should simply work to remove all specific pains, and therefore abrakadabra we are at the height of our individual experience of pleasure.

In my humble opinion no human being of moderate intelligence, and certainly not Epicurus, would make such an assertion. Epicurus' assertion was the philosophic one that when you have 100% pleasure you cannot go to 101%, and that consitutes the limit of pleasure. Epicurus never said to discard your common sense and experience and think that for you, a life of filing your fingernails is the equivalent of a life of a physicist going from discovery to discovery.

In order to experience the height of pleasure possible TO YOU, you must act to make sure that your pleasures are those that you in fact feel to be the best possible combination of pleasures to you. Obsessing over identification and removal of every pain does nothing to optimize your best mix of activities and therefore pleasures.

And that's why I will always maintain that what people are doing by discussing "Absence of pain" without explaining this context is playing into the hands of Cicero and Plutarch and all the other enemies of Epicurus.

Godfrey I am aware that your post is largely in agreement with prior posts, so that's good and I should not stir the pot

However on this part I am curious, because I would think that it would probably be a generality that a physicist would likely consider discovery as generically more pleasurable than many other pleasures, or else one would not choose to be a physicist as an occupation?

Quote from Godfrey

Even so, often a creative discovery is the result of "scratching an itch," or problem solving to remove a pain. Additionally, the creative process itself is often pleasurable yet often tortuous. All to say that the predominance of pleasure over pain might be quantifiable in retrospect for a very specific instance, but that it's ridiculous to try to make a generic statement ranking the pleasure of making a discovery as higher or lower than any other specific pleasure.

Thank you for the direct link Kochie!