Discussion of the thread - Against Katastematic Supremacy - Pleasure Is A Unified Whole And Not A House Divided - Forum Editorial Policy

Quote from Pacatus

Some pains may be readily removable, some may not. Sometimes the distress caused by pain (or by focussing on the pain) can be relieved (or at least attenuated) by engaging in pleasurable activity (e.g. Epicurus on his deathbed).

Sort of similar to pleasures in that respect. There's always a context that is going to have great influence on when and how you address relieving a pan, just like how you address pursuing a pleasure..

To me that's another reason why "Maximize Net Pleasure" works as a statement of the target while "Minimize Total Pain" does not. The focus by which you triangulate to reach the goal is the "net" -- not prioritizing removal of all pain as the prime directive.

Dave, I appreciate your engaging on this; it was your posts yesterday that led to a discussion last night at our "meet and greet" and kept me awake last night thinking about it all.

Quote from DaveT

No, what I mean is that once you eliminate pain(s) you have pleasure automatically and immediately. You don't need to do anything to turn to pleasure. Now, take that short explanation and see how I don't care about any discussion of kinetic and katastematic pleasures. Epicurus is telling me quite clearly that absent pain, I have pleasure.

While this does some work toward clarification I don't think it goes far enough. I think it is fair to say what we are talking about is this, and the difficulties that arise from departing from it by suggesting that we should triangulate our decisions on the basis of any term other than pleasure, as stated here: "We are inquiring, then, what is the final and ultimate Good, which as all philosophers are agreed must be of such a nature as to be the End to which all other things are means, while it is not itself a means to anything else. This Epicurus finds in pleasure; pleasure he holds to be the Chief Good, pain the Chief Evil."

Your statement taken literally continues to say "once you eliminate pains..." as if the only pleasure you are really insisting on are whatever you happen to find available when pain is gone. Yes, because there are two feelings, when pain is gone there is pleasure. Yes, when pain is gone, then the pleasure that remains is pure or complete or unadulterated by pain. That is the most pure or complete or unadulterated it can be. But are you telling me that Epicurus was blind to the differences between pleasures that he discussed in PD09 as differing in duration, intensity, and parts of the body that are affected? Certainly he was not, and he was focusing his efforts in life on particular steps which he calculated would bring him the most pleasure (studying nature, building a school, gathering together teammates), all of which required significant costs in pain of exertion, making of enemies, etc. Had Epicurus held "I am not going to pursue those pleasures until I eliminate every pain from my life" we would not know about him in order to have this forum -- Epicurus would never have done anything beyond chasing pains to their minimum -- and like all of us, he never fully escaped them, as we know from his "poor health" and painful death.

So yes Epicurus is telling you that every time you eliminate pain what takes its place is "a" pleasure. But it would be the height of irresponsibility not to calculate your actions to make sure that your pleasures that you achieve in your circumstance are those of the longest duration, greatest intensity, and involved the most of the total mind and body that are possible to you. And part of the reason I say "height of irresponsibility" is that Epicurus has drilled into us that when we die we are gone forever, so that we need to take great care how we spend our time, which is just another way of saying that we should firmly direct the pleasures that we seek to achieve. And we do NOT wait until "all pains are gone" before we start making sure that our pleasures are as gratifying to us as possible.

Ok that's going to cover most of what I suspect you'll want to respond to, but I will touch on other aspects of the rest.

Quote from DaveT

I am in a state of pleasure which I can increase any way I choose within the hedonic calculus.

The issue there is being clear about "increase." From the perspective of "increase," when you truly have no pain it is not possible to increase pleasure from that point, because when there are only two options, and one of the options is gone, you are already completely full of the other option.

The problem that underlies much of this debate is that "completeness" does not say anything about duration, intensity, parts of the body affected, or anything else about the details of the specific pleasures under discussion. We don't experience "pleasure" as a concept any more than we experience color as a concept -- we experience specific pleasures and we see specific colors. The conceptual terms allow Epicurus and us to talk about categories, but those terms tell us NOTHING about the specifics within those categories, some of which are much more desirable than others. I am sure that statement will generate some pushback but Epicurus says all pleasures are desirable --- he never says all pleasures are EQUALLY desirable, and indeed it would be ridiculous to say so.

Quote from DaveT

Man, I love your processes, but please give me time to plumb your prior comments before supporting your position with more material. I can't keep up and feel like you are giving me too many things to think about before I can finish my conversation. me out of the water. Can we come back to this after you actually read my response?

Like I said I read your comments yesterday closely and I very much appreciate them because they are helping me focus in on the deepest issues.

The term "absence of pain" as applied to real life is another Rorschach test that can mean anything to anyone. It is useful in context when you are debating categories and abstractions, but it tells you NOTHING about the particular experience under discussion without reading much more into it.

Since pleasure and pain cannot coexist at the same space per PD03, any particular pleasure can also be called "absence of pain." But of course what we are reading into the term most of the time is to read it as complete absence of pain as a way of trying to figure out what could have been meant by using words like highest or best in the same sentence, as did Epicurus and Torquatus and presumably others as well. That's what's invaluable about On Ends because it shows this term being debated and used in multiple constructions, which shows that "absence of pain" and "pleasure" can be used identically but in multiple ways. "Pleasure" without a qualifier can be read to mean "pure pleasure" just like "yellow" can mean pure yellow. Same for "absence of pain" - it can refer to the goal, or any part of the experience along the way that is not painful.

The real issue is being clear about what the goal really means, as Torquatus did in saying "let us imagine..." and went into detail about the numerous and vivid pleasures as well as the freedom from the particular fears (pains) that he listed.

Torquatus moves back and forth between the general and the particular in order to explain their relationship. We have to do the same if we are going to avoid having "absence of pain" be interpreted as a prescription for retreat, resignation, and the rest.

Because that is exactly what is going on out there in the world by the legions of people who say "The world got Epicurus wrong -- he really wasn't into pleasure at all!"

Let me expand and double down on this:

Quote from Cassius

Epicurus says all pleasures are desirable --- he never says all pleasures are EQUALLY desirable, and indeed it would be ridiculous to say so.

So yes as far as I can tell Epicurus never says that all pleasures are equally desirable, any more than he says that all pains are equally undesirable. It would be ludicrious to take those positions, but the improper interpretation of absence of pain is leading directly to that result.

People are talking as if Epicurus were defining a particular experience, rather than a particular context, as "the best pleasure" or "the highest pleasure" and so they are demoting all other analysis of how to rank pleasures and pains as if to do so were meaningless. When you imply that the single goal is "absence of pain" then you are start talking as if it makes no difference which pleaures take the place of the pain that they displace, which again I will say is so nonsensical that the important texts that survive make no mention of such a counterintuitive concept.

And yet today all you hear is that the most minimal pleasures are all we should care about, even though Epicurus specifically said something entirely different. We do not seek to be free to walk away from pleasures whenever we like not that we may at all times enjoy but a few things, but that so that we won't feel painful longing if circumstances require that we go without them.

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 this very kind of discussion shows that Epicurus was very well aware that all pleasures are not exactly the same and totally interchangeable.

Quote from DaveT

... Now, take that short explanation and see how I don't care about any discussion of kinetic and katastematic pleasures. Epicurus is telling me quite clearly that absent pain, I have pleasure.

Dave, the further I read into Arenson's book the more i would encourage the part I underlined. I'm not disagreeing with what you are saying about your more practical approach - I am saying that i don't think you are going far enough.

Arenson is building the case (with many of the same cites as Nikolsky and Gosling & Taylor) that the kinetic/katastematic issue is focused on responding to arguments that health is not a pleasure, that replenishment pleasures have nothing to do with "the good," and that what Epicurus was doing was rejecting that argument and saying that indeed replenishment and active pleasures of any kind are definitely in the category of "good," regardless of whether they are "becoming" or "being."

I'm one of those people who find that entire argument singularly uninteresting and unpersuasive, and I am willing to dig into it only because I see that it has been use for what i consider to be very damaging purposes.

So I agree that not worrying too much about kinetic vs katastemtatic is exactly the right approach for most people.

But it's also exactly the right approach in regard to worrying about absence of pain.

It's total BS to build a theory on thinking that Epicurus did not know the difference between bread and water vs steak and wine, and that he would not prefer the latter absent some particular circumstance that would make choice of the latter lead eventually to more pain than pleasure.

And of course Epicurus would not suggest that the bare description of "absence of pain" would constitue the ultimate goal of life. Sensory deprivation may have some enjoyable short-term aspects in certain circumstances, but to assert that sensory depriivation is the ultimate best human experience is totally absurd -- and therefore I do not think he would have meant anything absurd.

"Absence of Pain" is every bit as tied to responding to the arguments about process vs state and being vs becoming that Plato and Aristotle were wrestling with as is the kinetic/katastematic distinction. "Absence of pain" supplies the "state of being" that can be thrown in the of the Platonists and others who insist that only the "complete" can be the highest good.

If you're into logic puzzles the kinetic and katastematic pleasure distinctions, and "total absence of pain" are great logical solutions to tricky questions. but they have only the most abstract of connections to real life decisions.

And the reason I am reacting against your formulations so far is that your suggestion that we should first eliminate pain and only afterwards concern ourselves with real-world mental and bodily pleasures turns the true priority on its head.

The point of PD04 is to emphasize the point that we should NOT obsess about pain or make it the focus of our lives, because pain is ultimately manageable - it can be terminated by death if it gets too severe, and when it is not so severe we can almost always find ways to experience offsetting pleasures that outweigh those pains.

All of which is to repeat that the common sense application of pleasure being the supreme good and always balancing pleasures against pain, with the goal of greatest net pleasure, are the key to be practical application of the philosophy. Ideas like kinetic and katastematic and "absence of pain" are fine for those who want to debate the logical formulas, but they absolutely should not be used to corrupt the common sense balancing of pleasures and pains that every infant or animal understands before they become corrupted through having to deal with Platonism and Stoicism and the rest.

NOTE: I spent a long time composing this so it does not reflect any posts by Dave or others made after #45. I'll come back to those.

Thank you Patrikios - that's what I get for writing at 2:00 AM.

Here's what i typed:

Quote

And given that what we are doing is trying to articulate a clear philosophy to help people live better, you are honestly comfortable telling people that their overriding objective in life should be "absence of pain?"

For anyone to answery "yes"to that question - remember: You would not be this case arguing that what some would variously describe as "meditation" or "mimicing a a corpse" is pleasurable or a pleasure. What the sources are saying is that absence of pain is the limit of pleasure, or the highest pleasure, or the greatest pleasure. Torquatus' thought experiment to imaging the man surrounded by numerous and vivid pleasures and the rest clearly to me meet that test. You are saying that your single "absence of pain" description exceeds what Torquatus described?

And here's the untangled version:

Quote

And given that what we are doing is trying to articulate a clear philosophy to help people live better, you are honestly comfortable telling people that their overriding objective in life should be "absence of pain?"

For anyone to answer "yes"to that question - remember: You would not be arguing that what some would variously describe as "meditation" or "mimicing a a corpse" is pleasurable or a pleasure. What the sources are saying is that absence of pain is the limit of pleasure, or the highest pleasure, or the greatest pleasure. Torquatus' thought experiment to imaging the man surrounded by numerous and vivid pleasures and the rest clearly to me meet that test. You are saying that your single "absence of pain" description exceeds what Torquatus described?

The point I was trying to make is that we're not debating whether meditation-like experiences are pleasurable. I'll grant for the sake of argument that they can be or are. What we are debating is what is the highest / greatest / best pleasure, meaning a target that is so great that it consistutes the goal towards which we aim everything in life. To understand meditation-like experiences in that way - as "the greatest pleasure" or "the supreme good" or "the goal toward which all our actions are aimed" is simply not a plausible argument.

And to carry the point further:

It's not a plausible argument to view the term "absence of pain" as meaning "a meditation like" or "sensory-deprived" experience. If it doesn't mean that, then it means something else. And that something else is not a particular "experience" at all. The reason the term is so abstract is that it was developed in the context of answering the the question "What is the good?" and the people who were debating that had accepted the premise that "the good" cannot be something that changes - fluctuates - at all. From their point of view, anything that is truly good has to be unchanging

If you're Epicurus, you have the option of saying "You're full of bull to say that the good has to be perfect and complete." And his entire physics is based on atoms constantly moving through the void and leading to constant change, so Epicurus' physics is in fact a rejection of that whole "perfection" viewpoint.

More importantly, as Epicurus argued it is not even appropriate to request a logical defense of pleasure. Torquatus starts off by repeating that Epicurus emphasized it is not necessary to look further than the senses to determine that pleasure is to be chosen and pain is to be avoided.

Here i think there is a parallel with Velleius as to gods. Velleius says that we can stop at the basics, but then he tells Cicero that the mind strives for more - to discover the "form of god":

Quote

“If we sought to attain nothing else beside piety in worshipping the gods and freedom from superstition, what has been said had sufficed; since the exalted nature of the gods, being both eternal and supremely blessed, would receive man's pious worship (for what is highest commands the reverence that is its due); and furthermore all fear of the divine Power or divine anger would have been banished (since it is understood that anger and favor alike are excluded from the nature of a being at once blessed and immortal, and that these being eliminated we are menaced by no fears in regard to the powers above). But the mind strives to strengthen this belief by trying to discover the form of god, the mode of his activity, and the operation of his intelligence.

So how do you address the Platonic argument about pleasure fits into the "form" of the good and whether the good has to be "complete" or in the category of unchangeable "being"?

You can't accept the Platonic argument that all pleasure is tied to lack or pain or weakness, and that pleasure is nothing more than a medicine for pain, because that obviously does place it in an inferior status. The highest possible life cannot possibly be identified with nothing more than scurrying around to address annoyances like playing a whac-a-mole game.

You tell Platonists that they are wrong to think that pleasure is always tied to lack or weakness. Yes, the pleasures that derive from relieving pain or lack, such as thirst, are subject to change and fluctuation. But many pleasures do not stem from pain or lack at all. Classic examples include smelling roses or listening to music, but there are many many more examples.

And BOTH types of pleasure are desirable - they are not enemies of each other. The pleasures which relieve pain or lack are not inferior to or the enemy of the pleasures which you were not motivated by pain to pursue. What is common about all types of pleasure is that we find them agreeable. Pleasures feel good. So the correct logical perspective about what is the supreme good is NOT going to be found in how long they last or whether they are immortal.

What I read the whole anti-tranquilist line of argument to be moving toward (from Gosling and Taylor to Nikolsky to Austin's footnote and now to Arenson) is that the whole discussion arises from Epicurus' decision to provide a logical argument as to whether Pleasure can qualify as the supreme good. If you're like an infant or an animal or you're otherwise uncorrupted - if you are like "Hedea" in "A Few Days In Athens" - then you don't need to know the intellectual underpinnings of Pleasure as the good at all. You know it just like you know that snow is white and honey is sweet.

But if you want to play on Plato's turf and debate the issue logically, then you have to discuss the many types of pleasure (including kinetic and katastematic) and that since there are only two feelings any experience or state in which pain is absent equals pleasure.

The hazard of debating the logic of gods is that you get into sidetracks about whether gods speak Greek or Latin. The hazard of debating the logic of pleasure is that you get sidetracked into thinking that "absence of pain" means something outside the logical context in which it was developed.

And that's exactly what has been used by Epicurean philosophy's enemies to discredit it. Epicurean views of gods has been reduced to laughing about whether the gods speak Greek. Epicurean views of pleasure have been reduced to smiling about "absence of pain" as if it meant anything other than pleasure.

Quote from DaveT

Yes and no. You understand the part about eliminating pain. Except once you experience pleasure , you are mistaken in the second part of your restatement. I am in even inferring obliquely that whatever you find available after the pain is gone.

Dave I am the world's worst at dropping "nots." Was this suppose to be "I am not even inferring"..... Or Iam i just misreading that sentence?

Quote from DaveT

It is like he might have said: "Once you deal with pain, I trust you to carry on using Prudence, to find more pleasures in this lifetime of yours."

On this point, I don't think there's a general Epicurean rule that says. "First, deal with pain." Certainly not "First, deal with all pain." Now there clearly is a hierarchy for teaching about the nature of the universe (no supernatural gods; true nature of divinity; no life after death; pain can be defeated). But what i want to be clear about is that after you have the framework in your mind you don't then go around on a search and destroy mission after pain - you look at it from the point of view of pursuing pleasure. Maybe that's "glass is half full or half empty" territory, but I think the positive perspective is essential.

Quote from DaveT

I can't agree with this "If--then" proposition. Pleasure and pain can exist in the same space, if you meant to say simultaneously. Is that even arguable?

And so say any particular pleasure can be called "absence of pain" is true on its face, but I don't know who would say such a thing. I don't know where ancient Epicureans would have said it.

A human being can experience many things at once, and so pleasure and pain can be felt in different parts of the experience at the same time. But in regard to the SAME part of the experience, your big toe either feels pleasure or pain, not both, and logically the two conditions are separate and distinct in the same way that body and space are logically distinct. This is a large part of the argument of Sedley's "inferential Foundations of Epicurean Ethics" and the many citations in that. As stated in PD03 "... Wherever pleasure is present, as long as it is there, there is neither pain of body, nor of mind, nor of both at once."

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Quote from Cassius

The point of PD04 is to emphasize the point that we should NOT obsess about pain

Quote from DaveT

Obsess? That is an emotionally charged word. Certainly PD04 can be read to infer that, but so what?

Here by reference to obsess is not aimed at you or anyone here, but it's importing my feelings about discussion of Epicurus outside this forum. Probably not necessary for me to name names in that regard other than pointing to my collection of "world's worst" Epicurus videos.