Separating out "pleasure in the abstract" into practical decisionmaking involving "specific pleasures" probably requires us to face a number of questions, including these:
- Is it true that some pleasures are "more pleasurable" than others?
- If this is NOT true, then
- is it appropriate to stop and say the answer to the question is "Never," because pleasures are totally interchangeable and even the "simplest pleasures" are just as pleasurable as "complex pleasures"?
- If this IS true, then
- Does that mean that some situations which involve 2% pain are more preferable that some situations which involve 0% pain?
- What situations would those be? How would we describe the factors that would have to be weighed?
My own view is that there are clearly situations where the intensity or duration or parts of the body affected would justify choosing a course of action that produced 98% pleasure and 2% pain would be preferable to a situation that involved pleasures that were "lesser" but still involved 100% of total experience.
But I also have the impression that many people who study Epicurus will say that "100% pleasure is always better."
How would we untangle these questions? This is just another way of asking a question that I don't think modern discussion of Epicurus addresses very clearly, but which I think must be addressed for the philosophy to make sense. I feel sure the ancient Epicureans would have had a quick answer to this.