Under What Circumstances, If Any, Would An Epicurean Choose A Course That Produced (For Example) 98% Pleasure And 2% Pain Over A Course That Was 100% Pleasure and 0% Pain?

Separating out "pleasure in the abstract" into practical decisionmaking involving "specific pleasures" probably requires us to face a number of questions, including these:

1. Is it true that some pleasures are "more pleasurable" than others?
2. If this is NOT true, then
   1. 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"?
3. If this IS true, then
   1. Does that mean that some situations which involve 2% pain are more preferable that some situations which involve 0% pain?
   2. 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.

I would think that the following from Diogenes Laertius is relevant to this question of how Epicurus looks at conceptual terminology and how concepts can vary in degree but still be essentially the same.

Quote

[121] He will erect statues of others, but whether he had one himself or not, he would be indifferent. Only the Wise man could discourse rightly on music and poetry, but in practice he would not compose poems. One wise man is not wiser than another.

[122] They hold that faults are not all of equal gravity, that health is a blessing to some, but indifferent to others, that courage does not come by nature, but by a calculation of advantage.

So even though most of us would readily say that some actions are "more wise" than are others, Epicurus can still say that "to be wise" means that one wise man is not wiser than another.

Similarly most of us would probably agree that faults have a common unity in being faults, and yet clearly some faults are of more gravity - can cause more pain - than others.

Even the word "health," a term which we can see as easy to apply and of equal value for everyone, and for which there is a great disposition to erect as a goal of life, is a blessing to some but a matter of indifference to thers.

We should probably ask the same question about happiness. Can one happy man be more happy than another? Is happiness like wisdom, for which one wise many is not wiser than another, or is happiness like health, in which one healhy man can be healthier (or at least value it more) than another.

And of course I'd ask the same question about "ataraxia"? Can one many who is not disturbed be less disturbed than another?

I am writing all this to bring out what I think is an underappreciated point: That talking about happiness and pleasure in the abstract is clearly the best philosophical goal, but the analysis doesn't stop there. There are varying kinds (and degrees?) of happiness and varying kinds and degrees of pleasure . (Also at 122: "They say also that there are two ideas of happiness, complete happiness, such as belongs to a god, which admits of no increase, and the happiness which is concerned with the addition and subtraction of pleasures.")

What do we tell people about how to determine which pleasure is "greater" when we explain what Epicurus meant when he talked about the wise man at the banquet or the question of how to consider length of time in measuring pleasure?

I want to throw this into the mix as well:

It seems clear that the question of identifying a "heap" (the sorites issue) was known to Epicurus, and his statement that he would not know the good if you subtracted the various specific pleasures that he listed (in the saying recorded by Cicero) is a restatement of how "the good" does not exist apart from specific things which we find to be good, just as the heap does not exist apart from the grains that compose it.

In discussing heaps of sand, we can easily understand that one heap may contain more grains than another heap, and therefore be larger and recognizably be different. But is not the point that both heaps, no matter how much larger one may be than the other, are both "heaps?" In other words a heap does not become more of a heap, strictly speaking, by adding more grains of sand.

Happiness considered to be a life of pleasure is conceptually the same. Whether the life is 100% pleasure or 98% pleasure, or whether it lasts ten years or a hundred years, it remains a life of pleasure and therefore a happy life, and it can be legitimately said one life of happiness is not more of a life of happiness than another, even though the larger one would clearly be preferable if you have the choice between them.

I am not saying that this is the only way to explain why PD 19 says what it says (PD19. Infinite time contains no greater pleasure than limited time, if one measures, by reason, the limits of pleasure). However this is one plausible explanation, and any competing explanations have to be equally or more consistent with common sense reasoning and Epicurus' other sayings.