Posts by Cassius

Quote from Don

From my perspective, Epicurus was able to "offset" his physical pain with the "kinetic" pleasure of memories precisely because he had cultivated his katastematic pleasure of a mind free from anxiety and trouble.

Can someone who fears the gods not also offset pleasure against physical pain?

Quote from Don

If he had been worried about what happens after he dies, would the gods punish him for some transgression, would be become a shade in the underworld... He wouldn't have been able to find joy in memories of past times with friends.

Basically I'd repeat the same question. Can't Catholics (to take one example) not find joy in memories of past times and friends? (I suspect @Eoghan will have a comment there! )

Quote from Don

His body was not free from pain or working effortlessly and without struggle or suffering (which I think is a better way to think of aponia rather than just "freedom from pain"), but he could still have ataraxia. Ataraxia and aponia do not arise together. You can have one without the other.

I think this is an interesting discussion. I can see how it is possible to talk about "ataraxia" and "aponia" productively even without being an ancient Greek, but I can also see that these words can get in the way of a more practical understanding. Isn't the bottom line that life comes down to a practical combination of mental and physical pleasures and pains, and we all do our best from moment to moment to try to make sure the pleasures predominate over the pains?

If those words would appear to lead to the conclusion that Catholics can't experience joy in thinking about their friends, or that they can't otherwise offset pleasures against pains, then I would think many people would think such an argument would be contrary to common experience.

Now I think we all agree that such people won't be as fully successful in offsetting pleasures against pains, because they won't be able to completely get rid of fear of death or of the gods. But if that's the issue why don't we just say so in plain English?

[Again, the context here is to help with a practical view of how to offset pleasures against pains, as against those commentators who say that Epicurus held that "katastematic" pleasure is the real goal of life, the only kind of pleasure even worth having, and the very reason for which kinetic pleasures even exist.]

We've discussed this many times before, but it seems to me today that this is worth emphasizing, and maybe having a thread on "Tips on offsetting pleasures against pains."

On Epicurus' last day, when he was experiencing sharp bodily pain from his kidneys, it was "the joy in his heart" that he stated he was offsetting against that pain.

Quote from Epicurus Letter to Idomeneus

[22] When he was on the point of death he wrote the following letter to Idomeneus: ‘On this truly happy day of my life, as I am at the point of death, I write this to you. The disease in my bladder and stomach are pursuing their course, lacking nothing of their natural severity: but against all this is the joy in my heart at the recollection of my conversations with you. Do you, as I might expect from your devotion from boyhood to me and to philosophy, take good care of the children of Metrodorus.’ Such then was his will.

Under most interpretations of categorizing pleasures, "joy of heart" is considered to be an "active" or "kinetic" pleasure:

Quote from Diogenes Laertius

And Epicurus in the work on Choice speaks as follows: ‘Freedom from trouble in the mind and from pain in the body are static pleasures, but Joy and exultation are considered as active pleasures involving motion. '

Go many places on the internet and in modern books and you'll find that they say that Epicurus held "static" or "katatestematic" pleasure to be the ultimate goal. But if we focus on what Epicurus himself did when the chips were down and he was in great pain and on the edge of death, it was the value of "active pleasures involving motion," even if only the active motion of his mind in summoning up the joy from memory, to which he looked for comfort in the face of the worst pains.

Epicurus didn't say to himself, as far as we know, "My kidney is in terrible shape, but boy my liver has no pain at all!" He didn't say, "My kidney is in terrible shape, but my mind is 'healthy.'" Both of those would be legitimate observations given the sweeping view of "pleasure" as Epicurus seems to have defined it, but it's worth noting which pleasures he picked out for comfort in that letter to Idomeneus.

So if we were to work on developing tips for what to look to in bad times, certainly "it is sweet" to look upon the troubles of others and see that you are not suffering from them," and that's a comfort to be taken in bad times too. But even there, does not that constitute a "motion" of the mind?

At any rate I think we can resolve all these questions in a very satisfactory way, but the next time we read someone saying that kinetic pleasures exist only for the sake of katatestematic ones, with the implication that we would be better off doing away with all "kinetics" whatsoever, I think we can look to the "Epicurus' last day" example for the very great value of "kinetic" pleasures.

Would we indeed find that it is not always, but frequently the kinetic pleasures to which we reach in making sure that we can find a predominance of pleasure over pain? Maybe it's possible to list out types of situations where looking to one type of pleasure is more useful than others, and that might be a handy way of sorting things out for future reference.

Note: There's some good material in this thread, but it's less useful now as some key posts no longer there.

Thanks for the further explanation Nate and I should not have painted with so broad a brush as to include your wife's art in this thread. You are absolutely right that AI / computers will never be able to replace true creativity, in music or in art, and that when we're really serious about getting something creative done we'll never be well advised to try to let a computer do it. For someone like me even the most expensive graphic or video program is a waste of time, because i have no artistic ability to make use of it. AI has a place, but it's definitely never going to take over the place of true creativity.

Thanks for posting!

Just time for two comments for now:

- He put a lot of effort into that video. Too bad he didn't find a picture of Epicurus to use, and instead used that bald sketch that has no resemblance to Epicurus whatsoever

- I do think his timeline illustration comparing the time after death to the time before birth was well done. That little segment is well worth imitation.!

Quote from Joshua

The problem is unsolvable in Hume's terms, not just for Epicurus but for everyone. There's nothing wrong with that--I actually think we're better off without absolute oughts, which is the same thing as saying that we're better off without absolute morality. If God commands you to sacrifice your firstborn, even allowing a God there is no absolute morality to say that you should follow his whims.

Quote from Joshua

Why should we avoid things that cause pain? You might say, because Nature has given us pain a guide. Okay, why should we follow Nature? Because that is the surest road to the life of happiness. Okay, why should we pursue happiness? Because the happy life is the best of all possible lives. Okay, why do we want to live the best life? Because it's the most pleasant life. Why do we want the most pleasant life? Because it's the best life. Why--

--because I said so!

The problem is unsolvable in Hume's terms, not just for Epicurus but for everyone. There's nothing wrong with that--I actually think we're better off without absolute oughts, which is the same thing as saying that we're better off without absolute morality. If God commands you to sacrifice your firstborn, even allowing a God there is no absolute morality to say that you should follow his whims.

I think this is where I am personally happy to part ways with Hume, but before I travel down that road, the first question I always try to ask is "What did Epicurus think?" Not because I am automatically going to defer to Epicurus, but I am always extremely curious to know his position before I decide whether I am agreeing with it or not. I "think" that I can predict that Epicurus would part company with Hume, but I would be happy to entertain any suggestions that he would not.

But back to the personal part:

I personally am willing to go with an authority on something, like I go with a brain surgeon when I need brain surgery, IF I can first check out the thing in which I am placing my confidence and if I decide that it is worthy of confidence. In the case of "Nature" as a guide I tend to see Hume's infinite regression of "why's" as akin to Democritus' apparent infinite regression to "nothing truly exists except matter and void" and to me that way lies nihilism and despair and the abyss. [Thanks to the Sedley article which describes it better than I can] it appears to me that Epicurus rejected Democritus' radical atomic reductionism, and I am thinking he would reject Hume's reductionism for analogous reasons. At some point you have to make a practical decision to "live," and that point is where we "trust the senses," which amounts to "trusting what Nature gave to us" for survival.

Quote from David Sedley, Epicurus' Refutation of Determinism, p 33

In confirmation of this, we can return to the close and apparently conscious parallelism between Epicurus' treatments of determinism and scepticism. The sceptics refuted in Lucretius IV must be, or prominently include, those fourth-century Detilocriteans like Metrodorus of Chios, Anaxarchus, and even Epicurus' own reviled teacher Nausiphanes, who had played up the sceptical side of Democritus' thought, and against whom Epicurus was eager to marshal the positive empiricist arguments which Democritus had also bequeathed.39 This scepticism was the result of what I shall call reductionist atomism. Because phenomenal objects and properties seemed to reduce to mere configurations of atoms and void, Democritus was inclined to suppose that the atoms and void were real while the phenomenal objects and properties were no more than arbitrary constructions placed upon them by human cognitive organs. In his more extreme moods Democritus was even inclined to doubt the power of human judgment, since judgment was itself no more than a realignment of atoms in the mind XXX. Epicurus' response to this is perhaps the least appreciated aspect of his thought. It was to reject reductionist atomism. Almost uniquely among Greek philosophers he arrived at what is nowadays the unreflective assumption of almost anyone with a smattering of science, that there are truths at the microscopic level of elementary particles, and further very different truths at the phenomenal level; that the former must be capable of explaining the latter; but that neither level of description has a monopoly of truth. (The truth that sugar is sweet is not straightforwardly reducible to the truth that it has such and such a molecular structure, even though the latter truth may be required in order to explain the former). By establishing that cognitive scepticism, the direct outcome of reductionist atomism, is self-refuting and untenable in practice, Epicurus justifies his non-reductionist alternative, according to which sensations are true and there are therefore bona fide truths at the phenomenal level accessible through them. The same will apply to the XXX, which Epicurus also held to be veridical. Pleasure, for example, is a direct datum of experience. It is commonly assumed that Epicurus must have equated pleasure with such and such a kind of movement of soul atoms; but although he will have taken it to have some explanation at the atomic level, I know of no evidence that he, any more than most moral philosophers or psychologists, would have held that an adequate analysis of it could be found at that level. Physics are strikingly absent from Epicurus' ethical writings, and it is curious that interpreters are so much readier to import them there than they are when it comes to the moral philosophy of Plato or Aristotle.

(I haven't gone back and got those pesky Greek letters in my computer yet, thus the "XXX's" )

TauPhi that is a good question and a good example of the benefit of going through "On Ends" to bring out these issues in articulating central ideas.

Bryan -- So you can't just say for example: "Take this sentence: "Death is Nothing To Us" and display it in the style of a golden plaque on a museum wall" ?

Yes ---- The identification of the supreme good is not the same issue as knowing how to pursue and achieve it, and that is why Epicurus puts such a high premium on the practical value of reason and prudence. They don't identify the good for us, Nature does that, but they can tell us how to pursue it. Not even animals (at least the intelligent ones) blindly pursue all immediate pleasure and avoid all immediate pain. Being "blinded by desire" in Torquatus' words is a good turn of phrase. We use the senses to achieve pleasure and avoid pain, but it's the separate faculty of feeling that tells us what is painful or pleasing. The intelligence requires reason and judgment, the feelings don't involve reason or judgment and they are (like the senses) never "wrong" or "right."

Quote from Letter to Menoeceus

[129] And for this cause we call pleasure the beginning and end of the blessed life. For we recognize pleasure as the first good innate in us, and from pleasure we begin every act of choice and avoidance, and to pleasure we return again, using the feeling as the standard by which we judge every good. And since pleasure is the first good and natural to us, for this very reason we do not choose every pleasure, but sometimes we pass over many pleasures, when greater discomfort accrues to us as the result of them: and similarly we think many pains better than pleasures, since a greater pleasure comes to us when we have endured pains for a long time. Every pleasure then because of its natural kinship to us is good, yet not every pleasure is to be chosen: even as every pain also is an evil, yet not all are always of a nature to be avoided. [130] Yet by a scale of comparison and by the consideration of advantages and disadvantages we must form our judgment on all these matters. For the good on certain occasions we treat as bad, and conversely the bad as good.

Quote from Cicero / Torquatus On Ends Book One

[32] X. ... Surely no one recoils from or dislikes or avoids pleasure in itself because it is pleasure, but because great pains come upon those who do not know how to follow pleasure rationally. Nor again is there any one who loves or pursues or wishes to win pain on its own account, merely because it is pain, but rather because circumstances sometimes occur which compel him to seek some great pleasure at the cost of exertion and pain. To come down to petty details, who among us ever undertakes any toilsome bodily exercise, except in the hope of gaining some advantage from it? Who again would have any right to reproach either a man who desires to be surrounded by pleasure unaccompanied by any annoyance, or another man who shrinks from any pain which is not productive of pleasure? [33] But in truth we do blame and deem most deserving of righteous hatred the men who, enervated and depraved by the fascination of momentary pleasures, do not foresee the pains and troubles which are sure to befall them, because they are blinded by desire, and in the same error are involved those who prove traitors to their duties through effeminacy of spirit, I mean because they shun exertions and trouble. Now it is easy and simple to mark the difference between these cases. For at our seasons of ease, when we have untrammeled freedom of choice, and when nothing debars us from the power of following the course that pleases us best, then pleasure is wholly a matter for our selection and pain for our rejection. On certain occasions however either through the inevitable call of duty or through stress of circumstances, it will often come to pass that we must put pleasures from us and must make no protest against annoyance. So in such cases the principle of selection adopted by the wise man is that he should either by refusing certain pleasures attain to other and greater pleasures or by enduring pains should ward off pains still more severe.

In addition to the new graphics that Nate's wife has been producing, I see that Bryan has produced some new work that apparently also uses new technology.

When I combine my reaction to these new images with Kalosyni's recent efforts towards "motivational posters" and "pamphlets" it seems like we ought to be able to combine the two to produce striking presentations not only of persons but also illustrations of ideas.

Meaning: Can we tell the generators to combine the text of striking quotes with a striking background or scene?

In order to get started we need some discussion of what tools are available, how to access them, and how to use them.

Bryan or others, can you let us know what you are finding in the "tools" department?

Here's one list of tools but we need to save each other time by networking what we are finding to be best:

75 AI Powered Design Tools to Boost Your Productivity in 2023

It's our turn to aim to make one of the most valuable AI design tools to benefit you and your creative process.

dirtybarn.com

And joining the issue of Hume's "is - ought" question to this distinction, it seems to be that we have Epicurus saying that Nature has given us one faculty (feeling / pathe) by which to determine what to choose and what to avoid, and there is no question but that what "is" given (feeling /pathe) clearly "ought" to be followed.

And the question is not "whether" to follow it, but "how" to follow it successfully.

It sounds to me like Epicurus would not be very impressed with Hume's supposed problem, or at the very least he would say it has a very direct answer. The issue is not whether to comply with our natural faculties, but how to assess theories that there are considerations that trump our natural faculties (thereby elevating "Nature" over "logic" and "supernatural religion")

Other views on that?

So then it would be useful to look at the Latin employed by Cicero writing for Torquatus and Cicero writing for himself to see if this distinction is preserved.

I've only just started working with this podcast, but I want to point out an issue that comes up very near the beginning that we did not go into very far:

Cicero says the following near the beginning of Section XII. I am underlining the part I want to highlight:

Quote from Cicero On Ends Book 2 - Cicero Addressing Torquatus

XII. .... Now as to his statement that pleasure is decided by the senses themselves to be good, and pain to be evil, he allows more authority to the senses than our laws grant to us when we act as judges in private suits. For we are unable to decide anything, except that which falls within our jurisdiction. In this matter judges often uselessly add, in giving their decision, the words if a thing falls within my jurisdiction; since if the affair was not within their jurisdiction, the decision is none the more valid for the omission of the words. On what do the senses decide? On sweet and bitter, smooth and rough, nearness and distance, rest and motion, the rectangular form and the circular. Reason then will declare an unbiased opinion, aided first by the knowledge of all things human and divine, which may justly be called wisdom, then by the association of the virtues, which reason has appointed to be rulers over all things, you to be the attendants and handmaidens of the pleasures; truly then the opinion of all these will in the first place declare concerning pleasure that there is no chance for her, I will not say to occupy alone the throne of the supreme good, but none even for her to occupy it with morality in the way described. As to freedom from pain their opinion will be the same.

This would apparently be in partial response to what Torquatus has said previously:

Quote from Cicero On Ends Book 1 - Torquatus Addressing Cicero

[30] Every creature, as soon as it is born, seeks after pleasure and delights therein as in its supreme good, while it recoils from pain as its supreme evil, and banishes that, so far as it can, from its own presence, and this it does while still uncorrupted, and while nature herself prompts unbiased and unaffected decisions. So he says we need no reasoning or debate to shew why pleasure is matter for desire, pain for aversion. These facts he thinks are simply perceived, just as the fact that fire is hot, snow is white, and honey sweet, no one of which facts are we bound to support by elaborate arguments; it is enough merely to draw attention to the fact; and there is a difference between proof and formal argument on the one hand and a slight hint and direction of the attention on the other; the one process reveals to us mysteries and things under a veil, so to speak; the other enables us to pronounce upon patent and evident facts. Moreover, seeing that if you deprive a man of his senses there is nothing left to him, it is inevitable that nature herself should be the arbiter of what is in accord with or opposed to nature. Now what facts does she grasp or with what facts is her decision to seek or avoid any particular thing concerned, unless the facts of pleasure and pain?

[31] There are however some of our own school, who want to state these principles with greater refinement, and who say that it is not enough to leave the question of good or evil to the decision of sense, but that thought and reasoning also enable us to understand both that pleasure in itself is matter for desire and that pain is in itself matter for aversion. So they say that there lies in our minds a kind of natural and inbred conception leading us to feel that the one thing is t for us to seek, the other to reject.

The issue I am raising is that of terminology as to the three legs of the Epicurean canon: When Epicurus refers to "the senses" is he referring only to the five (seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling), or does "the senses" also include "the feeling of pleasure and pain" and "the prolepsis" as well?

Torquatus has said that pleasure and pain are "perceived" (Reid's word) directly, but does he mean that seeing and hearing and the rest tell us directly that something is pleasurable or painful, or is that a feeling that is added on by the separate faculty of pleasure and pain?

This becomes important in addressing Cicero's objection that the senses "do not have jurisdiction" to pass on what is the ultimate good.

Where does the "jurisdiction" really lie in Epicurean terms?

Are pleasure and pain perceived directly by seeing / hearing / touching / tasting / smelling?

Or do those senses report truly whatever it is that they report, and then a separate faculty (the feeling of pleasure and pain) passes "judgment" or "feeling" on whether it is painful or pleasurable?

If I recall Dewitt argues that "the five senses" and "the feeling of pleasure and pain are independent faculties but operate concurrently.

Anyone have a different take on that?

Does care need to be taken to state that pleasure and pain need to be "felt" (or some other word) rather than "sensed"?

This also bears on the topic we examine throughout the podcast as we look at whether "reason" is the ultimate arbiter of the supreme good, or whether we simply look to what is present in nature as the arbiter (and that nature gives us only the feeling of pleasure and pain as arbiter) of the supreme good.

In this episode we address Cicero's objection that the senses do not have the "jurisdiction" to pass on what is the supreme good, and that reason requires that virtue be identified with the supreme good, perhaps by itself and perhaps combined with "thought and action," which are identified by Ciceros preferred philosophers as the primary natural endowments of man.

Related to this issue is the entire question of the legitimacy of looking at Nature to answer the question of what is the supreme good, and one thing we mention in the Episode is Hume's "is -ought" criticism of certain moral arguments. We don't get into that particularly far, but here is a reference.

Is–ought problem - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Welcome to Episode 203 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the only complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts, and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where you will find a discussion thread for each of our podcast episodes and many other topics.

This week we continue our discussion of Book Two of Cicero's On Ends, which are largely devoted Cicero's attack on Epicurean Philosophy. "On Ends" contains important criticisms of Epicurus that have set the tone for standard analysis of his philosophy for the last 2000 years. Going through this book gives us the opportunity to review those attacks, take them apart, and respond to them as an ancient Epicurean might have done, and much more fully than Cicero allowed Torquatus, his Epicurean spokesman, to do.

Follow along with us here: Cicero's On Ends - Complete Reid Edition. Check any typos or other questions against the original PDF which can be found here.

This week we work through Section XII, starting roughly here:

XII ... Now as to his statement that pleasure is decided by the senses themselves to be good, and pain to be evil, he allows more authority to the senses than our laws grant to us when we act as judges in private suits. For we are unable to decide anything, except that which falls within our jurisdiction. In this matter judges often uselessly add, in giving their decision, the words if a thing falls within my jurisdiction; since if the affair was not within their jurisdiction, the decision is none the more valid for the omission of the words. On what do the senses decide? On sweet and bitter, smooth and rough, nearness and distance, rest and motion, the rectangular form and the circular. Reason then will declare an unbiased opinion, aided first by the knowledge of all things human and divine, which may justly be called wisdom, then by the association of the virtues, which reason has appointed to be rulers over all things, you to be the attendants and handmaidens of the pleasures; truly then the opinion of all these will in the first place declare concerning pleasure that there is no chance for her, I will not say to occupy alone the throne of the supreme good, but none even for her to occupy it with morality in the way described. As to freedom from pain their opinion will be the same.

• November 29, 2023 - Agenda - Wednesday Night Zoom - VS 48 & 49
• Please join us. (Post here in this thread if you have never attended one of these sessions, as we do have a vetting process for new participants.)
• Vatican Sayings 48 and 49
  • VS48. We must try to make the end of the journey better than the beginning, as long as we are journeying; but when we come to the end, we must be happy and content.
  • VS49. It is impossible for someone to dispel his fears about the most important matters if he does not know the Nature of the universe, but still gives some credence to myths. So, without the study of Nature, there is no enjoyment of pure pleasure.
• Old Matters from last week
• First Monday of Month Upcoming For New Members.
• New Matters for Agenda this week or next week.

A great collection for Thanksgiving!

We should probably develop a complete Thanksgiving list, to which we could add some Lucretius no doubt as well.

I apologize to everyone that my typing lately is so awful:

of course that was supposed to be "meals"

If anyone sees me type someone that seemingly makes no sense don't hesitate to let me know.

Of course that presumes you can separate out my posts that "make no sense" from those that do!

Thanksgiving-appropriate philosophy as we partake in holiday meals:

A good time to think about how "he who, not thirsty himself, mixes mead for another, and he who, being thirsty, drinks the mead, are in just the same state of pleasure:"

While we are getting it filtered through a negative-sounding Cicero, sounds to me like this example was used to emphasize the viewpoint that the person who -- "thirsty himself" -- meaning not in pain, falls within the definition of pleasure just as much as the person who chases away the pain of thirst by drinking!

This variation does not stress the host and the guest being "totally without pain," but that might be implied too from the fact that no other aspect of their experience is mentioned.

So either way, from (1) the "whole person totally without pain" perspective (if we assume that) or (2) from the "discrete experience" perspective (that the experience of drinking while thirsty falls under the same label of "pleasure" as the person who is not thirsty at all) the point is being driven home that "absence of pain" can mean either stimulation or simply normal life without pain.

Good to hear from you Cleveland Oakie and Happy Thanksgiving to you too!

Quote from waterholic

This also explains the statement that pleasure and pain cannot be mixed. Additionally, this removes the uneasy breakdown of "types of pleasure". There are no types of pleasure, there are different activities and stimuli, each contributing "atomic units" of pleasure and pain.

Yes I can see that would be one of the implications - a further terminology change in the meaning of "pleasure" -- especially if pleasure includes "health" and "normality" and everything that is not a pain unit.

We presumably will run into the issues that the Utilitarians did as to dolors etc, but I have not read into that well enough to comment. Probably that's relevant and needs to be included eventually. I don't even know if they considered that to be problematic themselves, or only their enemies did. I can see how "greatest good for the greatest number" fails because these units aren't transferable in measure from person to person.

But as a model of how a SINGLE person can view the issue within themselves, I've never really seen the big problem. As long as you keep firmly focused on how subjective the issue is, and how the same acitivity can change from pleasure to pain and back by time, place, etc. then I think the analysis is helpful.

What it REALLY needs to help with is making clear that:

1. You don't have to get rid of ALL pain in order to experience ANY pleasure
2. There's nothing "magic" that happens when you move from 99.9% to 100% -- 100% is not a different transcendent "type" of pleasure different from 99.9%. But's that's the inference that I think far too many people are drawing from "absence of pain is the height of pleasure." The correct implications need to be clearly separated from the incorrect implications.