Episode 310 of the Lucretius Today Podcast is now available. This week our episode is entitled: "Neither Happiness Nor Virtue Are Binary States"
Joshua also quotes in this episode from Game of Thrones. I have not watched that so I am coming up dry looking for a video clip of the scene, but here is a link to the text:
Quotes by Davos
Melisandre: Are you a good man, Davos Seaworth?
Davos: I am a man. I am kind to my wife, but I have known other women. I have tried to be a father to my sons, to help make them a place in this world. Aye, I've broken laws, but I never felt evil until tonight. I would say my parts are mixed, m'lady. Good and bad.
Melisandre: A grey man. Neither white nor black, but partaking of both. Is that what you are, Ser Davos?
Davos: What if I am? It seems to me that most men are grey.Melisandre: If half of an onion is black with rot, it is a rotten onion. A man is good, or he is evil.[11]
—Melisandre and Davos
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We're going to improve that and make it easier to find. For the time being it is par of the "Map" box in the right sidebar if you are on a wide screen, or near the footer if you're on a phone.
We've updated the "Map" page with an easier-to-read version. The old maps are still there but this is definitely easier to navigate on a phone-sized screen:
I certainly don't think it's a cut and dried argument for hooking up to the machine (which I don't think you're saying btw!).
Right. I generally see the experience machine hypothetical as geared toward the normal ordinary person to test their views of pleasure. This set of facts focuses more on someone who is in a very difficult situation with no realistic hope of improvement. But it does deepen the question in my view, because once you break down the barrier of "I would *always* choose reality no matter how bad it is" then you start to ask questions about what circumstances would justify such a decision.
As another way of revisiting the same question in this hypothetical, I recently rewatched the Star Trek original series two part episode: "The Menagerie." I would say that this story sets up the question pretty well.
In that episode, the Christopher Pike, the first captain of the Enterprise has been tragically injured in a radiation accident and injured to the point where he is a total invalid with a fully working mind but the with the inability to move over than to blink one for yes and two for no through light bulbs on his wheelchair. Spock kidnaps Pike and hijacks the Enterprise and takes him to a planet where the occupants have incredible powers of illusion. On that planet they have a female human (who like the Epicurean gods, did not have a pattern by which to reassemble her remains after she crash-landed on the planet) and that want Pike to be her mate. In the original pilot Pike refused to stay, but in the Menagerie he is so injured and disfigured that it becomes debatable whether he should return to the planet and live "under the illusion" of perfect health, or reject the opportunity in favor of his existing reality.
All variations of this hypothetical require that you grapple with the question of who evaluating who is running the machine, and this scenario is no different.
But for those who like Star Trek this is an interesting way to ask the question of choosing between something that is apparently an "illusion" as opposed to "reality."
The final words of the second episode are something to the effect:
"Captain Pike has his illusion and you have your reality. May your way be as pleasant."
Also from section 14 of the same chapter:
XIV.¶
To me such are the only men who appear completely happy; for what can he want to a complete happy life who relies on his own good qualities, or how can he be happy who does not rely on them? But he who makes a threefold division of goods must necessarily be diffident, for how can he depend on having a sound body, or that his fortune shall continue? but no one can be happy without an immovable, fixed, and permanent good. What, then, is this opinion of theirs? So that I think that saying of the Spartan may be applied to them, who, on some merchant's boasting before him, that he had despatched ships to every maritime coast, replied, that a fortune which depended on ropes was not very desirable. Can there be any doubt that whatever may be lost, cannot be properly classed in the number of those things which complete a happy life? for of all that constitutes a happy life, nothing will admit of withering, or growing old, or wearing out, or decaying; for whoever is apprehensive of any loss of these things cannot be happy; the happy man should be safe, well fenced, well fortified, out of the reach of all annoyance, not like a man under trifling apprehensions, but free from all such. As he is not called innocent who but slightly offends, but he who offends not at all; so it is he alone who is to be considered without fear who is free from all fear, not he who is but in little fear. For what else is courage but an affection of mind, that is ready to undergo perils, and patient in the endurance of pain and labour without any alloy of fear? Now this certainly could not be the case, if there were anything else good but what depended on honesty alone. But how can any one be in possession of that desirable and much-coveted security (for I now call a freedom from anxiety a security, on which freedom a happy life depends) who has, or may have, a multitude of evils attending him? How can he be brave and undaunted, and hold everything as trifles which can befal a man, for so a wise man should do, unless he be one who thinks that everything depends on himself? Could the Lacedæmonians without this, when Philip threatened to prevent all their attempts, have asked him, if he could prevent their killing themselves? Is it not easier, then, to find one man of such a spirit as we are inquiring after, than to meet with a whole city of such men? Now, if to this courage I am speaking of we add temperance, that it may govern all our feelings and agitations, what can be wanting to complete his happiness who is secured by his courage from uneasiness and fear; and is prevented from immoderate desires and immoderate insolence of joy, by temperance? I could easily show that virtue is able to produce these effects, but that I have explained on the foregoing days.
Notes during editing:
I set up a separate thread for the issue of Happiness not requiring absolute absence of pain, and I'm going to name this episode something to the effect that Epicurus does not consider Happiness to be a binary state (where the only two options are happiness and unhappiness).
That raises something that Joshua points out, however: Epicurus does treat pain and pleasure as a binary state - that you are either feeling one or the other but not both at the same time and not an in-between state.
So we'll want to discuss: what's the difference between "happiness / unhappiness" and "pleasure/pain?"
This point is implicit in many other discussions here on the board, especially those which relate to:
- Epicurus stating that he was happy even in the midst of dying from kidney disease.
- Epicurus saying that the wise man can be happy even while on the rack.
- Torquatus explaining to Cicero that the wise man is always happy because he always has more reason for joy than for vexation.
The reason I wanted to post this is to include a section of "Tusculan Disputations" where Cicero directly addresses the point that some people want to argue that "happiness" requires "completeness" - basically that if you are 99% happy but have 1% of your experience "not happy" then you should not consider yourself to be "happy."
This also falls under discussion of "the perfect is not the enemy of the good."
But here's one place where Cicero brings this up in Tusculan Disputations Part V, and takes the absolutist position:
VIII.¶
A. I wish that indeed myself; but I want a little information. For I allow, that in what you have stated, the one proposition is the consequence of the other; that as, if what is honourable be the only good, it must follow, that a happy life is the effect of virtue: so that if a happy life consists in virtue, nothing can be good but virtue. But your friend Brutus, on the authority of Aristo and Antiochus, does not see this: for he thinks the case would be the same, even if there were anything good besides virtue.
M. What then? do you imagine that I am going to argue against Brutus?
A. You may do what you please: for it is not for me to prescribe what you shall do.
M. How these things agree together shall be examined somewhere else: for I frequently discussed that point with Antiochus, and lately with Aristo, when, during the period of my command as general, I was lodging with him at Athens. For to me it seemed that no one could possibly be happy under any evil: but a wise man might be afflicted with evil, if there are any things arising from body or fortune, deserving the name of evils. These things were said, which Antiochus has inserted in his books in many places: that virtue itself was sufficient to make life happy, but yet not perfectly happy: and that many things derive their names from the predominant portion of them, though they do not include everything, as strength, health, riches, honor, and glory: which qualities are determined by their kind, not their number: thus a happy life is so called from its being so in a great degree, even though it should fall short in some point. To clear this up, is not absolutely necessary at present, though it seems to be said without any great consistency: for I cannot imagine what is wanting to one that is happy, to make him happier, for if anything be wanting to him he cannot be so much as happy; and as to what they say, that everything is named and estimated from its predominant portion, that may be admitted in some things. But when they allow three kinds of evils; when any one is oppressed with every imaginable evil of two kinds, being afflicted with adverse fortune, and having at the same time his body worn out and harassed with all sorts of pains, shall we say that such a one is but little short of a happy life, to say nothing about the happiest possible life?
I would say that's it's important to recognize that Epicurus is taking the position with which Cicero disagrees, that a happy life is so called from its being so in a great degree, even though it should fall short in some point.
In other words, Epicurus did not hesitate to call his last days happy even though he very definitely felt physical pain - and therefore those days could have been "more happy" without that physical pain during that time.
Yes that's one of the key quotes. There are several paragraphs in that section that are packed with info.
Excellent points.
These issues of recognizing more than one level of reality are discussed in similar manner in Sedley's "Epicurus' Refutation of Determinism."
it seems to be difficult for some people (Plato et al) to think about there being a "higher-level" pespective and for others (Democritus) to think about there being an "atomic-level" perspective without ending up denying that our "middle-level" persective also exists and is just as real as the other two. In fact it's not "just as real" but for us it's actually more real because it is the level at which our senses function, and as you say the only way we can be sure of anything about the lower or higher levels is by the way we see impacts in our own level.
So that's why it's so important not to let the sensations be disparaged as untrustworthy. As soon as you stop demanding evidence at our own level of sensation then you've set the stage for all the otherworldiness both of religion and of "weird science" which goes with hope or speculation alone and without grounding in evidence that we can confirm.
I personally equate this too with Epicurus' statement about "outlining" in the letter to Herodotus. We have to keep the various levels of truth in our awareness at all times and be able to go back and forth between them without missing a beat.
And yes we'll go back over this in detail in the Sunday Zooms on Lucretius and then when we get back to Lucretius after the current review of the bigger-picture issues Cicero has summarized for us .
That's where I see us at currently. Most all of us need additional grounding in both the details and in the bigger picture. Cicero can show us where Epicurus stacks up (revolts) against the majority consensus. At the same time Lucretius shows us how Epicurus reasoned to his conclusions.
Cicero (On Ends / Tusculan Disputations / Academic Questions) gives us the big picture questions which everyone was asking and to which Epicurus was reacting, but Cicero doesn't give us the backup details of how Epicurus reached his conclusions. Lucretius gives us the backup details that explain how Epicurus reached his conclusions, but Lucetius often doesn't give us the big picture questions which everyone in 50 BC understood.
We need both in order to understand the full picture and what it means for us today.
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The sorites question is going to come up again in upcoming podcast episodes so I am posting this as a refresher (Edited from Grok). I suspect there are a lot of people like me who aren't very familiar with this question or its unusual name. However the question it frames (especially in terms o "emergent properties" of atoms coming together into bodies) is very important in understanding how Epicurus differs from Democritus and other Greek philosophers.
The sorites problem (from Greek σωρός, sōros = “heap”) is a famous paradox in philosophy and logic that exposes how vague concepts break down when we try to apply sharp, precise boundaries to them.
Classic formulation (the heap paradox):
- 1 grain of sand is not a heap.
- Adding just 1 grain of sand to something that is not a heap can never turn it into a heap.
- Therefore, even 1,000,000 grains of sand are not a heap.
The reasoning looks perfectly logical, but the conclusion is absurd — we all know a million grains of sand piled up is a heap.Same paradox with other vague concepts:
- Baldness: A man with 100,000 hairs is not bald. Removing one hair can’t make him bald. So removing hairs one by one means even a completely hairless man is not bald.
- Tallness: If 5′0″ is not tall, and adding 1 mm can’t make someone suddenly tall, then no one — not even 7′5″ basketball players — is tall.
- Forest: One tree is not a forest. Adding one tree can’t create a forest. Therefore a million trees do not make a forest. (← this ties directly to your earlier question)
Why it’s a problem
The sorites paradox reveals that many everyday concepts (heap, forest, tall, red, old, rich, conscious, alive, etc.) are vague — they have borderline cases and no precise cutoff point. Classical logic assumes everything is either true or false with a sharp boundary, but vague concepts don’t work that way.
Main attempted solutions (very brief)
- Deny the premise – There actually is a precise number where it flips from “not a heap” to “heap” … we just don’t know it. (Most people find this unsatisfying.)
- Fuzzy logic / degree theory – Truth comes in degrees. 1 grain = 0% heap, 10,000 grains = 47% heap, 1,000,000 grains = 99.9% heap, etc.
- Epistemicism – There is a sharp boundary (e.g., exactly 42,687 grains = the first heap), but it’s unknowable to humans.
- Supervaluationism – “It is a heap” is true when it’s true in all reasonable ways of making the term precise, false when false in all, and undefined in borderline cases.
- Reject the concept entirely – Some philosophers say vague terms like “heap” or “forest” are fundamentally defective and shouldn’t be used in serious reasoning.
Bottom line
The sorites paradox shows that the world is full of genuinely fuzzy boundaries, and our crisp yes/no logic isn’t always equipped to handle them cleanly. It’s why the question — “Does a forest exist apart from its trees?” — is so slippery: there’s no single tree whose addition magically creates “a forest,” yet somehow the forest is undeniably real once enough trees are present.In short: the sorites problem is the philosophical land-mine hiding inside every vague word we use every day.
Example: Does a forest exist apart from its trees?
Yes — but only in certain ways, and no in others. It depends on what you mean by “exist.”
- The forest exists as a real, emergent thing that is more than the sum of its trees.
- It has properties none of the individual trees have: a microclimate, a canopy layer, a soil ecosystem, migratory bird corridors, wildfire behavior, carbon sequestration at scale, a distinct smell and soundscape, an aesthetic impact that makes you feel small.
- Remove one tree? Still a forest.
- Remove every tree one by one? At some point the forest objectively ceases to exist, even if the last tree is still standing.
So the forest is real, but it is not a separate material object floating above the trees. It’s an emergent pattern that arises from the trees + their relationships + time + space.
- The forest also exists as a concept in your mind.
- You can burn every tree to the ground and the idea of “Black Forest” or “Amazon Rainforest” still exists in culture, maps, satellite photos, memories, legal codes, and carbon-credit markets.
- In that sense, the forest can outlive its trees entirely.
- But if you’re a strict reductionist (“only atoms and the void”), then no, the forest does not “exist apart” from its trees — it’s just a convenient label we slap on a large collection of trees that happen to be near each other.
Most useful answer:
The forest is real the same way a marriage is real, or a city is real, or a song is real.
It cannot be reduced to the individual components without losing something essential, yet it has no existence completely independent of them either.So:
A forest both is, and is not, its trees — depending on whether you’re wearing the hat of a poet, an ecologist, a philosopher, or a chainsaw salesman.
PD26. Of desires, all that do not lead to a sense of pain, if they are not satisfied, are not necessary, but involve a craving which is easily dispelled when the object is hard to procure, or they seem likely to produce harm.
Joshua is right to point to this one, which is relatively clear. And I think he's right to say that the test is not limited to "bodily" - unless someone is speaking in the sense that everything is "bodily" in the end - but that's not the sense being discussed as far as I can tell.
I think Torquatus makes clear and there's no reason to doubt him that mental pains and pleasures can often be more significant to us that bodily pains and pleasures. Dying for a friend would be an extreme decision but one that seems to clearly involve mental over bodily considerations.
And in the end I don't think that's even a close issue. While maintenance of the body is necessary in order for us to do anything, most of the biggest decisions that have the most affect our course of life are not primarily for the sake of the "body" at all.
You have to do the math yourself, for yourself!
.... because only YOU can measure the pain or pleasure that results from any action.
It is exactly wrong to do what the Benthamites tried to do and reduce the calculation purely to mathemetics.
However, so long as you realize that the mathematics is only an aid, and cannot be applied as the final factor, I would say that lining things up statistically does make some sense as a tool of analysis.
So I'd still maintain that in any difficult decision it probably does make sense to sit down and try to enumerate the options as a spreadsheet. If you don't, you're not making your best effort to think things though. But you have to remember that the assignment of units of pain and pleasure is entirely relative to you.
Therefore I would not say "don't even try to add them up because it can't be done."
i would say "plotting out the possibilities in detail is the only rational way to proceed, but you have to remember that there is no "necessity" in ethical decisionmaking. You can't treat your projection as applicable to anyone else or even to yourself at a later time. A moment by moment analysis is all that is possible,
Welcome to Episode 310 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the most 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 we discuss this and all of our podcast episodes.
We'll pick up this week at Section 14 of Part 5 of Tusculan Disputations, continuing to look at how the Stoic/Platonic philosophers use logic to deduce that since only virtue is within our control, happiness comes from exclusively relying on virtue, excluding all else from being considered to be truly good.
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Thank you Kalosyni and thanks to others such as Raphael Raul who have suggested navigation revisions.
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This seems like a very close issue as raised in Lucretius Book 3 when he points out that even if our atoms were rearranged later due to the effects of infinite time and space, that would still not be "us" because of the absence of continuous memory.
However I am not sure as I reread that whether Lucretius is making a specific assertion that continued memory is somehow necessarily impossible. He may be relying solely on the objection that we don't remember any past lives, which I gather he is taking as sufficient proof that these rearrangements have already happened. He may well be inferring from the fact that we have no such memories that this is sufficient proof that the break is a matter of fact regardless of the cause.
I tend to think that that is his reasoning and that given the implications of infinite universe/eternal time that the inference is sound.
3-843
And even if the nature of mind and the power of soul has feeling, after it has been rent asunder from our body, yet it is naught to us, who are made one by the mating and marriage of body and soul. Nor, if time should gather together our substance after our decease and bring it back again as it is now placed, if once more the light of life should be vouchsafed to us, yet, even were that done, it would not concern us at all, when once the remembrance of our former selves were snapped in twain. And even now we care not at all for the selves that we once were, not at all are we touched by any torturing pain for them. For when you look back over all the lapse of immeasurable time that now is gone, and think how manifold are the motions of matter, you could easily believe this too, that these same seeds, whereof we now are made, have often been placed in the same order as they are now; and yet we cannot recall that in our mind’s memory; for in between lies a break in life, and all the motions have wandered everywhere far astray from sense.
I agree with Martin and others that uploading your brain is not a viable alternative. At what age do you upload, before [brain cells start dying ar age 25?)?
I interpret the original question (and most hypotheticals like this) not to refer to now ("...IS a viable alternative") but to whether such a thing will be possible in the future with more advanced technology.
Is there is some theoretical barrier or insuperable obstacle that will always be impossible to overcome no matter what the technology?
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