Posts by Cassius

I think we have hinted at this in the discussion already, but we need to confront it directly:

I think everyone understands that the intent of PD02 is to provide a complete and total immunity defense to fear of pain after death (or hope for reward after death).

If that is accepted, then whatever word(s) are being used by Epicurus to refer to "sense" are intended to be global and sweeping, and not leave open the possibility that we can feel pain or pleasure after those "senses" are gone. Agreed?

Don or others, any thoughts on how the wording used in PD02 helps us with this question of whether pain and pleasure can be experienced separately and apart from "the senses"?

Is it not safe to presume that (just like with "atoms") Epicurus might not be using the same words we would use today (we might use "consciousness" or "experience" or "feeling" (in a general sense)), but that he is intending to include within a broad designation of "feeling" every possible experience of the mind and body? Should we consider that this may in part the use of the "images," as a theory of how the brain processes thoughts physically so that "touch" is not limited to the outer skin?

Welcome @Terry Long !

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Please understand that the leaders of this forum are well aware that many fans of Epicurus may have sincerely-held views of what Epicurus taught that are incompatible with the purposes and standards of this forum. This forum is dedicated exclusively to the study and support of people who are committed to classical Epicurean views. As a result, this forum is not for people who seek to mix and match some Epicurean views with positions that are inherently inconsistent with the core teachings of Epicurus.

All of us who are here have arrived at our respect for Epicurus after long journeys through other philosophies, and we do not demand of others what we were not able to do ourselves. Epicurean philosophy is very different from other viewpoints, and it takes time to understand how deep those differences really are. That's why we have membership levels here at the forum which allow for new participants to discuss and develop their own learning, but it's also why we have standards that will lead in some cases to arguments being limited, and even participants being removed, when the purposes of the community require it. Epicurean philosophy is not inherently democratic, or committed to unlimited free speech, or devoted to any other form of organization other than the pursuit by our community of happy living through the principles of Epicurean philosophy.

One way you can be most assured of your time here being productive is to tell us a little about yourself and personal your background in reading Epicurean texts. It would also be helpful if you could tell us how you found this forum, and any particular areas of interest that you have which would help us make sure that your questions and thoughts are addressed.

In that regard we have found over the years that there are a number of key texts and references which most all serious students of Epicurus will want to read and evaluate for themselves. Those include the following.

1. "Epicurus and His Philosophy" by Norman DeWitt
2. The Biography of Epicurus by Diogenes Laertius. This includes the surviving letters of Epicurus, including those to Herodotus, Pythocles, and Menoeceus.
3. "On The Nature of Things" - by Lucretius (a poetic abridgement of Epicurus' "On Nature"
4. "Epicurus on Pleasure" - By Boris Nikolsky
5. The chapters on Epicurus in Gosling and Taylor's "The Greeks On Pleasure."
6. Cicero's "On Ends" - Torquatus Section
7. Cicero's "On The Nature of the Gods" - Velleius Section
8. The Inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda - Martin Ferguson Smith translation
9. A Few Days In Athens" - Frances Wright
10. Lucian Core Texts on Epicurus: (1) Alexander the Oracle-Monger, (2) Hermotimus
11. Philodemus "On Methods of Inference" (De Lacy version, including his appendix on relationship of Epicurean canon to Aristotle and other Greeks)
12. "The Greeks on Pleasure" -Gosling & Taylor Sections on Epicurus, especially the section on katastematic and kinetic pleasure which explains why ultimately this distinction was not of great significance to Epicurus.

It is by no means essential or required that you have read these texts before participating in the forum, but your understanding of Epicurus will be much enhanced the more of these you have read. Feel free to join in on one or more of our conversation threads under various topics found throughout the forum, where you can to ask questions or to add in any of your insights as you study the Epicurean philosophy.

And time has also indicated to us that if you can find the time to read one book which will best explain classical Epicurean philosophy, as opposed to most modern "eclectic" interpretations of Epicurus, that book is Norman DeWitt's Epicurus And His Philosophy.

Welcome to the forum!

In this episode we spend a significant amount of time talking about how Epicurus stands apart from both (1) empiricism and (2) the "blank slate" theory that is associated with both Aristotle and (more recently) John Locke.

In regard to (2), during the episode I referenced the book entitled "Dialogues on Innate Principles" written in the late 1700's in response and in contradiction to the blank slate theory. (The major point of that book is that "ideas" and "principles" - or "principles of operation" are two very different things. John Locke argues against being born with innate ideas - which is true - but which does not go far enough in addressing the real issue: are we born with innate "principles of operation" in the way our minds and bodies work. Barwis makes deistic references which will need to be disregarded, but I think makes an excellent argument that - in my view - is compatible with Epicurus and gives us potent arguments against the "blank slate" from a more philosophic perspective that I would say remain valid today.

Here is a key part of the argument that stands alone, but the full book (which is short, and written in an entertaining dialogue form) gives many others:

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When I take a general view of the arguments adduced by Mr. Locke against innate moral principles; and when I see what he produces as the most indisputable innate principles, “if any be so,” I am inclined to think there must have been some very great mistake as to the true nature of the things in question: for he lays down certain propositions (no matter whether moral or scientific, so they be but true), and then proves that such propositions, considered merely as propositions formed by our rational faculty, after due consideration of things, as all true propositions must be, are not innate. Nothing more obvious! But surely those whom he opposes must, or ought to have meant, (though I cannot say I have read their arguments, nor do I mean to answer for anyone but myself) not that the propositions themselves were innate, but that the conscious internal sentiments on which such moral propositions are founded were innate.

He looked on me, interrogatively.

I said it might be so, and that I saw a great difference in those things.

Or perhaps, continued he, the mistake may have arisen from following too closely the mode, in which it is necessary to proceed, in order to acquire a knowledge of certain sciences, as in geometry: that is, by laying down some clear and self-evident axioms or rational propositions. But even here it should be remembered that, in the natures of things, there were principles which had existence anterior to the formation of these axioms or propositions, and on which they are founded, and on which they depend for their existence: as, extension and solidity.

I gave an assenting inclination of the head.

I cannot, therefore, conceive, added he, that what we ought to understand by innate moral principles, can by any means, when fairly explained, be imagined to bear any similitude to such propositions as Mr. Locke advances as bidding fairest to be innate, nor to any other propositions. That is, I cannot conceive that our innate moral principles, our natural sentiments, or internal conscious feelings, (name them how you please) which we derive, and which result, from our very nature as creatures morally relative, are at all like unto any propositions whatever. Who can discover any similitude to any conscious sentiment of the soul in these strangely irrelative propositions:

“Whatever is, is.”

“It is impossible for the same thing to be, and not to be?”

Nobody.

The innate principles of the soul, continued he, cannot, any more than those of the body, be propositions. They must be in us antecedently to all our reasonings about them, or they could never be in us at all: for we cannot, by reasoning, create any thing, the principles of which did not exist antecedently. We can, indeed, describe our innate sentiments and perceptions to each other; we can reason, and we can make propositions about them; but our reasonings neither are, nor can create in us, moral principles. They exist prior to, and independently of, all reasoning, and all propositions about them.

When we are told that benevolence is pleasing; that malevolence is painful; we are not convinced of these truths by reasoning, nor by forming them into propositions: but by an appeal to the innate internal affections of our souls: and if on such an appeal, we could not feel within the sentiment of benevolence, and the peculiar pleasure attending it; and that of malevolence and its concomitant pain, not all the reasoning in the world could ever make us sensible of them, or enable us to understand their nature.

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Dialogues On Innate Principles - Jackson Barwis

This thread has become something of a show note thread in itself, so I am linking it here.

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RE: As To The Three Legs Of The Canon (Sensations, Feelings, Anticipations) Is it Possible to Experience (Receive Data?) From One Without The Others?

I am editing our podcast episode 160 where we stumbled through the beginnings of this issue, and much of it is going to end up on the cutting room floor due to the stumbling. However one observation that Joshua made that ought to be part of this discussion is that even if you consider "relief from pain" to be a pleasure that is not associated directly with one of the five senses (that itself would be a question) it would still probably be proper to consider that relief from pain to be a…

Cassius

February 7, 2023 at 6:01 AM

However that thread stands alone and beyond this episode, so we will eventually move it to the Canonics section. Please make comments about this episode specifically here.

Episode 160 of the Lucretius Today Podcast is now available. This week we start Chapter 8 of the DeWitt Book - "Sensations, Anticipations, & Feelings"

Further, the goal of life is not "the removal of pain" because "the goal of life" is defined by the philosophers to be that ultimate end for which you do everything else. Again, see Torquatus' narrative: (IX. I will start then in the manner approved by the author of the system himself, by settling what are the essence and qualities of the thing that is the object of our inquiry; not that I suppose you to be ignorant of it, but because this is the logical method of procedure. 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.)

You do not "remove pain" as the ultimate goal unless you want to go ahead and die, because the only way to be ultimately sure to experience no further pain is to die. If removal of all pain is your goal, then die, as I gather Marcus Aurelius (or was it someone else?) said to or about the Christians.

In the Epicurean view you "remove pain" in order to experience pleasure. Pleasure is the ultimate goal that you pursue, and which you calculate toward in making all decisions, up to the point when you die. You don't calculate all decisions against achieving total absence of pain unless you want to go ahead and die, or wish you had never been born, both of which Epicurus expressly ridicules in the letter to Menoeceus.

This is a far better description of the goal of life -- a life of pleasure lived in this way - and there is no way that the word "tranquility" or even "ataraxia" conveys this. The aspect of "absence of disturbance" is clearly focused on not brooking any interruptions to a life of pleasure pursued actively and vigorously in this way:

Quote from Torquatus from "On Ends" (Rackham)

XII. The truth of the position that pleasure is the ultimate good will most readily appear from the following illustration. Let us imagine a man living in the continuous enjoyment of numerous and vivid pleasures alike of body and of mind, undisturbed either by the presence or by the prospect of pain: what possible state of existence could we describe as being more excellent or more desirable? One so situated must possess in the first place a strength of mind that is proof against all fear of death or of pain; he will know that death means complete unconsciousness, and that pain is generally light if long and short if strong, so that its intensity is compensated by brief duration and its continuance by diminishing severity. Let such a man moreover have no dread of any supernatural power; let him never suffer the pleasures of the past to fade away, but constantly renew their enjoyment in recollection, and his lot will be one which will not admit of further improvement.

A life spent sleeping in a cave would certainly be tranquil, but it does not take an Epicurus to see that such a life would admit of a heckofa lot of improvement.

For the sake of argument, let's grant for a moment that the advocates of "tranquility" as the goal of life will quickly accept what they don't grant to Epicurus - that it is sometimes necessary to embrace pain or disturbance for a few minutes - so that they can "get back on the path to tranquility."

So such a person is going to admit that there are times when they deviate from their highest goal, for the sake of getting back on to that highest goal -- but they are going to admit that their highest goal -- in the 70 years out of eternity that they have on this earth -- their highest goal is "to be tranquil.... to be calm"?

Oh my god, if that is what they see as the best way to spend their time on this earth, then either someone needs a new dictionary on the meaning of tranquility, or someone has been tragically led astray.

And I don't think Epicurus needed a dictionary, nor was he led astray. His words, however, have been hijacked.

Quote from A_Gardner

That said, an argument against propping up pleasure as the only good in life, is that it can lead to more states of psychological unrest, as pleasure is never a guaranteed and we often faces forms of hardship

Yes it certainly can..... and ....

Quote from A_Gardner

Can it be argued here that ataraxia is more difficult to obtain/ maintain when faced under the duress of pain?

Yes it certainly can..... and .....

Both of the questions are exactly why I think it is such a terrible fallacy to accept the consensus view that "tranquility" or even "ataraxia" (which I think is best to translate into English and call it for what it is - "absence of disturbance") is the Epicurean goal of life!

Not shouting at you here but this gives me another opportunity to get out the soapbox:

Of COURSE pleasure is not guaranteed, and OF COURSE we should feel psychological unrest if we run into obstacles to pleasure that we can do something about, which is the case of many or most of them. Should we just crawl into a hole and die and say "Oh me oh my I could have been so happy today but it's raining, and the noise outside is loud, and I have a headache which I could fix with an aspirin but i don't want to take it." You can't stop the rain but you can have fun inside; you can't fix all the noise but you can close the windows or put on mufflers; you can fix the headache with an aspirin! And if you DON'T do those things then you should thank your lucky stars that you DO have psychological unrest rather than having been made in the image of a Stoic god and being indifferent to everything!

Same answer as to absence of disturbance. If you wake up to find that you have fallen asleep on railroad tracks, or that there's a tornado bearing down on your house, you better hope that you disturbed! You better hope you are not "tranquil" or so "calm" that you can't muster every bit of excitement and energy and determination and even anxiety that you can muster, and get to safety as quickly as you can!

That's the problem with defining tranquility and ataraxia as the goal of life. They AREN'T. Epicurus said it correctly over and over, the goal is PLEASURE, and in the service of pleasure, which any normal human being knows requires work to obtain, you sometime accept and even choose and welcome pain, if it helps you achieve greater pleasure.

It's not Epicurus who put these advocates of "tranquility and ataraxia and absence of pain above all" people on the wrong track, in my view. It is the intentional misrepresentation - by taking out of the context of the rest of the philosophy - of a few sentences in the letter to Menoeceus. Those passages have an absolutely clear interpretation that is totally consistent with the rest of the philosophy when taken as a whole, but a series of anti-Epicureans like Cicero and Plutarch began the proccess of defamation by mischaracterizing Epicurus as a sluggard and a retiring wallflower who would never tolerate a moment of pain. Then - after the first generations of defamers passed away along with the remaining Epicurean texts and teachers who could explain the situation properly, another 2000 years of pro-Stoic and anti-Epicurean writers (some innocent and some not) have come along to bury the "Pleasure is the goal" message in a bunch of pro-Stoic rewriting of the original message to change its message entirely.

I am so glad you came back to make that comment, and to make it in that way!

This is the number one problem that holds back Epicurean philosophy in the world today.

I am editing our podcast episode 160 where we stumbled through the beginnings of this issue, and much of it is going to end up on the cutting room floor due to the stumbling. However one observation that Joshua made that ought to be part of this discussion is that even if you consider "relief from pain" to be a pleasure that is not associated directly with one of the five senses (that itself would be a question) it would still probably be proper to consider that relief from pain to be a "stimulus" involving some kind of change or action that would seem at least analogous to a sensation.

We weren't sure whether that observation helps or not, but in this question of whether pleasure (or pain) occurs totally separately from "sensation" it might be helpful to consider "change." Is all change felt as a sensation? I doubt this is by any means an ultimate answer to the question but it might be helpful as part of the analysis.

This is probably repetitive but might be worth repeating:

I don't think Epicurus saw anything wrong with conceptual reasoning whatsoever as long as we recognize that it is humans who are assigning the definitions to words, and that the definitions/meanings are not assigned by "God" or some kind of mystical or semi-mystical "ideal form" or "essence."

As long as we recognize that humans give definitions to words, and we can make mistakes the further we get away from things that are directly observable, then we can keep speculation in line and come up with methods for determining when we think things are true, when we think things are false, and when we need to "wait" or accept multiple possibilities.

That seems to me to be the premise of the whole Epicurean canonics: We have to use conceptual reasoning in order to reach conclusions and not be absolute skeptics. But in doing so, we can't stand by idly while people falsely claim that their definitions of the concepts (especially concepts which are moral conclusions like "the good" or "virtue" or "piety") are blessed by God or by Nature or by Ideal Forms or by Essences or anything else that gives them a mystical quality that we must accept, overriding and overruling our own conclusions that derive from our own senses, anticipations, and feelings.

Earlier today I was traveling and my posts were a little rushed. I'd like to repeat that as stated in my post 28 above I think that Joshua is right in bringing up this issue of ambiguities in considering pleasures to be sensations, and we really need to talk about that.

I really don't like the term "sensations" or "the senses" as implicitly linked only to seeing hearing tasting touching, and smelling. Those may be the "classical five" or the "primary five" but Epicurus' own texts talk about the brain receiving images directly, and as Don and others have noted we now recognize sense of balance and other bodily functions that make direct contact with the outside world other than the primary 5.

Since we regularly refer to "a sensation of pleasure" or "a pleasurable sensation" then we really need some terminology that more clearly separates (1) the feeling/sense of pain and pleasure that determines whether something is desirable or not from (2) the automatic bodily functions of which there are 5 primary but also some other number, all of which are unified in that they report automatically without injection of opinion or evaluation as to desirability.

The following is speculation but there is the old theory, still very controversial, that women can be synchronized to the moon phases. (One of many articles on a much-disputed topic.  This one cites Aristotle.) I don't think it undercuts Epicurean philosophy at all for us to recognize more than five physical senses, and I personally speculate that someday there will be discoveries that make Epicurus' theory that the brain is affected by "images" seem somewhat less absurd than it does today. The main commonality between however many there are is that nature provides them and they operate without injection of conscious opinion (errors in interpreting them would be in the mind, not in whatever the faculty is).

So there really ought to be a better term than "the senses" to separate those more clearly from "the feelings."

Quote from Kalosyni

By pleasure: I mean the feeling that comes when tasting honey or the feeling that comes while drinking water when thirsty.

Yes, but you also use the term "pleasure" to describe many other feelings besides honey and drinking, and so you use the word both to describe specific concrete individual instances PLUS the "placeholder term" or "concept" that you use to summarize each and every pleasurable experience under the commonality that "you find them pleasing."

Quote from Kalosyni

By happiness: I mean the evaluation of the last month as having been filled with many pleasurable moments.

You're including here your "evaluation" of last month or last year or your whole life or any time period you wish to include, which means that the meaning you are giving it in a particular usage needs clarification. Same with "pleasure," but when we scrutinize what "pleasure" means we quickly get back to "a good feeling that we all recognize immediately by nature.

In regard to "happiness" when we scrutinize what that means we also associate that word with a good feeling within ourselves. But in the case of "happiness" we also have to take notice that it is a word that people like Plato and Aristotle and the Pope and all sorts of other people define in entirely and grossly incompatible ways.

There's a problem of agreement as to definition in both cases, but:

- in the case of 'happiness" what makes a man happy is loaded up with so many conflicting terms by the stoics and peripatetics and the religions that the term becomes almost infinitely maleable.

- in the case of "pleasure" we have individual disagreements on what we find pleasurable (chocolate vs vanilla) but we're all generally in the same ballpark that we're talking about a gut-level feeling that is desirable to have for obvious reasons.

Oh I am sorry Joshua is saying that Dewitt is saying rhat pleasure is not one of the five senses. True, but..... That is a reference to the concept of pleasure as one of the three legs of the canon, right?

This is where we need to get into the subtleties of pathe perhaps, because we all refer to pleasure as a "feeling" and that is also a word we use to describe many items of data received from the five senses (at the very least "touch").

So pleasure may not be one of the five senses, but as a canonical faculty we are considering it as a direct contact with or means of measuring reality, correct? It is giving us an analysis automatically and without opinion of what we are sensing, right?

So while pleasure is not one of the five senses, it acts like, and we talk about it, in much the same way, and also regularly refer to "a sensation of pleasure", correct?

I agree with your last comment Don. I think "happy" has become so ambiguous that it needs a lot of caution and description of how we are using it. Pleasure is much more clear, but as a word it too could be taken out of context by the word-splitters.

Maybe what we are looking for is a description of all these things using words that are resistant to splitting

We definitely need to turn some attention to "conceptual reasoning in Epicurean philosophy.". In my view this is a cause of the confusion in Diogenes Laertius as to anticipations.

It seems to me that the description of seeing oxen and assigning a word to them, and then judging future animals against that word, is standard conceptual reasoning with which Epicurus would have had no issue. When he was criticizing excessive decision-making he was not criticizing obvious things like "look at those two animals that look like each other lets call them oxes."

He was criticizing abstractions built on a abstractions which grow further and further away from observation to the point where there is no further linkage.

I think Dewitts position, with which I agree, is that this process of labelling oxen is a matter of language formation that contains many elements of opinion that would not be related to the instinctive process of pattern recognition in the first place.(1)

But for purposes of this discussion the key is to establish that we agree that basic conceptual reasoning is not a reference to Platonic idealism, and is something that Epicurus himself used and embraced. (For example, an "atom").

(1) I edited this post for the record to make clear that I think that's why the best term is prolepsis or pre-conception or anticipation, and the absolutely worst possible term is what Bailey uses in his translation, where he in fact uses the term "conception" rather than something that indicates an input into the concept-formation process. In my view Bailey guts the entire discussion by presuming that pre-conceptions = conceptions, and that is something that needs to be totally revisited and refuted. We can deal with this when we talk elsewhere about anticipations. Right now we need to establish that the formation and use of concepts in ordinary life attached to real observations does not constitute Platonic idealism. Here is a reference to concept-formation being endorsed by Epicurus in the letter to Herodotus: "First of all, Herodotus, we must grasp the ideas attached to words, in order that we may be able to refer to them and so to judge the inferences of opinion or problems of investigation or reflection, so that we may not either leave everything uncertain and go on explaining to infinity or use words devoid of meaning." Another: "[40] And if there were not that which we term void and place and intangible existence, bodies would have nowhere to exist and nothing through which to move, as they are seen to move. And besides these two, nothing can even be thought of either by conception or on the analogy of things conceivable such as could be grasped as whole existences and not spoken of as the accidents or properties of such existences." Plus I know some disagree on this, but DeWitt cites this from Diogenes Laertius in the context we are talking about it now, and I think it applies: "The internal sensations they say are two, pleasure and pain, which occur to every living creature, and the one is akin to nature and the other alien: by means of these two choice and avoidance are determined. Of investigations some concern actual things, others mere words." This is from Chapter 8 of EAHP:

Kind of inappropriate for me to "like" an execution date, but I think everyone gets the message

I think the problem is that the word pleasure is like "true* and can be used in multiple ways, but I would say one of the ways is that pleasure is a feeling and operates automatically and irrationally just like sugar is sweet.

Yes you can look at those words and say that sugar and sweet are concepts, but in these cases the meaning is obvious and nothing is needed beyond "pointing to them."

Pleasure can also be viewed as a concept on the same level as "virtue" and "piety"

The trick is being clear in how we use them.

Happy is also fairly clear in meaning, but "happiness" would be almost like "pleasure ness" - a term we do not use. If we did use that term we would evoke similar problems and ambiguities as we do when we refer to "happiness"

This is a VERY productive conversation because I think its resolution will clear up a lot of problems.

Quote

What DeWitt is saying is that pleasure ≠ sensation; that no pleasure is a sensation because pleasure presumes judgment ("I like this") and sensation is irrational and incapable of judgment. I realize that after a certain point this all begins to get a little nit-picky.

I hate to throw a monkey wrench here but I am not thinking I agree that Dewitt is saying that. Joshua can you point to what you are referencing?

We certainly agree in your first sentence but I do think there is a "concept" of pleasure which is used as a placeholder in these discussions where the discussion demands a single word that references the full concept.

I don't think all concepts constitute Platonic ideal forms, do they?