Posts by Cassius

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.

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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?

Quote from Don

Epicurus seems to treat the mental faculties of the mind as a sense organ picking up sensations from subtle images leading to thought and memory.

As I read things there is no doubt about that being part of the big picture of the operation of the mind. Clearly Epicurus says this.

I presume that a tricky part is per Joshua:

Quote from Joshua

but after he knows of it he stops requiring sensation to feel pleasure or pain about it.

Would this be consistent with PD2 relating to absence of sensation being nothing to us? Do the faculties operate so independently that "over here" we have the five senses operating on one set of data while "over here" the pleasure faculty is operating on an entirely different set of data or somehow operating without any data at all?

Are we talking about memory here, to the effect that once a memory is stored the five senses are no longer involved at all? Is not the pleasure or pain from our memory essentially a stored sensation?

In other words for purposes of PD2 and maybe other uses, should we be considering memory of a sensation to be the equivalent of a "new" or "contemporaneous" sensation?

Is "pleasure" like "yellow" - in that pleasure does not exist apart from sensations that are pleasurable just like yellow does not exist apart from things that are yellow? This question I think is particularly important.

Should we ask the same about anticipations? Do anticipations exist apart from sensations and feelings?

Can any of these three faculties be considered to have an independent existence apart from the others?

Would it be concerning if we were to admit that "pleasure" exists apart from "sensations that are pleasurable?" I sense that this question is closely related to the also-troubling contention that katastematic pleasure is some kind of special and higher pleasure, different in nature from any other "normal" type of pleasure, and somehow separate and apart from experience/sensation.

This reminds me of Dewitt's observation that pleasure has no meaning except to the living. "Pleasure" can exist outside the normal functioning living being no more than a soul or spirit can be considered to exist outside the living body, right?

Also: we can choose in our mind to consider yellow apart from a lemon if we prefer, but that doesn't mean yellow exists without our picturing in our mind's eye something that is yellow, does it? This phrase "mind's eye" may be related to the topic. Does our mind have an ear and a nose and a tongue too?

When we say "Imagine something..." Does that mean anything different than summoning up the "image" from storage rather than from the "current" eyeball input? Is summoning up the image from storage so conceptually different for our current purposes such that the result should not be considered to be a sensation? If we close our eyes for just a moment is the pleasure we are feeling from the stored picture in our mind (of the same object while our eyes are closed) so very different in kind? Does the blink of an eye while we are standing in the Louvre change how we should consider the pleasure we feel in appreciating the Mona Lisa?

Seems to me that we are in danger if we don't consider that this discussion has both "biological" aspects and "philosophical" or "conceptual" aspects. Can't (or shouldn't) we conceive of both stored and contemporaneous images as having exactly the same ability to be considered properly as sensations?

PD02. Death is nothing to us, for that which is dissolved is without sensation; and that which lacks sensation is nothing to us.

Does that mean that we should consider ourselves to be dead when we stop receiving new sensations from functioning organs, or only after our minds have ceased to function and to be able to *both* receive new *and* operate on stored memories of sensations?

All this interrelationship is why I think it is ridiculous to single out and interpret "katastematic pleasure" or "tranquility" or "ataraxia" or "aponia" or any other particular word as something higher than, or special in kind, or anything more than one among many experiences of (or aspects of or perspectives on) the "Pleasure" that we use as a description of our general goal in living a full human life.

(And when I say I think it is ridiculous, what I mean is I think Epicurus would have thought this interpretation of his words to be ridiculous too.)

It makes much more sense that Epicurus was taking a very general and common sense perspective on life, so that when he was asked "What is the Goal of Life?" the discussion went something like this:

- Can life be considered to have a goal, Epicurus?

- "If you would like to, Yes."

- Is the goal of life Virtue, or living nobly and virtuously?

- "No."

- is the goal of life Piety, or obedience to the Gods?

- "No."

- Is the goal of life Rationality, since the distinguishing factor of man is that he is the rational animal?

- "No."

- Is the goal of life constant partying, as people claim you do?

- "No."

- Is the goal of life Tranquility, or the elimination of pain?

- "No."

- "Is the goal of life Happiness, or eudaemonia, or flourishing, or well-being?

- "No, not in the clearest manner of speaking."

- Then what do you say the goal is, Epicurus?

- "Pleasure - which includes the pleasure that comes from living virtuously, and the pleasure that comes from having holy opinions about the gods, and the pleasure that comes from using our minds rationally, and the pleasure that comes from partying, and the pleasure that comes from tranquility, and the pleasure that comes from eliminating pain, and the pleasure that comes from feeling happiness, and the pleasure that comes from many other types of experiences as well."

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I then clarified that it might be possible to experience pleasure or pain uncaused by sensation, but requiring nevertheless some kind of change in stimulus

Is not the awareness of consciousness itself - of being alive - a "sensation" of some kind? And would that not factor in to the apparent view that so long as pain is not present what is being felt is pleasure, even if it is just awareness of being alive?

I presume these are the kinds of issues this question calls for answering.

Yes to repeat we brought up the subject and then quickly realized that it was going to be very complex and dropped back to continue the podcast without it. So as far as I am concerned we are essentially a blank slate on this topic!

Joshua did I frame this question accurately to the way we were discussing it?

I don't recall that we have addressed this question before and it's full of difficulties. I agree with Don's comments generally with the possible exception as to anticipations. I will need to reread the rest of the chapter and see if there are any academic articles on this topic.

I think my eventual answer is going to be that they all three function together and all the time, but that will move "anticipations" more deeply into the center of all brain activity than I have previously considered it to be. However that may well be possible.

Though Dewitt occasionally uses the term ideas I think reject the view that anticipations are "ideas" of any kind, and I think I prefer the view that they were considered to be by Epicurus some kind of "firmware" or "operating system" process always involved in consciousness (probably involving patten assembly and recognition).

In that I am influenced by the Barwis argument that we are born with "principles of operation" (again genetic or similar methods of functioning) but not with "ideas.". In that I see a strong analogy to pleasure and pain and the senses, in that they are in operation at birth (or some time after conception) though containing no prior experiences.

This morning we recorded the first episode for Chapter 8 and one thing that we came across, but did not deal with yet, led us to consider whether it is possible to experience "feeling" (pleasure or pain) separate and apart and independently of anticipations and feelings. This question arises in discussing the connection and relationship between the three faculties.

This question implicates PD2 (without sensation we are dead) and it is something discussed in the Wenham article which I regularly cite on the kinetic/katastematic issue.

Before we address it (probably episode 161) it would be good to discuss it in a thread. I am initially posting this in 160s notes but will probably move the topic to a separate thread of its own.

Perhaps a better way of asking the question would involve formulations like:

1. Can you experience pleasure without a sensation being involved / give rise to it?
2. Does every sensation evoke a feeling of pleasure or pain?

Given the big issues involving what anticipations really are, adding it into the mix may be more trouble than it is worth, but probably the same questions apply:

1. Can you experience pleasure without an anticipation being involved / give rise to it?
2. Does every anticipation evoke a feeling of pleasure or pain?

What of the workings of the mind in all this? Do those workings of the mind constitute or generate sensations?

How do the three work together? DeWitt's formulation starts out with:

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The three criteria are neither three aspects of a single capacity nor yet three discrete capacities which function separately from one another. To Epicurus body and soul are alike corporeal; they are also coterminous. Consequently all reactions of the individual to his environment are total or psychosomatic. Thus in the case of every reaction Nature is on the alert to register approval or disapproval by the signals of pleasure and pain. This is the function of the Feelings in the meaning of the Canon.

It is true that in the Greek language all three criteria may be called pathe, in modern parlance "reactions," but they are not identical. It is true also that all three may be components of a given reaction but still they occur in sequence. Sensation is irrational and merely registers a quality, for example, sweetness. It is the intelligence that says, "This is honey," and it is the Feelings that report, "I like it" or "I don't like it." Again, it is positively known that Epicurus postulated the existence of an innate sense of justice and called this an Anticipation. Now injustice hurts and it is the Feelings that register this fact. If a man is condemned to pay an unjust penalty, the pain is a reaction distinct from the aural sensation of hearing the verdict.

Agree? Disagree? Your comments are welcome!