Posts by Cassius

I consider this article linked and attached here to worth reading as a step in the right direction - but one for which many more steps are needed. It's another effort to wrestle with the "absence of pain" issue, and I think it ends up much closer to the right place than most do, but I would go much further. Here is an edited version of my comments to the blogger, which I think are best placed here before the article is linked:

The article is an analysis of work by Toby Sherman, who writes (and these are not the words of the writer of the blog) "“This is because kinetic pleasures gain their value from their ability to reduce our sum of pain.” Put another way, kinetic pleasure is “remedial” and takes its “value…in the removal of what is bad.”"

I would call this almost "offensive" to me -- or better stated it just shows the kind of attitude that I have no sympathy with. Kinetic pleasures do not "gain their value from their ability to reduce our sum of pain." All pleasure is desirable in and of itself, and not for consequences relating to displacing of pain. PLEASURE is the motivating force of life, darn it, not running from pain! And I am not sure there is any bridge-building possible or desirable between people who see the world based purely on running from pain. For the thousandth time, if you really want to eliminate pain from life, there is one sure method for achieving that! The holding of "running from pain" as the meaning of life is the true "stoic" mentality, it seems to me, and I believe that the proper response to that is to recoil from it like recoiling at a snake - and then be prepared to strike back at it and eliminate it from your mind as a legitimate perspective on life.

And for Sherman to say that that it is possible to construct a "plausible" interpretation of Epicurus' views. How ridiculous - Epicurus' views of pleasure - when read as a whole and not through the modern commentators - are very clear for anyone who doesn't have that stoic run-from-pain mindset!

Of course I know there are many people who are exactly that way, and I feel very sorry for them, but we cannot allow them to monopolize Epicurus and keep "the truth" away from people who have a normal and healthy view of life, who not only need it just as much, but have the capability of understanding it and using it.

It looks like Sherman gets around to the Gosling and Taylor common sense understanding of the issue as a "full tank of positive pleasures of all kind" but it's painful to go through all the apologizing and stoicizing first.

Here's a clip:

My problem here is that the objection does not just "fail" -- it is absurd, ridiculous, offensive, and numerous other action adjectives, and it should be treated as such. I would perhaps make a small exception for the example of a doctor in a hospital full of homicidal maniacs who take such a position, and for such a doctor it might be be suicide to enlighten them as to their mania. And so such a doctor might well hold his tongue or even agree with the maniacs to their face in order to escape from them. Which, come to think of it, is an approximately accurate description of most of the academic world today, so maybe I should cut Sherman some slack.

"The Stoic account (and, of course, the Epicurean) places the control of desire at the centre of happiness." << I would not say that is accurate as to Epicureans. Yes desires are to be understood and pursued intelligently, but not "at the center" or as a goal in itself, as the Stoics seem to do. And the type of control and other aspects of the "control" issue are hugely different.

"Sherman says that any example which tries to prove that pleasure can be increased beyond perfect painlessness can be argued to show that the person experiencing said pleasure has yet to reach perfect Epicurean contentment." <<< My issue with that passage is that "contentment" is very misleading in the current age. It sounds like in most ears as the equivalent of sleep - doing absolutely nothing - and if you're working on making this into a practical philosophy, you probably should avoid a word that has so much negative baggage and inaccuracy. As long as we focus on tranquility and contentment and words like that, we'll never capture the core direction.

I think the whole issue at stake here is answered in this from On Ends:

"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.**"

The "will not admit of further improvement" is the full and complete answer to the problem that Sherman will never solve by calling this state "contentment."

THIS is the sentence that people need to focus on and embrace: " 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?"

OK with that intro, here is the article, with a copy attached here too: http://www.themodernepicurean.com/2020/09/06/epi…d-and-defended/

Wagner struggles with the issues of pleasure and pain in his Tannhauseur, and he makes the hero waiver back and forth, but some of the excerpts when he is praising pleasure and great poetry, especially when combined with his music. In this 30 minute clip I capture some of the most important of the pleasure/pain discussion. I've cued this to a short song outburst that is one of the best:

After the post I have cued, the second scene in this clip is also excellent. In the song contest, the hero sings in praise of what is at least a loosely Epicurean view of love/pleasure against what is very specifically a stoic/platonic view of love/pleasure. That begins at the point where two platonic lover sings a short statement, rebuked strongly by the hero, who is at this point pretty much channeling Epicurus, at 14:38. In both cases you'll hear a little bit of crosstalk that is less than inspiring, but if you give it just a few minutes in both scenes you will see exactly what I am talking about. In these excerpts, especially the singing contest, it appears to me that Wagner is showing that he knows **exactly** what the issues are between Epicurean and non-Epicurean views of pleasure. He seemingly takes the side of the Platonic/religionists in the end, but I think I have read, and I think myself, that his argument in favor of the Epicurean side is much more convincing. And if you wade through the whole of the play, the religionists don't come off so great either, and "god" seems to bless the hero despite his supposedly unpardonable flirtations with Venus.

Great approach, Charles - and that reminds me of something else, and I cannot believe that a search here does not pull it up....

Quote from Godfrey

Going back to the expensive car example: you may desire an expensive car because all your friends have one, or because James Bond has one, or because you think your clients expect you to drive one, or any number of other reasons. The resulting desire is, to me, much different from a pleasure/pain.

And the specifics of your example play right into Don's point about natural and necessary desires not being "intrinsic." The things that we decide on as some urgent discretionary need are totally contextual, and because they are totally contextual, we can deduce that there is nothing in their nature that makes them the way they are.

I say that because when I finish posting the recording of today's episode I think that's one of the points being made. One of the arguments that atoms do not have sense of their own is that some people are wise and others are foolish, and maybe the same person is both wise and foolish at different times. That makes it pretty darn hard to believe that people are made of wise or foolish atoms. All of the discussion of color and other qualities that change with context are relevant or at least analogous to this discussion. Whether an expensive car is a luxury or a necessary is totally dependent on the totality of the surrounding context, not a function of some "essence" within the atoms that make up the automobile.

Quote from Don

I would agree that desire and feeling or reaction or "internal sensation" (that's my personal least favorite translation incidentally) are closely connected.

That is an example of why I have come to count on Bailey as almost always coming up with my "least favorite" translation. It is as if he instinctively senses where there is an important issue and picks words that are least appropriate. The only thing good that I have to say about "internal sensation" is that it might be perceptive in linking feelings and sensations in at least the way they function, if not in every way similar. Considering feelings to be sensations helps mentally connect them also with the "all sensations are 'true'" viewpoint.

I am thinking that a "desire" is something closer to a "concept" in being the result of a conscious thought process where someone is picking among alternative courses of action as the one to pursue. Clearly that's a different issue than "feeling" which is as you said above more of a "reaction."

And yes I agree this is a key quote for this analysis:

Quote from Don

That echoes Epicurus's statement: Ask of each desire (epithumia): What happens if it is fulfilled and what if it's not? (VS 71)

Well we are together that desire must be a different thing than feeling, but what does that mean? It appears we are not together on something, but what is the something on which we are not together? The definition of desire?

My starting point would be that the two are very closely connected even if not the same - why would you desire anything but for the feeling (of pleasure or avoidance of pain) that it gives you?

And as to pathe, which I agree is key, what about this from Diogenes Laertius. Don it is my understanding that pathe is the same word used in both these passages, although Bailey calls it "feelings" in one place and "internal sensations" in the other. Is that not the case?

At any rate, I think the point at the moment is:

It appears we are not together on something, but what is the something on which we are not together? The definition of what it means "to desire" as a thought process?

Godfrey your observation is why I think maybe the essential word is "feeling" even more so than desire. I doubt you can truly have a "desire" without a feeling, so maybe they are equivalent, but I think the real war is between rationalism and theism vs feeling as the ultimate division between the Epicureans and the two major camps of anti Epicureans.

I was looking over this thread again and I keep coming back to Thomas Jefferson here:

Quote from Cassius

‘I feel: therefore I exist.’ I feel bodies which are not myself: there are other existencies then. I call them matter. I feel them changing place. This gives me motion. Where there is an absence of matter, I call it void, or nothing, or immaterial space. On the basis of sensation, of matter and motion, we may erect the fabric of all the certainties we can have or need.

Seems to me that he must have given a lot of thought to exactly the question Camotero is asking - that of coming up with a pithy summary to serve in his words as his habitual anodyne - ("I was obliged to recur ultimately to my habitual anodyne...")

Seems to me that he did a pretty good job of summing up the essentials of Epicurean physics, or maybe we should think of if as a perspective on physics, a combination of physics and epistemology, which he's correct to observe is the basis on which everything else rests.

Over time others can and will do better, and do it in more modern and elegant phrasing, but I do think this general direction is the right one. When you're questioning everything about your life, or when you're just trying to dig back to "what should my starting point be?" it seems to me this is pretty darn close.

And i gather that this is why Dewitt referred to the mind as a "supersensory organ"

Well I am not sure I can go much further! I think we're seeing that Epicurus's response to issues of "skepticism" and "knowledge"" was to focus on what those words meant and define as clearly as possible what it means to be "true" and "real" -- with the result that the rigorous conclusion is that "truth" for is what is or could be revealed to us through the canonical faculties. Asking for more than that --- asking for "certainty" -- implies a standard of proof that is impossible for a human being and is not even relevant to a human being in any way.

Within that kind of framework, what is "true" is what can be ascertained through the canonical faculties, and nothing else is or can be "true" or "real" to us.

As DeWitt says, Epicurus needed a standard of truth in the realm of relationships or abstractions - we need to go back and get his exact words - but I think that the problem arises when we say that the anticipations are standards of truth in the realm of "ideas." IDEAS are fully-formed concepts, and fully-formed concepts necessarily involved opinion and serve themselves as canonical "truth." Fully-formed ideas / concepts are highly useful and much to be appreciated, but they can never in themselves be considered "universal truths" that rise to the level of them always being true and real to individual humans.

Don in my mind this is where I always fall back to a passage from the 1770's book that I quote from by Jackson Barwis, his book against John Locke's argument against "innate ideas." Barwise defended not innate "ideas" but innate "principles of thinking." The book was entitled "Dialogue on Innate Principles." In that book (primarily chapter one of that book) Barwis argues that there is a huge distinction between innate IDEAS vs innate PRINCIPLES. Barwis argues that Locke and others are wrong to assert that there are innate *ideas*, but that there certainly are innate *principles of functioning* that go into ideas.

Here is the important section. Underlining is my emphasis Barwis is talking about innate "moral" principles here, but I think the point applies more widely to the issue of how "principles" are different from "ideas." I think the faculty of anticipations is dealing with the "principles' as discussed below, not with "ideas." We are not born with innate ideas, but we are born with a faculty that processes information in certain ways (according to certain principles):

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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.

...

Even in the abstracted sciences of arithmetic and geometry, reason can create no principles in the natures of the things treated of. It can lay down axioms, and draw up propositions concerning numbers, extension, and solidity; but numbers, extension, and solidity, existed prior to any reasoning about them.

And here I must observe that the assent or dissent that we give to propositions in these sciences, which are but little interesting to our nature, is drawn from a source widely different from that which we give to moral propositions. Thus, when we are told that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, and see the demonstration; we say simply, true. That they are equal to three right angles; false. These things being irrelative to morals, they move no conscious sentiment, and do therefore only receive our bare assent or dissent as a mere object of sense; in the same manner as when we say a thing is, or is not, black or white, or round or square; we use our eyes, and are satisfied. But the truth or falsehood of moral propositions must be judged of by another measure; through a more interesting medium: we must apply to our internal sense; our divine monitor and guide within; through which the just and unjust, the right and wrong, the moral beauty and deformity of human minds, and of human actions, can only be perceived. And this internal sense must most undoubtedly be innate, as we have already shown; it could not otherwise have existence in us; we not being able, by reasoning, or by any other means, to give ourselves any new sense, or to create, in our nature, any principle at all. I therefore think Mr. Locke, in speaking of innate moral principles, ought, at least, to have made a difference between propositions relative to morals, and those which have no such relation.

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If you get interested in the entire argument, it is here:.

So the argument that I would make is that there must be some kind of innate mechanism that assembles mental pictures, and that did this mechanism not exist, we would never experience mental pictures in the first place. This mental picture mechanism functions "innately" - pre-rationally, and it can function in ways that we conclude are not "true to all the facts."

An example of that would be in Epicurus's letter to Menoeceus: "But they are not such as the many believe them to be: for indeed they do not consistently represent them as they believe them to be. And the impious man is not he who popularly denies the gods of the many, but he who attaches to the gods the beliefs of the many. For the statements of the many about the gods are not [pre]conceptions derived from sensation, but false suppositions, according to which the greatest misfortunes befall the wicked and the greatest blessings (the good) by the gift of the gods." (This is the Bailey version, and he insists on using "concepts." I inserted the [pre] because everyone else uses anticipations or prolepsis here rather than "concepts." This is why I am so unhappy with Bailey much of the time.)

Quote from Don

Are the epibolē and prolepses two facets of the same faculty? I believe we've discussed elsewhere on the forum the innate nature of the prolepses. The phrase phantastikē epibolē occurs in DL X.50 and 51

I would say almost certainly yes, they are two facets or descriptions of the same faculty. I agree with your comment that this listing of three almost certainly is intended to be a listing of the three legs of the canon. That is why I think there's so much work to do in understanding exactly what "an anticipation" really is. I think an anticipation/prolepsis/mental presentation/mental picture canNOT be a "concept" as we understand the term in logical reasoning, for example as with the concept of "capitalism" or the concept of "socialism" or whatever. Something that is "defined" in terms of "words" necessarily entails opinions about what to include, and therefore cannot be "canonical" or constitute a "mental picture" which is canonical.

But on the other hand a certain number of mental images probably constitutes at least part of the input that is eventually used to form a "concept." So what I am thinking is that these are parallel: the faculty of anticipations must be something like "sight." Sight is a faculty whereby the eyes assemble and process light. The anticipations would be parallel in that the "faculty of anticipations" assembles and processes mental pictures without thinking about them. But no single mental picture is a "concept" any more than a single photon or processing of light is a "sight." Cameras produce images but don't "think" about them. Our brains/minds presumably assemble all these things (input from eyes, ears, feelings, anticipations, etc) through pre-rational processes, and that "pre-rationality" is the essence of what I would think Epicurus would insist is required for a faculty to be described as canonical. If opinion is involved in producing something, then the result cannot be "trusted" or given the same level of authority as any of the three canonical faculties. If we do elevate a concept formed by reasoning to canonical status, then we have a feedback loop, and we have erased the distinction between the canonical faculties and opinions.

Error comes in opinion and the assembling and uses of opinions (the rational process). Whatever anticipations are, I firmly think that Epicurus saw them as "pre-rational," and that would fit a faculty that "automatically" assembles individual mental pictures just like the eyes and the ears assemble light and sounds without "thinking" about them.

What are our takeaways from this?

I would say first and most easily obvious he is saying that we should pay attention to all our faculties and the information that they provide to us (presumably because they are reported honestly and in this sense are "true"). That's probably pretty noncontroversial, except maybe if someone pursues the non-Epicurean reasoning that the senses are never to be trusted and should simply be ignored in favor of pure dialectical reasoning.

The deeper parts include:

(1) That the data from the "mental presentations' / anticipations" and also the feelings of pleasure and pain are entitled to equal consideration with the data from the five senses.

(2) That we should "wait" and hold open as at least potentially "true" all theories which have support from some date from some combination of the three faculties, and

(3) That we should be careful not to select from among the unrefuted possibilities any favorite or pet theory to hold as the only "true" possibility so long as other possibilities remain viable.

All of this is also presumably the foundation of affirming that "truth" comes to us through these three faculties and not from any other way which is NOT based on these three faculties (i.e. divine revelation, totally abstract logic / rationalism)

I would say one of the most continuously difficult parts is that of separating (1) instances of data provided by the "mental presentations/anticipations" from (2) conceptual reasoning, in which concepts are formed after a lot of thought and deliberation and reasoning. I continue to think that if we were to equate "mental presentations/anticipations" with "concepts" we would be confusing two distinct things (the process vs the result) into a single thing (the concept which the result of thinking) and we'd have a feedback loop which would introduce rationalism into the canon and would be why that Epicurus himself only had THREE legs, but the "other Epicureans (in my view mistakenly) came up with four.

Great work Don! Thanks for preparing that!

Yes I think that is an EXCELLENT analogy. I'm trying to generalize the observation so as to get the most meaning out of it possible. Maybe every math / geometry class from grade school on up ought to start on day one with.

"No matter how enthralled you get with this subject, remember: MATH CAN HELP US DESCRIBE REALITY, BUT MATH ITSELF IS NOT REALITY!"

(probably a better way to phrase that but you get the idea)

Quote from Don

"just because something can be shown to have a mathematical probability of happening doesn't mean it has a corresponding possibility in reality."

Yes but I wonder if that is specific enough. Like in the monkey analogy people seem to default to a position that "anything is possible but the possibility may be infinitesimally small." Well, but that's the question, isn't it? is there really ANY possibility of certain things happening, and can't we be pretty confident in saying that some things can never happen, and shouldn't we try to be rigorous in separating the two? If we think about the monkeys that exist in reality, even given an infinite time I would not expect them by nature to be interested in hitting all the keys randomly and persistently enough to come up with a sonnet.

The "anything is possible" cliche is a dangerous one, I'm thinking.

Thanks for posting that Charles!

Don thanks for the link to the wikipedia article. I woke up thinking about the monkeys and the aspect that struck me is that Epicurus might say that reasoning by analogy would include the fact that we can observe monkeys here in earth playing with typewriters and we observe that they are not in fact apt to randomly press all keys. The wikipedia article observed something similar. Changing the paradigm to reference some kind of random letter generator .... changes the hypothetical. I am tempted to say that Epicurus would say that even in an eternity of time a monkey could never be expected to produce even a single work of Shakespeare, and that it is always essential to be very clear as to ones statements so as to avoid overbroad and incorrect implications of infinity and eternality. Even in an infinite and eternal universe there are limits on what we should expect to happen, and *all things* are not possible.

I find this interesting because I don't think it is a small point - I think it's an important one.

Are we inferring that the monkey will learn or reproduce and generate more intelligent offspring? Or is the hypothetical that the same monkey keeps typing on the same typewriter for an infinite time? Does randomness expanded to an ever greater power ever produce something highly complex without there being something in the nature of the process under consideration that creates a tendency toward "organization"?

At this point I am not advocating a position just trying to think it through.

At least in my own mind I relate these questions back to the presumption that the Epicureans thought the universe eternally old into the past as well. Regardless of whether we think that violates modern physics, toward what conclusions would that presumption have led them? That life in the universe has existed eternally too? I personally think that must have been a conclusion of theirs but anyone care to comment?

I would think the common thread in the questions is whether there must be some kind of "disposition" to lead to the formation of life, or to monkeys typing Shakespeare, in order for that to happen.

Must there be something in the nature of certain elements that tends to produce organization?

Tim if you do take any steps at all I hope you will be sure to post them here at the Forum. I think it's highly motivational for people to see others trying, and highly helpful to each other to see what techniques seem to have worked and which do not work so well. After some ten years of watching I've only seen one ongoing "success story" and that is the meetup group in Australia. I attribute that largely to the leadership of one individual, which is much to his credit, but I'm not sure whether other leaders within that community have emerged, or to what extent they have become stronger Epicureans vs just having a good time (which is of course worthwhile in itself).

Tim -- I presume you're talking about the nature of the gods -- check out the opening of chapter 13 - the true piety.

As to the monkeys and Shakespeare, I don't mean to dismiss that question. I am inclined to think that the answer is "no" as I indicated but it would be good to articulate more clearly why not (or why he would) agree that "random" events (which is pretty much the meaning of monkeys on a typewriter) could or could not produce Shakespeare.

It immediately comes to mind that of course we generally think that natural events that are to a point "random" produce life, and life eventually produced humans, and humans eventually produced Shakespeare, and he eventually produced his body of work.

But I don't think that's really the fair way of analyzing the question. The question starts with a typewriter, and a monkey, so that kind of sets some parameters. Would ANY amount of time be sufficient for a monkey sitting in front of a typewriter to produce the work of Shakespeare? No doubt we could talk about the analogy from many different angles but the heart of the question seems to me to be some defined force of randomness eventually producing a highly organized result which would seem couinterintuitive given the starting point.

Any care to argue that such a result is "inevitable" given enough time? There may well be better ways to articulate the question but the I think there are useful lessons to be drawn from analyzing it and considering both the limits of the hypothetical results and how we reach the idea that there are in fact limits (if we do).