Thanks Don! If it turns out that we turn our attention broadly to PD10, maybe we should also branch off and discuss that in more detail somewhere here: Doctrine 10 - If the things that produce the pleasures of profligates...
Just in case Ms. Wilson ever drops by herself, we should probably at least think about keeping this thread focused on the broader question of whether she is doing a good job of describing Epicurus' position on pleasure is the ultimate goal.
Don -- use the whole context of the philosophy. Epicurus never places anything greater than pleasure. He is saying we can actually experience total-- perfect-- pleasure. That it's not abstract. The profligates are not going far enough! They are leaving some of their pleasure on the table.
It is hard for people today to drop the middle path ideas they've been inculcated with. EP is not a middle path. It's a path of the most extreme, total pleasure, experienced by humans in reality. Epicurus could testify to it because he lived it.
My thought is that we're unlikely to make too much more progress in this thread on the "role of logic" question, so what we should really get back to and is more to the point in terms of Wilson's article is this point being made by Elayne here, where she is focusing in on the ultimate conclusion that "Epicurus never places anything greater than pleasure." As I see it, that's exactly correct, and it includes wisdom or prudence -- those are valuable only insofar as they lead to pleasure, and the apparent unwillingness of Catherine Wilson to embrace that conclusion is part of how this thread originated in the first place.
I suspect Don would say that he agrees with that point, so maybe the issue is more "why do we think there is an issue in how to express this?"
Some of the material we are discussing here deserves to be pulled out and discussed in more detail in a separate thread, but the discussion is so integrated here I doubt it makes sense to try to move any of these posts to a separate section.
However on the issue of the relationship of reason and logic and the faculties, and how reason and logic work in Epicurean philosophy, we're going to be coming back to that over and over as long as we discuss Epicurus. I therefore want to set up a new thread which contains the core of Norman DeWitt's treatment of that topic, which I think is the best I have ever seen. I "try" to apply his approach myself, but this is a complex subject and the place to start is DeWitt's own analysis so we can consider his perspective in developing our own.
I have taken excerpts from the book which lead up to Chapter 7, "The Canon, Reason, and Nature" and pasted what appears to be some of the most material here for easy reference: The Role of Reason and Logic in Epicurean Philosophy
I highly recommend this material as a place to "reboot" one's thinking on this topic - that's what I intend to do myself.
In order to assist us in discussing the role of reason and logic in Epicurean philosophy, the following is an excerpt of the material on this topic from DeWit't's "Epicurus and His Philosophy. The most important chapter is Chapter 7 - "The Canon, Reason, and Nature," but DeWitt comments on the topic in numerous places leading up to that Chapter, which I have attempted to capture here:
Page 4
From the point of view of logic this progression from the general to the particular constituted a sort of chain argument, a device in which Epicurus had great faith. He looked upon truth in terms of the whole and the part, the integer and the details. The details seemed to him so linked with one another that, if only the beginning was rightly made, one truth after another would infallibly reveal itself until perfection of knowledge should be attained. As Lucretius expressed it; "One point will become dear from understanding another; nor will blind night ever rob you of the path and prevent you from peering into the ultimate realities of nature; so surely will understanding o[ one thing kindle a gleam to illuminate the next."
Page 7
He exalted Nature as the norm of truth, revolting against Plato, who regarded Reason as the norm and hypostatized it as a divine existence. The fallacy consists in classifying Epicurus as an empiricist in the modern sense; he never declared sensation to be the source of knowledge; much less did he declare all sensations to be trustworthy.
Page 12
He declared dialectic a superfluity but was able to criticize Plato with great acumen and he wrote against the Megarians, the contemporary experts in logic. He rejected geometry as having no bearing upon problems of conduct but adopted the procedures of Euclid in the composition of his own textbooks. He refuted the assumption of the mathematicians that matter is infinitely divisible, rightly insisting that the result would be zero. This is not the thinking of an ignoramus.
He also exhibits great familiarity with the writings of Plato and he distributed among members of his school the work of refuting or ridiculing his various dialogues. His own classification of the desires is developed from a Platonic hint and he begins to erect his structure of hedonism from the point where this topic was left by Plato. A paragraph is extant in which he warns his disciples against the Platonic view of the universe as described in the Timaeus, and elsewhere he pokes a little satirical fun at that famous opus. More than half of his forty Authorized Doctrines are direct contradictions of Platonic teachings.
Page 13
The closeness of the relationship between Epicurus and Aristotle may be judged from the fact that two volumes on the subject have been published by the eminent Italian scholar Ettore Bignone. Leaving aside for the moment the undoubted contentions of the two schools. it may be said that common to both founders was the direct analytical approach to problems as opposed to the circuitous analogical approach adopted by Plato. The main difference was that the attitude of Aristotle was analytical while that of Epicurus was analytical and pragmatic at the same time.
Page 16
It was the romantic aspect of the new knowledge that captivated Plato, who was no more than up-to-date as a mathematician himself. In geometry he seemed to see absolute reason contemplating absolute truth, perfect precision of concept joined with finality of demonstration.
He began to transfer the precise concepts of geometry to ethics and politics just as modern thinkers transferred the concepts of biological evolution to history and sociology. Especially enticing was the concept which we know as definition. This was a creation of the geometricians; they created it by defining straight lines, equilateral triangles, and other regular figures. If these can be defined, Plato tacitly reasoned, why not also justice, piety, temperance, and other virtues? This is reasoning by analogy, one of the trickiest of logical procedures. It holds good only between sets of true similars. Virtues and triangles are not true similars. It does not follow, therefore, because equilateral triangles can be precisely defined, that justice can be defined in the same way. Modern jurists warn against defining justice; it is what the court says it is from time to time.
Page 17
Yet this was only the beginning. One false step invites another. The quest of a definition, of justice, for example. presumes the existence of the thing to be defined. If equilateral triangles did not exist, they certainly could not be defined. Assume that justice can be defined and at once it is assumed that justice exists just as equilateral triangles exist. Hence arose Plato's theory of ideas. The word idea means shape or form and he thought of abstract notions as having an independent existence just as geometrical figures exist, a false analogy.
The theory of ideas was rejected as an absurdity by the young Epicurus, because he was a materialist and denied all existences except atoms and space. The theory once rejected. the instrument became useless; scientists have no use for dramatized logic; they depend chiefly upon their senses.
Page 18
EPICURUS AS PHILOSOPHER
Of all false opinions concerning Epicurus the most preposterous is that which would dismiss him as a dullard or even as a charlatan. If correctly appraised he will be seen to have attempted a genuine synthesis of philosophy.
He came upon the scene when a great corpus of speculative writings had accumulated, which is precisely the circumstance that invites to a synthesis. A certain progress in this direction had been made by Plato and Aristotle but neither of these was a conscious synthesizer and neither of them was interested in creating an encyclopedic digest of philosophic thought for public use, much less for the amelioration on human life and the increase of happiness. This is precisely what Epicurus attempted. His aim was to survey the whole course of Greek creative thought, to criticize. to cull it, to organize it and make the results available in the form of useful and understandable handbooks.
Page 22
THE NEW ORDER OF NATURE
Especially conspicuous in the Canon of Epicurus is the omission of Reason as a criterion of truth. Only the Sensations, Anticipations, and Feelings are recognized as direct contacts between man and his physical and social environment. By virtue of being direct contacts, they acquire a priority over Reason and in effect exalt Nature over Reason as affording a norm of truth.
How this revolution came about may be explained by recalling a few details. The Ionian scientists had studied nature chiefly in her terrestrial aspects, taking reason for granted as a faculty. The ltalian Greeks had ignored the terrestrial aspects of nature and exploited the faculty of reason. This procedure led from arithmetic and geometry to astronomy, and by astronomy was revealed the celestial order of nature. This inflexible celestial order captivated the imagination of Plato, who was a romantic, and it was this he was imitating when he proposed in his Republic and his Laws a rigidly regimen led polity, of which a travesty now flourishes in Soviet Russia.
After this Platonic interruption the Ionian tradition was revived by the later Aristotle, but he switched the emphasis from inorganic to organic nature. The sciences of zoology and botany were founded by him. In the course of these studies he arrived at the conclusion "that Nature does nothing at random." Of this discovery he did not realize the importance. It signified that organic nature is governed by laws. In reality it marks the discovery of a new order of nature, the terrestrial order, as contrasted with the celestial order of Plato's grandiose cosmogony.
It was the lead of Aristotle that Epicurus chose to follow. He looked to organic nature as furnishing the norm just as Plato had looked to reason. This divergence resulted in two opposing interpretations of the phrase "living according to Nature." To the Stoics, who hitched their wagon to Plato's star, it signified the imitation of the inflexible celestial order by a rigid and unemotional morality. To Epicurus and Epicureans, "living according to Nature," though they never made a slogan of it, signified living according to the laws of our being. Of this being the emotions were recognized as a normal and integral part, undeserving of suspicion or distrust.
How the new terrestrial order of nature and the older celestial order operate as points of departure for inferential truth may be illustrated simply in the case of justice. For Epicurus the Feelings are the criterion. Injustice hurts and justice promotes happiness. Therefore human beings make a covenant with one another "not to injure or be injured." Justice is this covenant. It is of Nature. No dialectic is necessary to discover the fact; it is a matter of observation. The sense of justice is innate; it is an Anticipation or Prolepsis existing in advance of experience and anticipating experience. Even certain animals possess it; elephants, for example, the bulls excepted, do not injure one another and they marshal the herd to protect one another against injury from outside.
Plato. on the contrary, taking his departure from the analogy between geometry and ethics and politics. requires a definition; dialectic is invoked as the instrument and the ten books of the Republic are devoted to the quest. In the background are the mathematical notion of ratio and the musical notion of harmony. Thus at long length the conclusion is reached that justice is a harmony of the three constituents of the soul. reason, passion. and desire. Justice in the state is a harmony of the constituent classes.
Plato was complicating philosophy for the few who find self-gratification in complexity. Epicurus was simplifying philosophy for the many who were willing to live by their philosophy. Platonic justice seemed to him a specious pretense. In Vatican Collection 54 he wrote: "'We should not pretend to philosophize but philosophize honestly, because it is not the semblance of health we need but real health."
Epicurus analyzed human nature just as the later Aristotle analyzed ethics and politics, like a student of natural science observing the ways of plants and animals. It was this method he was following when he scrutinized human nature in action and reduced the direct contacts between man and his physical and social environment to Sensations, Anticipations, and Feelings. It was the same method he followed when he classified human desires as "natural and necessary, natural but not necessary and neither natural nor necessary." After the same fashion he scanned the behavior of man in society and concluded "that the injuries inflicted by men are caused by hatred or by envy or by contempt." The best evidence of a certain validity in the Canon was the ridicule heaped upon it; ridicule is available when arguments are lacking. A tacit tribute to its validity is the fact that the idea of the Prolepsis or Anticipation, the innate idea, was adopted by the Stoics and appears as an accepted commonplace in Cicero's thought. The Sensations were seized upon as the weakest leg of the canonic tripod and in this instance misrepresentation scored a victory. The fallacy that Epicurus declared all sensations to be true and hence trustworthy still flourishes. This would mean that vision informs us no more correctly about a cow at twenty paces than at half a mile.
Equally fallacious was the allegation that the Canon had been set up as a substitute for logic. To make such a claim is on a par with asking a trial lawyer to criticize a chemist, or, as Epicurus might have said, to ask the ears to pass judgment on the nose; the phenomena of which they are competent judges would not fall in the same class. The function of ancient logic was to score points and make opponents wince but no adversaries or witnesses were needed for the use of the Canon; solitude was sufficient. The modern scientist in his laboratory follows a like method. He depends upon the sensations as Epicurus did. The researcher works on the basis of an hypothesis, which he puts to the test of experiment, that is, of the senses, and these, exactly as Epicurus said, "confirm or or fail to confirm" the truth of the proposition. Even the theory of Einstein, that rays of light from distant stars are bent in passing the sun, was tested by photographs taken during an eclipse, and photographs are merely extensions of vision.
Page 121 The Canon, Reason, and Nature
The Canon was not an afterthought, as the Stoics asserted, but occupied the first place in the triad of Canon, Physics, and Ethics. This arrangement is unalterable, because the Ethics were deduced from the Physics and the truth of both Physics and Ethics was subject to the test of the Canon, which included Sensations, Anticipations, and Feelings.
The task of expounding the Canon would be much simpler were it not for ancient and modern confusions and ambiguities that beset the topic. Epicurus disposed of it in a single roll. The word canon denotes a rule or straightedge but metaphorically includes all the instruments employed by a builder. A perspicuous account of it is presented by Lucretius, who mentions also the square and the plumb line. Apart from this passage, however, Lucretius misleads the reader, because he gives exclusive prominence to the Sensations and seems to have lacked a clear understanding of the workings of Anticipations and Feelings as criteria.
These last two criteria, it is manifest, were not discussed in the Big Epitome which Lucretius had before him. In the graded textbooks of Epicurus the topic must have been reserved for advanced students. It is doubtful whether Lucretius was even acquainted with the roll that treated of the Canon. This is unfortunate, because his own one·sided treatment is largely to blame for the classification of Epicurus as an empiricist and for the ascription to him of belief in "the infallibility of sensation."
It is an even worse mistake to have confused the tests of truth with the content of truth, that is, the tools of precision with the stones of the wall. This was the blunder of Pierre Gassendi, who revived the study of Epicurus in the seventeenth century. It was his finding "that there is nothing in the intellect which has not been in the senses," From this position John Locke, in turn, set out as the founder of modem empiricism. Thus a misunderstanding of Epicurus underlies a main trend of modem philosophy. This astonishing fact begets an even greater concern for a correct interpretation, which may cause Locke to appear slightly naive.
The institution of the Canon reflects a contemporary striving for an increase of precision in all the arts, sculpture, architecture, music, and mathematics, but the immediate provocation is to be found in the teachings of Pyrrho the skeptic and of Plato. Pyrrho's rejection of both reason and the sensations as criteria rendered acute the need of establishing a canon of truth. In the judgment of Epicurus Plato also ranked as a skeptic, because he belittled the sensations as undependable and phenomena as deceptive, the only real and eternal existences being the ideas. Thus in his system reason became the only contact between man and reality, and human reason was crippled by the imprisonment of the soul in the body.
Epicurus denied the existence of Platonic ideas on the ground that the only existences were atoms and empty space. Thus to his thinking man stood face to face with physical reality and his sensations constituted the sale contact with this reality. Had he stopped at this point he would have been an empiricist, but he did not. He made room also for a kind of intuition, which is incompatible with empiricism. He postulated that man was equipped in advance by Nature for living in his prospective environment, and not in his physical environment alone but also in his social environment. In addition to the five senses this equipment included innate ideas, such as that of justice, and these ideas, because they existed in advance of experience, were called Anticipations. Moreover, as Epicurus postulated, each experience of the individual, the sensations included, is accompanied by a secondary reaction of pleasure or pain. These pleasures and pains are the Feelings, which also rank as criteria, being Nature's Go and Stop signals.
Thus Nature, having equipped man with a triple contact with his environment, becomes a norm, while the Platonic Reason is eliminated along with the Platonic Ideas. It now remains to explain in more detail the dethronement of Reason and the recognition of Nature as the norm.
Page 122
THE DETHRONEMENT OF REASON
It will have been noted that the Canon makes no mention of reason. This means that reason is denied rank as a criterion of truth. It will be worth while to observe by what procedure this exclusion may be justified and what the consequences will be for the concept of reason itself. The position of Epicurus becomes seemingly paradoxical because there is no instrumentality by which reason can be dethroned except reason itself. Consideration of this paradox may be postponed until it has been shown how the Platonic concept of reason may be rendered absurd. The conclusions will be absolutely logical if the premises are accepted.
As will be set forth in the chapter on Physics, Epicurus adopted and declared Twelve Elementary Principles, one of which reads: "The universe consists of atoms and void:' This is a positive statement. If the implied negative be made explicit, it is this, that there is nothing incorporeal except void. This is destructive of certain teachings of Plato. According to him the sensations inform us only of the things that are transient, that have a beginning and an end. The realities are the eternal forms or ideas, which are not joined up with matter and so are incorporeal. Moreover, according to the same teachings the ideas are apprehensible only by pure reason, which, being, like the ideas, discrete from matter, is itself incorporeal and divine. Logically, therefore, if there is nothing incorporeal except void, the eternal ideas and the divine incorporeal reason are alike absurdities.
By this same principle it should be noted that the incorporeal soul is also eliminated. Thus, the soul. being corporeal and incapable of preexistence or survival, is reduced to a parity with the body. This means farewell to all the disabilities imposed upon it through imprisonment in the body and to all mystical ideas associated with successive incarnations. Corporeal reason alone is left, that is. human intelligence. There is another of the Twelve Principles that has a specific bearing upon the Platonic concept of reason: "The atoms are always in motion." If we seek the implied negative of this positive statement - and Epicurus reasons after this fashion - it will be this, that nothing else in the universe is in motion, because the void is incapable of motion and outside of atoms and void there is nothing. It will follow also that no other cause of motion exists. It will be nonsensical, therefore, to think. of divine reason as the cause of motion.
There is yet another of the Twelve Principles that possesses a bearing upon the function of reason in the universe. The second Principle reads:"The universe has always been the same as it now is." This principle is known to us as the law of the indestructibility and uncreatibility of matter. To Epicurus it meant that the idea of primeval chaos was absurd; the universe has always been a cosmos. Specifically, speaking of the various motions of the atoms, he said: "Of these there has been no beginning, the atoms and the void being eternal." To him the universe was a cosmos solely because of the various weights, shapes, and magnitudes of the atoms and their motions, all of which were constant factors. Consequently there was no need of the ordering mind (nous) according to Anaxagoras or of the divine demiurge of Plato. Both of these become absurdities. In the extant remains of Epicurus the word nous does not occur; it seems to have been deliberately avoided.
While by this line of argument it will be observed that the incorporeal, eternal, and unerring reason of Plato and Aristotle is eliminated, the purely human, mortal reason remains. Even this is subordinated to the sensations: "Not even reason can refute the sensations, for reason depends wholly upon them." This does not mean, as Gassendi imagined, that the whole content of thought is derived from the sensations, which was not the teaching of Epicurus, but rather that the deprivation of sensation is virtually death. The basic idea is the conviction that reason is incapable of making direct contact with reality; reason is active only when the sensations are active. Without the sensations reason possesses no criteria, since they along with the Anticipations and Feelings function as contacts with reality.
Moreover, it is not in sensation but in human intelligence that error arises. Of sensation he wrote: "Sensation is entirely irrational." This is not cited as a demerit but as a merit. It is the justification for regarding sensation as a criterion. It cannot "stimulate itself" and, unlike reason, "when stimulated by something external cannot add anything or take anything away." For example, let us say that the color of white registers itself on the vision. It is not sensation that tells the observer he is seeing a white ox. This is a function of the intelligence and the recognition is "an immediate perception of the intelligence." Even to such a perception as this Epicurus denied the rank of criterion, though his successors did not, and the ground of his rejection is manifest. If the observer says, "It is a white ox," this is a judgment and as such it is secondary to the sensation itself and it can err. Thus it does not qualify as a criterion. The sensation, however, does not err. As Aristotle said, "The sense of sight is not deceived as to color, nor is that of hearing as to sound,"
It remains to mention that Epicurus minimized the value of reason even in dealing with things beyond the range of sensation, whether too minute or too remote for observation. To denote the notions relative to these unseen phenomena he raised a familiar word to the rank of a technical term, epinoiai, which by virtue of the prefix means "secondary" or "accessory" ideas. This is the sense in the following pronouncement: "For all accessory ideas (epinoiai) are derived from the sensations by virtue of coincidence, analogy. similarity and combination, reason also contributing something:' While this grudging concession to reason should be noted, it is observable also that procedures which employ comparison and analogy seem to Epicurus an inferior kind of reason. By analogy, for example, it should seem possible to have a heap of atoms, since we have heaps of dust, but a superior reason intervenes and reminds us that atoms are endowed with motion. Consequently, a heap of atoms is inconceivable. This superior reason employs the method of inference from the Twelve Elementary Principles. The procedure is deductive; Epicurus is not an empiricist.
Three kinds of reason are thus recognized: first, a dependable kind that proceeds by deduction from first principles; second, an inferior kind that proceeds by analogy from the visible to the invisible and is subject to correction by the former; third, ordinary human intelligence (dianoia), which is normally automatic and hence fallible and is subject to correction by the volitional intelligence.
Common to all these forms of reason is their restriction to the human mind; all are faculties of that mind. Outside of this human mind there is no reason in the universe, no world-mind which expresses itself in eternal ideas, regularities of motion, harmonic relationships, and spherical perfections and is identifiable with truth itself.
It still remains to glance at the paradox in which Epicurus involves himself by employing reason to dethrone reason as the chief criterion. He places himself in a position similar to that of the skeptic who denies the possibility of certainty in knowledge, thus depriving his own skepticism of certainty.
This paradox, moreover, does not stand alone. It is also paradoxical that Epicurus should have omitted reason from his Canon and at the same time accepted a great body of truth accumulated by the reasonings of predecessors and set these down among his Twelve Elementary Principles of Physics. From this inconsistency he thought to escape by treating each of these principles as if a theorem of geometry. For example, to demonstrate that the universe is infinite in respect of both matter and space, he resorts to a disjunctive syllogism. If matter were infinite and space finite, the latter could not contain the former. Again, if matter were finite and space infinite, then matter would be lost in space and no clashes or combinations of atoms would occur. Since these alternative assumptions lead to absurdities. the conclusion, is that the original proposition is true. With such reasoning even a Stoic logician could find no fault.
This treatment of the Elementary Principles as theorems does not save Epicurus from the charge of inconsistency. It gains for his system of knowledge merely the semblance of being logically self-contained. Reason is employed as a criterion to set up criteria by which it should itself be demoted, if not quite superseded. Reason, however, as he conceives it, is purely human. not divine.
The elimination of the divine reason entails a curious logical consequence: the universe is split in two. the terrestrial and the extraterrestrial regions. The former becomes anthropocentric, since the human Sensations. Anticipations. and Feelings are the norm; the latter is left impersonal and nonpurposive, being governed by natural laws. Plato's universe. on the contrary, is undivided, being completely theocentric and ruled by the divine and incorporeal reason. In the terrestrial sphere Epicurus approximates to the position of Protagoras, who said "Man is the measure," while Plato said "God is the measure."
Logic can never give you primary information about reality, Cassius . Logic is not _in_ the Canon but supplemental.
I certainly agree with this, but I don't perceive myself as asserting that. I mean to be saying only that Epicurus was using logical arguments to respond to the Platonists on their own terms, not that he was in any way giving up his own view of the faculties as the means of contact with reality.
That passage I cited where Torquatus was referencing divergent opinions within the Epicurean school has a lot in it to be considered, just like the Diogenes Laertius reference to later Epicureans having four branches of faculties instead of three.
Over time it would be good for us to explore what those divisions were all about.
We certainly have a variety of opinions -- maybe we can come closer on certain points or maybe not - but I do think we're all on the same team that pleasure is the key to all this, however we conceive the best way to explain it to be the case.
So when Elayne says
Pleasure being maximized at the absence of pain is not a logic statement at all
I would maintain that it is, and that it is a function of there being the only two feelings and thus the measure of one by definition being the inverse of the other.
But I don't dispute that Elayne is also correct that we can validate the statement through personal experience.
I would say this illustrates how true reasoning is supposed to work, with experience being the basis on which the only kind of valid logical statements can be made.
Maybe there's a personality perspective here -- some people are interested only in what they experience as the test of truth, while some people think that the only way to be sure of something is to be able to state it in a logical proposition that is internally consistent.
I know we have different opinions on prolepses, but it is going too far to assert that the basic conclusions of EP must include contributions from logic that are not already established as evidence. That is adding logic to the Canon itself.
I really think I agree with your comments Elayne, but I don't think we have fleshed out what we really mean by "logic." We are using logic or reason or something whenever we communicate, and we're using logic and reason in all our "formulations." And we agree that the logic has to be based on observations of the senses. So i think that the issue is coming to an articulation of what we mean by "true reasoning" so that we can apply some kind of label to the process of the deductions that Epicurus was drawing. The "pleasure is the absence of pain" formulation is something other than pure sensation - what would you prefer to call it?
Epicurus wouldn't advocate taking the drug. How would it make me a god? How would my atoms replenish themselves to make me incorruptible?
if anything at all is missing from total pleasure, then it's not a total bliss pill, by definition!
OK I see this discussion as reinforcement of the need to be more aggressive in the logical side. As Elayne is pointing out, the only way to resolve these questions is to look at the definitions, and that's the problem that has to be addressed with hypotheticals at the very beginning -- stating the terms extremely clearly.
Does the difficulty with clarify in hypotheticals mean that we should never use them? I can see the possibility of arguing both sides of that, but the step of arguing both sides would probably be extremely helpful for being clear on the benefits and limits of the use of hypotheticals.
I think that's behind our different viewpoints on PD10. I think that Epicurus WAS setting up an extreme hypothetical in which he was in fact suggesting what Don is resisting -- PD10 in my view is as hypothetical or a logical challenge or whatever you would like to call it, set up specifically as an "in your face" statement of the position that the ultimate goal is pleasure, and forcing you to confront what some people are going to think are uncomfortable truths.
So if you state in your hypothetical that the "bliss drug" is in fact fully effective in providing you with a lifetime of unmitigated and undiluted pleasure - the effective equivalent of Epicurean godhood as set forth by Torquatus in on ends -- then yes indeed I do think that Epicurus would say: "Of course you should take it - that's the whole goal of my philosophy!"
[Note: I am referrring to this section from Torquatus, which I see as itself a hypothetical such as we are debating: "
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."]
I'm not trying to criticize Don here because he's not the one who wrote the article for public consumption that ends up creating the confusion that I think Wilson is creating. The more I think about it the more I think she has raised exactly what Epicurus held to be the ultimate point -- that "pleasure" must be defended to the end on both logical and experiential grounds, and she has flubbed the test.
Which is not to say that she is by any means unique, because it appears that later people who thought they were following Epicurus have been arguing about this for 2000+ years, if the comments in Cicero's "On Ends" in the underlined section below are any indication:
This Epicurus finds in pleasure; pleasure he holds to be the Chief Good, pain the Chief Evil. This he sets out to prove as follows: Every animal, as soon as it is born, seeks for pleasure, and delights in it as the Chief Good, while it recoils from pain as the Chief Evil, and so far as possible avoids it. This it does as long as it remains unperverted, at the prompting of Nature's own unbiased and honest verdict.
Hence Epicurus refuses to admit any necessity for argument or discussion to prove that pleasure is desirable and pain to be avoided. These facts, be thinks, are perceived by the senses, as that fire is hot, snow white, honey sweet, none of which things need be proved by elaborate argument: it is enough merely to draw attention to them. (For there is a difference, he holds, between formal syllogistic proof of a thing and a mere notice or reminder: the former is the method for discovering abstruse and recondite truths, the latter for indicating facts that are obvious and evident.) Strip mankind of sensation, and nothing remains; it follows that Nature herself is the judge of that which is in accordance with or contrary to nature.
What does Nature perceive or what does she judge of, beside pleasure and pain, to guide her actions of desire and of avoidance? Some members of our school however would refine upon this doctrine; these say that it is not enough for the judgment of good and evil to rest with the senses; the facts that pleasure is in and for itself desirable and pain in and for itself to be avoided can also be grasped by the intellect and the reason. Accordingly they declare that the perception that the one is to be sought after and the other avoided is a notion naturally implanted in our minds. Others again, with whom I agree, observing that a great many philosophers do advance a vast array of reasons to prove why pleasure should not be counted as a good nor pain as an evil, consider that we had better not be too confident of our case; in their view it requires elaborate and reasoned argument, and abstruse theoretical discussion of the nature of pleasure and pain.
I will address expected comments here by saying that I think even this doesn't state the issue the way I would state it. I think that the first part about "grasped by the intellect and reason" is what Epicurus was doing, and they were not in fact refining upon Epicurus' doctrine, because everyone knows that the intellect and reason aren't feelings that can detect pleasure and pain. So my view is that this first position is that the a a proper intellectual and reasonable argument that "the good" is pleasure can and does go hand in hand and with the observation that no outside proof of pleasure is necessary or even possible.
I think the error -- the one that Torquatus says he agrees with, is that "the nature of pleasure and pain" requires elaborate and reasoned argument and abstruse theoretical discussion. There's no way to appreciate pleasure and pain except to experience it -- to me that is clear, and that is I think Elayne's position. But if it were truly unnecessary to engage the question of "what is the good?" logically, then we wouldn't even be having these discussions at all. We'd just say "look over there" and the discussion would be over.
Even the statement "What does Nature perceive or what does she judge of, beside pleasure and pain, to guide her actions of desire and of avoidance?" is in fact a logical proof that supports and bolsters the "experience-based" position.
As to your last paragraph, "To bring this back to Wilson..." I totally agree. As to the first paragraph, I see we are, as you warned, in the rabbit hole of dealing with hypothetical without firmly agreeing on the terms of the hypothetical first.
As to Wilson (not you) I see that as another example of my concern about her logical consistency. If you're not going to go all the way with the logical argument in a piece like that, I would say it likely does not make sense to bring it up, else you end up creating just the kind of ambiguity that causes the doubts we're now discussing.
Because if the "bliss drug" were defined as the equivalent of transforming you into an Epicurean god, then surely I think Epicurus WOULD say to take it. Would you agree with that?
I think that the answer is probably yes, but given the way she has written her statement I am not clear that Wilson would say yes, and in fact I would read her as likely saying "no."
I agree with Wilson about this
I'm afraid we can't unwind this without being more clear what we are agreeing with, because i am no longer certain what we are talking about as Wilson's opinion.
As to the bliss drug, let's ask IF IT WORKED TO PRODUCE PERPETUAL LIFETIME BLISS (which seems to be the issue, some of us are presuming it works, others are simply concluding it can't), would you take it? Again, for purposes of this answer, let's presume that the hypothetical is that the bliss drug is in fact effective to produce perpetual uninterrupted bliss for the rest of one's life. And let's just say "lifetime" so that we're not arguing that the bliss pill extends or shortens life.
So :
(1) Is Catherine Wilson saying Epicurus would say to take it, or not? She seems to be saying that most people (with whom she apparently agrees?) would say no, but let's be clear as to what she is saying or implying that Epicurus would say. What is she saying is the Epicurean answer to the bliss drug question?
and therefore in terms of whether you agree with her Don,
(2) Would you (Don) take that pill?
Finally, I'm just happy to see Epicurus's name in a popular magazine where it's not some Stoic writing how unworthy pleasure is as a goal then going off on their "following nature" and virtue rant.
Ok this is I think a good summary of your point and I certainly agree with it - you're cutting her a lot of slack because of this, and indeed that title -- explicitly promoting Epicurus over Stoicism - is impossible not to appreciate. How infrequently we see anything like that in the popular material that we read is a testament to how bad things are out there. Catherine Wilson deserves tremendous credit from that point of view.
So within that context I can certainly appreciate that you want to be generous. I tend to think the same way -- I've watched some of her videos and I like her personality. She seems honest and friendly and clearly means well. And I think she realizes that even to the small extent she's wandered from the academic orthodoxy, in her circle she's pretty much out on a limb on her own, with few allies. So I can appreciate that she's being brave even being in the game at all.
But having said that, I think Elayne's criticism still stands. It would not be very hard for Wilson to word these passages more accurately, and I don't really think that she was being sloppy -- she seems to really draw back from the full logical conclusions that Epicurus' logic compels her to draw. Elayne's point about Epicurus saying clearly that we sometimes choose pain in order to eventually achieve more pleasure --- that really is a super-fundamental point. I cannot imagine a really no good excuse for her not making that very precisely and clearly except that she doesn't want to -- she doesn't want to say explicitly that wisdom or knowledge is not desirable in itself unless it brings pleasure. That's just too much for the academic world to tolerate, and she's not willing to go there even though that is clear Epicurean doctrine.
As to the bliss pill, I also see Elayne's point that the general principle that she's laying out is very wide from the mark. She's choosing to emphasize that the problem would be that "the causes of pain and pleasure would be obscured." Well, why is that a problem? If the bliss pill works, who cares WHY it works -- that's principle doctrine 10 in spades. The clear implication of this phrasing is that it is the KNOWLEDGE of the causes that is of concern to Wilson. She's clearly implying that knowledge in and of itself is good, which is totally wrong in Epicurean terms. It is even somewhat contradicted by what she has just said in the preceding paragraph, where she implies that the benefit of experiencing pain is to "keep our appetites sharp."
Here's the main point I wanted to come back and add, and this is a little different from what Elayne wrote:
Rather than Wilson failing to appreciate pleasure as a feeling, I think the thing that bothers me about her approach is that she seems to back away from taking the doctrines to their logical conclusions. As Elayne pointed out, her emphasis on the pleasure of "all" is Wilson's own arbitrary humanist addition, and isn't at all supported by the texts. She's universalizing and humanizing the edge because she isn't willing to follow the logical progression to the end, which involves real feelings of pleasure for real people and not universalized abstractions about what would be nice if the world were like that. Same with her observations about "justice."
Probably the best way I can express my concern at the moment is that I think you have to accept that Epicurus was preaching pleasure (a feeling) a the goal while at the same time employing words in a system that he wanted to be rigorously logical and consistent. If you can't follow the principles he set out to their logical conclusions, you're really ignoring them and producing something that might seem pleasing to us for the moment, but isn't true to what Epicurus was teaching.
So I think in order to really understand and appreciate Epicurus you have to be ruthlessly logical in identifying and then applying Epicurus' chain reasoning, as I think is DeWitt's strength. We can debate in good faith all day long whether it is necessary to follow his chain reasoning on eternality and infinity, but even those of us on different sides of that question are on the same team. We ultimately pick up the chain at some point where we all affirm materiality and lack of supernatural forces, and so we're ultimately holding the same chain, just at different starting points.
In ethics though it's hard to say that we're even on the same chain with Catherine Wilson. Wilson understands that "pleasure" is identified as the goal, but she takes all sorts of liberties with other aspects of the ethics, so she reaches conclusions that are more personal preference than they are illustrations of the principles. She's taking principles and showing how SHE applies them without identifying the fundamental issues involved in them, so she ends up teaching "Wilsonism" rather than Epicurus' process, approach, and system. By doing so she lowers the discussion away from the "philosophy" part entirely and makes Epicurus into simply an ethicist with whom we should agree.
My greatest concern then is that because she isn't following the course logically, she ultimately isn't going to be able to deal effectively to what I see to be one of the biggest obstacles we all face -- dealing with the "pleasure as the absence of pain" passages.
Unless you get used to seeing Epicurus as a master logician, you're going to try to make sense of the "by pleasure we mean the absence of pain" passages thinking that he is talking in terms of feelings that we should grasp directly, when -- in my humble opinion - he is talking in primarily LOGICAL terms in order to address the Platonic logical arguments against pleasure as the highest good such as expressed in Philebus. He's expecting us to remember that the logical context is that there are only two feelings, so that BY DEFINITION - by logic - the presence of one equals the absence of the other. If you try to take that passage in purely experiential or "I know it because i feel it" terms without keeping in mind its logical context you're going to crash on the rocks, because in "feeling" terms it doesn't feel right to identify the goal of life - the greatest joy we can experience, as "absence of pain."
You're got to be prepared to approach Epicurus at the same time as both (1) the master architect of human happiness -- a masterful conveyor of the importance of "feeling," as well as (2) a master logician who was superior to Plato in explaining the goal of life in terms of ideas.
If you can't walk both paths then you're going to stumble. If you're too focused on emotion and feeling you will stumble when you confront the logical ideas of the Platonists, but at the other extreme if you're too focused on logic you'll fail because you sound like as much of an emotionless robot as the Stoics.
I firmly think you have to be grounded in *both.* Catherine Wilson is primarily explaining Epicurus in terms of her own feelings, and that's not good enough.
It's kind of a coincidence that I start this thread at the same time as the nearby thread about the hazards of social media use, but:
If anyone who reads this is a Facebook user who is able to keep that bad habit under control, and you'd be interested in helping to keep the Epicurean Philosophy group going, please let us know.
We need to constantly be on the lookout for new potential members here, and despite all their pitfalls, participating to a limited degree on places like Facebook, Reddit, etc, can be useful for making new contacts.
Several of us spend a lot of time "moderating" the facebook group to keep it in line with core Epicurean views, and if you're interested in doing something like that we'd be glad for the help. Looking for new people, bringing them along, and converting them into potential new moderators themselves is an ongoing process that will always be needed, and we need to systematize the process. For example, when someone on Facebook starts regularly making promising posts, we try to invite them to closer conversation to find out about them, and then steer them into closer levels of participation, including here.
That's a fun but time-consuming process, and we need all the help we can get. We do that now on facebook, but it would be ideal to do something similar in other places too.
For example on Facebook, long ago we set up a separate "closed" group where we could talk more freely with new potential members. We invited them to the closed group with a private message like this:
**Goals and terms of the 2019 Epicurean Friends Facebook Group**
Due to your past active participation in the Epicurean Philosophy Facebook Group, you have been asked to join this confidential "Friends" Group, which was formed for the purpose of promoting Epicurean Philosophy. The main discussion group is "open," and just like other groups on Facebook there are hundreds of profiles in it which are probably "fake" and which we know nothing about. That means everyone has to be careful about the level of personal information and the depth of personal commentary that we post there. In order that the core regulars of the group can get to know each other better, exchange ideas more freely and confidently, and work together more closely to promote the study of Epicurus, we have set up this "closed/secret" group.
We don't have many ground rules or obligations other than (1) new people will only be added by consensus of the existing members, (2) members agree to keep the information posted there private and not to repost it outside the group without permission of the original poster, and (3) members must introduce themselves within 30 days of being added to the group, and participate actively at least once every thirty days thereafter. If you lose interest in the group and don't post at least once every 30 days, the admins will check on you and ultimately remove you from the group until you ask to be readmitted and are again approved by the group. Also, of course, if you join and then decide later to pull out for any reason, of course you can do that - we just ask that you pledge to keep the conversations private.
Upon suggestion of a new member to the group we will post a thread and receive comments for at least three days, and we'll consider that we have a consensus if no one states affirmative opposition to the suggestion. We will then provide new suggested members with a copy of this post, and let them know that if they'd like to be added we will add them on these ground rules.
Thank you for being a part of the Epicurean Friends Facebook Group.
We've found that a system like that works pretty well to allow us to get to know people over time. By now I think most of us who have been around a while will agree that "time" - in terms of continued quality posting over a period of time - is the best and possibly only method of really getting an idea of the direction someone will go in the future. A few post over a couple of days, or even a couple of weeks, just isn't a reliable indicator. A few posts are enough to judge whether we want to get to know someone better, but there's an essential next step in finding out a little more about them that their stated views, and seeing them sustain that interest and friendliness over a period of time.
So - the bottom line is -- if you'd like to assist at Facebook, or a similar project anywhere else, please post here and we'll go forward from there.
Once again my negligent typing rears its head. Thank you Joshua! I will correct the original but leave these comments to document your assistance!
Epicurus' core teaching about death is that it is "nothing" to us. This is essential. If what awaited us beyond the grave was eternal torment, no amount or length of pleasure would be adequate to keep us happy.
I particularly agree with that Joshua, even though not everyone might think this is essential. I personally see this as very similar to specific positions on the nature of the gods, and on the erternality / infinity issue. Not everyone is going to feel the same way, but my personal bet is that 80% of the world would never even entertain a philosophy-of-life seriously unless it took a position on these questions.
The more i thought about it the more i expected Elayne to blast the article, and I see I was not disappointed. In my view this is one of Elaynes strongest areas (of many).
I understand (I think) why Don reacted the way he did, because I see this article from several different angles. But there's something fundamentally wrong with Catherine Wilson's approach to Epicurus which really gives us some great oppportunities to discuss.
I really think there is a lot of important material here to digest, and I will probably suggest we cut this out to a public post while treating the politics at a very high level, as Elayne did. But I am in the road for 4 hours so can't do that til tonight. I hope more will comment.
We should never be afraid to disagree with each other and on this topic above all our discussions will help us articulate the issues better and see where obstacles stand in our way.
There's nothing more important than this in Epicurean philosophy, and the road to explaining how we get there is crucial. The interplay of the logic and the feeling aspects still seems to me to be one of those where we can improve our presentation. I see that aspect slightly different from Elayne but I need to work on articulating how. I think Wilson is failing dramatically in her understanding of the logical issues.
Catherine Wilson is providing us great material for growth in these areas.
Notes from similar thread on Facebook:
Poster: If Epicurus lived in our time, would he have used a smartphone?
Elayne:: 😂😂😂 Love it! Of course, he would do the same process as for every choice or avoidance-- consider the total effect on his pleasure and pain, in his own life, knowing his own preferences and situation. He would not make a decision apart from these specifics because pleasure is what must come first.
Matt:
As I posted elsewhere...
In my humble opinion, Epicurus most likely would’ve written a treatise on the use of an iPhone/Internet/Media/Social Media. To show the advantages of how the technology leads to a more pleasurable life.....and conversely if not used WISELY how it can become the greatest tool of creating pain and misery.
Elli:
ES. 41 We must laugh and philosophize at the same time and do our household duties and employ our other faculties, and never cease proclaiming the sayings of the true philosophy.
If Epicurus lived today, definitely he would use iphone, to watch and such kind of videos on youtube for laughing out loud.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUm2KWPmnHg
Eis Aiona : may be smartphone, but FOR SURE NO SOCIAL MEDIA
Actually I want to pull back my first good impression of that bliss drug comment. Now that I look at it again, is the analysis really correct? Is she in fact showing that she does not understand the importance of maintaining that pleasure is pleasure and good in itself, and that the reason that the problem with a bliss drug is its IMPRACTICABILITY, not the desire for total pleasure?
The second paragraph seems to hint at the right analysis, but..... she isn't stating WHY it is good to experience the world as it is....
Elayne I particularly want to know what you think about that! The more I think about it the less I like it. I think she is buying into the "we must have pain in order to experience pleasure" argument which might give us a good example of why Epicurean divinity has an important use -- to illustrate that pain is not necessary to the best life ??????
Oh my this implicates a lot of our discussions! Is Wilson so focused on the practical feeling / experience aspect that she has lost the importance of the "logical" argument by which we must maintain that pleasure is desirable in and of itself? Is this an illustration of how we must constantly recognize BOTH the logical and practical arguments lest we slide down a slope in which we lose our focus on the need for both?
Now I have raised two topics (1) the political angle of the article, and (2) Wilson's bliss drug analysis. Of the two, the SECOND is far more important than the first.
Here is a new article by Catherine Wilson:https://www.newstatesman.com/international/…phy-we-need-now
Who can disagree with the title?
OK I just looked at this one and see it is actually a new article by Catherine Wilson. It contains some good philosophical points along with some not-so-good, but is something most of us would personally agree with. However it's focused on politics, and my view is that it would probably not be a good idea to post it, especially right now.
All of us in the USA are no doubt aware that political tensions right now are probably higher than any time in our lifetimes, so this is probably a particularly good time to adhere to the posting guidelines for the greater good of our mutual project here.
I almost want to post the article solely for this following paragraph, and I might pull the paragraph out somehow and post it anyway. This increases Catherine Wilson in my estimation, but the danger involved in opening discussion into humanism and politics is probably too great to post the whole article.
I even hesitate to post these confidential comments because I want us to stay away from politics as far and as long as we can. But at the very least we need to be open to discussing where the limits are, and I think at least here in this confidential group we have a close enough relationship we can at least discuss where the limits are, if anyone has any comments.
This is a video that was discussed here some years ago, but only recently became available again:
Thanks Don. There are some significant issues with parts (not all) of the article, as Elli's and Elayne's posts point out, but there are some good parts too and that's part of what we're here for -- to discuss things and help clarify issues for everyone.
