Posts by Godfrey

Quote from Don

You just to put the work in on A to live the calm life of B.

TauPhi , I think that burninglights ' post #32 above does a good job of clarifying what I was trying to describe as to how my understanding of katastematic pleasure differs from what you are describing. And I find this understanding of it useful in using our reasoning and agency to craft our most pleasant life.

Quote from TauPhi

I am strongly opposed to the idea of a "neutral state".

We're definitely in agreement there.

Quote from TauPhi

it's felt constantly throughout one's life and is sometimes disturbed by pain caused mainly (but not only) by fear which distorts our perception of life's experiences.

My main question is whether or not this is correct. Whether there is actually a background state, or a constant fluctuation between pain and pleasure in all parts of the body and mind. I'm beginning to see it as the latter.

Quote from TauPhi

If katastematic pleasure would be fleeting and unstable and lasted only for some time, k/k division would make no sense and would be reduced to an absurd. I mean, how much time do we need to declare a pleasure long-lasting so it's katastematic and no longer kinetic? 15 minutes? Two days? 5 years? At this point we might as well start discussing which superhero is better, Superman or Spiderman?

Ataraxia and aponia have no inherent time component as far as I can determine as a non-Greek speaker. If they define katastematic pleasure, there is no reason why katastematic pleasure would have to have a particular time component, let alone last a lifetime. The only reference to time is the secure knowledge of their continuance, which depends on prudent choices and avoidances. In this case, they're "stable" because you've done the work necessary and can tap into the particular feeling of pleasure at any time, even though you don't feel it all of the time.

It does seem to me that kinetic pleasures, in general, have less breadth of location than have ataraxia and aponia. But that depends on the exact definitions of ataraxia and aponia.

I hope I'm making sense and not driving people crazy with this line of thought! My own thinking is evolving, and we have so few sources to go on that it seems necessary to do the digging to really try to get a handle on the deeper ideas. And as always I welcome frank speech!

As for Superman and Spidey, I have my opinions. But those belong in another corner of the internet (a corner to which I never go )

Quote from TauPhi

everything that is alive, has senses and a brain (or the corresponding organ) capable of translating sensory inputs into experiences, is equipped with katastematic pleasure at birth. This pleasure is, simply put, background noise to life.

As such, katastematic pleasure has nothing to do with intensity, location and duration. These can be descriptors of kinetic pleasures. If one really wants to apply these descriptors to human katastematic pleasure, they would look something like this:

intensity: subjective and unquantifiable

location: somewhere between one's ears

duration: lifespan

This is interesting, but in pondering it, I keep coming back to Epicurus' wording. To paraphrase: the healthy functioning of the body and lack of disturbance in the mind. But, to me, this mustn't be considered simply background noise, and it still consists of intensity, location and duration.

For something to be a pleasure, by definition it must be felt. With this in mind, a "background state" could easily be misconstrued (and typically is, outside of this forum) as a "neutral state", even though I don't think that's what you're saying TauPhi .

By being in either the body or the mind, these felt pleasures have a location. They have duration, which can be anything from fleeting to long lasting. (Think of times when your body feels really great or your mind is really clear. For me, these times are fleeting. If they're long lasting for you, tell me how you do it!) And they have varying intensities, depending on the particular situation.

So apparently where this is leading me is to the conclusion that ataraxia and aponia are most likely the katastematic pleasures. But they are like all other pleasures in that they vary in intensity, location and duration. If there is anything that categorizes them as separate from other pleasures (notice that I studiously didn't say "makes them special") it's the breadth of their locations: aponia being throughout the body at a given moment and ataraxia being throughout the mind at a given moment. Unless, of course, you're a god. (Which kind of sounds similar to a Stoic sage as I write this... but I digress.)

We have two methods of working toward a pleasant life which can be found in the extant texts of Epicurus: 1) working with the categories of desires and 2) working with intensity, location and duration of individual pleasures. Considering the lack of clarity of k/k pleasures, both of these methods seem, to me, to be more directly useful than trying to sort out the k/k debate (although Don may not agree with that, and I respect his thinking on the matter!).

Each of these two methods is geared toward helping us feel the most pleasure with the least effort.

When using intensity, location and duration to consider individual pleasures there is no hierarchy among these three that I'm aware of. We use our own evaluations, for our own particular situation.

A day full of delight to both of you, Joshua and Kalosyni !

Quote

I would guess then that "contingent," in this case, means something like political/social activity for aims that are not pragmatic (say, to sustain beneficially secure social contracts, laws and norms), but based on some other "contingent" considerations: such as personal power or enforcement of some ideology.

That was my impression: contingent as opposed to realpolitik. But I was confused, and haven't gone back and listened to that part again.

Not sure I buy into "unique and sacred nature that is fundamentally different from the nature of all other beings and phenomena". That seems to me to be in conflict with evolution. Also, separating ourselves out as unique, sacred and fundamentally different sounds like one of the evils of idealism and religion which leads to all sorts of misinterpretation and ensuing conflict.

But I appreciate the chart Pacatus ! Quite interesting.

From the circumplex, I interpret what Eoghan Gardiner is describing to be near the bottom of the "Deactivation" axis. With such a low amount of "excitement", it would be very difficult to distinguish pleasure or pain even though the feeling is still there. Additionally from the circumplex, the feeling would not be very strong. But it would still be there as either a pleasure or a pain.

This aligns with my intuition. But it's difficult to intuit the idea that the absence of pain is the greatest pleasure. It’s logically correct, but when I really dig into it, it's hard to wrap my head around. At first it makes sense at the macro level, but Eoghan Gardiner 's anecdote is at the macro level. After a while it makes my head spin!

Of course, what Cicero loved to do was to find rabbit holes and dig away....

This article that Kalosyni posted is a good read and has some pertinence to the discussion:

Post

Article: "Lucretian Pleasures" by Sedley

This article may be of benefit in understanding the nature of pleasure within Epicurean philosophy, and here is the abstract:

[…]

https://www.academia.edu/43841652/Lucretian_Pleasures

Kalosyni

October 11, 2023 at 11:07 AM

Could VS11 possibly have any relevance in this discussion? If it does, it's certainly not explicit. It's set up as contrasting to something, but the question is what it's contrasting to. I've typically thought of it in terms of discussing people's actions, but what if it's about k/k pleasures. Admittedly, I'm probably reaching pretty far....

VS11: For most people, to be quiet is to be numb and to be active is to be frenzied.

Typo. Desire, not pleasure....

Quote from Cassius

Is "variety" in pleasure the reason we find it is desirable to get out of bed tomorrow? Or is the reason just that we didn't succeed in making "pure pleasure" today so that we try again tomorrow?

I don't necessarily think that either or these is the reason to get out of bed, although in a particular instance they could be. One thought is that pleasure is something that we're attracted to, so any pleasure may gte us out of bed: a beautiful day outside, the smell of coffee, the anticipation of some activity that awaits.

Another thought is that desire, not desire, is the reason to get out of bed. The desire to relieve a full bladder, to drink a cup of coffee, to accomplish such-and-such. Experiencing pleasure may actually keep you in bed: enjoying the sun shining through the window in your bedroom, the pleasure of anticipating some future event, etc. It could be a desire for variety, or a desire to achieve pure pleasure today.

Quote from Cassius

I would think there must be an equally simple way of dealing with a question such as: "If your view of the goal is (1), and you reach it one day, why do you want to live another day?"

This gets back to the Cyrenaic view of pleasure. As I recall, they thought that there was no lasting pleasure so that as soon as you reached your goal and satisfied one desire for a pleasure, you had to then satisfy another desire for pleasure. This also points out an issue with goal setting in general which is being discussed in some circles these days: once you reach your goal, what do you do? Instead, some writers recommend developing a habitual process of moving forward toward achieving what is important to you.

Too, pleasure is able to increase in duration, so if you reach your maximum of pleasure one day, you can still increase it by continuing it for another day.

Quote from Cassius

"living the sort of life specific to the being in question"

Any properly functioning being has an innate drive to pleasure/health/vitality, which I assume would drive it/them naturally to get out of bed and do stuff, if able.

Other thoughts on variation....

External sources of pleasure have uncountable variety. Internal experiences of pleasure seem to be confined to location, duration and possibly intensity. How does the variety of external pleasures equate to variety of internal experiences? Is it through location, in that different nerve endings or neurons are stimulated by different stimuli? If you eat one cherry, then another and another, are you increasing the intensity of stimulation at each nerve ending or are you stimulating an increasing number of nerve endings?

At that, my neurons are overstimulated. Peace out.

Quote from Cassius

Godfrey I don't recall that you commented on "why accept the minimum when more us possible" and I suspect that is key to completing this analysis. There is some aspect to "Intensity" that fits into this puzzle. More intensity has to be obviously desirable just like it is obvious that you want the most duration and locations.

Minimum what? As long as all pain is gone from the body and mind, there is no minimum because you are by definition at the maximum of pleasure (macro). If we're talking about micro pleasures, then the minimum would mean that you're limiting yourself to one location of pleasure or to one moment of pleasure. Once pleasures have accumulated throughout your body and mind, you're at the maximum of pleasure.

It would appear that there's no sliding scale of intensity, other than through location and duration, by definition. At least That's what I'm thinking right here, right now. That may change.

Quote from Godfrey

PD03 “The limit of quantity [intensity???] in pleasures is the removal of all that is painful. Wherever [location] pleasure is present, as long as it is there [duration], there is neither pain of body nor of mind, nor of both at once.” Bailey (1926)

Paraphrase: "The most pleasure that one can experience is the removal of all pain, throughout one's body and mind, for the duration of their life. This maximal pleasure comprises pleasures which occur in various parts of one's body and mind and at various times, to such an extent that they fill the entirety of the person's body and mind for the duration of their life." PD03

Is this a correct paraphrase of PD03? If so, why? If not, why not?

Quote

PD09 “If every pleasure could be intensified so that it lasted and influenced the whole organism or the most essential parts of our nature, pleasures would never differ from one another.” Bailey (1926)

Paraphrase: "If any pleasure could be extended for the duration of the life of a particular organism and extended throughout the body and mind of the organism, this pleasure would be the same as any other pleasure so extended." PD03

Is this a correct paraphrase of PD09? If so, why? If not, why not?

We experience pleasures as differing from one another, so what does this mean? How do the pleasures differ from one another besides in location and duration? Are extension, accumulation, condensing, intensification, all describing the same thing? What is that thing? Reading the sentence, does the thing apply only to the location and duration of the pleasure, or to the pleasure itself? How does this thing relate to the maximal pleasure in PD03?

I'm thinking that PD03 and PD09 are keys to solving this puzzle, although I haven't looked at other of Epicurus' writings in this regard. For the record, I don't think that the answer will be found in Cicero although the answer should explain what Cicero is saying about pleasure.

PD03:

“The magnitude [intensity???] of pleasures is limited by the removal of all pain. Wherever there is pleasure [location], so long as it is present [duration], there is no pain either of body or of mind or both.” Hicks (1910)

“The limit of quantity [intensity???] in pleasures is the removal of all that is painful. Wherever [location] pleasure is present, as long as it is there [duration], there is neither pain of body nor of mind, nor of both at once.” Bailey (1926)

PD09:

“If every pleasure were condensed [intensity?], if one may so say, and if each lasted long [duration], and affected the whole body, or the essential parts of it [location], then there would be no difference between one pleasure and another.” Yonge (1853)

“If all pleasure had been capable of accumulation [intensity], if this had gone on not only in time [duration], but all over the frame or, at any rate, the principal parts of man's nature [location], there would not have been any difference between one pleasure and another as, in fact, there now there now is.” Hicks (1910)

“If every pleasure could be intensifed [intensity] so that it lasted [duration] and infuenced the whole organism or the most essential parts of our nature [location], pleasures would never differ from one another.” Bailey (1926)

As I recall, Don interpreted PD09 as saying that pleasure cannot be condensed (by analyzing Epicurus' counterfactuals. Based on our most recent posts I think this could be saying that there is no component of intensity. There is only the feeling of pleasure/pain, it is a two-way switch, and it varies in magnitude only through location and duration.

Cassius , my post just now and your last post (which cross-posted) are talking about the same problem, I think. Just approached slightly differently....

Quote from Cassius

I think we could reword that this way:

A question is "why is absence of pain (which is the definition of pleasure) through the organism (at macro level) the limit of magnitude, whereas a more localized pleasure (at the micro level) can increase?"

If that is saying the same thing, which I think it is, the answer is pretty obvious: a macro level pleasure cannot increase by definition. because it has no more room to increase, while pleasure at any smaller degree than macro level can increase because it still has room to increase.

Sorry for disappearing... busy day!

Yes, that rewording of the question is the same thing.

The last paragraph in Cassius ' quote shows that, yet again, I wasn't clear enough in my overall analysis above. As far as it goes, what is presented in this paragraph is obvious. The components of location and duration obviously cannot increase at the macro level, but they can at the micro level.

What's not obvious to me is the role of intensity. If intensity can increase at the micro level beyond the absence of pain, why can it not increase at the macro level? Or is intensity the wrong description of this component of pleasure? Is it really just a two way switch that jumps from pleasure to pain? If this is the case, then the three components are feeling, location and duration. If so, "feeling" describes both the composite of the three components and one of the components, in which case I think it's a better description to say that pleasures and pains vary through the modifiers of location and duration, and avoid the word "intensity". Which might actually be the way the Greek texts are written: at least in PD09, I've been understanding (as has at least one translator) "condensed" to be equivalent to varying intensity.

I don't have a problem with that, and that might be exactly the conclusion from PD03 and PD09. This means that what is perceived as "intensity" is, in fact, an increase or decrease (condensing) in location and/or duration. My general sense is that I can increase the intensity of a pleasure or pain without increasing the location or duration. Is that actually incorrect? If one was to dig into the science, is a nerve ending (if that's the correct term) an on-off switch? Imagine a pleasure or pain resulting from a pressure. Does increasing the pressure simply recruit more nerve endings (increase the location) rather than elicit a greater response from the original quantity of nerve endings? If I'm getting this right, that seems to be what Epicurus intuited and what he based his conception of maximum pleasure on.

Am I making a comprehensible presentation? If so, does it make any sense?

(Cross posted again...)

Quote from Cassius

Maybe quantity applies at the macro level but at the micro level that is where you have duration, intensity, and location?

I've actually been wondering for a while if magnitude/quantity was describing the same thing as condensing/intensity, but I think you're going in a better direction. Here's my latest thinking:

Magnitude/quantity simply comprises intensity, location and duration. This can occur at any intensity at any location for one moment, or at many locations for a long period of time. The limit of the magnitude/quantity is the absence of pain throughout the organism, for the life of the organism. But, practically speaking, we can work with intensity, location and duration of individual pleasures (through reasoning about our desiresand comparison with our experiences of pleasure and pain) in order to maximize the pleasures available to us. This is exactly what Epicurus did on his deathbed: there wasn't much physical pleasure available to him, so he maximized his mental pleasures, through recollection of his most intense pleasures, in the time that he had left.

A question is "why is absence of pain throughout the organism (macro) the limit of magnitude, whereas a more localized pleasure (micro) can increase beyond mere absence of pain?"

- Macro pleasure, by definition, can't increase in location. A micro pleasure can.

- Can macro pleasure can increase in duration? Or is it specifically "godlike"? A micro pleasure can increase in duration.

- Can a macro pleasure increase in intensity? Epicurus is apparently saying that it cannot, that it's limit is the absence of pain. From experience it seems that a micro pleasure can increase in intensity.

- Intensity the actual Feeling of pleasure or pain, right. Location and duration are simply where and when that Feeling occurs.

Is there something special about intensity at the macro v the micro level? Is Epicurus' description of the limit of magnitude/quantity as a type of homeostasis? Could the latter case be a situation where there are no pains anywhere, ever, to overcome so that there is no need to pursue a pleasure in one place to offset a pain in another place?

Technically, having the absence of pain throughout your body and mind is the fullest pleasure. Practically, I'm not sure that I've ever experienced that! Maybe when I was a baby?

In any part of the organism, once all pain is gone you can experience increasing pleasure in that part, at least until the increased sensation causes pain. So, interestingly, the maximum pleasure of the entire organism is the absence of pain, whereas the absence of pain is the minimum of pleasure for any specific location in the organism.

This explains the interaction of intensity, location and duration. The location of the minimum pleasure in every location throughout the organism is considered a greater pleasure than the most intense pleasure in a few parts of the organism. Practically speaking, this provides some guidance for maximizing pleasure through working with all three of the components instead of just the component of intensity.

(oops, we cross posted)

So, to paraphrase PD03:

"In terms of an entire organism, the maximum pleasure is the absence of pain throughout the organism. In any part of the organism, any degree of pleasure removes all pain in that part for as long as it is there, because pleasure is equal to the absence of pain."