Posts by Godfrey

Back at you. Happy New Year to all!

Thanks for all your hard work Don . Merry Christmas!

Quote from Todd

Maybe the transition to Latin was where it all started to go wrong.

This would be interesting to pursue, maybe in another thread. I don't have the Greek or Latin chops to pursue it, but if anyone else wants to I'll follow it with interest Meanwhile, this paper that Don linked to sounds fruitful!

Slippery bastard, indeed! In reading through the above download, it seems that at least every other line could be easily refuted (which is similar to the rest of the tiny amount of Plato that I've read). Yet the argument blithely proceeds....

Don there are some examples of "good" in there in case you're interested.

The only thing that might be helpful to change is the very end under The Why: it's also important to clarify this in order to live your best life, and to have ready at hand if you are in a situation where you question your beliefs.

So it would seem that what's important to discuss and work with is pleasure/pain, and not "the good," "a good," or "good." But it's going too far to say that pleasure is not a good or to separate pleasure and good. And there's a context in which it's important to parse good/a good/the good, but that's peripheral to a functional understanding of Epicurean philosophy. Is this the conclusion we're reaching?

Quote from Todd

1) There is no such thing as a good (or a bad) in nature. The concept of a good is a product of human reason. So first we need to define what a good is (or stop talking about them).

2) How would we define a good, using only the tools nature gave us? Pleasure and pain seem like the obvious tools for the job.

I'd like to dig into this, thinking out loud (as it were). If I'm not mistaken, Epicurus defined pleasure as what is conducive to life and pain as what is not conducive to life. Offhand, I don’t recall if this is in his extant writing, or if I got it elsewhere. But this would apply to all life: single cells, plants, animals, babies, adult philosophy enthusiasts, etc. As pointed out in 2), this makes pleasure and pain obvious choices for defining good and bad.

What is conducive to life would be intuited by that life as good, not conducive as bad. I guess this is where the anticipation comes in. So pleasure = good, and pain = bad. Now what produces pleasure is also a good, and what produces pain is also a bad. By this way of thinking, "good" is pleasure and "a good" produces pleasure/good.

Quote from Todd

4) So is pleasure a good? Does it produce pleasure? No, it IS pleasure. Therefore, it is not a good.

So it seems to me that the word "good" has multiple meanings that are so intertwined as to resist this conclusion. It's a little bit like "read" in the phrase "read that book" v the phrase "they read that book." "Read" is both a command and a past tense verb, and also has different pronunciations. How would this apply to good/a good/the good? I'm not enough of a linguist to answer that, so I'll ask the question because I think this needs to be dealt with.

Trying to "improve" one's enemies has a long history and to a degree gets to the heart of what's so destructive about religion (aside from the issues of "faith" and the supernatural). The Crusades and the Inquisition come readily to mind.

For that matter, trying to improve one's friends isn't such a great idea. Try telling a loved one that they need to lose weight!

Quote

Quote

Quote from Godfrey 3. In light of 2, I think that we all agree that pleasure is the positive/attractive part of the faculty of Feelings. As such, a prudent understanding of one's feelings and desires is the core of Epicurean ethics.

Yes, of course.

However, saying things in such a general way that no one could possibly disagree and still call themselves an Epicurean is not interesting to me (possibly a personal failing).

I was mainly trying to clarify a point of agreement with that comment, bc I was losing track of where the discussion was going.

Quote

Quote

Quote from Godfrey 4. Pleasure is good. It's a good. It's The Good. It feels good. It's everything described in the previous 138 posts.

for the clever way of putting that.

But this strikes me as a rather bland, (somewhat) non-controversial flavor of Epicureanism. I would like to be able to make stronger claims, and to do that, you have to be very clear on what words actually mean and how concepts relate. Again, this is possibly a personal failing of mine.

Definitely not a personal failing!

This comment 4 was a tongue-halfway-in-cheek way of saying, in conjunction with 3, that (at least for me) it's more productive to discuss "pleasure" than "good." I don't call this bland or non-controversial; consider

- there is no supernatural

- there is no life after death

- the basis of ethics is pleasure

- Plato and Aristotle were in many ways misguided and misleading

- the starting point of philosophy is the individual, not the polis

These five assertions have made opponents apoplectic for 2300 years! Just the idea that the basis of ethics is pleasure drives people crazy. But I wasn't trying to derail the discussion as much as clarify the parameters. Good discussion!

I'm coming late to this discussion, but....

1. This seems like exactly the type of rabbit hole that Cicero cleverly led to in his discussion of Epicurus.

2. Todd you have mentioned repeatedly that in this thread you are only discussing ethics. I think that that's a mistake, because there's no Epicurean ethics without the physics. To me, separating the two is in this instance an error of dialectics, which can be useful for winning arguments but not terribly useful in gaining a complete understanding of a subject.

3. In light of 2, I think that we all agree that pleasure is the positive/attractive part of the faculty of Feelings. As such, a prudent understanding of one's feelings and desires is the core of Epicurean ethics.

4. Pleasure is good. It's a good. It's The Good. It feels good. It's everything described in the previous 138 posts.

5. From my perspective, there seem to be three things being discussed in this thread: a) parsing the concept "good," b) trying to gain a clear grasp of Epicurean philosophy, and c) coming to a way of presenting the philosophy to others. If I'm correct in this, it might be helpful to put a) into one thread and b) and c) into another thread. Combining them all, at least for me, is creating a lot of confusion. If new terminology is necessary, I think it would best derive from a discussion of the intent of the philosophy, from general to specific. Parsing the meaning of specific ancient words is important, but needs to be done in a very specific context. And, at least for me, the specificity of that context seems uncertain in this thread.

I do think that modern research has largely been a confirmation of Epicurus' position, which I find informative. There's no reason to take what he said "on faith" when it makes intuitive sense and has empirical confirmation. His original reasoning has been confirmed, to the point where many of his detractors words throughout the centuries look pretty ridiculous now.

Oh, I just noticed Todd 's edit; we cross posted. It makes more sense now.

Infants and animals were examples used in ancient Greece to make an argument for pleasure, both "do" and "ought." Today we have neuroscientific research, such as Barrett, Lembke and others, to provide the "do." (I don't have more specifics at hand; just seeing if this will advance the discussion.) Then the task becomes getting to "ought." I've personally never found formal logic at all convincing. I tend toward more practical means, such as "if we understand that pleasure and pain are guides to our behavior, doesn't it make good sense to understand how best to work with them? Why not try it out for a while and evaluate your results?"

But I'm uncertain as to the posts between Todd and Joshua and where they're going....

Quote from camotero

From this, I think there's an analogy to be made about his concern for politics. I agree with you that such an active individual wouldn't shy away from action with the potential to shape their world/experience/pleasure (he even advocated against passiveness), but perhaps what he rejected was the falling in the trap of the useless politics game....

Agreed.

Having dipped just a little into reading Aristotle, I would say that Epicurus was reacting against basing a philosophy on the polis rather than the individual. Aristotle, Plato, the Stoics and others determined that what was good for the polis was best for the individual, whereas Epicurus determined that the best life results from an understanding of nature and through the experience of the individual. Beginning with the polis tends to lead to duty ethics and state religion, both of which Epicurus reacted against.

Whether a particular individual chooses to be active in politics would be based on that individual’s analysis of their desires, not on a blanket proclamation that politics is to be avoided.

One format that might be helpful to adapt in some fashion is the one that Alan Alda uses in his "Clear and Vivid" podcast. He ends each interview with the same "seven quick questions" that he asks every guest. A possible way to use this idea would be to begin the interview with a few quick, standardized questions and proceed from there.... With Alda's podcast I sometimes skip to the end to hear how the guest answers the questions if I'm not particularly interested in the main topic. It's an interesting way to get a sense of the guest as a person.

Our drink of choice is Death Wish Espresso Roast coffee

My family and I are enjoying visiting our daughter and her boyfriend in Alaska. We're definitely experiencing our whitest and coldest Christmas ever. The solstice is quite meaningful up here as there are currently about 4 hours of daily daylight.

Happy Solstice, all!

Well done! Getting meaty now

At first glance it appears that Epicurus made a significant improvement by adding the third category of "unnatural." Having just necessary and unnecessary, for me, makes choices and avoidances rather black and white. The third category allows more room for personal nuance.

With two categories I think the tendency would be toward choosing the necessary and avoiding the "unnecessary" desires. This feels to me like a rigid sort of virtue ethic. With the three categories, the middle one (natural and unnecessary) becomes what I like to think of as the "sweet spot" where we make our most interesting choices. This is what puts the "pleasure" in "pleasure ethics."

As a therapeutic, gratitude enhances current pleasure. At the same time, gratitude for past pleasures helps in dealing with loss and reminds one to take notice of what one has now.