Posts by Godfrey

I'd like to propose again that a desire is not a pain, but it may produce pain or be a response to a pain.

To test a somewhat muddled analogy: fire is not a pain, but if you put your hand in it, it will lead to pain. Moving on from the analogy: if you keep your hand in the fire, you will have a desire (in this case a response to pain) to remove your hand from the fire. If someone offered you a large sum of money to keep your hand in the fire, the natural desire to remove your hand will be fighting with the (vain? depends on the circumstances) desire to get the money (choices and avoidances: which resultant pleasure/pain leads toward a better outcome?).

If desire is a pain, then per PD03 the limit of the magnitude of pleasure would include the removal of all desire. Is this what Epicurus had in mind? Then why would he describe natural and necessary desires? Does he say somewhere that gods have no desires?

Can we even experience pleasure without desire? Certainly we can by stumbling into something pleasurable. But Epicurus is very clear that prudence is of critical importance; this is how we live our lives with intention and not by chance.

As I recall from an experiment described in the book Dopamine Nation, rats with their dopamine blocked would starve to death. They weren't motivated by the pleasure of food or by the removal of the pain of hunger, but by dopamine. So if dopamine equates to desire (does it?) then it would clearly not be a pain or a pleasure. Desire would be a stimulus to action as opposed to pleasure and pain, which serve as guides to action and results of action. (OK I'm mixing modern and ancient here)

Sadly, I don't. But I hope that it does.

BTW post #36 is a great start toward pinning down the details of desires v feelings!

I'm inclined to think of hope and desire as degrees of the same thing. For a pop culture reference, consider the Ted Lasso episode "The Hope That Kills You". Any sports fan hopes that their team wins, but isn't that really a desire? And in that case, even a vain desire as they have no control over the outcome.

Likewise, do I desire world peace or hope for it?

The only things which are intrinsically "good" or "bad" are pleasure (good) and pain (bad). Everything else, including desire, only lead to greater or lesser pleasure or pain.

Quote from Cassius

So just like Pleasure, some Desires are to be pursued in certain circumstances, and some should not be pursued, but at no point do we consider either "Pleasure" or "Desire" to be tainted terminology. In fact I would come very close to applying the same phrasing as in the letter and paraphrase the result as: "All Desires are good, because they are desirable, but some desires may lead to more pain than pleasure and thus should not be chosen."

Rather than being a question of what the good is, to me this approach invites confusing desires with pleasures. Martin 's description seems quite accurate. The confusion might come about because, as far as I can tell, Epicurus didn't define desire. He only gave categories of desires. But if we look to modern science (to my understanding) we see that desire is different from pleasure or pain. Even though he didn't define desire, by his treatment of the various ideas I think it's clear that Epicurus was in basic agreement with modern science.

Did Aristotle or Plato define desire? Maybe Epicurus felt no need to define it because he had no objection to the common notion of it.

Quote from Joshua

...I don't think that pain is necessarily "bad" or "evil".

I agree with much of Joshua 's post. A point to clarify, at least in my mind, is that rather than being bad or evil, pain is a guide pointing away from health. Pleasure is a guide pointing toward health. If you ignore your pain (or have CIP) then you can expect results harmful to your well-being. When you overdo pleasure seeking, pain will generally guide you back to reasonable pleasure seeking.

Pleasure is a guide toward healthy outcomes, pain is a guide away from unhealthy outcomes. Desires are neither. Or both. In this way they are different from pleasure and pain; they're more like attractions rather than guides.

The question remains whether they are feelings, sensations, thoughts, or something else....

Joshua made an interesting point when he said, if I'm quoting correctly, that desire is a Feeling of pain.

My understanding is different, but I think that it's a valuable point to discuss. I've made the point in other threads that desire and pleasure should not be confused. However I've been on the fence about desire and pain. For now I'll push the idea that desire is not a pain but that it leads to pain. I think that current neuroscience shows pleasure/pain and desire to be caused by different chemical processes: maybe Don or reneliza would care to weigh in on this.

PD10 and PD11 both mention pain and desire, which is why I was previously on the fence. But as I read them now, it appears that these PDs treat them as different things.

PD10 "If the objects which are productive of pleasures to profligate persons really freed them from fears of the mind—the fears, I mean, inspired by celestial and atmospheric phenomena, the fear of death, the fear of pain—if, further, they taught them to limit their desires, we should not have any reason to censure such persons, for they would then be filled with pleasure to overfowing on all sides and would be exempt from all pain, whether of body or mind, that is, from all evil.” Hicks (1910)

This seems to be making a clear distinction between pain and desire.

PD11 "If we had never been molested by alarms at celestial and atmospheric phenomena, nor by the misgiving that death somehow affects us, nor by neglect of the proper limits of pains and desires, we should have had no need to study natural science.” Hicks (1910)

However this one isn't so clear. But for now I'm sticking to the idea that desire is not a Feeling.

Quote from Kalosyni

The goal of existential therapy is to assist individuals in accepting and overcoming existential fears that are inherent in being human. An example of these existential fears includes freedom and responsibility, isolation, meaninglessness, and death.

This seems to be in line with what Epicurus was doing. However I'm not familiar with the nuances of existentialism. It seems to me that its starting point is dealing with how to live in a fully material universe, but I have no idea where it goes from there. My impression is that quite a bit of variety is included under the existentialist umbrella.

That's what it appears to be, based on the CNET link.

As an aside...

The industrial designer Eva Zeisel once said something along the lines of "I don't strive for perfection, because if I attain it, what else is there to do?"

Somehow this seems relevant here. But in thinking about it it might deserve a thread of its own.

Quote

Lerner's piece uses some of the early JWST studies to attempt to dismiss the Big Bang theory. What's concerning is how it misconstrues early JWST data to suggest that astronomers and cosmologists are worried the well-established theory is incorrect. There are two points early in Lerner's article which show this:

He points to a preprint with the word "Panic!" in its title, calling it a "candid exclamation."He misuses a quote from Allison Kirkpatrick, an astronomer at the University of Kansas.

The first point is just a case of Lerner missing the pun. The full title of the paper is "Panic! At the Disks: First Rest-frame Optical Observations of Galaxy Structure at z>3 with JWST in the SMACS 0723 Field." The first author of that preprint, astronomer Leonardo Ferreira, is clearly riffing on popular 2000s emo band Panic! at the Disco with his title. It's a tongue-in-cheek reference, not a cosmological crisis.

This first point is rather amusing, but also a good example of how misinformation gets started.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a very seductive idea. However I've encountered more confusion than clarity when I've tried to relate it to the categories of desires and my personal conclusion is that it's not helpful to one studying Epicurus. The more that I looked into it, the more academic criticisms of it I found.... It appeared to me that it could turn into another rabbit hole that would actually take me further from understanding Epicurus. I dropped it and focused on Epicurus and feel that I've been well rewarded for my choice.

It may have been mentioned earlier in this thread, but Empedocles (I think) saw the universe as being made up of Love and Strife. That, as I recall, was one of the pre-Socratic notions that eventually led to atomism.

Maybe a more directly pertinent thought is the contrast between "pleasure ethics" and "duty ethics". For most of my life I was living by duty ethics, although I wasn't consciously aware of it. Duty ethics is a great way to grow the economy and keep the worker bees buzzing, and it takes the stance that pleasure will be the downfall of everything. Pleasure ethics, on the other hand, is a great way to live life in a manner that is connected to physical reality. No vengeful gods needed. This is one more way that Epicurus endeavored (as it were) to counteract the destructive influence of Plato.

Quote from Matteng

It sounds that Epicureans don´t look Pain in the face, like a form of positiv thinking.

My points: First you should do something to change painfull situations (and question the underlying belief and the hedonic calculus). If that is not possible than cognitive methods could help, like memorizing pleasure or to change the attention.

This is spot on to me. The EP worldview, from top to bottom, is about understanding and working with reality. Part of that understanding is to get to know your pain, perhaps quite intimately. Only then can you work toward a deep and lasting pleasure.

Quote from Kalosyni

This is where I believe that certain "natural goods" are important -- such as the need for friendship/companionship (and all the enjoyments that come with it) which can make life situations feel better or less stressful or less disappointing.

The interpretation that I'm currently working with is that natural and necessary desires, such as friendship, are a priority. Fulfilling them is the bottom limit of the sweet spot. Once those are met, there's great pleasure to be had in pursuing a variety of desires, as long as we stay in the sweet spot and below the upper limit that is the vain desires. If the natural and necessary desires haven't been fulfilled, then it's a priority to work with them, although this will most likely be done concurrent with pursuing natural and unnecessary desires. In the process of sorting out all of these desires we determine what, for us as individuals, is natural and necessary and what is the icing on the cake. At least for me, it's a constant work in progress!

Absolutely! Awe, and also coming to grips with mystery through myths. And passing myths down to children at such a young age that the myths seem innate.

Quote from reneliza

I’m still curious about the second part though: “if one measures, by reason, the limits of pleasure.”

What if we allow for multiple explanations, as in the letter to Pythocles? Reasoning might lead one to:

- A person’s pleasure is limited by their finite life: their life is still finite, regardless of the infinity of time.

- If you're in a state of pleasure, the length of time of that state is immaterial and can't be quantified, so finite or infinite time are irrelevant (correct me if I'm wrong; that's how I understand Martin's point).

- Using the idea of homeostasis (at least as I understand it) as a teeter-totter, pleasure can be thought of as a state of balance. Too much pleasure brings pain, which seeks a return to the state of balance and could be considered as a limit to pleasure. In the absence of pleasure, we'll do anything to obtain it, to return to the state of balance.

These are three valid (I think) ideas of the limits of pleasure and there are certainly more. The previous PDs provide guidelines to understand pleasure, to use while reasoning this out. I think there are multiple ways to interpret this, as long as you use reasoning to rule out interpretations such as "God will fill my life with pleasure, whether in this life or the next, so I don't need to worry about time" or "I can do whatever I want to find pleasure, regardless of the consequences".

The more you grapple with reasoning out the issue, the more ramifications and nuances you might find.

To me, pleasure has been defined in PD18 and a variety of previous PDs beginning with PD03. I think PD19 is referencing those, and pivoting to the subject of craving infinite time for infinite pleasure. PD20 then mentions "fears about a life after death" and "departure from life", which seems to indicate that this is the subject of these two PDs, not pleasure. The two are describing the temporal limits of a person and how to think about it. [Parentheses are my additions.]

PD19. Infinite time contains no greater pleasure [the body’s goal] than does finite time, if one determines the limits of pleasure rationally.

PD20. The body takes the limits of pleasure to be infinite, and infinite time would provide such pleasure. But the mind has provided us with the complete life by a rational examination of the body’s goal and limitations and by dispelling our fears about a life after death [as described in previous PDs] ; and so we no longer need unlimited time. On the other hand, it does not avoid pleasure [which is the body’s goal, after all], nor, when conditions occasion our departure from life, does it come to the end in a manner that would suggest that it had fallen short in any way of the best possible existence.

Imagine that you are experiencing a bliss that's so great that you want it to last forever. At some point you'll bring yourself pain if you start to crave the experience. These are saying that you need to understand that your life is finite, so enjoy your bliss. Don't crave it, but don't reject bliss because it's going to end: relish it for what it is, and relish your finite life for what it is.

So I think that if you try to understand PD19 as saying something about pleasure specifically it becomes confusing and mysterious. At least for me, it becomes much clearer and simpler as I'm trying to describe it. "Now that you have a reasoned understanding of pleasure and of the material universe, think about what it means to have a finite life in an infinite universe." This, by itself, is a lot to think about.

Another option:

Infinite time contains no greater quantity of dark chocolate eaten than finite time, if one measures, by reason, the limits of quantity of dark chocolate eaten. Or, perhaps pet puppies could be used.

I mean this to be serious, not snarky. If you reason that what Epicurus is referring to is that life is finite, then just about anything that an individual experiences could be substituted for pleasure and would make the same point.

But since Epicurus used the word pleasure, is he using the word because it is the goal that he is concerned with or is he making a different point than what I'm understanding?